Friday Hound Blogging

Last week we paid Iowa a compliment by pointing out that when it came to the heartless exploitation of innocent living creatures for (no) profit, they were indeed smarter than Florida. This was what our old daddy used to call a left handed compliment because being smarter than Florida is not much more difficult than falling down, but the point is the far seeing legislators in Iowa at least had the neuronal capability to understand that the dead industry of greyhound racing was dead and acted appropriately, unlike the myopic gaggle of special needs Neanderthals who inhabit the Legislature in Florida (when they don't get lost on the way to work) and whose philosophy when it comes to greyhound racing we have pictorially represented below:

But back to Iowa.

So, all the interested parties got together, agreed to dump a boatload of money on the overlords to get them to  go away, to which the overlords replied thank you very much, but instead of closing both tracks, please allow us to take a fair amount of this money down to Dubuque, pile it up in the center of the track there and set it on fire. Well, everybody was fine with that because in Iowa there is no law against being weapons grade stupid, so the deal was done.

Now it seems some of the overlords are having buyer's remorse, or perhaps, given how subsidized the overlords have been, a better term might be moocher's remorse.

Some Iowa greyhound owners are skeptical about a measure approved by the Legislature that would make millions of dollars available to the industry in return for closing one dog-racing track and changing ownership of another.

The problem seems to be with the distribution of whatever is left over after the smoke clears in Dubuque. "Look, these guys have spent their whole lives in an industry that runs on exploitation, greed and callous disregard," said Melissa Schmidt, a kennel owner from Bellevue."You really think they're suddenly going to become paragons of virtue when it come to giving a ton of money away?"

John Filipelli, a greyhound kennel owner from Council Bluffs, has similar concerns. "I've spent my whole career cutting corners, dodging regulations and ignoring laws. And I'm one of the good guys. Now you want me to trust these Bozo's with millions of dollars? What, are you from Florida or something?"

The measure gives the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission authority for establishing a payment process.

"We would get that input and handle it like we would any other time we adopt a rule, which is obviously to send it out to all stakeholders and get input from all parties, have all of those discussions at public commission meetings prior to passing any rules,"  Brian Ohorilko, the commission's administrator, said. "By the time that's all done though, I figure most of the money will have gone down the rat hole in Dubuque and the rest...well...let's just say the Board members of the Iowa Greyhound Association have...umm...expenses and leave it at that."

Hmmm. Overlords turning on overlords over money. Whodathunkit, huh Dew?

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