Saturday, February 9, 2008

Casino Hype

On Feb. 9, the Intelligencer Journal gushed: "With all the glitz of Las Vegas and the movies, Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course will open its doors this week in Dauphin County.

The plush $300 million casino features 2,020 slot machines, restaurants to suit everyone's tastes, from hot dogs to haute cuisine, hundreds of flat-panel TVs and live and simulcast horse races, all amid decor of movieposters and props that reflect the best of Tinseltown."

WATCHDOG: Are we being prepared for the inevitable? Knowledgeable observers speculate that when the convention center project was pronounced dead in 2006, its sudden and miraculous resuscitation had to do with the passing of the law permitting licensing of slot casinos (with table gambling likely soon to follow.) We do know that talk about "closing the funding gap" was sheer propaganda. The gap actually exploded.