It was suppose to be about racing and the jobs it brings. Suffolk Downs has been telling us this for years. FOR YEARS!!
But what’s this? A letter from the track to the Gaming Commission claiming the track means nothing to them. This from Commonwealth Magazine detailing the track’s position.
he also said the track would discontinue racing if racing would jeopardize Mohegan Sun’s ability to win the casino license.“We would not let racing or any other activity on the remainder of Suffolk Downs’ property get in the way of a successful gaming establishment on the leased parcel in Revere,”
So much for loyalty and Speaker Deleo’s old man and all that. This ain’t about the track and the love of thoroughbred racing. Of course it isn’t. How stupid are we. It’s all about the money. Rich people money.
Fuck you Joe “MR. Boston” O’Donnell and Fuck you more Dick “Mr. Horse Racing” Fields.
BTW how funny is it that Steve Wynn, a Jewish guy from world famous Shirley Ave in Revere, the training ground for many legendary Jewish bookies of years gone by, and Joe O’Donnell, born and raised in Everett and the son of one of their finest, are trying to put gambling dens in each others’ hometowns?
What makes it really funny is that those two cities can hold their own with the best of corrupt municipalities. Definitely two of the top ten in Massachusetts. Has O’Donnell ever tried to open a business in his hometown of Everett? He’s too smart for that I bet.
BTW2 Okay, now this casino thing has crossed the line. It’s gotten personal. The wise guys have been doing all sorts of things with leases and contracts and ownership interests and applications to make sure Wynn wins the license. (Too many people think it’s a done deal for Wynn. Weird)
Anyway, as a result of this shenanigans King Arthurs World Famous Strip Joint in Chelsea has closed. Temporally is what they say. But hey, that’s not good enough for me. Tell the kidney patient the dialysis clinic will be closed for a couple of weeks. See how he takes it.
Yes one of the few places open on Christmas. (Worst night of the year to find a place open where u can get a drink.)
Talk about a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa causing a hurrica…..
Seems like one of the guys who deserves a cut from the Wynn deal can’t get a cut from the Wynn deal so they changed some names on some applications and licenses and such stuff giving the pizan who couldn’t get his share from the casino deal the strip club. Or something like that.
Who knows who cares. Fact is it’s been closed for some reason and that ain’t right. Everyone forgets about the little guy in these things. What about us little guys?
Now it’s personal.
Can we get the legislature to amend the bogus law now – before WE repeal it in November to remove the horse racing welfare special interest give-away. Bobby? Hello?
This is an abysmal example of government at it’s worst. Don’t like shitty government policy, practices and waste? Neither do I. It makes our work to do good so much harder.
Donate to repealthecasinodeal.org
Deval? Hello? Do the next right thing and shut it all down.
Full disclosure: I hate it when Democrat elected officials eff-up royally and implement regressive, corrupt, inefficient, special interest-insider policies that harm people, small business and regional economies.
government is co-opted by the private sector. But not to worry, the governor personally guaranteed that this whole process will ultimately proceed “professionally” and will not be tainted by politics.
Link.
According to the lawsuit, documents for which I had occasion to read when I was a young cub at the late lamented Everett News, they really said:
“Fuck you, we are the police.”
Did anyone seriously believe that legalizing casinos would NOT result in a scumbag feeding-frenzy? It always did before. In some places, the tide of greed was abated by stringent oversight and regulation, but that didn’t happen here, and so we have this clusterfrack.*
As predicted.
* Additional mixed metaphors available on request.
and the properties they are trying to locate on have been spending millions of dollars just to get a 5% ROI? No, there is obscene money to be made, and they want in. Shut it down!
Same thing happened in RI – their track said they needed casinos to stay open, got them, then shut down the track later.
Suffolk is just being quicker about it. They’ve used their struggling track to as marketing toward the public and pols – if only we had expanded gambling we could keep this poor horse industry open, they say – but they’re business people. They don’t give a damn about the track. If it’s unprofitable and they already got their casino, they’ll close it. If the gambling commission would rather them close it, they’ll close it without the pretense of stringing the public along for a couple more years thinking their support of expanded gambling will be what’s needed to save the house industry – something I’m positive posted a big role in the vote in Revere, for example.
This is just a corrupt industry, and our process has utterly sucked so far to do anything to rein it in… despite all promises to the contrary.
Repeal it now.
I’m sure there were a couple more since I used my phone… but
toward the end I meant to say horse industry, not house industry.
…to guarantee the continuation of track in the contract? Something like if you do not continue to operate the track, possibly for at least x number of years, the state will yank your gaming license.
reads: “If a category 1 [i.e., casino] license is awarded to an applicant with a live racing license under chapter 128A as of July 1, 2011, a condition of the gaming license shall be to maintain and complete the annual live racing season under said chapter 128A. Upon failure to conduct live racing, the commission shall suspend the category 1 license.”
… that provision mandating continued racing upon issuance of a gaming license no longer applies to Suffolk Downs now that Mohegan Sun is technically the applicant. Hard to miss the willingness to walk away from racing at the first opportunity in the letter quoted above… and in the binding lease agreement which was finally just released to the public on Friday, the parties agreed not only that SD had no obligation to maintain the track, but that they could actually force MS to take over operations at any time.
That wasn’t established in the law for casinos and I’m not sure if the Gaming Commission could do something like that, but I doubt it.
Moreover, in the case of RI, where their casino came about through a different process, there was such a deal.
As soon as the casino there cried poor, though, they got rid of it anyway.
One of the huge problems with this industry is that even when we create rules for them, they either circumvent them or get them changed. Like in RI with the track — and like Suffolk Downs getting a second vote before the process in which that otherwise would have been allowed.
The rules just don’t apply to this industry.
Any time a state puts a regulation or provision in place that might limit casino profits to a slightly-lower level of obscenity, the casino industry embarks on an endless program of wheedling, whining and bribery to get that regulation or provision reduced until it is completely gone. Look at the history of Twin Rivers in RI, and their nonstop squirming to escape the staffing and other provisions of the enabling agreement. Typical, predictable, and apparently forgettable.
This whole thing is going to get messier and messier. The next AG will likely be prosecuting the state regulators, the builders, the owners etc. for the inevitable corruption practices to follow.
Corruption in the gambling industry? When they said gambling would create jobs, I didn’t realize it meant for lawyers.