Casino
Robert Healey, Cool Moose Party Lt. Governor candidate, writes in a letter-to-the-editor that appeared in Friday’s Warwick Beacon (and probably in other local papers): In the aftermath of Question 1 there is an interesting point for those who support Voter Initiative. Too often labor and others with vested interests in maintaining the status quo of…
Hopefully, this will be my last Casino post for a while (but ya never know…) I was driving home from work and heard the Providence Phoenix’s Ian Donnis talking to Dan Yorke about the curious ProJo flip-flop on the casino. As Ian noted, Dan had covered the issue at length (and I had a few…
The ProJo disavows conspiracy theories and tries to explain why it changed it’s mind on the casino: The editorial speaks for itself, but we repeat here that the prospect of more jobs for Rhode Islanders, especially for hard-pressed low-income people, including immigrants, was the overwhelming factor. That’s it. One run-on sentence of explanation as to…
Casino proponents want you to believe that the universe of casino gamblers is divided into two groups, “destination” gamblers, who want to make an event out of their gambling trips, and “convenience” gamblers, who are interested in more frequent but less expensive trips. Based on this hypothetical partition, casino proponents claim that a Harrah’s casino…
Ah, well. I understand the choices that are unavoidably part of crafting a short news segment, but I can’t say I’m thrilled with the soundbyte that BSR88.1 reporter Chris Gang chose from my 20 minute conversation with him for his piece on the casino question on Off the Beat. The argument I tried to present…
The ProJo’s endorsement of a casino displays a willingness to believe everything good about the proposal and nothing bad. That alone makes it perhaps one of the most sophomoric endorsement I’ve ever read. Yet, even the naivete could be dismissed if the Journal’s editorial board had seen fit to mention at least once in their…
One reason that the RIPEC casino study and the Rhode Island Building Trades casino study (links via Dan Yorke) come to different conclusions about the financial impact of building a West Warwick casino is that the Building Trades study assumes there slippage payments will only be made for two years after the opening of a…
Harrah’s is spending $106,000 a day and still can’t move the poll numbers. Rhode Island College’s Bureau of Government Research and Services has released a poll that indicates 56% of likely voters oppose the casino, 33% support it and 10% are undecided. This is in line with the Brown University poll last month that had…
Scott Mayerowitz of the Projo gives a concise explanation of the “slippage” formula that applies to Rhode Island’s existing gambling facilities… The deal the state struck with Lincoln Park protects it through 2020; Newport Grand is protected through 2015. The slippage clause takes the average revenue at each facility in the two years prior to…
Beyond the sloganeering, here is the budgetary aspect of the casino debate in a nutshell…Harrah’s is going to take money away from Newport Grand and Lincoln Park. Even the study that casino supporters paid for says that.Because the state gets about 60% of gambling revenue from Lincoln in Newport, while it is projected to get…