Месяц: Октябрь 2014

Hooray! Our schools have been saved! Doing what Colorado taxpayers did not do for perceived school budgets, generous Rhode Islanders have heard our pleas, and have arisen to redress our shortcomings! And all we have to do in return is to allow a private firm in Rhode Island to harvest gambling money (“the house always wins”) from Colorado and make an Eastern-State-style kickback to “hook” our populace vote-wise. The “hook” will be 34 percent of their take here, and it amounts to an advertised $114 million per year. The payoff will take place under the aegis of a proposed amendment to the Colorado Constitution (Amendment 68) and it restricts usage of the money to K-12 education only. Effective essentially forever, whatever its merits.
We should be thankful for such help —- until we wipe the tears of gratitude from our eyes and consider that their total take from Colorado is easily calculated to be $347 million per year, less the “kickback” to the Colorado Treasury, from already hard-set citizens! As constitutional provisions are not easily changed, this amendment will be effective forever once the end-recipients of these funds lock-it-in politically. If the gambling funds diminish or disappear during recessive times, calls will almost certainly be made for taxpayer help.
What about un-stated external costs probably left to Colorado taxpayers? Extra civic administration, additional policing, social support for cleaned-out families, etc.
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? Feature a city's pot-holed, two-lane road suddenly connecting with the casino's four-lane highway entrance?
I will vote no for this proposal, and I strongly urge you to vote no as well.
Alf Modahl

Just four stops remain in Season 5 of the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT), which recently saw Ryan Dykhouse top a field of 517 entries to win the FireKeepers Casino stop in Battle Creek, Michigan, for $124,500. The next stop for the MSPT will be at Meskwaki Casino in Tama, Iowa, from November 1-9 for an $1,100 buy-in $300,000 guaranteed Main Event.

Meskwaki has been one of the MSPT’s best-performing stops due partially to the fact that players only need to be 18 years old to play. The last time the MSPT visited the property, which was back in July, Jonathan Olson topped a field of 368 entries to win a $95,741 first-place prize after defeating MSPT regular Mike Holm in heads-up play.

Other past winners of the MSPT Meskwaki include Muneer Ahmed ($89,184), Dan Sun ($77,103), Michael Reynolds ($81,060), Terry Ring ($87,694), Andy Van Blair ($88,958), Jesse Spooner ($81,060), and Matthew Anderson ($100,075). As you can see, the winner of the event can expect a high five-figure score.

“The MSPT looks forward to returning to Iowa for the last time in Season 5," MSPT owner and operator Bryan Mileski told PokerNews. "Time and again Meskwaki proves to be one of the more popular stops on the schedule, and we expect the players to turn out in full force. The last time we rolled into town we crushed the $300,000 guarantee, and we expect to do the same come November.”

The tenth stop of Season II of the Card Player Poker Tour kicked off at Hollywood Park Casino in Southern California Oct. 17 and will host a series of tournaments through Oct. 26 culminating with a $340 no-limit hold’em $100,000 guarantee main event Oct. 23-26.

Here is a look at the latest results:

Jimmy Harris

Event No. 5: No-Limit Hold’em Super Stack Turbo $10,000 Guarantee
Buy In: $150
Entrants: 85
Prize Pool: $10,200

Jimmy Harris $2,587
Did Not Report $1,743
Kathleen Solowitz $1,647
Did Not Report $1,566
Dariush Alamdari $685
Jesus Frausto $560
George Wilson $450
Norman Cooper $355
Kyung Min $305
Frank Dorrel $150
Shyam Madiraju $150
Hollywood Park Casino combines the action and excitement of the most popular live casino card games with the thrill of simulcast thoroughbred wagering. Located just five minutes from Los Angeles International Airport, with thousands of hotel rooms nearby, HPC is the closest casino to Los Angeles’ Westside.

The Davenport City Council will take its first vote on rezoning land for a new land-based casino at Wednesday night's meeting.

The new land-based casino would go near the intersection of Interstates 80 and 74.

Many neighbors are against the plan, saying heavier traffic will have a negative impact on the area.

City leaders say the developer chose the location, not the city.

They'll take the first vote on the rezoning at Wednesday night's meeting.

It will take three votes to make the rezoning final.

With the general election just two weeks away, the four referendum questions on the state ballot are getting almost as much attention as the governor's race.

And among those four, the one seeking the repeal of the state's Casino Gambling Law seems to have gathered the most intense group of supporters.

Repeal the Casino Deal, the statewide grassroots, anti-gaming group, has been doing its best to convince voters that the 2011 bill providing for three casinos and one slots parlor should be reversed.

With all the fits and starts associated with the casino-licensing process -- including conflict-of-interest concerns and questions of partners with criminal records -- the odds of this question succeeding seemed favorable.

But that initial anti-casino momentum has slowed, as recent polls suggest. Surveys by the Boston Globe, Suffolk University/Boston Herald, UMass Lowell/7News, and WBUR all show the referendum question trailing by double digits.

Now anti-casino backers have disclosed a report that predicts the state's Lottery revenue will fall by as much as $104 million -- $830,000 in Fitchburg -- in just the first year of the three casinos' and one slots parlor's operation.

The only other support for such a devastating effect on the Lottery, according to the Globe, was a report filed in 2008 by state Rep. Tom Conroy, a treasurer candidate and casino foe, who alluded to a 2006 paper written by a Pennsylvania college student, which predicted a 25 percent drop in that state's lottery revenue once casinos began operating there.

Top union officials are vowing a strong Election Day turnout to defeat a casino-repeal ballot measure — a push that could prove the wild card for the gubernatorial race.

“Obviously Question 3 (the repeal initiative) is a big question for organized labor and also for the economy of Massachusetts,” Teamsters Local 25 President Sean O’Brien said yesterday at a raucous Charlestown rally of hundreds of union members for Democratic candidate Martha Coakley. “We must maintain the legislation to build casinos in Massachusetts.”

The effort to get out the union vote for Coakley has been in full swing for months, said O’Brien, who leads the largest Teamsters union in New England, with 11,000 members.

“We’re out there, we’re knocking on doors, we’re doing phone banking every night, we’re doing robocalls, we’re using social media, we are doing a grass-roots campaign to make sure that our candidates get elected,” he said.

Read more: Voters hold ace in Question 3 war:

Cast yes ballot to stop Mass. casino mess
Say no to save jobs, revenues, hopes
The casino ballot question will be an incentive for union members to head to the polls, Coakley said after her speech.

“That is one question I think will drive some turnout,” Coakley said. “I expect that will have an impact.”

At a campaign event in the North End an hour later, Republican candidate Charlie Baker said he would welcome high union turnout.

“I’ve talked to a lot of union members over the course of this race who feel they’ve been nickeled-and-dimed to death by the commonwealth of Massachusetts ... and the attorney general has made it quite clear that she has no problem with continuing to raise taxes,” he said.

Both candidates may be right to welcome — and fear — union turnout on the issue, said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University’s Political Research Center.

The latest polling shows the repeal losing by 15 points. But among registered Democrats — despite strong opposition by the party’s traditional allies in organized labor — the repeal is passing, Paleologos said.

“The second place it gets tricky is among women voters. Because the literature suggests that women are more susceptible to higher divorce rates, higher domestic violence, higher spousal gambling addiction, etc. etc. ... women oppose Question 3 in our poll,” he said. “Women should be Coakley’s wheelhouse, so it’s not all fully correlated ... You don’t have full alignment of these groups.”

Yesterday, the attorney general urged the hundreds of Teamsters to get their friends and family members to the polls on Election Day.

“I need your help,” Coakley told the crowd. “If you will give us that time and you have our back, I will have yours.”

In her unsuccessful 2010 Senate race against Scott Brown, union support was infamously marginal for Coakley.

“What happened in 2010, that’s history,” O’Brien said. “We’re moving forward and she’s going to be the next governor.”