Yes, it’s yet another exciting episode of The New(t) Adventures of Sheldon Adelson. When, in typically unsubtle (read: crass) fashion, the casino potentate began pouring kegs full of money into the current presidential race, it was bound to set off sparks. Equally predictably, those sparks lit a fuse that would eventually detonate a powder keg right under Sheldon’s tuchus. What ABC News is reporting isn’t anything with which you, dear reader, aren’t already familiar but the mainstream media is going to have a field day with it. The ensuing, disingenuous and half-truthful attack ads will practically write themselves. And if the mega-successful Adelson is genuinely “puzzled” by the spotlight he’s turned upon himself, he’s not quite as smart as we thought.
Happy birthday, Steve Wynn. The once (and future?) nemesis of Adelson turns 70 today and ABC just gift-wrapped him an extra-large present for the occasion. The timing could not be more ironic if you scripted it.
Yes, it’s true that smoking is hazardous to your health (just ask the Surgeon General), creates a disgusting stench, can drive away customers, and definitely distressses your property faster and increases costs for things like HVAC systems. All that being said …
…. two wrongs don’t make a right when Penn National Gaming institutes a policy whereby employees cannot even smoke on property, they’ve can’t even wear a nicotine patch. Hell, they can’t even smoke in the privacy of their own homes! If you test positive for nicotine, you’re persona non grata at Penn’s pair of Ohio slot houses. Oh, they’ll be happy to take your money as a customer but forget about working there, bub. Penn’s fatwa — and its random drug-testing policy — go far beyond anything required under Ohio law. It’s also being imposed only in Ohio. Workers at, say, M Resort, don’t yet have to worry about Big Brother Penn peering through their keyhole.
This gives the lie to do-gooder Penn verbiage about how this done out of concern for employees’ health. Penn plantation foreman spokesman Mark Tenenbaum struck much truer chords when he said the edict was laid down to reduce health-care costs and “and increase productivity.” (To say nothing of the capex savings mentioned above.) You heard Massa Tenenbaum, folks: Tote that barge! Lift that bale! (Need I enumerate the health-related canards that Penn could use to discriminate against blacks, women and gays?)
Doing the right thing. It must be noted — and praised — that Caesars Entertainment is taking a thoroughly more enlightened stance. Its Buckeye State employees will not be tested for nicotine. If they smoke, the company will encourage them to stop — by dangling the carrot of cash incentives before them. Now that’s what I call a “total rewards” system. Whether Gary Loveman or Rock Gaming CEO Dan Gilbert gets the credit, it matters not. They’re doing the right thing.
Our old friends clinging to a toehold in the casino industry at Columbia Sussex continue to make the wrong kind of news. When they’re not taking a slack attitude toward safety, they’re about to have a hotel foreclosed in Missouri (undoubtedly causing Show-Me State gaming regulators to congratulate themselves on thwarted Col Sux casino purchases) off, with several others potentially on the brink. Three straight years of declining REVPAR? Sounds like ColSux to us!
It’s about Obamacare. I liked the original Obamacare bill, you know, the one with the single payer option, not this stupid version where the insurance companies actually make more money now than without it.
My insurance premiums have doubled under Obamacare, yes, doubled. So, I’m guessing that even under a group plan, being a smoker would probably add $2K or so a year to an individual’s policy, maybe more.
So…I can understand why Penn doesn’t want to employ smokers. It’s not the worst thing I’ve heard of.
ABC is gift wrapping Steve a 70th birthday present? What are they doing, comping him his next facelift? I swear, Steve’s going to have more work done than Jjoan Rivers.
Forgive my opacity. The “birthday present” of which I spoke was the unflattering Adelson story that ABC ran today. El Steve will probably be having his vegan birthday cake with a side helping of Schadenfreude.
The only portion of “Obamacare” that is currently going is the provision that allows people to carry their children on their group plan until they turn 26. The rest comes in over time, mostly in 2014. Premiums have not “doubled” because of this relatively small and attractive feature, medical inflation is spiraling out of control for the last several decades. Of course it would have been better with the Public Option, but the Republicans blocked that. Healthcare “debates” these days far too often ignore the completely unsustainable situation our country is in. I am more that willing to give the ACA a chance to stop the bleeding.
David has already enlightened us Stiffs to Sheldon Adelson and his storied history, now ABC is running with it…