Since there is no problem in today’s America too trivial to be resolved with gunplay, let the record show that 31-year-old Kevin Jones Jr. was mortally wounded at the Lucky Club Casino early this morning. Jones was pronounced dead at a local hospital. How his alleged assailant, convicted felon Shonta Holland, came to be in possession of a firearm is a question for the people who run background checks on would-be gun owners. There’s no question, however, that this is another blotch on the Lucky Club’s stained blotter. In the 1990s, back when it was the Cheyenne Hotel, its owners were chased out by Nevada regulators, who found too much jiggery-pokery on the balance sheets.
In 1998, MTR Gaming purchased the Cheyenne — soon to become the Speedway Casino — an electrical fire shut the place down for a fortnight. During the 2007 gaming bubble, MTR sold the Speedway at a 330% markup. New owner Seth Schorr — son Wynn Resorts COO Marc Schorr — had scarcely taken the keys to the property in June 2008 when an electrical fire forced a two-week shutdown. Now this. Whatever you can say on the property’s behalf, lucky it ain’t.
A Trump disgrace. Not the man but the company which bears his name, Trump Entertainment Resorts. CEO Robert Griffin (recruited from bottom-feeding MTR, you may recall) has decided to balance the books after Hurricane Sandy by putting the thumbscrews to his workforce. All workers will be forced to take a week of unpaid leave between now and Dec. 2. Adding insult to injury, Griffin welshed on a promise to allow employees to cash in vacation days to make up for wages lost while Sandy kept Trump Plaza and Trump Taj Mahal shuttered.
“We recognize the hardship you and your family are enduring,” crocodile-wept Griffin before threatening to close both casinos if employees didn’t bend over and take it. Trump Plaza is. admittedly, a financial basket case but if the Taj, one of the Boardwalk’s higher-grossing casinos, is that close to the tipping point, then maybe majority owner Marc Lasry should be looking into Griffin’s job performance. I’m no demographer but it stands to reason that TER’s workforce is derived from the bedroom communities near Atlantic City that were so heavily devastated by Sandy. Griffin’s Ebenezer Scrooge act only compounds the post-hurricane misery. He and TER are prohibitive favorites to be 2012’s Stiff of the Year. (We’ve never actually recognized one, but this might be the time to start doing so.)
As for Donald Trump, let’s just say he’s got problems of his own at the moment.
