They are if you’re a horse owner at The Isle Casino & Racing @ Pompano Park, which not only left trainers and owners out in the cold, as far as slot revenues are concerned, it just slashed purse amounts by 35%, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Pompano Park, it should be noted, is an isolated case. The track, owned by Isle of Capri Casinos, argues in its own defense that slot revenues were lower than expected. But will racing be driven out in the process? Again we are faced with the question of how viable horse racing actually is (I’m looking at you, Kentucky) if massive subsidies from slot machines are what’s needed to keep it alive. And while not contractually obligated to do more than it’s done for the horsemen, at first blush it looks as though Isle of Capri has pulled a bait-and-switch here.
My 18-year-old son is in the news again. Oh wait, that’s Florida House Speaker Marc Rubio, fighting a dogged rearguard action against Gov. Charlie Crist’s gambling expansion in Florida. Rubio is arguing that A) Crist’s revenue projections won’t pencil out and B) “it is morally wrong to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the working class.”
It’s a good day whenever a Grover Norquist-type conservative like Rubio comes out against regressive taxation. Unfortunately, Rubio’s remedy is to dismantle the Florida state government. Also, he’s made a habit of opposing fellow Republican Crist whenever possible (the two are vying for the mantle of Jeb Bush) and when Rubio says he’s against “transferring” disposable income, it sounds to me like code for “By all means, let’s keep it away from the Seminoles,” whose Class III compacts Rubio is challenging in court.
So forgive me if I doubt Rubio’s altruism just a bit. (And, no, I don’t have an 18-year-old son.)
If he’s lost Schwartz, he’s lost Middle America. The lone media defender of Columbia Sussex CEO Bill Yung has left the building. UNLV’s Dr. David Schwartz finally loses patience with the Kentucky hotel baron after reading about Yung bragging on his ability to fling $1 million at the feet of Kentucky’s new governor in the same week that Columbia Sussex stiffed the state of New Jersey for 750 large. Is Yung’s company really that hard up or is this a passive-aggressive way of getting back at the Garden State?
Excessive federal zeal in prosecuting gambling rings finds an unsympathetic ear at the Supreme Court. If there’s a reason some Americans are distrustful of expanded federal law-enforcement powers, whatever the premise or the administration (the Clinton-Gore administration had its intrusive proclivities, too) it’s because, inevitably, they will be pushed past the breaking point.
