Arkansas Blog

It's a shame. This is a time for our good mayor to keep quiet. This is a chance for a jumpstart to the economy but the Baptists just want to keep things illegal so the gambling revenue goes to Pocola and Sallisaw OK. We have here all the negatives of casinos but no revenue or business. It is a long shot to get the casino and there is pending legislation by Sen. McCain to limit off reservation gaming houses run by the tribes. In order for this to happen the BIA will have to accept the land into trust for the Keetowah Band of Cherokees. The Cherokee Nation opposes this. Our mayor should stay out of it. It is a Federal matter only. I would love to see the preachers take it in rear on this one. Couldn't happen to a better bunch.

i'm not a baptist but i want the casinos OUT as well (oaklawn is like iraq, its here, the system works)

have you been to tunica? its like a third world hell

"have you been to tunica? its like a third world hell"

What are you talking about? Tunica is extremely nice (Well the majority of the casinos. Fitz is pretty crappy). The entertainment is great! The food is good. And Mississippi is getting a lot of tax dollars from Arkansas......

>have you been to tunica? its like a third world hell<

Soution: don't go there.

Tunica was 3d world before casinos. Now they have jobs, new schools, and a booming economy paid for with a lot of Arkansas dollars...What is it about jobs and progress that you don't like Anon?

You have to forgive Anonymous . He's one of those FOX NEWS BLIND BUSHBOTS who has their hands over their ears and eyes screaming "All IS WELL". But if you disagree with any of the neocon CHICKENHAWKS they will call you unAmerican. Even if your a Veteran.

I like "Riverdog | July 6, 2006 04:25 PM"s description of Anonymous.

Funny but I was thinking about Anonymous today. He strikes me as some bottom dweller who hides under a rock. When a new subject is posted, Anonymous slithers out from his slimy hole under the rock - up chucks a few verses of Repug garbage to disparage any effort, Demo or not, that tries to correct the Repug mess we are in.

I agree with Riverdog and Anon2. And Anonymous tries to make it appear that many others agree with his position by posting replies to his own posts! Sometimes he does not even address his comments to the right person, and posts and posts and posts - all directed to the wrong person. Pathetic.
What an idiot.

Anonymous, have you actually been to Tunica? The casinos are sitting in the middle of cotton fields, for Heaven's sake. Not exactly a third world hell.
And, if you have been there, why?
I'll front you a roll of quarters if you tell the truth.

I watched the 10 PM coverage of the rally and saw hiz Honor Gay Ray ranting, claiming Fort Smith does not need a casino to develop the water front. Well Hello! He has been Mayor for what, 10 or more years, and what has he or the city directors done so far to actually get it developed? Huh? NOTHING! I am sick and tired of a bunch of do nothing moralists cramming their life style down the throats of the rest of us. Gambling is here, if you take I-540 from Fort Smith to Pocola the casino is maybe 100 yards from the State line. Its like watching TV, if the channel offends you, change the channel or turn it off. Noone is forcing these folks to go there. Oh, and Mr. Mayor, why did you allow the city to lose so many jobs on your watch? Remember Wortz Bakery? Shipley/Flowers Bakery? Flanders Industries? West Communications? And Whirlpool soon to move to Mexico? Get a frigging clue.

Fort Smith Observer | July 6, 2006 11:35 PM

More like close to 20 years. Here's what chaps my ass royally. The right wing, goodie two shoes Baptist, Christian right idiots who scream about casino's...and all other sins find it in their Christian hearts when you talk about Wal-Mart and big business...to suck it up..that's called a free market - and God Belss America. Hypocrites.
Fort Smith needs and deserves this econonic boom and if Ray Baker is stupid enough not to recognize this, then he'll be packing his bags - and be mayor no more come November.

Fort Smith Observer | July 6, 2006 11:35 PM

More like close to 20 years. Here's what chaps my ass royally. The right wing, goodie two shoes Baptist, Christian right idiots who scream about casino's...and all other sins find it in their Christian hearts when you talk about Wal-Mart and big business...to suck it up..that's called a free market - and God Belss America. Hypocrites.
Fort Smith needs and deserves this econonic boom and if Ray Baker is stupid enough not to recognize this, then he'll be packing his bags - and be mayor no more come November.

Indian Gambling 101

Indian gaming is not a local economic benefit for communities. The tribes, or should I say the out of state managment groups, most of which are based in Vegas, who run the gambling enterprises reap all the financial benefits. Private gambling industries, such as the Harrah's of the world who pay local, state and federal taxes, know Arkansas is not a viable market for land based large scale casinos and will never build here.

The federal government in its attempt to make "reparation" for robbing Native Americans of lands, has passed legislation for recognized tribes allowing them to pay no taxes to state or local governments in which they operate.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the major regulatory body for all Indian gambling.

Class 1-2 and 3 gambling by the Indian nations falls into three distinct areas of oversight. Class 1 is totally controlled by the tribes, consisting of traditional Indian games, class 2 has been the foundation for the building of casinos, a huge money maker for the tribes, it consist of high stakes bingo parlors, scratch off games, pull tabs and at this point as yet undefined electronic machines that mimic bingo type games, for all practical purposes the electronic games are very much like slots. Class 2 Indian gaming is not regulated by any local or state authority, it falls under the fed guidelines under BIA, and has been the fastest growing segment of Indian gambling. Class 3 gambling consist of slot machines, card games etc. like you see in a traditional casino. Class 3 Indian gambling to operate must have a compact with the state and local government regarding any cut of the take that goe's to the local community, regulation falls again to BIA and not to local or state authorities.

There is little, if any chance, that the tribe attempting to move into Arkansas will receive recognition by the feds, even if there were a chance, the process can take several years to complete (5 years or more) in many cases.

The singular purpose of Indian casinos and other forms of Indian gambling is to benefit the tribes which profit from them. In the last decade nationally Indian gaming has grown from a 100 million dollar windfall for Indian tribes, and people like Jack Abramoff and others who exploit the tribes, to a industry generating over 16 Billion dollars a year. As for job creation or new tax revenues to the local economies they operate in, once again, the BIA and tribes by law have no obligation to employee any persons locally, in fact a great portion of workers as they should be are Native Americans.

In conclusion, Arkansas is better off with no expansion of any form of gambling legalization, even more so with the Indian gambling scenario, whose pacts in many states only require them to donate a decided upon and usually small percentage of the financial losses by patrons back to the local community.

Yeah, the Mayor doing his impression of crazy old Sen. Ted Steven's of Alaska, yelling NO NO NO I will not support a casino in Fort Smith was pretty embarrassing. He was surrounded by church folk. Nothing wrong with church folk or churches, but if you gathered up all the churches in Fort Smith how many jobs do they generate, what do their jobs pay and all together how much in taxes do churches add to Fort Smith's treasury?

This uproar is pretty funny, but what can you expect from a reformed whore? Our Mayor spent 40 years teaching high school history but fails to remember that Fort Smith was the wildest most rootin tootin psycho sumbitch in America until Judge Parker's court was dismantled, the women folks, churches, WWI and the Depression made a dainty little lady out of my hometown.

Actually, when Fort Chaffee was rolling, as late as the 1960s quality whores from the New Orleans circuit packed every old hotel on Garrison Avenue. But nice folks don't talk about that.

As soon as Chaffee was good and gone, the churchy folks started their reforming and their purging of our wild west past. I remember leading blue-hairs having hissy-fits, outraged that we'd even mention the Hanging Judge, I'm sure they rolled in their grave when our last remaining whore house, the only one on the National Register of Historic Places became Fort Smith's Welcome Center.

I take my history as I find it. Great Granddaddy was a horse thief, who cares? Making history better or worse is a sin. Now, do I want 2 dozen whore houses to come back to town? Do I want 37 saloons on Garrison again? Do I want drunks laying in the gutters, or pigs and wild dogs roaming the streets or black men lynched in front of 1st National Bank again? NO NO NO to paraphrase our Mayor.

Allowing a casino on our side of the river will not bring back the bad old days to Fort Smith. I don't gamble and I don't have a dime in it, but I believe adults should be free to enjoy legal pleasures. As our factories move to Mexico, we'll need that 77 million a year generated by the casino. We will need those 1300 new jobs. We'll need the city's share of the 2.7 million in new sales taxes the casino will generate each year. Not to mention 1.7 million people drawn to downtown by the casino per year. If Westphal is wrong and the figures are only half that.....it's still worth a shot.

Our Mayor is a strange bird. No one on earth works harder 7 days a week for a piddley 10,000 a year than he does. He is like mosquitoes this time of year, he's everywhere.

He's been mayor since 1845, well it seems like it and he's got the totally powerless job down pat. No one can hit 5 places in one day faster, deliver a short concise message that fits the occasion better and ends with smacking his fists and yelling Life is Worth Living in Fort Smith, like he can. Plus he sends out more thank you, get well, congratulations and condolences letters and notes than anyone in the mayor business.

He's got it down to a science. The smile is fixed and fake and the sincerity is only a quarter inch deep, but by god he makes the effort and will attend the birth of your dog's puppies if the bitch can do it quick and on his schedule.

The older he gets the more of a cartoon character he becomes, but I'm not knocking that...the man works hard for Fort Smith. I can't think of another person I'd rather have for Mayor of Fort Smith...most of the time.

But he's wrong this time. The casino will not drive out a single church, sinners are already sinning. Trust us Mayor, we're big enough to handle gambling on this side of the river. The Indian casinos in all of Oklahoma took in 1.4 billion in 2005.

We'll need some of that money to buy Mexican Whirlpool fridges in the future. Let Fort Smith be Fort Smith again, the country can handle it.

Mayor Baker is a nice guy, but pretty kooky at times. After the '96 tornado he tried to get the city to move its visitors center out of Miss Laura's because, the mayor claimed, the former bordello gave the city a bad name. Baker also vetoed a feral cat control ordinance because he claimed it was a "cat leash law."

In the city administrator form of government, the mayor is pretty powerless. Anyone know whether Baker is running for a fifth term this year? (He first got elected in 1990).

Let me be the first to say that the last thing Fort Smith needs is to elect the man who announced last week he was going to run against Baker in the next election. He's an insane clown posse of one.

If anything is holding Fort Smith back it's our city administrator form of government. It's bad enough it means our city is run by a group of amateurs, but the last 15 years our city has been run by people cut out of the same close-minded Republican, right wing, lily white cloth.

Plus the job of city administrator has driven the last 2 city administrators insane. And lets not forget our current board of directors spent in the neighborhood of 80 thousand dollars with a consulting group out west just to pick our newest city administrator, our own Chief of Police. I'm expecting a good frisking and general lockdown each night starting in 2007.

I'm with DcNwA. Follow the money or better, maybe "show me the money" is my comment. I have no religious or moral objection to gambling, but I am unconvinced that adding Indian gaming on this side of the river will do a thing for Fort Smith. In the nearby Oklahoma towns of Roland (Cherokee Casino) and Pocola (Choctaw Casino) the improvements enjoyed by both towns are... just not showing. Perhaps I'm missing something invisible, but I see no improvement in the appearance of prosperity in either place. No new mall or restaurants. No larger schools. No new industry related to gambling (unless you count the adult movie stores that seem to spring up in the shadow of the casinos and one of those was raided and closed last month.)

I have noticed that the casinos themselves and their surrounding parking lots have grown larger.

The solution to this problem is simple: Appoint DBI the Casino Czar and let him handle everything.

DBI's description of the frontier, lilly white version of "Mayor Ray" is correct. Especially the part about an appearance at a puppy litter birth. It has got to be on HIS schedule.

The world revolves around him and I do not care what kind of clown is running against Mayr Ray. I am voting aginst HizEgozNess. He is dangerous. A loose cannon. With Tenure.

Say NO! N - O to Mayor Ray in Nov.

PS I do not give a ratz furry azz about the casino. It is a non-izzue. Bring us a Marshalls Museum. Now THAT is what DBI should be the czar of.

>>Keep in mind, the Keetoowah tribe cannot do this without the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA has said they will not even consider it without a resolution by the Fort Smith city directors. So in the end, it looks like it's in their hands.>>

isn't this a sweetheart deal. the bureau of indian affairs was bought off by Jack Abramoff and Eddie Ayoob.

wonder if and how much Abramoff's firm Greenburg-Traurig give Lincoln and Pryor? how much did the indian tribe give those two--??

This story bears too many similarities to the Ralph Reed story in GA.

If the 2000 referendum had been marketed correctly, it would have passed. Who wouldn't have voted for more jobs with benefits and a cash influx into this welfare state? Think of that, the tax base stabalized and eventually going DOWN. Our state income tax is among the highest in the nation! Huckabee raised certain taxes immediately and the people who voted "NO" didn't understand why! Tunica was the poorest county in America at one time. Now they have outlet malls, new suburbs, plus restaurants and anything else that serves the public. An added kicker is that they have lots of money for education and are hiring top teachers from excellent schools. If you don't believe in gambling, fine, but be realistic about this. These "poor" people WILL spend their money and they might as well spend it in Arkansas. Write the congressmen and tell them Arkansas would appreciate a casino in their state because we WILL drive to OK or Tunica if we have to.

I think it's about time someone ran against Ray Baker. I cannot wait to vote today! What has this man actually done for our community? Besides let the illegals take over! Are there more jobs in our community - NO. Are there activities for our young people, so there not running the streets - NO. BUT - we do have a bank on every corner; we do have a nice supply of resturaunts and last but not least a Mexican Market every two blocks - now that's PROGRESS. I guess helping illegals is Mr. Baker's number 1 priority - oh that and his paycheck.