According to Morgan Stanley analysts, the chances of pro-casino legislation passing in Japan this year are “quite low.” Yes, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has booted the ball yet 
again. His big push [sic] to bring casinos to the Land of the Rising Sun didn’t start until the Diet had but one month left in which to pass legislation — hardly propitious timing for so controversial an issue. Abe’s only hope, having frittered away a majority in both Houses of Parliament, is for gridlock to move the adjournment date from Nov. 30 to mid-December. Morgan Stanley blames Abe’s weak hand on the expenditure of political capital on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and uncertainly following the presidential election over here. Heck, Abe doesn’t even have a consensus within his own party: Morgan Stanley estimates that 80% of the ruling Liberal Democrats are behind him on the casino issue and he can’t look to help from frequent coalition partner, the Komeito Party: It’s against gambling.
We’ve lost track of the number of times casino legalization was just around a Japanese corner. Major gaming companies thought this was finally it. Las Vegas Sands committed to build the world’s first $10 million megaresort and MGM Resorts International was close behind, offering $9.5 billion in investment. Heck, Genting Group bailed out of a project in South Korea, possibly thinking This Was It in Japan. Guess not. Also, American companies may have been irrationally exuberant about the size of the Japanese market. Morgan Stanley estimates it could be as large as $20 billion, second only to Macao, but perhaps just $7 billion, much closer to Las Vegas. One potential deterrent would be entry fees for Japanese citizens, although the government of Singapore has tried that and found it to be no damper to casino patronage. Anyway, somebody please wake us when Shinzo Abe gets his act together.
* The Crown 18 are now the Crown 17, Jenny Chiang having been released on bail. Three Australian and 14 Chinese citizens languish under arrest, including Jason O’Connor, the man in charge of Crown Resorts‘ international VIP marketing. If the Chinese government wants to send the message that you can’t promote gambling to Mainlanders, it’s coming through loud and clear.
* With a debt overhang still clouding $850 million Graton Resort & Casino, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and development partner Station Casinos are wagering that a new, $175 million, 200-room hotel will improve the math. The opening makes Graton the first casino in Sonoma County to have a hotel. Before this, it was having to stash high-value customers in hotels as far away as San Francisco. The new facility looks very handsome, particularly the hand-blown glass mobile in the lobby, depicting the fall of leaves. Now Station and the Rancheria just have to hope that there’s a concomitant shower of dollars.
* “It has to happen because so many other countries are doing it and like usual the [United States] is just missing out.” That was one Donald Trump, circa 2011 on the subject of Internet gambling. We’ll find out if Trump’s views on the issue have devolved or not, 
depending on whom he picks as attorney general. After all, it was Eric Holder‘s reinterpretation of the Wire Act of 1961 (a Robert F. Kennedy legacy) that opened the door to Internet gambling in Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey. One columnist predicts that Garden State Gov. Chris Christie (R) is first in line for the Justice Department. Would an Attorney General Christie do a 180 on a Gov. Christie?
Christie is a best-case scenario but Bridgegate may have made him toxic. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is another name floated but we don’t know her leanings. Then there’s the ominous triangulation of Trump, Sheldon Adelson and Rudolph Giuliani (an Adelson court favorite) — not to mention that Las Vegas Sands lobbyist Andy Abboud got his nephew briefly attached to the Trump campaign.
To further confuse the issue, Adelson’s main congressional allies, Sen. Lindsey Graham 
(R) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R, right) both openly opposed Trump. Will he harbor a grudge? And they’d have to shepherd Restoring America’s Wire Act past fellow conservatives who found Second Amendment-impeding implications in its language last time around and killed it. So the best we can say, ‘Net bettors, is that even if Trump suddenly supports RAWA, congressional passage is so iffy that it may never get to his desk. A re-reinterpretation by Giuliani, or someone like him, enjoys shorter odds, although it’s certain to wind up in the courts. States with Internet gambling aren’t just going to wear sackcloth and ashes where that revenue is concerned.
