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People have got to start looking at both sides of the governmental financial picture. I'm not talking about horse racing here.
Ever notice how only the real services that real people need are the ones that are cut?
All politicians in Illinois are crying in their champagne about such dire straits when they provide tax subsidies and cash incentives to corporations that don't deserve it on the basis of "the jobs it will create." Those jobs never come and the corporations have also shouted a big EFF YOU as they cut 2,500 or 3,700 jobs! Our glorious pipsqueak dictator mayor has the money to install "safety cameras" at schools with data he is lying about and not being able to cover the city properly with cops. We can afford to hold a NATO summit, but are well content to throw mental patients who need basic service to the street.
It's easy for these politicians to cry and cut our services, but there has not been one bit of fiscal reform on the part of government or the financial industry despite the treasonous actions of those involved.
As for horse racing, when fans, a precious few columnists and members of forums like this one have been passionately offering real solutions to the game's problems, the industry has offered nothing but childish, parochial bickering and fiddle-dee-dee inaction on all sorts of issues, any issue that you would want to choose.
Hell, a top suit at Churchill Down Inc. stated almost gleefully recently that CDI is no longer a horse racing company. His tone was "yeah, we'll continue to run the Derby (because it's so damn profitable), but if it wasn't, we'd be out of it. We're on to better things now." CDI's social stratification of the Derby and Churchill Downs is disgusting, with bleeding the racing fan's rock dry as its main goal.
Racing has not taken care of its own house for lo these many decades and now finds itself without any real foundation to stand on. That's one problem. But now that you have politicians looking to make a name for themselves and their personal futures, racing may truly be on the brink with the center of balance well off the cliff.
And to the casual or uninitiated, potential fan out there? The HBO "Luck" debacle was yet another wonderful event to have let happen.
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