Sherry Chandler

Coast to Coast Casinos

[Update: from today's Lexington Herald-Leader: Pence splits with Fletcher on gambling.

I hadn't realized when I made this post how timely it would be.]

Here’s an op-ed in the NYTimes online against building a casino at Gettysburg. Gettysburg? Brooks Carver, why didn’t you tell me Civil War buffs are such high rollers?

I keep thinking all this gambling must be a bubble, that the pool of gamblers must be finite, and yet from local bingo parlors to Las Vegas, gambling just grows like kudzu, blessed by civic groups with dollar signs in their eyes. I’m sure you noticed the number of floating casinos blown ashore by both Katrina and Rita. Conversely, when the midwestern drought lowered the water level on the Ohio, some small cities were turned into ghost towns because the riverboat casinos had to shut down.

All this gambling is done on water to salve the tender consciences of the religious, who want the money but don’t want to condone the perceived sin.

The casinos are eager to rebuild on the Gulf Coast, don’t even want the tax breaks the Bush administration seems to want to give them anyway, as long as they can build on land this time. And now a casino at Gettysburg, of all places. Surely somebody somewhere is being suckered.

Yet, as my brother pointed out recently, all the people he knows who go to the riverboat casinos come back with tales of big winnings.

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