Sunday, May 03, 2009

Cheerleaders Know How to Cheer, Still Dumb

Scott Van Voorhis, picture from the link below.

Without a shred of intellectual curiosity, accepting "facts" without the merit of proof, columnist Scott Van Voorhis cheers loudly for the home team for the well-healed lobbyist as he furthers the meme of casino inevitability.
That said, the prospects of expanded gambling in Massachusetts look better now than ever before. And the big casino companies – while cautious of state’s long history of flirting with but never consummating gambling deals – are voting with their feet.

“The inevitability of it is there,” said David Nunes, a veteran developer working on plans for a major gambling venue near one of the state’s busiest intersections – the Massachusetts Turnpike and Interstate 495. “People are tired of watching the money skip over state lines to Connecticut and Rhode Island.”
Mr. Van Voorhis - if they're so damned inevitable, why aren't they here already? This is the same old argument, yet it only gets weaker. With federal permission, our state couldn't stop a bingo hall in Middleboro 24 months ago -- but now we can even do that. Casinos haven't become more inevitable in the past year, they've become less.

Which is exactly why the Cheerleader section is getting so damn loud. They're down and there's only 5 minutes left in the 4th quarter.

[Note to cheerleaders: please take no offense to me comparing Scott Van Voorhis to you. -Ryan]

1 comment:

Mark Belanger said...

Van Voorhis article shows a decided pro-casino bias. That's bad enough but his tone is ridiculing toward anyone that opposes casinos dismissing concerns as trendy argument rolled out by anti-gambling moralists in their zeal to shut down the casino industry. Huh?

Trendy? Moralists?

Van Voorhis clearly hasn't done any real research on the economic effects of casino and mindlessly regurgitates that mantra of "jobs, recaputure, revenue" when the case for casino's economic benefit has not yet been made. Sure it will create short term construction jobs but the overall economic benefit is a zero and maybe even negateve when the costs are measures such as regulatory, crime, bankrupcies, suicides, transference, lottery losses, and so on.

Poor journalism.

Give me a call Scott - I'll fill you in.

About Ryan's Take