WPCNR THE SUNDAY BAILEY. News Comment By John F. Bailey. August 3, 2008: Those slash and burn charts provided by State Budget Director Laura Anglin in Governor David A. Patterson’s Wednesday news conference show such a dire prediction for the state’s finances that the newspapers of record chose not to reprint any – another example of “legitimate” media “with superior news judgment supposedly” covering up the big picture of state leadership incompetence.(You can see some of the charts on White Plains Week, our internet telecast at www.whiteplainsweek.com. Or see the complete presentation at the Department of Budget website.
To the gambling industry Ms. Anglin’s charts are the long-awaited opportunity to create Sodoms and Gomorrah gambling meccas in the far corners of the state.
Think of “Anything Goes Gambling” at Lake Placid (“The Peaks”). Glimmerglass Casino in the Finger Lakes, Fire Island Flames Club on Fire Island, or Manhattan Waters at Battery Park or on the East River.
Gambling’s instant ability to suck cash willingly out of taxpayers, demonstrated most notably at Empire City in Yonkers may be the fix for the Crash of 08. It is far easier for our crafty legislators to legalize gambling across the state than to cut spending or raise our taxes, or pass higher commerical property tax rates. They could cut the STAR exemptions again like they did last year without telling us (and neither did “the media,” folks.).They have already demonstrated willingness to slash STAR.
But, wait….here’s an idea. If I’m a legislator, I have to have a gimmick.
The state now needs gambling, thanks to fifty years of looting by the legislature.
The legislators need gambling to avert the necessity of cutbacks in their profligate spending and appalling proliferation of state departments with layers and layers of incompetents, hacks, hangers-on and overpaid bureaucrats — and to keep feeding the bloated school district big spenders.
The precipitous decline of Wall Street bonuses, the wipe out of capital gains charts, worse Wall Street losses than 9-11 are the excuses, as well as the drop in state pension values and high cost of travel provide the excuse to cut major deals with the gambling interests.
“Anything Goes” Casino gambling is an “Everybody Wins” solution. You can keep up the bloated aid to education. You can increase medicaid payments, fund the out of control pensions.
The success of Empire City in Yonkers has lead to the first of such proliferations in the Catskills – the Empire Resorts-Cappelli Enterprises partnership in reviving the Concord resort, and building a raceway there. This will be the model of many more to come.
Think of how lucrative a casino in Long Island would be on Fire Island, you could call it the Fire Island Flames – build a hotel and convention center and you’d draw thousands every weekend from populous Nassau and Suffolk counties — the beginning of Miami Beach on Long Island.
Upstate? Sleepy Lake Placid with a casino on the lake up there would be an ideal draw from Canada, Vermont, and Albany. Or how about on Lake Champlaign on the New York side? Or how about Manhattan itself or on City Island – or on one of the virtually unused islands between the Triborough Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge. You might even want to turn the bridge tolls into combination toll machines and slot machines – and that is not a joke.
Just this morning, the Times did a story on Steve Wynn, the casino magnate, just finished building a $2.3 Billion casino in Las Vegas. The story makes a point of saying how Las Vegas is hurting somewhat from the downturn.
There is plenty of investment money around from foreign sources to fund these New York goldmines.
The New York State Legislature has already shown the direction that will allow them to continue the decadent New York State Government spending style. Today it’s video gaming terminals, tomorrow it may very well be full-tilt casinos.
I tell you one thing – wide opening gambling in New York will shut down gambling trade shuttling to Vegas and Atlantic City and Connecticut. People could gamble on their lunch hour in Manhattan.
There are millions in New York who buy lottery tickets every day – a response decades ago to the state’s need for money “for education.” They believe in something for nothing. You’ve got a built-in sucker market here.
If I were the state I’d plop three casinos in the New York area: Manhattan, Long Island and Westchester County. You already have one building in the Catskills. Add one in Saratoga Springs or Lake Placid for the northeast and one in the fingerlakes region to attract the Pennsylvania, northeast Ohio market.
Of course, I am not advocating this. I am just thinking the way a legislator thinks.
Along with the casinos comes the ancillary industries of parasites, but casinos provide jobs in regions that have none. They bring convention centers. They create businesses in regions that need them without huge investment by the state. But most of all they bring legislators’ money you otherwise would not see into state coffers.
In White Plains, casino on Silver Lake would be an excellent thing to get that hideous swamp cleaned up, Silver Lake Casino would be a great idea, don’t you think? Just smell the sales tax, folks!
Or better yet – how about a casino at the Ritz in Tower Two or at 42? Or at those anemicly-assessed, starving properties along Mamaroneck Avenue in “assessment decline?” Certainly would add to the handle on the Mamaroneck Avenue “strip.”
“Anything Goes” Casino gambling in New York would bring in a new era of new bureaucracies (and more hack jobs) in New York for the legislators to hand out. The New York State Hotel & Entertainment Enterprise Commission – that would be good for about 10,000 jobs don’t you think? A New York State Casino Security Force.
“Anything Goes” Casino Gambling is the easy fix. And, as we all know, legislators in New York always do the easy fix. And, I am trying to think like a legislator does, how can I keep things as they are, increase contributions to my compaign funds, reward my key lobbyist groups, spend more money, and not raise taxes.
