LETTERS: CASINO OWNERS AREN'T LAUGHING NOW

To the editor:

The winners laugh and joke, and the losers say shut up and deal. For the last three years, Missouri's gambling-boat operators have laughed and joked, all at the expense of Missouri citizens. Now the Missouri Supreme Court says, "You lose."Previously, when they thought they had the winning hand, the gamblers played fast and loose with the law and the gaming commission. They claimed that their boats -- even though they had no motors and even though they sat on manmade lagoons far from the river and even though they had to pipe water to them from the river -- were riverboats. Never mind the fact that when Missouri voters approved the concept of riverboat gambling, they were assured that these boats would cruise the rivers and provide a huge tourist attraction. The voters were told these boats would provide jobs, increase tourism, revive declining riverfront properties and spark an economic boom that would spread throughout the area surrounding the boat.

All of these promises and many more have not materialized. Why not? Where have the boats and the promises gone? One went to Caruthersville, a bone tossed to the downstaters. The rest have gone to St. Louis, Kansas City and other metro areas that have no room for these boats.

So the fiction was invented that manmade lagoons with boats that have no engines were actually on the river, because they sat in a floodplain.

My church sits on a floodplain, and occasionally the river comes up around it. But that doesn't make it a boat.

The voters of Missouri said yes to gambling boats. So be it. The Missouri Supreme Court said yes to gambling boats with the provision that they actually be operating on a river. So be it.

But now the gamblers who thought they had a winning hand are crying foul. Sorry, no one changed the rules. No one changed the game. The gamblers just didn't listen when the game was explained. When the gamblers spend millions and lost the first time, no one cried foul. When the gamblers spent more millions the second time and threw in some wild promises and won, they didn't cry foul. But now that other players finally have been dealt a winning hand, the game is rigged.

So what is left? The gambling boat operators say the Supreme Court doesn't have the final say. They will change the rules again. They will find a different game. They will take all their money and go home. I say let them go. I have lived with the game they tried to rig, and I didn't like it. So if they can't live with the game they created and rigged and ran now that they have to live within the law, let them go elsewhere. We will be better off without them.

The winners laugh and joke. They are not laughing anymore.

MARK K. SLINKARD

Cape Girardeau