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Another sensationalistic piece of garbage by OPB's hyped host.

I'd suggest you apply at FOX News, because you are incapable to resist any and every temptation that comes your way to reduce a topic to dirt, filth and controversy, even when everyone around you- guests and callers, uses brains to deal with a subject and does so forthrightly.

TOL's host is the on-air equivalent of Willamette Week's gutter journalism that was the subject on display today.
OPB: Get another, wiser, calmer, less caffeinated host, and soon!

posted 5 years ago
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First,
I thought the show was poorly planned and executed. More than forty minutes spent on a relatively minor issue (condos), and then barely any time left to delve into the casino issue - the 600 pound gorilla of the Gorge with huge environmental, economic and traffic consequences for a whole region.

Then more time wasted with a lengthy and completely unchallenged (by the interviewer) interview with Cascade Lock's mayor, then literally no time left at all for any arguments to weigh in counter to his tall claims. In the end, the main counter voice to the development, the lawyer for the Friends, got his 15 seconds, being cut off at 9:59 sharp. Guys, plan better!

The Gorge's scenic splendor will collapse under the weight and size of this casino and its traffic and air impact, if built as proposed. Anyone who has ever set foot inside a casino, like Spirit Mountain, for example, will quickly realize that the Cascade Locks casino will be anything but a 'resort'. It is going to be yet another sad, sad place, like all other casinos, mostly visited by sour-looking, chain-smoking, gambling addicts and retirees who are delusional about the real odds and payoffs in a gambling hall; a casino staffed with a few underpaid workers with little or no benefit plans, and about as far away as you can possibly be from healthy economical development in Cascade Locks or the serenity at this most spectacular part of the Gorge (at least for now.)

And don't give me this bit aboutthis being a sound plan for a region's 'economic development':

Most of the profits will be syphoned off to the big casino developers (I did not say Mafia) in Nevada and New Jersey. And, show me any casino development in Oregon whose profits have turned a tribe at large around, economically, to the point where it could move away from this terrible form of addiction!

The costs to our region do not justify under any circumstance (except deceit and lies) the supposed pay-offs.

Shame on you, Governor Kulongoski who, more than any other elected leader, keeps driving this ill-conceived plan along, for reasons I still don't understand.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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