{"id":13760,"date":"2014-06-11T08:59:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T16:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=13760"},"modified":"2014-06-11T08:59:52","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T16:59:52","slug":"adelson-who-asked-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/adelson-who-asked-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Adelson: Who asked you?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sheldon<\/a>Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> is fast becoming the #1 buttinski in American politics. He’s not from Florida<\/strong> and doesn’t do business there
\n<\/a>but that hasn’t stopped him from meddling the state’s electoral process. He’s been seeding an astroturf movement <\/a>to defeat the use of medicinal marijuana. A constitutional amendment to approve medical pot is on the November ballot and Nanny Sheldon wants to see it go down. Of the Drug Free Florida Committee<\/strong>‘s $2.7 million war chest, $2.5 million comes from the CEO of Las Vegas Sands<\/strong>. Wire services report that “[Sarah<\/strong>]\u00a0Bascom<\/strong>\u2019s group maintains that the medical marijuana measure has a loophole that will allow people to obtain marijuana for nearly any reason,” even though the Florida Supreme Court<\/strong> has rejected that as a pig in a poke. No doubt we will soon be hearing from Sheldon about marijuana being a “gateway drug” and producing a generation of addicts. Since he’s married to an drug-abuse specialist, Adelson ought to know better. And, as a former addict himself (albeit of the legitimate, prescription kind), Sheldon might want to look to the beam in his eye rather than the mote in Florida’s. Either way, he should stick to doing what he does best — develop high-class casino resorts — and stop telling Americans how to live their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Atlantic City’<\/strong>s budget just sprang another leak. We don’t know how the city is going to make ends meet, considering all the property tax give-backs that the courts are handing down. The latest payday was for Borgata<\/strong>, which will receive $88.25 million plus an $18 million credit toward its 2014 assessment. That’s a lot of greenbacks<\/a>. As if that wasn’t enough, the Borgata’s 2015 assessment will be revised downward. In return, the casino will not seek a further appeal of its 2011-15 assessments. The 2009-10 period, during which Borgata was assessed at 250% of its value, remains fair game. Atlantic City’s budget was only $249 million last year, so — as appeals from Borgata, the Tropicana<\/strong>, Caesars Atlantic City<\/strong>, Trump Taj<\/strong> Mahal<\/strong> and, yes, even pile of junk Trump Plaza<\/strong> mount up — the question of Atlantic City’s solvency going forward must be asked.<\/p>\n

MGM Resorts International<\/strong>‘s proposal for Springfield<\/strong> looks like a shoo-in, judging by the near-raves it’s drawing<\/a> from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission<\/strong>. Revenue projections were described as reasonable (starting at $412 million a year) and the MGC implied the project would do a 7.5% ROI. MGM’s design concept got outright raves for “plans to preserve downtown Main Street\u2019s traditional storefront appearance, to save all or part of some historic buildings and to introduce new amenities to the economically struggling city, including a public plaza and ice skating rink, cinema, bowling alley and a trolley stopping at the Basketball Hall of Fame and other city attractions<\/em>.” The actual award of license is a mere formality now, subject to the negotiation of terms and conditions, although you never know what can turn up in the fine print. But it looks like a done deal and that’s a good thing, both for Springfield and for the industry.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sheldon Adelson is fast becoming the #1 buttinski in American politics. He’s not from Florida and doesn’t do business there but that hasn’t stopped him from meddling the state’s electoral process. He’s been seeding an astroturf movement to defeat the … 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":[23,60,26,36,7,112,11,25,12,21,169],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13760"}],"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=13760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13761,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13760\/revisions\/13761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}