Not on his watch: Texas Governor Greg Abbott offers a resounding ‘no’ to online gambling.
Texas officials must stop their line of inquiry into legalizing online gambling, Governor Greg Abbot said this week.
In a letter to your Chairman regarding the Texas Gambling Commission, Abbot said that the state prohibition on gambling expansion is in destination to protect citizens and he ‘supports it wholeheartedly.’
Abbot’s veto comes in light of news that the state regulator is information that is gathering the feasibility of adopting new gambling games in Texas, in particular recreations betting and daily fantasy sports. In October, commission executive manager Gary Grief joined up with staff on a fact-finding mission to Delaware to examine the state’s online gambling operations.
‘In light of continuous external pressures to expand the footprint of gaming in Texas, it is timely and necessary that we offer direction on prohibiting all such expansions without express authorization and direction by the Texas Legislature,’ penned Abbot in a page dated November 9, 2015.
‘Please ensure this direction and intent is strictly enforced on the list of staff of the Texas Lottery Commission.
Please also notify the administrator staff and director that any request to journey to gather information regarding gaming possibilities that are prohibited in Texas must certanly be denied.’
Gambling in Texas
The only forms of gambling currently legal in Texas are the state lottery, charitable bingo and raffles beyond the parimutuel betting at horseracing and dog tracks and the state’s one Indian casino.
Perhaps the lottery, which earns $2.2 billion every two years for public education, is under danger and its abolition has been debated in the legislature every since its 1991 inception year.
In 2013, lawmakers voted by 81-65 to scrap the lottery, before realizing that plugging that $2.2 billion hole with raffles and bingo may be a stretch regarding the imagination.
A hastily put together ballot reinstated it.
Opposition in the Legislature
The idea of gambling expansion does maybe not stay well with the conservative and Christian sensibilities of the large area of the legislature, and a bill freeslotsnodownload-ca.com to liberalize gambling this year had been summarily quashed.
‘Though we might not offer these games, we want to be knowledgeable of the industry in order that we might serve as a resource to the legislature should they decide to think about these other designs of gaming,’ Texas Lottery spokeswoman Kelly Cripe said of the reasoning behind the recent objective to Delaware.
‘As we carry on our mission to come up with income for Texas, we are very mindful and respectful it could be the Texas Legislature that sets policy.’
However, this Cripe told the Dallas Morning News that her organization would adhere to the governor’s wishes week.
Fontainebleau Resort Goes on the Market for $650 Million
Carl Icahn, who is prepared to market the property he rescued from bankruptcy for a $4 million profit. (Image: businessinsider.com)
Fontainebleau, the big, ambitious $3 billion Las Vegas Strip megaresort that never had been, is up for sale.
Carl Icahn, the billionaire raider that is corporate rescued the unfinished project from bankruptcy in 2010, is asking $650 million for the property, according to CBRE Group, which has been hired to broker the offer.
The one caveat for potential purchasers: you shall have to complete building it yourself.
Fontainebleau was one of several huge developments conceived before the global economic downturn of 2008 that were devastated when recession hit throughout the construction stage. The tower was never ever completed, and the resort stays just 70 percent complete.
Fontainebleau had grand tips: named for a magnificent French chateau that was as soon as home to the kings of France, its tower would, at 730-feet, end up being the tallest in Vegas.
Investment Possibility
But, like experience Atlantic City, no project better symbolizes the financial crash that ravaged the casino industry from 2008 to 2011, during which time Las Vegas ended up being famously dubbed ‘Ground Zero of the financial downturn.’
Work began in the property in 2007. Developers Fontainebleau Resorts of Miami, spent $2 billion before being forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as lenders, spooked by the depression that is economic bailed on the project.
In 2009, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, canceled $770 million in construction funding april.
But Vegas is now on the up, and Ichan demonstrably thinks that Fontainebleau is not any longer a doomed folly to economic shortsightedness, but an investment opportunity that is exciting.
‘we think Las Vegas nevertheless has an amount that is fair of to perform,’ said Icahn, who paid around $150 million for Fontainebleau. ‘But I’d rather offer it than take the time and energy to build it out, which we have been considering doing,’ he told the Wall Street Journal this week.
On the Up
The visitors have returned to the city in their droves and room rates are at record levels. Meanwhile, other projects that were abandoned through the economic crisis, including the Echelon and the vegas Plaza, have found new owners who are prepared to invest in their development.
Next door to the Fontainebleau, the Frontier, which closed down earlier in the day this is to be redeveloped into an extension of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s Convention Center District year. The future suddenly looks bright for the end that is north of Strip.
‘Las Vegas didn’t just have a recession, it had a depression,’ John Knott, executive vice president of CBRE Las Vegas told the nevada Review Journal.
‘We’ve come a way that is long. Gaming companies are spending in and properties that are renovating. Local gaming numbers are starting to show improvement. New projects are bringing vibrancy to our community.
I believe the recession is behind us now.’
It’s estimated Fontainebleau would just take another couple of years to perform.
Hacker Group ‘Anonymous’ Targets Terrorists Over Payment Processors
Cyber hacking collective ‘Anonymous’ announced it is pursuing ISIS following the terrorist militants claimed to have killed over 130 individuals in Paris final Friday. (Image: americasfreedomfighters.com)
Call them Terrorist Haters Anonymous, if you shall. But the group that lives up to its name is for once likely to bring down the bad guys with their own boy that is bad abilities.
Yup, the vigilante collective known as ‘Anonymous’ is going to war, and they are planning with a type or kind of cyber-Robin Hood promise this time.
The web hackers posted a video declaration group that is against terrorist State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on the week-end, claiming the self-proclaimed perpetrators in charge of the assaults in Paris will be ‘hunted down’ and stopped in their cyber songs.
Online communications, apparently now largely moved onto gaming platforms in a ‘peer-to-peer’ mode that is inaccessible to police force without obtaining warrants, are the mode that is primary planning these global and lethal attacks, based on media sources.
Gaming World Knows DDoS Attacks All Too Well
The gambling community has also become familiar with other (often unidentified) proficient computer hackers disrupting operations at both land-based and online casinos while obviously no one would mind if Anonymous succeeds at disabling its victims and greatly hindering their operations.
During 2009 and 2010, two separate incidents compromised online that is popular gambling processors Moneybookers and Neteller, with an untold range addresses, emails, telephone numbers, birthdates, and password hints taken.
Last year, Iranian hackers angered by Sheldon Adelson’s pro-Israel position infiltrated community servers during the billionaire’s Sands Bethlehem resort in Pennsylvania, effectively shutting down the casino. Plus in a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assaults sent four Internet casinos offline in New Jersey for some 30 minutes july.
Hackers have largely been a disruptive force that costs victims vast sums of bucks each year to defend, however for now the masterminds are putting their skills to good usage by going after ISIS, a group condemned by all 28 member states of this North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Yes, ISIS Tweets
ISIS is just a radical group that resides in the Iraq wilderness, primarily Ramadi, a city it captured once US forces withdrew from the area. ISIS’ war-ravaged headquarters isn’t without technology, the guerrillas possessing the capability to distribute its communications and claims of obligation online, since it has reportedly done concerning the Paris attacks.
Distributed through Twitter, ISIS called the bombings and mass shootings in Paris that left significantly more than 130 dead a ‘blessed attack’ and the ‘first of the storm.’
Anonymous responded in its own Internet message, a video showing a representative donning the group’s Guy Fawkes mask saying, ‘Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down … we’ll introduce the operation that is biggest ever against you.
‘ The French people are stronger than you and can turn out of this atrocity even more powerful,’ the hackers concluded.
Consequential Results
The Anonymous collective’s wishes to disrupt the internet operations of ISIS could be significant. The first line of ISIS recruitment is performed through online, the group maintaining a 24/7 social media presence that utilizes its sympathetic followers to spread its communications and viewpoints.
‘As part of its quest to terrorize the world, ISIS has learned an arena no terrorist group had conquered before: the burgeoning globe of social media marketing,’ authors Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger wrote in their book on Islamic extremism, ISIS: The State of Terror.
A report in March by the Brookings Institution found upwards of 2,000 pro-ISIS Twitter reports that were highly active, tweeting an average of 50 messages each day. Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq had been the top three advertised locales of the tweeters, but concerning to Americans is the known fact that the usa was fourth.
Twitter does not expose why or whenever it chooses to disable an account. ‘Is it ethical to suppress political speech, even when such speed is repugnant?’ Brookings asks.
Anonymous is planning to answer that question on its terms that are own. Gamblers can only hope that other cyber that is such turn their attentions elsewhere as well.