SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, June 25, 2009--As one looks around the racing industry and the country as a whole, the game’s troubles are very much representative of current big picture realities. So far, this millennium hasn‘t been the wondrous new age it was purported to be.

So it’s not surprising, then, that what’s happening presently in regions that always have been considered America’s leading circuits, those of California, New York and Kentucky, are also reflective of larger issues. There’s no other way to say it: the racing industry in these states are in a shambles.

No need to rehash what everyone seems to know as to the root causes: A general lack of cohesiveness, uniformity, proactive vision and fat cat entitlement has stunted whatever growth was possible when the game reached its zenith of popularity in the 1970s.

Just as racing’s growth stopped, other professional sports leagues were becoming more aggressive, and niche sports started to gain in popularity. Then came the advent of convenience market wagering, the resultant growth of various forms of off-track betting.

Simulcasting arrived on the scene and almost immediately handle grew significantly across the board. Shortly thereafter, in-home wagering fostered more growth--inevitable cannibalization notwithstanding--aided by the burgeoning popularity of the Internet, the ideal tool for taking advantage of racing’s statistical orientation.

With states becoming more dependent on alternative forms of revenue raising, casinos became the new gambling reality. Native American gaming, with its huge tax advantages; a paradigm shift that turned the Sin City of Las Vegas into Disneyland for adults; Lottery expansion, and the exponential growth of cable television that helped kill the notion of night racing as choice entertainment, have all conspired to compel an industry to look at itself from the outside in.

Should it have embraced off-track betting instead of hoping it would fail? Should it have put itself on television to a greater degree? Should it have educated the populace, changed the betting paradigm, lowered the cost of wagering and gotten out in front of the drug explosion? Everyone knows the answers now.

But the enemy at the door is not coming from within this time, from its own ineffectual leadership, complacency and greed, standards which never seem to go out of style. Instead of being audacious, the notion of hope for the industry now had become pusillanimous in the extreme.

The consequences are that racing has come under attack from without. During the 1990s, ideology subtly began to replace reason in this country, becoming so much a part of the sociological fabric that political chickens had no choice but to come home to roost.

Resultantly, America is currently getting the dysfunctional government it deserves. If unchecked, don’t be surprised if America’s elected representatives destroy the entire racetrack community and its way of life.

In California, Native Americans are using their competitive advantage to influence state government, using their pocketed tax dollars to buy favorable legislation. But don’t blame them; they didn’t invent the system. Northern California is all but lost now. Santa Anita’s storied past, from Seabiscuit to Shoemaker, is in danger of becoming ancient history unless the track is put on sound economic footing again, if it’s not already too late.

In New York, where onerous tax rates have chased companies across its borders for decades, state government is a sad joke that has allowed eight-year-old enabling VLT legislation to lay dormant while all but a handful of horsemen fail to make a living commensurate with a 365/24/7 work schedule because political values always trump the best interests of the people.

In Kentucky, the party of “no,” bereft of ideas, apparently prefers to allow it’s signature industry to the world to fade away rather than give its citizens what they want. Why? Because it’s what the other political party wants, and because they can. What could be more unconscionable than that? What could be more decadent than feigning morality, pandering to an extremist wing of its constituency?

What truly is outrageous is that the leader of the opposition is himself a person who goes gaming, taking his business to casinos in nearby states rather than throw his support behind his state’s largest industry; throwing it a lifeline that would cost nothing.

What Senate leader David Williams’ party proposes as an alternative to VLTs, ironic given the party’s brand identity, is legislation that would divert funds to purses via taxes: one on the state lottery, one on charitable gaming, and a third on out-of-state simulcasts of Kentucky races.

Apparently taxing church sponsored bingo games and such, and having horseplayers from other states make up for Kentucky’s shortfall were preferable alternatives; collecting pennies instead of dollars before seeing simulcast revenue eventually dry up when horseplayers figure out that the winners aren’t paying as much as they used to.

The thoughts of one independent thinker, David Trimble, an attorney from Georgetown, Ky., in his weekly News-Graphic column:

“The Kentucky State Senate under the leadership of Senate President David Williams seems to believe its role in Kentucky government is simply to say "No." Rather than coming up with viable and sensible alternatives, the Republican Senate serves as a roadblock to anything and everything proposed by the Democrats, good or bad, while exercising no realistic leadership toward fixing Kentucky's problems.

“Yet, just as in every wet-dry election, the opposition political action groups set up the false bogeyman of "family" concerns, which far too many of the populace buy into without ever questioning the facts. Shouldn't having adequate school buildings, education programs, and social services be "family" concerns, rather than inchoate fears that too many studies have proven false?”

Perhaps even more unacceptable was State Senator Damon Thayer (R-Scott County), a horse industry consultant and former Breeders’ Cup and Turfway Park executive, standing mute on the VLT issue, suggesting that the Senate’s tax measure was the better alternative. Apparently, political ambition knows no bounds, Thayer now a poster child for the government we deserve.