CASINO...A roll of the dice in Franklin county?

This is not a liberal versus conservative issue. The stupidity is bipartisan.

Republicans John Kasich, Ohio senators David Goodman, Jim Hughes and state reps. Cheryl Grossman and Kevin Bacon as well as Columbus Democrats Michael Coleman and Mike Mentel
are all pursuing efforts to NULLIFY THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.

To me, it's pretty simple. We VOTED, the issue PASSED...done deal.

At this point we are beyond arguing the pros and cons of casino gambling, the effects on families, the detriment to people with addictive personalities, etc..

The notion of "protecting us from ourselves" is never ending. You can send me 1000 links to stories about how gambling ruins lives and I can send you 1000 links that demonstrate that obesity is killing our children and drunks are killing pedestrians and factory pollution is killing our wildlife. I can go back in time and show you that bacon will kill us and we will be out of oil by 1995. If we succumb to a puritanical need to stop all gambling in order to save ourselves, we might as well go all the way and eliminate Cheetos, Lays, McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Budweiser-Bush, Jack Daniels, Gallo Winery...where would it end?

The casino vote was a STATEWIDE vote. Whether the people of Franklin county approved it or not, the state of Ohio DID APPROVE THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT as it was presented.

I was not in favor of the issue BUT that is not to say that I am against a casino in Columbus.

I did not like the fact that the issue was written by outside interests when THE OHIO LEGISLATURE SHOULD HAVE DONE THE JOB. I was not happy that the location was pre-determined; not because of some silly belief that the Columbus "arena district" is supposed to be "family friendly" but because there are other areas of central Ohio that would benefit GREATLY from a development such as this.

The "arena district" is (for now) the home of a professional sports team that actually recruits and pays for players to be violent. It is (for now) a place with multiple venues serving alcohol that flows freely. Before that, it was home to a place where we strapped people into a chair and sent electricity through their bodies until they were dead. This is not "sacred ground" by any definition.

As I have written on message boards and said in conversations, the STATEWIDE smoking ban passed in 72 of 88 counties, still, it is law in the 16 counties where it failed. In a NATIONAL election, McCain won 22 states but still Obama is president of all 50 states. We can not micro-manage the democratic process. The majority rules and we move on.

IF THE PEOPLE STAND SILENTLY WHILE THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS IS SLAUGHTERED, WE DESERVE THE OPPRESSION THAT IS TO COME!

Your voice in the political process is about to become meaningless background noise. If any psychics can channel Karl Marx, get to work on that. We'll probably need some pointers.