{"id":771,"date":"2008-03-05T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-06T00:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/3\/5\/Desperation-in-Florida"},"modified":"2022-08-28T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-28T14:00:00","slug":"desperation-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/desperation-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Desperation in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Isle of Capri<\/strong>‘s racino a disappointment (especially for horsemen)? Is Boyd Gaming<\/strong> taking Florida expansion off the table? Is Magna Entertainment<\/strong> threatening to close overextended Gulfstream Par<\/a>k? What’s a Florida lawmaker to do?<\/p>\n

Why, legalize every form of gambling short of cricket fighting, of course. Statewide slots, a lottery, regulated “adult arcades,” high-stakes poker — it’s all on the table<\/a> as Sunshine State solons head back to Tallahassee, no doubt looking forward to two months of nonstop eye-poking and head-slapping between Gov. Charlie Crist<\/strong> (R) and archenemy House Speaker Marc Rubio<\/strong> (R), as they tussle over a shrinking state budget.<\/p>\n

Rubio’s still trying to rein in Crist’s Class III compact with the Seminole tribes<\/strong>, but that horse may have long since left the stable. The Seminoles are proceeding as though they’d never heard of Marc Rubio. Should he get a court to overturn the compacts, Florida lawmakers who have had a taste of once-forbidden Seminole gambling lucre may already be hooked and repudiate Rubio (who’s a lame duck, anyway).<\/p>\n

As for the absence of cricket fighting from the list of proposed fiscal remedies, I’d guess that’s just an oversight.<\/p>\n

The Schmuck Report:<\/strong> On a humorous note, sports reporter Peter Schmuck<\/a> takes a glance at the gleaming fa\u00e7ades of Florida’s racinos and declares that\u00a0“the experiment with increased gambling in Florida appears to be a success.” This is either disingenuous boosterism for bringing racinos to Maryland (an on-again, off-again quest) or else Schmuck is happily inhabiting a parallel universe.<\/p>\n

Corzine opines<\/strong>. New Jersey’s governor goes on the record as favoring smoke-free casinos. He also backs the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority<\/strong> in its quarrel with Atlantic City over whether or not to sell Bader Field to Penn National<\/strong>. (Turns out Penn wants additional land re-zoned for casinos, too.)<\/p>\n

Financing is sufficiently concrete, Corzine says, for both Revel<\/strong> and MGM Grand Atlantic City<\/strong>, and he’s bullish on Pinnacle Entertainment<\/strong>‘s postponed megaresort. And playing the stock market isn’t gambling, he says: “We made probability judgments about the viability of assets.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Isle of Capri‘s racino a disappointment (especially for horsemen)? Is Boyd Gaming taking Florida expansion off the table? Is Magna Entertainment threatening to close overextended Gulfstream Park? What’s a Florida lawmaker to do? Why, legalize every form of gambling … 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":[23,60,36,67,11,69,30,33,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771"}],"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=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31599,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/31599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}