Full disclosure: I was part of the Yes on 75 campaign team. I speak only for myself.

Except for any tax revenue, and maybe some support and contracted jobs that may have been created by an Oregon casino, a casino just across the river will be just as detrimental to Oregon as one built here. Just as the one here in Oregon, the Washington casino will be funded by out-of-state interests which will extract wealth from our region and send it out of state. It is not in Oregon's interests to have an out-of-state funded casino near the Portland-Vancouver metro area.

Our rural casinos are good for Oregon because they move money from the metro area to under-funded and depressed rural areas. This movement of money facilitates the circulation of money inside the state, builds jobs in areas where there otherwise would be none, and increases tax revenues - all results we should encourage. Neither the Wood Village nor the Washington casinos achieve the goal of attracting money to the region and having that money circulate in region before it leave. The net economic impact on the region is to make us poorer.

Because of the detremental impact on Oregon, we should take the lead on, or at least strongly support legal challenges to the Washington casino.

NIMBYISM didn't quite work then did it?

With luck, the legal process will delay things just long enough for the proponents of the Wood Village casino to regroup, redesign their proposal, and resubmit it to Oregon voters in 2012.

By 2012, the backers of the casino may be in jail.

Kari - The Casino deal is far from guaranteed in Washington State.

With luck, the proponents of the Wood Village Casino will see the 68-32 defeat for what it is: An outright rejection of a self-serving plan to carve out a special niche in the Oregon Constitution for a couple of private investors who want to turn Wood Village into their own private ATM machine.

This sounds like the "everyone else is doing it" argument. Find a casino-centered economy that is thriving.

"As for Wood Village: Sure, you can call it a "private ATM machine", but that's the goal of any business - to produce revenue for its owners." Haha. But when a business is set up to sell nothing for something in order to do so, it's a different enterprise compared to one that's set up to produce something to sell.

There may be reasons to have a casino around, but claiming that it will be an "economic driver" ranks with trickle-down economics as a surprisingly persistent argument, given the lack of evidence to support it.

What is the status of the casino in Cascade Locks that would be beneficial to an impoverished Native American community as well as a high unemployment area and be just as close as La Center? Oh and it would pay Oregon taxes.

My position hasn't changed. If we're going to have a casino in the Portland area, make it state-owned and operated, with 100% of gambling proceeds going to a public purpose, on top of any taxes drawn from the business in which the casino is sited. Personally, I'd prefer 90% of the casino revenue were put into a permanent endowment for state universities, with maybe 10% set aside to deal with casino-related problems like gambling addiction.

And put the casino someplace useful. Maybe in a hotel next to the Oregon Convention Center. Let the state run the casino and a private investor build the long-sought convention center headquarters hotel above it. After all, the only hotel in the city with a casino in it should be able to command a premium price for rooms.

But no, we don't carve out a special exception in the state constitution to give just ONE private operator a gambling monopoly. That doesn't change, no matter what happens in Clark County.

As for the owners of the old greyhound track, they can still built a destination resort with a hotel, nightclub, restaurants, 3D movie theater, concert hall, convention facilities, bowling center, water park, all of it ... but without a casino. Just like every other privately-owned entertainment destination in this state has done for decades.

Washington will make it happen and Oregonians will drive there to work and play. The dollars will go to Olympia instead of Salem. But many folks will congratulate themselves for stopping a bad, bad gambling hall. Shades of professor Harold Hill.

The legal challenge is much stronger than you would think.

Carcieri indicates that to take land into trust, the tribe in question had to be "recognized" in 1934. Recognition in 2000 doesn't quite cut it.

The nonsensical verbal gymnastics Interior used to justify this was pure claptrap. It was done this way to set up the test case.

There are going to be several legal challenges on the Carcieri front, the moronic and baseless restored lands decision by the BIA, and the environmental impact study that was an out and out joke.

And, as far as that goes, here in Washington, we don't have a state income tax. So, left up to the governor, the tribe won't have to pay one dime to the state in taxes, except what they collect from non-tribal members after they open their big box stores in addition to the casino.

Sub-minimum wage pay (Washington's minimum wage is $8.67; the tribe will only have to pay federal minimum wage at $7.25 or $7.50) no labor and industries, no unemployment, no business and occupation tax, no property tax, massive taxpayer-paid infrastructure development, complete violation of Washington's Growth Management Act, to name just a few of the problems confronting us... not to mention the sucking sound of tens of millions vacuumed out of the local economy, destroying La Center's tax base and the myriad of other small businesses who depend on disposable income that they will now see disappear to the Mohegan in Connecticut and the Paskenta in California.

This is one of the most fascinating threads I've read on BlueOregon in a long time.

It is basically nonideological. Instead, it's an example of the kind of debates we too often have today, where one side (in this case Kari) tries to argue the practical realities and lots of other people (you know who you are) want to argue for alternatives that either don't exist or are unlikely in the extreme.

Which is not intended to diminish some of the legitimate legal and political considerations being raised, but I still find the overall debate typical of other issues where the practical is measured against the theoretical and, being found wanting, loses.

This all reminds me of the "what would your mommy say" concept. "If the neighbor's kid is gonna jump off the roof, should you do it too?"

How about we legalize prostitution and put a bordello in Troutdale. There would undoubtedly be customers and a good revenue stream for the state. (As long as it's privately owned of course and doesn't generate the addition of a single vehicle to traffic in the Gorge).

Here's the thing: I'll bet most Clark County residents will approve of this. Maybe not those in the La Center/north county area, but most down in the Vancouver/Camas suburbs will. Over the years, they have been made the butt of everything in the metro area. The news only goes north to report on crime there, they are the butt of many jokes in the Portland area and many Portlanders think that most of the residents there are tax dodgers when they waste fuel to cross state lines and buy things tax free. I have a friend who lives in the Orchards area and drives to Portland all the time to buy things. He rarely seems to shop the many business around his own house.

For the first time in a long while, Clark County seems to have the upper hand over the rest of the metro area and most of them could care less on how they piss off Oregonians. The way I think of it is that I almost feel we had this coming.