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I'm willing to bet that a casino will be up and running in Cincinnati before the first slot machine is installed at a Kentucky race track. That's how much Boss Williams, the president of the state senate, has bogged down our signature industry's efforts to protect itself from rival states that are stealing our horses and siphoning away our gambling dollars.
The folks who own Turfway Park in Florence – the Harrah's gambling company and Keeneland -- have to be sick at Ohio's decision to allow the construction of casinos in the state's four largest cities. For years, they've been promising to build a world-class casino and entertainment complex around Turfway that would be a boon to Northern Kentucky's tourism industry.
But now Cincinnati will beat them to the punch, and, in so doing, may deal a fatal blow to horse racing at Turfway, which has been on life support ever since the gambling boats started floating on the Ohio. If and when Turfway dies, it won't be from natural causes. It'll be murder in the first degree.
The killers will be Boss Williams and his Republican henchmen in the state senate. Stung when voters took the governorship away from Ernie Fletcher after one scandal-ridden turn, the Republicans set out to hurt Fletcher's conqueror, Steve Beshear, by doing everything in their power to stymie his efforts to win approval for expanded gaming.
Never mind that Kentucky's voters elected Beshear precisely because they wanted to at least vote on the gambling issue. When you're Boss Williams, and you have the voters in your small five-county fiefdom in the palm of your hand, you don't care what the big-city residents think or what the horse-industry wants or even what's good for the revenue-strapped commonwealth.
Nope, all you care about is the poisonous power of personal politics. You know how much gambling money leaves Kentucky every day because you have been known to visit the boats when you need some time off from your campaign against progress.
You know the horse industry isn't blowing smoke about all the horses it's losing to rival states which have used casino revenue to enhance their racetrack purses and their breeders' incentives programs. Yet instead of listening to Bob Elliston at Turfway and Ron Geary at Ellis Park, you cynically prefer to focus your attention on Churchill Downs because you know the home of the Kentucky Derby has come to stand for greed and arrogance.
So now Ohio will join other states who are laughing at Kentucky. Here we sit, like a bunch of rubes, while our neighbors are sucking away our identity, not to mention millions of our tax dollars. Soon Kentucky money will be building schools and roads in Ohio, just as it has in Indiana for years.
We have fallen so far behind that catch-up ball may be doomed to fall short. Even if we approve slots at tracks, it will only be a Band-Aid. Now that Ohio has approved full-scale casinos, Kentucky needs to follow suit.
Heck, if Churchill Downs were playing host to this weekend's Breeders Cup program (which it was until the track's executives blew it off) and if Churchill had a world-class casino, do you have any idea how many millions of dollars, pounds, francs, yen and shekels would be pouring into Kentucky's economy this week?
Instead, we sit here and stew in our own juices.
As if being an obstructionist wasn't bad enough, Boss Williams compounds his sin by failing to come up with any viable alternatives to expanded gambling. Oh, sure, he bombastically floats a “plan” every now and then. But that's just a smoke screen designed to mask the fact that he has no ideas whatsoever.
Well, maybe I can help.
Since he pompously proclaims that expanded gambling is against the family values and fundamentalist religious views that he holds so dear, maybe he should orchestrate a new tourism strategy designed to bring in the Sarah Palin-Rush Limbaugh-Glen Beck crowd.
The Creationism Museum would replace Churchill Downs as the commonwealth's landmark institution. We could begin promoting Russellville as the state's capital of the Confederacy. We could establish a new Oxycontin Museum in Eastern Kentucky and the National Anti-Intellectual Museum in Williams' hometown of Burkesville.
Heck, if we're going to be last in education and health and just about everything else, we might as well promote it and be proud of it. Who needs horse farms when we've got mountaintop removal to show the nation?
Obviously, Williams not only is out of step with the Governor of his own state, not to mention all the responsible lawmakers who favor expanded gaming, but he's also out of step with the leadership in Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and, now, Ohio.
Are we really supposed to believe that he's that much smarter, that much more moral, than anybody else? His constituents apparently do. Or maybe they're just so insulated in their narrow-mindedness that they don't know or care what's happening around them.
I wonder how many of them believe we really didn't put a man on the moon in 1969 and that our President is a militant Muslim?
When the new casino opens in Cincinnati, I hope they invite Williams to help cut the ribbon. Never has Kentucky produced a leader who has done so much to help the economies and the horse industries in our neighboring states.
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ADD A COMMENT
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John LaFollette
fri nov 06 2009
at 8:40 am
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Mark Twain said "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati--because it's always 20 years behind the times!" Well said Mr. Clemens, but what does that mean for Kentucky?!? |
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