If you didn’t catch the news yesterday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is pushing for a plan that would allow the state to takeover Atlantic City’s casinos and entertainment district within a year, and remodel the city to become a Las Vegas of the East:
Christie hopes to prioritize using casino tax revenue to fund Atlantic City’s blighted areas. He said he doesn’t expect the proposed changes to affect the tax structure for Atlantic City’s casinos. But gaming enforcement, which is funded by the casinos, would be streamlined, he said, perhaps following the Las Vegas model of bringing the Division of Gaming Enforcement under the Casino Control Commission.
I think Christie is making the right move here. Atlantic City’s government has long been run by corrupt, inept individuals who cared about holding onto power and paying their friends than actually fixing the city’s terrible reputation. And the talk of attracting amenities such as a NASCAR track and amusement parks for families is definitely the direction the city should have went 15 years ago.
However, there is a lesson here for the Tea Baggers and closed-minded conservatives that think all government is bad, and that big government will doom us all. Isn’t Trenton making a power grab over the home-rule control of a local municipality the very example of big government?
I guess not when a Republican poster boy does it.
Follow Rob on Twitter | Become a Friend on Facebook | View more of his cartoons