{"id":13316,"date":"2014-04-16T13:33:06","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T21:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=13316"},"modified":"2014-04-16T13:33:06","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T21:33:06","slug":"self-delusion-in-illinois-grave-robbing-at-penn-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/self-delusion-in-illinois-grave-robbing-at-penn-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-delusion in Illinois; Grave-robbing at Penn project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robert<\/a>That’s a nice pair of rose-colored glasses that state Rep. Robert Rita<\/strong> (D) must be wearing<\/a>. He says a 10,000-position Chicago<\/strong> megaresort will “capture the revenue in the Chicago market without creating the cannibalization and oversaturation.” In case he hasn’t noticed, there’s already cannibalization and oversaturation happening in the Illinois<\/strong> market, with Rivers Casino<\/strong> the main beneficiary. Downstate lawmakers are, understandably, less than enchanted with Rita’s bill draft. \u201cI would suggest that downstate taking the leftover crumbs from Chicago is a laughable assertion that no downstater would bite on,\u201d was the rejoinder of state Rep. Chad Hays<\/strong> (R).<\/p>\n

The horsey set, meanwhile, bridles at an alternative Rita bill which would allow an unspecified number of racinos but curb their slot machine inventory (outside of Cook County<\/strong>) to 450 each. Rita’s Plan B also calls for a 4,000-position\u00a0Chicago<\/strong> casino, plus one in an undetermined suburb, one in Rockford<\/strong>, one in Danville<\/strong> and one in Lake County<\/strong>, each with 1,200 gaming positions. One shudders to think what such a mega-expansion would do to the existing casinos. There’s a horrid fascination in watching Illinois lawmakers put their casino industry on auto-destruct.<\/p>\n

\"Hollywood-Casino-Jamul\"<\/a>Penn National Gaming<\/strong> is keeping mum about the latest blotch on its litigation-plagued Casino Jamul<\/strong> project, near San Diego<\/strong>. The new lawsuit alleges that unmarked Native American graves were dug up<\/a> to make room for Hollywood Jamul<\/strong> and dumped into a CalTrans<\/strong> interchange. (Ick!) Fortunately for Penn, it — unlike CalTrans — is not the defendant in this grisly court case.\u00a0San Diego County<\/strong> Supervisor Dianne Jacobs<\/strong> contends that well-established Jamul graves are cheek-by-jowl with the casino site. If so, one has to question the taste of both the tribe and Penn in going forward in the manner which they did.<\/p>\n

Convicted<\/strong> money launderer Philip Gurian<\/strong> got off rather lightly<\/a> after being busted for running an illegal online gambling ring. (A co-conspirator has already been deported to Panama<\/strong>.) Besides forfeiting $100,000, he was sentenced to three years’ supervised released. Mind you, he can’t have a computer and is forbidden to access the Internet<\/strong>. That could put a crimp in his plan to write his memoirs. He’s also barred from “going to locations where gambling is the focus,” which could cut down on his recreational options pretty severely, too. But I’d say the court was merciful, considering the size of Gurian’s gambling apparatus (spanning six countries) and the length of his European rap sheet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s a nice pair of rose-colored glasses that state Rep. Robert Rita (D) must be wearing. He says a 10,000-position Chicago megaresort will “capture the revenue in the Chicago market without creating the cannibalization and oversaturation.” In case he hasn’t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,58,37,69,33,111,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13318,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13316\/revisions\/13318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}