It’s war to the knife and knife to the hilt between Carl Icahn and Unite-Here Local 54 President Robert McDevitt over the labor situation at Trump Taj Mahal. (For the record, Donald Trump is now affiliated with the casino in name only.) Yesterday, the union held a rally protesting Icahn’s continuation of pension and health-care cuts, 
imposed by previous management — which McDevitt accuses of being Icahn puppets. Since the Icahn-owned Tropicana Atlantic City operates without such cost cuts, the billionaire is now presiding over a two-tier system at his Atlantic City properties, with Taj employees the low men on the totem pole. “Workers demanding what really is their birthright in this industry is not what’s going to close the Taj Mahal. What’s going to close it is poor management and treating workers horribly. Seven other properties are providing what Carl Icahn took away, and they’re doing pretty well,” fumed McDevitt. He’s got a quantifiable point: They’re all doing better than the Taj, with the occasional exception of Resorts Atlantic City.
Icahn riposted by blaming McDevitt for the closings of Revel, the Atlantic Club, Showboat and Trump Plaza (a gross oversimplification, at best), calling the Local 54 prez “fundamentally dishonest … a petulant child.” He reiterated his vow to withhold $100 million in capex funding for the 
Taj, saying the casino workers should be rallying against north New Jersey casinos instead. Accusing McDevitt of trying to sabotage the Taj, Icahn said, “You can’t do what McDevitt wants and continue to exist if you’re a small casino. He wants to end up with three, maybe four casinos that will do whatever he says.” It appears that each man has entrenched himself in a position from which he cannot retreat. If Icahn concedes, he hands McDevitt a propaganda victory. If McDevitt goes along with the billionaire, he opens the door to demands for wage and benefit concessions at the other seven Atlantic City casinos when their collective-bargaining agreements expire. Icahn and McDevitt have been eye-to-eye for a long time now and neither shows any sign of blinking.
* DraftKings is bridling at a proposed Maryland law that would put daily fantasy sports under the remit of the State Lottery & Gaming Control Commission, impose a licensing fee and bar anyone under 21 from wagering. Although the bill would put DFS’ ambiguous status up to a popular vote on whether or not to explicitly legalize it, DraftKings is irked by any connotation of gambling, falling back on the “games of skill blah 
blah blah” malarkey of which they’re so fond. I mean, if you’ve got Russell Wilson on your fantasy squad and he pulls a hamstring, I’d say the element of chance just trumped all your skill. But, by the same token, DraftKings and its ilk can’t come out and admit that they’re offering sports betting (which they are) because then they’d be out of business. Still, they’re better off supporting the Maryland referendum, which provides a legal umbrella, than take their chances with a companion bill, also before the House of Delegates (both bills have already passed the state senate) that would outlaw DFS altogether. DraftKings needs to go with the lesser of two evils here and put its fate in the hands of the Maryland electorate.
* Both Sheldon Adelson and Jim Murren bought polls which validate their respective positions on whether expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center should be trumped by the construction of an NFL-size stadium. The Las Vegas Sands-funded poll loaded the dice somewhat by reducing the question to one of whether a stadium should be 
built (62% said yes) or not. Fifty-five percent of respondents favored diverting room-tax revenues for that purpose. The MGM Resorts International-commission poll was more detailed in its questioning, with 67% of respondents favoring a larger convention center and preferring it to a football stadium by a 13% margin. MGM’s pollsters asked a number of questions along similar lines and the convention center won every time. All of which goes to show you that, properly framed, you can get a poll to say whatever you want. The only surprising thing about the Sands poll isn’t that it showed 67% support for bringing a football team here but that 33% of respondents were opposed on indifferent to it. I wouldn’t have expected that.
Update: Coverage of the poll in Adelson’s own Las Vegas Review-Journal came immediately under fire from OnPoint Communications, which accused the R-J of misstating the cost of the Convention Center expansion at $2.3 billion, not the Las Vegas Convention & Vistors Authority‘s own figure of $1.4 billion. It also noted one key omission from the poll results disclosed by both the R-J and the Sun: When Adelson’s pollsters asked, “If a company wants to build a new stadium, then taxpayers should help with the cost since it will likely benefit them,” only 12% respondents replied in the affirmative. Another 78% said, in effect, “Hell, no.”
* American Casino & Entertainment Properties, owner of the Stratosphere, 
posted an impressive increase in profit from 2014, going from $7 million to $12 million. The improvement was across the board, from the casino floors to ADRs to food and beverage. This is the eighth straight year in which ACEP has grown revenue, a company which overpaid — guess who? — Carl Icahn for its assets, then struggled for several years to find its footing. In 4Q15, the Stratosphere drove ACEP’s improved performance, as the company contended with a variety of small declines at its two Arizona Charlies and at the Aquarius in Laughlin. The only blot on the Stratosphere’s ledger was revenue from the sightseeing tower itself, where the SkyJump appears to be losing popularity, down 13%.
