UFC President Dana White is finally making a useful contribution to society. The brawl baron has importuned his BFF Donald Trump to do something to reverse the recent tax imposition on gambling losses. You will recall that not only are 100% of winnings taxable, now 10% of losses are too. We can thank Sen. Mike Crapo (R) for that financial sodomization of players, snuck through a sleepy Congress. (White’s well-reasoned letter can be found here.)
There’s a fair amount of enlightened self-interest to what White wants. After all, he’s one of the larger whales on the scene today, his gambling losses being the stuff of legend. (Station Casinos is reportedly at least $30 million into White for bad markers, losses that the shareholders will probably be made to eat.) It’s heavy players like White that the Crapo tax will hurt the most. Indeed, if weren’t for whales spouting off on the issue, Big Gaming would still be complacent about it. And any tax relief the high rollers get will also be felt, to a lesser extent, by the Joe Average gambler. So White has our thanks.
Readers may also remember that Trump initially scoffed at giving gamblers any tax relief. But he’s notoriously susceptible to flattery and the pleas of well-placed friends, so White knows what he’s doing. Trump’s backhanded attitude toward players is deeply and unamusingly ironic, considering that the rank-and-file gamblers he clearly disdains made him rich and famous … back in the day when he was the face of Atlantic City. But they’ve served their purpose and now are the subject of presidential derision. Mind you, Trump is the very last person on Planet Earth who should be passing judgment on others in matters of personal morality. ‘Nuff said.
How will this play out? It’s a tough call. The GOP caucus on Capitol Hill would hock their own mothers into white slavery if POTUS said to do it. But the Senate is a notoriously chummy place, so would Republican senators sell Crapo down the river in order to placate Trump, should he reverse himself on the gambling tax? We don’t think so … but stranger things are happening in Washington, D.C. on a daily basis.
It’s only been 10 days since Affinity Gaming pulled the plug on Primm, Nevada. Already, however, the Las Vegas Review-Journal is getting rheumy with nostalgia for the not-so-good old days. “Bring back Primm!” we can hear Editor Glenn Cook crying. The R-J cherry-picks statistics to create the impression of an economic bonanaza-to-be. Yes, Herbst Gaming once overpaid $400 million for three castoff MGM Resorts International casinos at the state line. It was a foolish miscalculation that was literally the undoing of Herbst’s gambling business.
We hate to break it to the old duffers at the R-J but economic Darwinism has singled Primm out for extinction. The gradual degradation of the three Primm casinos didn’t help either. But three decades of tribal competition out of California took their toll and the opening of Hard Rock Tejon in Bakersfield was clearly the final in Primm’s coffin. It may look like a car dealership but it’s a hit and takes away the last reason Californians had to go to Primm instead.
Primm was not that compelling a draw for Las Vegans either, as the entertainment program atrophied and so did the outlet mall. The wide place in the road offered precious little (other than California lottery tickets) that one could also find plentifully in Las Vegas. Scarcely a destination unto itself, Primm was marked for doom. If it is indeed to be rebooted, as the R-J hopes, somebody’s going to have look beyond gambling.
To give the devil his due, while MGM Resorts International was a miscreant earlier this week for stiffing a waitress out of $76K tip, it has to be applauded for applying some corporate karma. It seems that Aria booked Predict Summit, a conference of (you guessed it) pimply prediction-market tech bros. That was April 30. Once word got up the MGM food chain, three days later, Predict Summit got evicted. Yes, for once principle was more important than the almighty dollar. MGM applied a swift kick to Predict Summit’s ass and we hope the rest of the Las Vegas casino industry follows its example. It’s bad enough that prediction markets are screwing the legacy gambling business over. Big Gaming needn’t roll out the red carpet for its mortal enemies.
Primary elections are nigh in Dixie. Here in Georgia, gubernatorial hopeful Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) recently distinguished herself by coming out in favor of legalizing casinos. Bravo! Unfortunately, even if she’s elected, she’ll have to deal with the spinelessness and torpor of the Georgia Lege, the most useless deliberative body in sight. In the half-dozen years since Gov. Brian Kemp (R) renounced his opposition to casinos and sports betting, the Lege has accomplished … nothing. That’s right, absent their largest obstacle, pro-gambling lawmakers are still hamstrung. So we’re not getting all optimistic yet and for good reason.
Then there’s Alabama, which makes Georgia look enlightened. The one publication in that state worth reading, Alabama Political Reporter, has no end of fun mocking the Victorian attitudes toward gambling that characterize the public square’s discourse on the topic. Don’t take our word for it: Read Josh Moon‘s blistering takedown, some of the most delicious prose we’ve sampled all week.
Quote of the Day: “I’m willing to bet that there are elected officials currently inveighing against ‘fraud’ who also are making a buck betting on votes they’ll be taking. I wonder what kind of odds I can get on that.”—Charles P. Pierce on suspicious Polymarket trading activity.