There is not a single day that goes by that I am not thankful for the job I have, running and growing my own business by helping other business owners run and grow their companies. I truly have a dream job.
That being said, it is very rare for me to read about someone who is doing a job that results in a bit of a smile and just a little bit of envy or wonderment.
In a recent issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance a quote caught my eye. “I don’t do very much other than write about, talk about and drink Scotch.” Believe it or not, there is a Scotsman who actually makes his living doing this. His name is Charles MacLean, a 52 year-old native of Scotland who went to law school, but is today the foremost writer and critic of whiskey in the world.
Charles MacLean knows the Latin name for all of the different trees that aging barrels are made out of and can even quote just about every line that has ever been written about whiskey in famous literature the world over.
To MacLean, a whiskey as old as him is still young compared to the century-old tastes that he is used to. A new whiskey drinker might think Glenfiddich goes down a little rough, but MacLean has been known to call Glenfiddich “sort of girly.”
Respected, envied and sought-after top whiskey critic...if that’s not living, then I don’t know what is...
If you’ve ever stepped foot into a Las Vegas casino, let alone had the opportunity to meet some of the security personnel, you know that a Las Vegas casino is an “expert” when it comes to security.
The average start-up cost for casino security is $56.5 million dollars. Las Vegas casino security is at such a level of expertise that the Department of Homeland Security is currently looking to Las Vegas casinos to help them in keeping America safe through training DHS officers on security.
We all know that security is pretty tight at a Las Vegas casino, but there are some interesting things that I just learned.
If a suspicious character is picked up in the lobby or gaming area of one casino in Las Vegas, his image and profile is sent to virtually every other casino in town to alert security personnel.
In many casinos, there are little cameras in the table, right underneath the dealer, watching their every move.
Bell captains are checking all luggage that is checked at the casino to ensure that the guest who left the bags is staying in the hotel and remains registered at the hotel.
When you use your key card to enter your room, IT and camera equipment is logging when you entered your room and recording video of the hallway to create a record of who is coming in and out of your room when a key card is used.
Cameras in the hallways are fitted with special software that send an alert to security staff if any large objects are brought in or moved out.
There are video cameras rolling and recording license plates at the valet and in driveways, recording numbers into a database.
Try not to be too paranoid next time your at a Las Vegas casino, but believe me, they are watching your every move...
As you may recall, a few years back, Californians voted to allow California’s Native American tribes to use gambling in order to pull their people out of poverty.
I will be the first to admit that usually gambling and the theory behind it generating revenue sounds wonderful at first, but then later leads to an array of negative social impacts.
I think, however, that for the most part, legalized gambling on California’s reservations has had a positive impact. Today, however, I’m not bringing up legalized gambling for Native Americans because of the moral issues. The side-effect of legalized gambling in California that I am talking about is the side-effect of politician after politician then using legalized gambling as a solve-all for the entire society’s economic problems.
We voted to give gambling to the Native American tribes because they were impoverished. We obviously felt bad for this entire sub-group of Americans because other than the land we took from the Spanish, bought from the French or the Russians (of course, after those folks took it from the Native Americans), our government directly took all of the land that makes up the U.S. from this group of people’s ancestors.
I, myself, am descended from a line of the Blackfoot people who had their land taken away. So, I think Californians did a good thing by giving the Native American tribes a way out of poverty.
For the most part, this has worked and has had a positive impact.
Now that it has worked, though, the California politicians, like LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, want their share of the money. Is Lee Baca and his cohorts blaming Gray Davis for the financial state of California’s Sheriff Departments? No, of course not, they are blaming it on the successful Native American gambling tribes because they are not paying taxes.
These people do not pay taxes because they are considered to be a sovereign nation within the borders of the U.S. This is due to the treaties that the U.S. Government made with their forefathers.
Not like it has never been done before, but Lee Baca wants us to tear up that treaty and get these Native American tribes paying 25% of their gambling revenue to the State of California.
You may soon see folks outside your grocery store with petitions trying to get this on the ballot. You may even receive a petition in the mail like I did with a letter from Lee Baca explaining how these Native Americans and their lack of paying taxes are going to contribute to the death of California’s Sheriff Deputies and result in tax increases for all hard-working Californians.
No where in this letter does Baca address the financial debacle of Davis and his liberal cohorts, but he is sure ready to blame the state’s money problems on people who are not required by law to pay taxes, and a 25% tax at that.
Now, are you ready for an even better one? This petition that Lee Baca is supporting and asking you to sign is going to also increase state revenue by adding 30,000 slot machines to the already legal card clubs and race tracks in California.
If this one passes, how far are we from completely legalizing gambling in the state of California? Well, we would sure be a hell of a lot closer than we were five years ago.
Baca claims to be worried about the number of Deputies that he is going to have to cut from patrols, but how many more criminals are we inviting to our state by further legalizing gambling?
Please do all of California a favor and do not sign this petition. It is going to bring another 30,000 slot machines to California and not to reservation casinos, but to neighborhoods where people live and are raising their children.
Lee Baca and his cohorts say that the Native American tribes owe Californians because we have “given them” a monopoly on gambling. Hey, not too bad...they got gambling and we got to destroy their entire civilization because it fit our national interest best and got to steal an entire nation’s worth of land from their great-grandparents so the government could turn around and sell it to us at $50,000 an acre.
Our government destroyed their way of life, so the least they can do is pay us 25% of their gambling earnings, right?
