{"id":3901,"date":"2010-06-29T14:13:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T22:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3901"},"modified":"2010-06-29T14:13:30","modified_gmt":"2010-06-29T22:13:30","slug":"penns-door-prize-toxic-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/penns-door-prize-toxic-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn&#8217;s door prize: toxic waste!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Penn National Gaming<\/strong> got a little something extra when it bought an old <strong>General Motors<\/strong> site for its <strong>Columbus<\/strong>, <strong>Ohio<\/strong> casino: 81 sites&#8217; worth of toxic waste, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dispatch.com\/live\/content\/local_news\/stories\/2010\/06\/28\/hush-hush-hazards.html?sid=101\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\">so much sludge<\/a> it takes 3,000 pages to catalog. Penn didn&#8217;t have to &#8212; pardon the pun &#8212; come clean about this, but it did.<\/p>\n<p>Now Penn faces the not-inconsiderable task of<!--more--> remediating the cesspools it has inherited. Were I a prospective customer, I&#8217;d hope Penn doesn&#8217;t take the shortcut of simply pouring a concrete or clay seal over the sludge. How&#8217;d you like to know that stuff was X dozen feet below <em>your <\/em>slot stool?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ohio voters who approved<\/strong> the state&#8217;s four in-progress casinos also carved a protected duopoly into stone. Not only does <strong>Cleveland Cavaliers<\/strong> owner <strong>Dan Gilbert<\/strong> have half the casino action, he&#8217;s gotten into bed with <strong>Harrah&#8217;s Entertainment<\/strong> (which may, in turn, operate Gilbert&#8217;s casinos) for a piece of its racetrack business. Perhaps the best remedy for this incestuous setup would be for voters to widen competition by approving seven racinos. But that&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dispatchpolitics.com\/live\/content\/local_news\/stories\/2010\/06\/29\/copy\/racetrack-slotsnow-closer-to-a-go.html?adsec=politics&amp;sid=101\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\">off the 2010 ballot now<\/a> and the ball&#8217;s in Gov. <strong>Ted Strickland<\/strong>&#8216;s court, where it&#8217;s likely to rest awhile.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wake me<\/strong> when lawmakers in <strong>Massachusetts<\/strong> finally decide <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/local\/massachusetts\/articles\/2010\/06\/29\/senators_block_bids_to_vote_on_casino_bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\">whether or not to approve casinos<\/a>. It already looks as though the state will reap hundreds of millions less in licensing fees than it would had it acted just one Legislature sooner. And now the <strong>Mashpee Wampanaogs<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/local\/massachusetts\/articles\/2010\/06\/29\/senators_block_bids_to_vote_on_casino_bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\">may be able to make a federal end run<\/a> around the deadlock in the capitol.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Video-upload problems<\/strong> have prevented <em>S&amp;G<\/em> from sharing the <strong>Quicktime<\/strong> teasers for what <em>Daily Fiasco<\/em> calls &#8220;maybe the most batshit insane show ever loosed on the Strip&#8221; since <em>Raw Talent Live<\/em>. The latter was the gleefully incoherent brainchild of Europoseur <strong>N(icole) D(urr)<\/strong>, centering upon the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/dailyfiasco.com\/2008\/10\/03\/saharas-got-talent\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\">Laptop of Life<\/a>&#8221; (LOL, geddit?) and the only show I have ever seen that used prerecorded applause &#8212; which made the nearly empty <strong>Sahara<\/strong> showroom sound as though it were filled with delighted but invisible people.<\/p>\n<p>Entitled <em>Triumph<\/em> (the title alone tempts fate), the new <strong>Las Vegas Hilton<\/strong> spectacle appears to be <a href=\"http:\/\/dailyfiasco.com\/2010\/06\/24\/triumph-will-be-the-most-insane-thing\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\">a mishmash of garbled Arthurian mythology<\/a> with 19th scientific experimentation. Sort of like somebody took the mostly craptastic final two seasons of <em>Stargate SG-1<\/em> and topped them off with story elements swiped from <strong>Amanda Tapping<\/strong>&#8216;s current series, <em>Sanctuary<\/em>. If they throw in a cheesily animated dragon, the <strong>SyFy Channel<\/strong> homage will be complete. <em>Daily Fiasco<\/em> has the full four-teaser sequence. Enjoy &#8230; if you dare.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unscreened hedge funds<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.freep.com\/article\/20100628\/NEWS01\/100628036\/Board-clears-way-for-Greektown-Casino-to-have-new-owners\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"broken_link\">have been cleared<\/a> to take over <strong>Greektown Casino<\/strong>. Hedge funds? What could go wrong?<\/p>\n<p><strong>In the past 24 hours<\/strong>, financially ailing nightclub <strong>Rumjungle<\/strong> has been both evicted from <strong>Mandalay Bay<\/strong> and had its execution stayed by a local judge. However this soap opera ends, you have to hand it to Rumjungle for a novel legal argument: then-<strong>MGM Mirage<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegassun.com\/news\/2010\/jun\/25\/judge-dismisses-rumjungle-nightclub-bankruptcy-cas\/\" target=\"_blank\">failed to protect the club from competition<\/a>. Dastardly!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Penn National Gaming got a little something extra when it bought an old General Motors site for its Columbus, Ohio casino: 81 sites&#8217; worth of toxic waste, so much sludge it takes 3,000 pages to catalog. Penn didn&#8217;t have to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/penns-door-prize-toxic-waste\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,28,44,26,4,117,7,112,11,71,69,33,111,25,54,8,9,20,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901"}],"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=3901"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3906,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901\/revisions\/3906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}