A new article on Senator Harry Reid’s dicey online poker bill claims that casinos are screwed if his bill fails – and that’s not screwed in the lurving way. Politico quote a “top casino company executive” stating: “We’re trusting that Harry knows what he’s doing. If he doesn’t, we are so screwed.”
Reid is so loved by the casino side of the industry as his federal online poker bill pretty much guarantees they will come away from online gambling with some semblance of success. Hell, Reid has even been nicknamed “Harrah” Reid at times such is his reputation amongst Nevada’s casino top dogs. That makes it no more likely the bill will pass though.
The latest piece of news comes after Reid criticized fellow Senator Dean Heller for failing to garner the level of support needed from the GOP for the federal poker bill to survive. Speaking of Heller, “observers” cited by Politico state that Heller is being set up to “take the blame” should the bill fail to pass during the post-election Lame Duck session. Erick Herzik, chairman of political science at University of Nevada, Reno, told the same publication that he doubts “anything’s going to get done” and that Reid has the “perfect defence” in the shape of blaming Heller.
The blame game was something that Reid spokesperson Kristen Orthman first brought to the table exactly two weeks ago. Whilst we’re sure they’ll both be laying the blame at each others doors we can imagine there’ll be a lot of angry, influential casino executives with steam coming from their ears looking for Reid if the latest attempts to get a bill through fail. Then, as predicted by us on more than one occasion, the online poker will roll out on a state-by-state basis and we’ll all look back wondering what all the fuss was about federal regulation anyways.
