Reverberations from Charlottesville were felt on the Las Vegas Strip last week when MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren wrote to all employees, saying in part, “You have my 
commitment that we will vigorously and zealously continue to reject hate speech and hate-based actions in any form,” calling out “hate mongers and white supremacists.” Murren advocated employee donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Anti-Defamation League, as well as four other groups. MGM will match any employee’s donation to these organizations.
While we applaud Murren’s actions, they could also be criticized as being a mile wide and an inch deep, since MGM is making no unilateral donations. However, Murren’s actions stand in stark rebuke to those of his fellow casino owners, who cower in silence while Nazis and their allies chant “Jews will not replace us.” Sheldon Adelson, have you lost your backbone?
Las Vegas‘ Nazi-loving past forms a subplot in the new book The Devil’s Mercedes, a history of Adolf Hitler‘s touring cars. It recapitulates Imperial Palace owner Ralph Engelstad‘s romance with ex-Hitler vehicles, not to mention his two Hitler 
birthday parties at the IP, for one of which bumper stickers were printed up that read “Hitler was right.” In an open letter to the people of his native North Dakota, Engelstad expressed a surprising degree of contrition (he could be nastily combative) but blamed the bumper stickers on the proverbial rogue employee and claimed to have had them all destroyed. Maybe they’ve been incinerated in the fires of Hell, where Engelstad is surely roasting this very minute, alongside his Nazi idols.
On a tangentially related note, the Culinary Union and Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D) are staging a protest today to highlight the plight of Temporary Protected Status émigrés, several of whom can be counted among the Culinary’s ranks, so you could say that the latter 
is defending its own turf. They’re calling for Sen. Dean Heller (R) to break with the Trump administration and support extension of the TPS program. “If TPS were to expire, it would criminalize thousands of current legal workers in major cities and industries overnight,” warns Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Argüello-Kline. Heller’s got problems of his own. “Frequent political candidate,” as the Las Vegas Review-Journal teasingly dubbed him, Danny Tarkanian has thrown his hat into the ring against Heller, which will probably force the latter to look for areas where he can run to the right. But is being a hardass on foreign-born Culinary employees one of them? L’il Tark has never been elected to office, despite myriad and obsessive attempts, but Heller seems to have joined Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake (R) on the GOP’s purge list.
* Gaming’s major jurisdictions continue to report July results. Pennsylvania was flat, mainly on the strength [sic] of slot play. Tables were 4% but slots 2% down. At Pinnacle Entertainment‘s Meadows racino, table play was an astonishing 39.5% higher but slots — which grossed $19.5 million — were 5% lower. GLPI‘s Penn 
National racino was down 1.5%, with slots off 3% and tables down 1.5%. The only other casino for which we have cumulative results, Sands Bethlehem, tumbled 4%, pulled down by 4.5% fewer slots winnings and an uncharacteristically weak performance at the tables, off -2.5%. Anyone who thinks the Keystone State needs slot routes has a hole in their head.
Casinos in Detroit were almost 1% up in July, with MGM Grand Detroit growing 2% and Motor City up 1%. Hapless Dan Gilbert wasn’t having any luck at Jack Greektown, down 1.5%.
* While I admit I’m still wrapping my brain around Bitcoin and thus have a certain amount of distrust for it, the cyber-currency is breaking new frontiers in Las Vegas. Strip club Legends Room is stamping all its dancers with a temporary tattoo, over which you can wand your Bitcoin app when you want to tip. (Remember, be a george, not a stiff.) Legends also has a cyber-currency application of its own and takes Ethereum as well. Mind you, you have to buy a small fortune in online tokens (Legends’ trades at $2.15 apiece) before it amounts to real money.
