"Cash-strapped Ohio considers casino bid; Promise of jobs appeals to voters" by Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press | October 19, 2009
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Backers of a casino proposal on the November ballot are counting on Ohio’s abysmal economy to shift the winds in one of the nation’s most stubborn antigambling states.
I'll tell you, I am smelling something bad and it is more than just the rotten economy.
Everything about the campaign - the state’s fifth major gambling referendum in the last two decades - centers on the jobs issue. Unemployment in Ohio, a once-proud manufacturing mecca, has topped 10 percent. A related decline in income tax revenue has set off a battle over balancing the state budget that lingers nearly four months into the fiscal year. Casinos could raise nearly $1 billion for the state.
Yeah, somehow everyone is going to get rich and no one is going to lose.
Doesn't work that way.... and why does the newspaper care more about states then you, citizen?
WTF!? They pass themselves off as such staunch defenders of rights when it comes to certain groups, etc, but here -- they act as if you are invisible, taxpayers.
The main casino advocates -
A BASKETBALL GUY involved in the GAMBLING INDUSTRY?
See: Former NBA referee reports to federal prison
No, NOT a GOOD IMAGE for a league that is lacking at this point.
Omnipresent television ads herald creation of 34,000 jobs from four casinos to be built in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Toledo. And, in a reversal from past campaigns, a host of unions eager for employment are working the phones.
Yeah, labor has become a real disappointment.
An Ohio Newspaper poll conducted by the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati found that 59 percent of registered voters support Issue 3 on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Then have it; it is your state, not mine. We don't even get a vote on it.
The four previous gambling issues, all of which failed, had similar strong support in advance of voting.
Oh, so Ohioans are JUST AS MUCH AGAINST the SHELL-GAME SCAMMERS as the REST of US, huh?
Still, the usual antigambling coalition of business interests, church groups, newspapers, and high-profile political figures isn’t as united this time, said Herb Asher, an emeritus political science professor at Ohio State University....
It is called DIVIDE and CONQUER and it has worked throughout history.
The anticasino TruthPAC - backed by MTR Gaming Inc. chairman and majority owner Jeffrey Jacobs, a Cleveland developer - has taken sharpest aim at the job figures in its opponents’ ads.
TruthPac says casino proponents ignore social costs such as addiction, divorce, and bankruptcy, and the impact of casinos’ low food and beverage prices on adjacent bars and restaurants.
Hey, lookit.... !!!!
A University of Cincinnati jobs study about the projected casino impact released earlier this year predicted 39,251 jobs and $4 billion in overall economic impact. Of total jobs predicted, 15,807 would be permanent, the study said.
How can any job be called permanent these days?
Of those, 7,500 would come from direct in-state employment at casinos. A quarter of the casino jobs would pay $27,500 a year or more, and 2 percent - 150 jobs - would pay $80,000-a-year executive salaries.
Sounds great!!!
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