Sheldon Adelson sock puppet Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R) would be holding his much-ballyhooed hearing on Internet gambling today, had Mother Nature not intervened and forced a postponement. When it 
happens, it’ll be pretty much the kangaroo court you’d expect. His star witness is rabid and troglodytic University of Illinois boffin John Kindt, who has advocated for the federal seizure of all tribal casinos on the grounds of “allegations of misuse, non-accounting, and even malfeasance involving gambling revenues in Native American operations.” Blithely ignoring tribal sovereignty, he would convert them to “educational, cultural, and business facilities.”
But Kindt doesn’t just reserve his wrath for aboriginals. Known for his dodgy research claims, Kindt idolizes the anti-gambling policies of Vladimir Putin and advocates the criminalization of gaming. Compared to the despot-slurping Kindt, the other witnesses are practically civil libertarians. True, Stop Predatory Gambling boss Les Bernal is going to have a hard time squaring his opposition to all iterations of gambling with Restore America’s Wire Act‘s exemption for playing the ponies. Prof. Mike Fagan, of St. Louis‘ Washington University, has opposed online gaming in the past, but his consumer-protection concerns don’t make him as problematic a witness as Kindt or Bernal, although he paradoxically prefers illegal Internet gambling, rife with abuses, to its legalized status quo.
In a grudging concession to evenhandedness, the witness list also includes cyber-expert Parry Aftab. Dr. Aftab has called for regulation of Internet gambling in the past and will presumably be the lone voice of reason in Chaffetz’s paranoia-driven show trial. Significantly, no regulatory official from a state with legalized online gambling has been called as a witness. Rather that hear how un-problematic the rollout of i-gambling has been, Chaffetz would clearly prefer to reach foregone conclusions.
* In keeping with Atlantic City‘s new mantra of diversification, Borgata has rolled out plans for two new amenities. One is a 5,000-person, standing-room-only (Ow, my aching 
back!) concert venue, supplemented by a nightclub. All but $1 million of the $15 million tab is coming from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. As Wayne Parry reports, this “lets the Borgata reclaim some of its investment alternative tax payments before they can be diverted to help the city’s struggling finances or to attract new development in the city under an Atlantic City rescue plan being considered by state officials.”
Live Nation will run Borgata Festival Park, which opens June 13. The nightclub won’t be ready until year’s end, but its designer has a prestigious Vegas credential to its name, in the form of Tao Restaurant & Nightclub at the Venetian. By the time the wrangle over Revel is settled, Borgata will be even more firmly entrenched as Atlantic City’s primary party spot.
* Times aren’t what they used to be. University of Nevada-Las Vegas English teacher Brittany Bronson has to double as a waitress to make ends meet. Like her, I am a resident of the Paradise neighborhood, former home to Liberace (whose mansion is being restored) and hard by UNLV. Conditions in Paradise are not paradisical but precisely as Ms. Bronson describes them. She draws an accurate picture of the lopsided economic recovery in Las Vegas, in which all the money seems to be flooding to tony neighborhoods like Summerlin and leaving many of the rest of us behind. No surprise that locals-casino revenue numbers are volatile and less upbeat than those on the Strip.
Borgata continues to raise the bar!