Vegas, People

They're programmed to eliminate any element of chance, and you can take that to the bank.

by Isaiah Thompson

What? Pennsylvania is facing a billion-dollar budget shortfall? We were supposed to be swimming in money! We've leased a third of our state forest for drilling — and what the hell were all those casinos for?

But so has Gov. Ed Rendell announced: The money's tight, just like it always is, only worse. I'm just going to go ahead and make a prediction: The next governor — or possibly this one — will resurrect the proposal to expand gambling (again), by legalizing "video poker" machines in bars across Pennsylvania. And by "video poker," I mean slot machines, because that's what they are: They're programmed to eliminate any element of chance, and you can take that to the bank.

It's almost happened twice already, in early 2009 and then again late last year, when Rendell, with plenty of eager legislators, proposed that every single bar in Pennsylvania — are you listening? Every single bar — be allowed to host up to five slot machines. That's not a tweak in a law; that's a new state.

That's Vegas, people.

The proposal was dropped for a different expansion of gambling: table games — oh, and the extension of credit to slots players, and the creation of another casino, and a slew of secretive earmarks. I can't wait to see what extras they pack into the video poker proposals. Intravenous tubes for loyal "gamers," maybe?

Then you've got the pool of potential governors. City Paper interviewed several candidates for this issue (though not Republican front-runner Tom Corbett, who is somewhat more reserved on gambling issues), and when it comes to video poker, all are open — nay, more or less indifferent — to a proposal that would introduce tens of thousands of slot machines, a radical, radical expansion of gambling in this state. Joe Hoeffel says it's "not a priority." Anthony Williams is pretty much "Toro! Toro!" on this one. Of the Democrats, Jack Wagner and Dan Onorato have espoused the most radical views so far, limiting that expansion to a couple of machines per bar or fraternal organization — just 28,000 new slot machines, that's all.

The pressure comes from the usual special interests: in this case, the Pennsylvania Tavern Association, which has so far been denied the glorious, glorious spoils of gambling, the spoils that have somehow still left our state a billion dollars short.

They know it's their turn — while we go to vote, thinking it's ours.