Sunday, March 18, 2012

Casino Counties — How making bets with public money can go wrong


My favorite line: "Hamilton County's financial situation may be difficult right now, [Hamilton County Commissioner Todd] Portune said. But next year, the government is taking a chance on a new source of expected revenue -- a casino." Good luck with that. What other assets do you have to sell after the current fire sale?

Read it at The Huffington Post
Ohio County Stadium Debts Force Government To Sell Hospital, Raid Savings
by Janell Ross

4 comments:

Clonal said...

Hey that is a public/private partnership on display - the public bears the loss, and the profits go to the crony capitalist!

Anonymous said...

If there is one thing that sends me through the roof it is the increasing reliance of state governments on lotteries, casinos and other forms of illegal gambling.

Is it any wonder that our financial sector has itself become a deeply corrupted casino industry, stealing fortunes from ordinary Americans, when we tell our children that a perfectly legitimate means of paying for their education is to seduce the least fortunate among us to throw away significant chunks of their tiny paychecks on government-run numbers rackets.

The America I grew up in was a country in which thrift and prudence were virtues, and gambling was considered sinful - confined only to a a couple of mob towns. There's another part of our moral foundation we've thrown away.

geerussell said...

I share your reservations about state lotteries. To me they're just a highly regressive tax that replaces ordinary school funding rather than enhancing it.

That said, there are millions of bookies, numbers runners and floating card games from the america you grew up in who feel sad you forgot about them :)

Anonymous said...

You're right geerussell. Gambling was always commonplace. But it was disreputable.