Baltimore Tries to Use Eminent Domain to Condemn the Preakness Stakes Horse Race

O'Malley had an uncanny way of destroying everything he touched. If these were actual public servants, they would do the no-brainer of moving the event to Laurel. There's no way that both tracks will survive.

Does anyone have the paywall for the included WSJ op-ed?

source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-baltimore-make-off-with-th...

Back in the good old days, when men were men and men were free, gambling was legal in many parts of the state of Maryland.

It was unregulated. Free Market(tm) cultists would have loved it. Local municipalities were free to license gambling establishments as they chose with little oversight from the state. Maryland was surrounded by states in which gambling was illegal.

The Free Market(tm) saw such innovations as people building barges in the water on the Maryland side of the state border and then connecting them to land via docks and bridges to Virginia.

It was a golden age of Free Market(tm) Capitalism, where men were men and men were free, ahhh... the good old days!

In the 1960s, Las Vegas, Nevada and four counties in Southern Maryland were the only places in the entire United States of America where slot machines were legally allowed to pay out winnings in cash. Slot machines blanketed the entire southern half of the state and were found in every single business, to include doctor's offices and gas stations.

Unregulated, Free Market(tm) gambling brought with it a wave of crime and destruction that makes the troubled neighborhoods of today's Baltimore look like peaceful oases of quiet and safety and the gambling-fueled violence shocked the residents of Maryland so much that (until very recently) it was outlawed in the state, with few exceptions.

One of the few exceptions was horse racing.

As a condition of being allowed to continue operating, horse racing and betting on horse races was strictly regulated.

One of the regulations is that the races can only operate at facilities designated by the state, at times designated by the state.

The law that covers the use of eminent domain to retain the Preakness is not new. MD Bus Reg Code § 11-520 has existed for decades. It was the law when the current owners of the Preakness bought the rights, and obeying it is a requirement of their license.

The Free Market(tm) is incapable of supporting horse racing in Maryland, due to its reliance on public subsidies to continue existing.

The subsidies exist because tax revenue from gambling pays for the subsidies. The 50 or so gambling events per year pay for the facilities used year-round by other non-gambling equestrian activities.

The Free Market(tm) cannot be allowed to operate unfettered because absent strict regulations, piles of bodies tend to wash up in the Chesapeake Bay, their throats slit by organized crime gangsters fighting over their cut of the gambling revenues.

Ahh, the good old days! When men were men, men were free, men were free to murder their rivals to control the flow of gambling revenue, the Markets were Free and capital ism'ed.