Fun with geography, Adelson-style

Thanks to a tip from reader detroit1051, S&G customers can avail themselves of this handy online tool. With it, you can pretend to be Sheldon Adelson, scissoring the State of Florida into 75-mile zones of exclusivity (because, being a super-patriot and frequent payer of lip service to free-market capitalism, the last thing Sheldon wants is competition). I played a bit with Radius Around Point and, if Adelson gets his wish, you could theoretically fit three casinos into the Sunshine State — Adelson and his supporters want four, maybe five — if you sited them in Miami, Jacksonville and the greater Tampa/St. Petersburg area. The lucrative Naples market would fall right between the Miami and Tampa/St. Pete circles, so its gamblers would be a fiercely contested prize.

If the state were prepared to foist a casino upon the super-conservative Panhandle region, you could cram in a fourth one. But Orlando loses out … unless lawmakers were to gerrymander a diagonal, oblong “radius” the shape of a hot dog between the Tampa (or perhaps Sarasota) and Jacksonville zones. In other words, the exercise quickly devolves into silliness. I’m surprised Florida solons are taking this monopolistic nonsense seriously but Adelson’s been hinting at anywhere from $3 billion to $10 billion in investment. As Charlie Chan sagely observed, “When money talks, few are deaf.”