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A bill that would have shepherd in the largest gambling expansion in Florida history was withdrawn by its legislative sponsor on Friday, killing for now the vision of allowing up to three mega-resort casinos in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area.

The bill, which proponents said could lead to 100,000 new jobs for the state, faced a likely defeat at its first stop – the House Business and Consumer Affairs Subcommittee. Its sponsor, Miami Republican Representative Erik Fresen, asked that the bill be reserved from deliberation by the panel at its last planned session of the year.

Rules in the Florida House of Representatives prohibit the chamber from taking further action on a bill that has failed to pass at least one group, so the measure is dead for 2012, House Rules Chairman Gary Aubuchon said after the meeting adjourned.

Today’s action on the Casino gambling bill is a resounding victory for those of us who have opposed this assault on Florida’s family-friendly economy,Aubuchon said. Florida has been hard-hit by the housing crash and its redundancy rate, while declining, is still well above average at 9.9 percent.

The Legislature is under pressure to fill a $1 billion revenue gap, but lawmakers disagree whether casinos would bring in new money or cannibalize existing tourism revenues. The proposal would have created a state gaming commission to license up to three southeast Florida casinos whose owners invest at least $2 billion apiece in resort complexes.

Successful applicants would have paid a $50 million one-time license fee, with an annual renewal fee of $2 million. They would also have been subject to a 10 percent tax on gross gambling revenues.

Florida law now bars casinos from increasing beyond those operated by the Seminole Indian tribe and selected pari-mutuel racetracks and jai alai courts known as racinos.The Senate version of the proposal, which passed its first committee stop but faced resistance, would have allowed the pari-mutuels to function full-fledged casino games at the same tax rates levied against the larger resort casinos.

Gambling giants such as the Las Vegas Sands Corp had urged lawmakers to allow full casino gambling at so-called destination resorts in Florida since the Seminoles won their right to offer blackjack, baccarat and other banked card games more than two years ago.

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South Carolina’s love-hate relationship with gambling is title for another round of well loving and hating, in the state legislature and elsewhere. At issue are plans for Native American-sponsored casinos at two probable locales. Members of the Cherokee Nation are proposing to build a Casino near Hardeeville on land not yet acquire, but if they are winning the track will become a condition thanks to a loophole in federal Indian law.

A group of Catawba Indians are looking at building a casino in York County, on land the tribe already owns. The first shovelful of dirt is years from being moved, but already some S.C. backs are bowed. Governor Nikki Haley has vowed to veto any enabling legislation for a casino, and religious and moral leaders are decrying the plans as an assault on customary values.

Not a lot of good can be said about gambling in any form, and while most of it is probably harmless for most people, it can be addictive for others. That addiction, like all addictions, can be positively ruinous. It is also true that gambling does not spawn a lot of healthy activity on the side. The proposed Hardeeville casino is billed, in its current iteration, as a “resort,” complete with fancy hotel and golf course; however, it is hard to imagine a casino without some more tawdry accompaniments nearby.

The gambling may be legalized, but everything that comes with it is not. And that’s the case against it. A case for the corroboration of gambling is largely two, maybe three-fold, since these are Native American establishments being careful. First, gambling on this scale is a development tool. For example, the proposed Hardeeville casino and its associated resort would bring jobs and some tax revenue to an area that is among the most hard-pressed in the state.

That case is a little less significant with the York County plan, but it’s there all the same. Secondly, there is the anti-prohibition argument which argues it’s easier to offer some legal release for certain urges than it is to keep track of all the illegal outlets. Finally, casinos do provide a sort of conscience-assuaging recompense payment to Native Americans.

These people were not well treated during the expansive phase of American history in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and their ability to flourish on their own lands is now sharply synchronized by the federal government. We lay all this out because we’re not sure just what to make of the current casino talk.

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Legalizing casino gambling could help ease Texas’ budget woes, according to a conservative group with ties to a convicted lobbyist who defrauded the Tigua tribe out of millions of dollars. Americans for Tax Reform, a national anti-tax group run by Grover Norquist, dispersed a letter to Texas lawmakers this month that stated unlike the failed policies that have come out of Washington, D.C., in recent years, permission of gaming involves no government handouts and has proven to provide a real economic multiplier.

The letter stunned some Texas traditional groups that oppose gambling but consider Norquist a strong ally on anti-tax issues. The letter also astonished two Texas Indian tribes and lawmakers who remember Norquist’s ties to shamed lobbyist Jack Abramoff. More than a decade ago, some of Abramoff’s Indian tribe clients funneled money through a network of nonprofit association that included Norquist’s Americans designed for Tax Reform to Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition, according to a 2006 report by the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Reed mobilized opposition against a number of gambling interests, including tribes that operated casinos in resistance with gaming ventures run by Abramoff’s clients. The Senate report states that Norquist grew nervous about the accord and pulled his organization out from the conduit of money flowing to Reed’s group. Eventually, a federal court ruling forced the closing of Texas casinos run by the Tiguas in El Paso and the Alabama-Coushatta in East Texas.

Abramoff seized upon the decision and offered to help the Tiguas reopen their casino. His plan never materializes, but he and his associate, Michael Scanlon, defrauded the tribe out of $3.7 million. Abramoff and Scanlon went to prison for their actions. Norquist and Reed were never charged, but some Indian tribes are skeptical of a man they said worked against them.

Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform is a powerful group that has conventional pledges from 238 U.S. representatives and 41 senators including John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas to oppose tax increases for people and businesses and oppose reduction or elimination of deductions unless matched by reduced taxes.

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There is news that gambling casinos employ a lot of people and expected to produce a lot of money is likely to be built in Hardeeville. In other investment news there was an expose about the high yield for those who “invest in sin stock.”

Merrill Lynch recently scrutinize the presentation of alcohol, tobacco and casino stocks in all recessions since 1970 and found that while the S&P 500 fell 1.5 percent on average, “sin stocks” rose 11 percent. The piece of writing went on to say, “History shows that people do not drop their bad behavior in hard times.”

“Sin stock” is identified as alcohol, tobacco, gambling (gaming or casinos), 0pornography and some add firearms. I was first exposed to this serving as a trustee on the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 70s and early 80s. $90 million a year was the takings and the bylaws of the SBC necessary about 40 percent of all institutions be held in savings in case of national emergencies.

So $40 million was carefully invested by a financial group and in their reports to the trustees, they always explain they would not invest in any alcohol, tobacco, gambling or “sin stock.” Them Sunday School Board’s savings were scheduled in the top 1 percent of American stock investments.

Not too many years back, a number of gambling organization were built on U.S. 17 by the Savannah River. A woman left her toddler baby in a hot car until it died while she was inside gambling. Other horror stories came out showing what the pressure of gambling causes. “Addiction” also applies to alcohol and tobacco and pornography.

I understand those deficient to build this tremendous casino are Indians from the Midwest and the legislators and group of people leaders must decide if investing in “sin stock” is worth it. It will draw many people, many new jobs, and much money and I am sure much sorrow. Selling drugs brings in a lot of money until you’re caught. A lure of sin is quick profits until you’re arrested.

There are many jobs and industries that would reward the investor and make our country stronger without having to rely on “sin stocks.” I’ve counsel too many addicts of alcohol, tobacco, gambling and pornography to ever put this in the class of “helping the economy.” Las Vegas has the highest suicide rate in America.

I believe in thoughtful savings whether through stocks and bonds or buildings, but never invest in astonishing that will finally hurt so many people. Gambling is coveting and the Ten Commandments tell us not to covet. Let’s give confidence our children and friends to invest so that everybody benefits. We should be embarrassed that we depend on gambling to pay for education. There are better ways.

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Casino Guichard-Perrachon, a France-based vendor known as Groupe Casino, has reported a 14.5% augment in sales in the fourth-quarter, boosted by organic growth and gaining in Asia and Latin America.

Sales rose to EUR9.5bn ($12.09bn) over the period from EUR8.3bn ($10.56bn) a year ago. In France, sales were up 1.8% to EUR4.9bn ($6.23bn), as price discounts help to offset soft client spending.

The company’s organic revenue for France grew 0.9%, or 0.2% exclusive of petrol, notably for its expediency format stores, with sales at Monoprix up 2.3%, Franprix up 0.5% and Casino supermarkets 1.2% higher excluding petrol, reported Marketwatch.

Casino’s Leader Price and Geant brands lost ground however, with same-store sales down by 0.1% and 2.4% respectively, excluding petrol. International sales surged 32.1% at EUR4.6bn ($5.85bn). Casino’s worldwide organic revenue rose 10.6%, or 10.5% excluding petrol.

The company’s natural sales in Asia grew by 8.3% due to the breach of new stores, on a same-store basis however they fell 0.3%, hit by floods in Thailand. In November 2011, Big C, in which Casino holds a 63.2% wager, was compulsory to close 17 of its 180 stores in Thailand due to floods.

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Lobbying interests forked over nearly $20 million worth of reasons for lawmakers to go their way leading up to the 2012 legislative session. That’s how much money went to political parties and almost 40 committees run by top legislators in a six-month stretch ending Dec. 31, new reports show.

Unlike candidates’ campaign accounts, which are limited by $500 contribution limits, special committees and parties can take delivery of limitless donations. The big winner: the Republican Party of Florida, which received $7.5 million in the final three months 2011 alone its biggest off-year quarter in the past 15 years. The Florida self-governing Party received $1.8 million in the same period.

The Republican Senate majority has been more victorious at attract support than at any period in our history,said Senate President-designate Don Gaetz, R-Niceville. The biggest donor overall was health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. Its companies gave more than $1.5 million to the lawmakers’ funds and parties over the final six months of last year, including $660,000 to the Republican Party of Florida in the final three months of 2011.

The insurance company contributes $50,000 to the Florida Democratic Party.Donations to political candidates and organizations are designed to support our public policy positions to offer protection to as many Floridians as probable and encourage our commitment to the public good,company spokesman John Herbkersman said in an email.

The big givers to the Democratic Party were Disney ($155,000), the Seminole Tribe ($105, 00) and Genting ($103,000). Those three groups are involved in a fight over bringing three resort-style casinos to the state. A committee united with Republican Gov. Rick Scott, Let’s Get to Work, raised $437,000 in the last half of 2011, including $100,000 from the Florida Retail Federation.

Gambling money was a theme throughout most of the fundraising reports. One of the most vociferous opponents to the casino proposal, Walt Disney World companies, donated $672,000 to the parties and lawmaker committees in the second half of 2011. Florida Jobs PAC, a committee united with the Florida Chamber of Commerce, another casino critic, donated $370,000.

Another big donor was Automated Healthcare Solutions, which furnished $470,000. The Miramar firm sought tighter reporting requirements for recommendation drug monitoring. It makes software used by workers recompense doctors who dispense drugs in-house. The largesse of cash reflects the tensions and indecision of a redistricting year and the force to keep the Republican majorities, said lobbyist Ron Book.

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Kentucky, the state of bourbon and bluegrass, hasn’t yet accepted casino gambling, but there’s one spot that’s making inroads. In tiny Franklin, near where Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston fought divide duels in the 1800s, Kentucky Downs horse racing track and simulate facility has offered “Instant Racing” since Sept. 1. It’s the site of Kentucky’s first gaming machines.

The gaming center, though, sure looks like a minute Las Vegas casino. It has 200 electronic machines, strongly similar to casino-style slot machines. The brightly lit machines have spinning icons and show the final three seconds of an old, actual horse race in a small corner of the screen.

Players bet on the races as cocktail waitresses scurry about, creation sure they are well-fortified. You can get a mint julep, the traditional drink at the Kentucky Derby. The top of each machine lists the present jackpot in bold figures. A horn and irregular lights go off when someone hits a jackpot.

The minimum bet is 10 cents with individual bets of up to $1 obtainable. Players can bet units so the maximum is $5. Flesher said players have won about $700,000 in jackpots since September, counting one of about $6,000.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Diana Searcy of Cross Plains, Tenn., was playing one of the machines at the end of a row. Despite that mourn, she said she’s hit three jackpots between $1,600 and $2,900 since she begin playing in September.

The state racing commission says the total wagered on Instant Racing at Kentucky Downs was $8.4 million in November, $6.7 million in October and $4.3 million in September. The state gets 1.5 percent of the total quantity bet.“The Instant Racing wagering at Kentucky Downs has shown excellent acceptance by the customers, with the handle increasing at least 16 percent each month since its beginning in September,” the commission said in a statement.

The Family Foundation of Kentucky, a longtime opponent of the development of gaming in the state, has unsuccessfully challenged the game in court. Beshear, just re-elected to a second term, has said he wants voters to decide whether to expand gambling further than horse races, lotteries and charitable bingo games. He’s been a supporter of casinos and slot machines at horse tracks.

A full-page ad in The Courier-Journal Friday congratulated Kentucky Downs for “leading Kentucky racing to a new dawn.” The ad said pari-mutuel wagering at the track is predictable to increase six-fold in the coming year. It was paid for by Race Tech, a private industry group led by Oak Lawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., a track that offers betting on live races, replicate, instant racing and electronic blackjack.

Horses work for Kentucky proclaims signs outside the two-level Kentucky Downs structure, just off Interstate 65 and nestle against the Tennessee line. There is no legal gambling in Tennessee except for a state lottery. Tennessee, a target of Kentucky Downs promotion, is one of just five states with no casinos or live racing, according to the gaming industry.

Flesher said most patrons are from Tennessee and Kentucky, with daily audience “four figures some days.” There will be six days of live racing this coming September and races broadcast from other track year round. But there are no famous twins spires like at Churchill Downs.

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The dispute between Middleboro residents and the Mashpee Wampanoags over whether to build a casino in town promises to come to a head in 2012. The state Legislature late in 2011 approved the licensing of up to three casinos gambling in Massachusetts. The town and council of the tribe, including Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell, have been talking about a plan for Middleboro for several years.

Town officials say Cromwell tried to back out of a deal struck in 2007 for a casino. But, “the town’s official position is the conformity is still in place,” Selectmen Chairman Alfred P. Rullo Jr. said. Rullo said the tribe has retain control of more than 500-acres off Route 44 and has options to buy land.

The standoff between the town and tribe must be strong-minded this year, Selectman Ben W. Quelle said. “We don’t want to wake up one day and they’re here,” he said. The town had other business reversals in 2011. It lost Sysco Foods to Plympton, and Stop and Shop pulled up stakes. But the town gained a Volkswagen dealer, a new restaurant, a $10 million medical center, a $43-million development at Ocean Spray and a Trucchi’s grocery store.

Sysco accounted for about $1 million in tax revenue, Assessor Barbara Erickson said. Compass Medical Center will pay nearly $150,000 in local taxes, but Erickson said the Ocean Spray expansion is mainly in tackle, which is exempt from local duty. But more expansion is coming.

This year, work will begin on a 71-unit accommodation complex at the historic Winthrop-Atkins complex on East Main Street, but Rullo said the project could eat up more in local services than it generate in tax revenue.

Rullo expects 2012 to be another year of “scrimping and saving” to meet a town budget deficit, which has been projected at $750,000. “I think we’ll squeak by again,” Rullo said. But Quelle fears the gap could lead to talk of a tax augment through an override of proposal 21/2. He predicts voters will reject any tax hikes.

Quelle said selectmen will spend many meetings at the start of the New Year in discussions with public employee unions. Rullo said a new police station is the town’s top building precedence for 2012. The accessible station is not adequate for police business, he said. Rullo said the vacant hospital downtown would be an ideal location for a new police station, and said he hopes the town can enter into talks with its owners this year.

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When the Florida Legislature returns from its holiday recess, it will believe a bill to permit three Las Vegas-style casino resorts to be built in the southern part of the state. Lobbyists for the gambling industry have group Tallahassee, trying to make certain that the bill passes.

But the mere option of casino gambling has previously had an impact on profitable real estate in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. The biggest single move came last May when Genting, a casino company based in Malaysia, bought the Miami Herald building, overlook Biscayne Bay, for $236 million.

Genting released designs of what it hoped to build on the site: an extravaganza called Resorts World Miami, which in addition to a casino could have up to 5,000 guest rooms, 1,000 condominiums, 100 restaurants and comfort shops and a 3.6-acre rooftop lagoon that looks like something from “The Little Mermaid.”

The project would cost $3.8 billion, according to Christian Goode, the president of Resorts World Miami. And last month, the CIM Group, a real estate investment company based in Los Angeles, bought a stake in a business that plans to develop Miami Worldcenter, a 21.9-acre mixed-use project in downtown Miami.

The partnership has received master plan zoning approval for a nine-block, 11 million-square-foot progress that, according to its news release, “could easily contain a gaming component.” The Miami Worldcenter site is now mostly parking lots and weeds. Plans for that expansion were announce in 2008, but the project was shelved when the recession hit.

Sissy DeMaria, a publicist for Miami Worldcenter Associates, a joint venture flanked by the South Florida-based Falcone Group and Centurion Partners, wrote in an e-mail that unlike the Genting complex “the Miami Worldcenter has its entire permit in place and is ‘shovel ready.’”

Already, the casino games operator Las Vegas Sands has expressed attention in operating a gambling-based option at Miami Worldcenter, Andy Abboud, the vice president for government affairs for Las Vegas Sands, wrote in an e-mail. And Genting has sustained its buying spree, spending several hundred million dollars on post adjacent to the Miami Herald site.

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In response to concerns raised by a high-profile hopeful for a downtown Baltimore slots casino, Maryland officials have relaxed a rule designed to keep people with past gambling misbehavior from winning licenses to operate such facilities.

The action, taken the day before bids were due this fall, appears to have removed a significant hurdle for Dan Gilbert, the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team and chairman of Rock Gaming, to participate in the project.

Gilbert  part of a group vying to win state approval to build and operate a Harrah’s-brand casino was arrested in 1981, while a student at Michigan State University, in association with an alleged sports bookmaking operation that reportedly endangered violence against some who had gambling debts. Gilbert was not convict and his record was expunging, but according to published reports, he was fined, put on trial and given community service.

Even though Gilbert does not have a confidence, the incident could have disqualified his group from obtain a license under regulations that took effect in 2009, when Maryland commence its slots program.

In late September, the State Lottery Commission chosen to change those rules. Now, a gambling-related crime that took place out of state and did not result in a confidence is only disqualifying if it occurred in the past 10 years.

Gilbert’s group, which includes Caesars Entertainment, was the only capable applicant for the project after bids closed. The license could be award early next year if a divide state panel determines the bid is in Maryland’s best interest.

State lottery officials, who are accountable for crafting rules leading Maryland’s slots program, documented that the change was made after Gilbert’s group sought clarification of state rules before its bid. But they said the preceding directive was open to understanding and argue that the rules are now clearer, fairer and still among the strictest in the nation.

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