Speaking of thanksgiving

Thank you to Dorothy Brizill and Gary Imhoff, proprietors of DC Watch and themail, the city's leading "watchdog" site advocating good government. And to Dorothy's (and others) efforts fighting the nefarious attempts to bring slots/gambling to the City of Washington. Yesterday, the DC Court of Appeals ruled that such efforts are counter to federal law. Gambling** is dead!

After you take out all the advertising supplements from today's Post, see "Judges Nix D.C. Slots Vote." (And I am happy to say that one of the points in the holding by the DC Court of Appeals was a line of argument I suggested in a post to themail when this first came up in 2004.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

** Whenever anyone claims at a City Council hearing that ex-Councilmember, now lawyer-lobbyist for well-paying business interests, John Ray, has "vision" remind them that he was the lawyer for the first attempt to put an incredibly unseemly "gaming" initiative on the ballot, an initiative that was written not to create a fair and transparent process for the consideration of gambling, but in a manner that awarded the concession to one particular party (the sponsor of the initiative).
Money ("market rationality") is likely to be the primary motivator of most of DC's lawyers and lobbyists focusing on municipal issues at the behest of the Growth Machine, not "vision" ("social rationality").

Index Keywords: civic-engagement