Casino Expansion? More Gambling For Some, Miniature American Flags For Others!

It looks like the group seeking to expand casino gambling in Michigan will likely have enough signatures to put their measure on the November ballot.

The pro-casino expansion group is dubiously named Citizens for More Michigan Jobs. A more accurate name would be "Remo and the Boys Back Home With the Pension Fund Want a Piece of the Action." But these roulette-hucksters claim to have gathered 510,000 signatures. They need just 322,609, so we’ll probably have to vote on this thing.

Fine. Whatever. Casinos for some. Miniature American flags for others.

Now, I enjoy spending time at casinos as much as I enjoy taking a ball-peen hammer to my face and, as a matter of principle, I’m unmoved by proposals justified solely by self-serving horseshit about jobs. So I react to this latest casino effort with a deep, abiding apathy.

Everything “creates jobs.” It’s always an intellectually dishonest argument. Cut taxes and you’ll create jobs because people will spend more disposable income and businesses will require more labor to keep up with the marginal increase in demand. Raise taxes to build new schools and you’ll create jobs because someone will be hired to build the schools. Subsidize an arena for Hunger Games-like gladiator matches and you’ll create jobs. You’ll also thin out the labor pool. That’s a win-win for the jobs agenda!

Do something because the thing itself is worth doing, not because some political flak waves the bloody shirt about jobs.

All that said, the only thing more disingenuous than the pro-casino expansion jobs shtick is the teeth-gnashing from opponents of casino expansion.

“As much as the paid petition circulators want you to believe otherwise,” their “Protect MI Vote” website reads, “MICHIGAN CAN’T GAMBLE ITS WAY TO PROSPERITY.”

Oh, really now? And who exactly is paying for that message? Why, it’s Michigan’s existing casino operators! How delightful.

CMLife: The [Chippewa tribe, owners of Soaring Eagle Casino] is represented by Project(sic) MI Vote, which opposes casino expansion and also represents Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi and the owners of the MGM Grand Casino and Greektown Casino in Detroit. A spokesman for the group called the proposed amendment “irresponsible” and said expansion would be detrimental to business.

So, Michigan can’t gamble its way to prosperity—a true and fair point—but why must the state protect the prosperity of an existing (politically-selected) casino cartel from competition?

This casino battle is like watching a couple brosephs fight in the ally behind Black Finn. You don’t really care who wins, you just hope for a long fight.

The truth is that more casinos won’t cure what ails us. The state’s existing casinos haven’t exactly turned Mt. Pleasant or Detroit into shining cities on the hill. Yes, suburban casinos would likely cut into Detroit’s casino revenue, but that’s the consequence of relying on an easily-replicable business to float your town.

For reasons I don’t totally understand, people like shoving quarters in slot machines. If more people want to make a go of it selling the impossible dream of winning big at craps, have at it.

Michigan has bigger problems to worry about than who gets to run blackjack tables.

More casinos for some. Miniature American flags for others. Now, can we please start twirling toward freedom?