The “horsey set,” including Governor Beshear and former governor Jones, now the president of the Kentucky Equine Education Project (KEEP), the super-lobby outfit (with deep pockets) stumping for slots (now euphemistically called video lottery terminals) at ONLY the racetracks met their Waterloo when the slots bill didn’t make it out of the Senate committee this week, so the legislators simply did their duty and passed a budget the guv and crowd had claimed depended absolutely upon the slots. Their attempt at fraud was thus complete.
So…what was KEEP to do? Why…KEEP staged a rally to celebrate its loss (and probably wondered how it could spend so much to gain so little, actually nothing). KEEP head honcho Jones allowed that the state Senate was akin to a “third-world dictatorship,” presumably with Senate head honcho Williams being the horsey version of Idi Amin or maybe Hugo Chavez or even (gasp) FIDEL…well…OLE! The Louisville Courier-Journal claimed that 900 folks were at the rally, which featured speakers vowing swift revenge against republicans whose minds were so warped that they didn’t realize that horseracing is Kentucky’s “Signature Industry,” whatever that means.
Not mentioned, of course, was the fact that the slots measure received only 52 votes of a possible 100 in the House. There are only 35 republicans in the House, so, accounting for the fact that a few republicans probably favored the slots, a whole boatload of democrats, supposedly in the horsey set’s pocket, voted against slots at the tracks. Beshear spoke of the need for a revolution to turn out the repubs in the Senate, but he’d better be thinking about the mini-revolution against the slots in his own party. He campaigned on the promise of bringing more gambling to Kentucky (anyone for casinos these days?), but so far hasn’t come close to delivering.
For his part, Jones might be remembered as the governor of the 1990s who, with the help of the usual (at that time) huge democrat majority allowing for all legislation to be discussed, cussed and passed in just the democrat caucuses, got a bill through to help the horse industry. Under the legislation, who got the first payout? Jones, of course! Jones and his band of jolly lawmakers also managed to bring about the exodus from the state of all but one health-insurance provider. Something like 45 of 46 insurers decided that the state government would not run their businesses for them. Jones discovered that the companies didn’t respond like stall-knockers and horses.
If the horseracing industry is dependent upon state-supported gambling for its existence and thus feels that it deserves special treatment, what about all the other industries in the state that need help? How much of the tax from the slots should go to them? Or…should every industry or store in the state be allowed to place slots on their premises in order to jack-up their revenue and thus stay in business?
KEEP will say a big NO to that, since this means a diminution of its take. Only a very small segment of the population in Kentucky gives a fig about horseracing. The citizens stay away from the tracks by the millions, and always have; however, multitudes of them will go to the corner service station/convenient store to give the lottery a chance to steal their hard-earned cash.
KEEP knows this, so it must insist that the “horsey set” is more equal than all other enterprises. Instead, its members should figure out how to make their operations pay off. The casinos on the Ohio River haven’t bankrupted Kentucky yet; nor have they sunk Kentucky horseracing. Or…the operators, if they can’t make it, can do what myriads of other business people have done…go out of business and find something else to do. A lot of folks used to mine coal and raise tobacco the hard way in Kentucky – perhaps “Signature Industries?” Has anyone, including the governor and legislature, done anything to cover their costly adjustments? Of course not…they can just eat cake…but not the horsey set! It’s special!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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