Rov_Scam
6hr ago
In the Pittsburgh area there are plenty of all-white "ethnic" clubs that refuse to admit blacks or even serve them as guests at their clubhouses. If you see something like "French Club", German Club", "Croatian Club", or anything similar is probably whites-only, especially if it isn't affiliated with a national organization. There's one near my that I know members of an I've been offered membership on a couple of occasions but declined. I have been in the bar before to drink, but I'm reluctant to go if invited. As @Lewis2 points out, social censure more than any illegality keeps their membership down, though @Bleep is incorrect in at least this instance as membership isn't a bunch of racist weirdos. It definitely skews older, but membership of all social clubs skews older. It is, in fact, fairly difficult to become a member, as they only admit new members once a year, and you need a member to sponsor you, and they are allegedly selective in that members who pay dues but aren't really active don't have as much pull as people who drink at the bar regularly.
The issue comes in that they don't tell you up front that blacks aren't permitted. This wouldn't be an issue if the prohibition was limited to membership and denial of blacks would be understandable in the context of it being hard to get in anyway. The problem arises when a member brings a guest who is black. They will immediately be refused service and told to leave. I know two people who have made the mistake of bringing a black guest only for both of them to be humiliated and dumbfounded. My uncle was briefly a member and quit when he found out about the policy. He's liberal, but I know MAGA people who refuse to drink there as well for that reason. The old timers who drink there aren't even particularly conservative. One friend of mine excuses it by saying that it's pretty common for private clubs to be whites-only and leaves it at that, and he's pretty down the middle politically.
Rov_Scam
7hr ago
A few years back, the Wall Street Journal did an oft-quoted analysis that found that in a 1-hour football game (that takes up 3 hours of broadcast time on average), there was only 11 minutes of action. People who don't like football took this as proof that the game was stupid, but 11 minutes is actually the perfect amount of time, and it explains why football is so popular. It's counterintuitive, but it's true. Sure, hockey has continual action, but unless you're at the game, this actually works to its detriment. Too much excitement is no excitement. A football game is broken up into chunks whose meaning is clearly evident to anyone with a working understanding of the game, and there's plenty of time in between to both contemplate what we've just seen and anticipate what is going to happen next. Commentators have more room to show replays and offer in-depth analysis. If you're watching with friends you can have a conversation, pause during the play, then continue your conversation. Constant action is like watching a Western film that's nothing but shootouts. Yes, the shootout might be the most exciting part of a normal western, but it has an ebb and flow that makes the shootout meaningful. I love hockey, don't get me wrong, but I understand why it's not as popular as football. If you watch a football game at a bar, you'll get a dozen opinions on what Team A just did and what they should do on the next play. Most of these people don't know what they're talking about, but there's enough meat on the bone for them to at least have an opinion. In hockey, strategy is completely lost on the casual viewer. There isn't enough time in between plays for the announcers to explain it, and the action is so fast that unless you've been involved in the sport for years you won't be able to spot it. the best you get is people yelling for them to shoot more on the power play.
Rov_Scam
7hr ago
Let's break down Amendment 3. The average Florida home value is about $375,000, and the current exemption amount is $50,000. It's my understanding that the tax rate is approximately $750 for each $50,000 in value, so as it stands the average taxpayer would pay $4,875 per year on the average home. If the bill passes, full implementation would reduce this amount to $1,875. A 61% decrease in property taxes for the average homeowner does not seem fiscally responsible, especially since the bill also caps annual increases on non-homestead property at 5%, down from 10%. I honestly don't see how local governments can handle that kind of decrease, and there's no mechanism in place to replace the funding.
There is also the problem of landlords passing the tax on the current renters.
Landlords can't claim a homestead exemption, so this wouldn't affect renters at all.
Rov_Scam
8hr ago
As someone who owns one of these mailboxes, it's pretty clear to me that the real group made a typo and the fakers deliberately used a fake address. Not that the mailer includes a suite number but no box number. The plaza that the UPS store is in labels the units by letter, not suite number. So the address looks close to a real address but is actually unreturnable, since even if the post office was able to figure out the street address they wouldn't know what business to deliver it to. They have good reason as well; if some of the mail is undeliverable, they don't want the organization they're spoofing to get tipped off by a bunch of returns.
Rov_Scam
9hr ago
Football talent isn't declining; internet talk is a bunch of guys in high school and college who haven't been around long enough to realize that the league goes through ups and downs and that some players are mercurial. To the extent that there is a decline, the short answer for the reason for it is that since 2018 teams have been swinging for the next Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson, and draft capital ends up going to guys like Trey Lance and Anthony Richardson. To be fair, there isn't much of a choice, as few colleges run pro-style offenses anymore, so rookie QBs have to be taught basic skills like taking a snap from under center. Fun fact: Steve Young never took a snap out of shotgun once in his entire career. We're also coming out of an era where it was expected that the top ten QBs in the league would all throw for 4,000 yards. This was an anomaly brought on by rule changes and the aforementioned changes in college football. Now that defenses have adapted to it, you aren't going to see it as much.
Anyway, just for fun a took a look at the starters this year and compared them to starters from 2007. I picked the year arbitrarily, but it was long enough ago that nobody old enough to start would have been prohibited from playing football as a child due to fear of long-term cognitive impacts.
The Top Tier Mahomes and Brady are equivalent as they're both the undisputed alpha's of the league at this point in their careers. They may not have the most impressive stats, but they're up there, and they have multiple championships to back it up. Behind them you have Peyton Manning and Josh Allen, who everyone agrees are the most talented if not the most accomplished. This year the top tier also includes Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Brock Purdy and Jared Goff. In 2007 it also included Ben Roethlisberger, Phillip Rivers, and Drew Brees. There are more QBs today who can reasonably be described as "top tier" than there were in 2007.
The Second Tier Good QBs, but nobody would argue that any of these guys are better than any of the guys in the first list. For example, one might argue the relative merits of Burrow over Jackson, but nobody would take Trevor Lawrence over either of them. Also in this category are Sam Darnold and Jordan Love. The 2007 version includes Donovan McNabb, Eli Manning, David Garrard, Matt Hasselbeck, and Carson Palmer.
Cowboys QBs The parallels between Tony Romo and Dac Prescott are too big to ignore. Both are very good quarterbacks statistically. Both are underrated by Cowboys fans due to lack of team success, which is almost entirely due to Jerry Jones.
They Come with Baggage Players who showed promise in the past but whose talent is now beginning to be questioned. This is where Justin Herbert, Baker Mayfield, C.J. Stroud, and Jalen Hurts land. The 2007 equivalents were Jeff Garcia, Kyle Boller, Chad Pennington, and Marc Bulger. Advantage 2026 because that comparison seems cruel now that I look at it, but it could easily go that way for either of these guys.
The Young Guns They've showed promise but it's too early to tell how their careers will go. This year it's Drake Maye, Bo Nix, Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams, and Jaxson Dart. The 2007 equivalents were Alex Smith, Jay Cutler, Derek Anderson, and Matt Schaub. I'm going to tentatively give the advantage to this year, since none of the guys on the 2007 list ever actually made the playoffs at that point, and Smith is the only one whose career can't be called a disappointment.
The Young Busts Cam Ward is the only bad young player with a regular starting job. In 2007 we had Trent Edwards, J.P. Losman, Brodie Croyle, and Jason Campbell.
They Still Have It Matthew Stafford is this generation's Brett Favre. Both have played consistently well throughout their careers, and aren't slowing down despite being in their late 30s.
They Have It (Again) Kirk Cousins was a good but not great starter who got stuck in a crappy situation in Atlanta and is having a good season on the Raiders even though he has no business doing so. Kerry Collins was a good but not great starter who got stuck in a bad situation in Oakland and had a good season with the Titans even though he had no business doing so.
Whatever the Hell This Is Jameis Winston was a highly touted prospect who got dumped from his original team in favor of an aging veteran (Tom Brady) for throwing too many picks, became a backup, and was later forced to start due to injury. Daunte Culpepper was a highly touted prospect who got dumped from his original team and was replaced with an aging veteran (Brad Johnson) for throwing too many picks, became a backup, and was eventually forced to start due to injury. I give Jameis the edge since the Giants might win the division, even if it's by default.
Let's See What We Have Tyler Shough and Tavaris Jackson were both untouted second-rounders who were made starters at the beginning of the season after their teams decided that they wouldn't be resigning aging vets, Derek Carr and Brad Johnson respectively. Neither showed much promise, and I doubt Shough's fate will be any different than Spencer Rattler's.
We Don't Know What We Have Bryce Young looked like a bust several years into his career and still might be. Rex Grossman took the Bears to a Super Bowl but was constantly injured. Neither of these guys is reliable going forward.
The Journeyman Backups There is little difference between Jacoby Brissett and Josh McCown.
The Aging Vets 2007 had a surplus of aging veterans who ended up starting and don't fit into any of my other categories. These included Trent Green, Jon Kitna, Damon Huard, Brian Griese, and Trent Dilfer.
He's Still in the League? Aaron Rodgers and Kurt Warner are both Hall-of-Famers who, after getting dumped by their teams, went to New York under terrible circumstances and got better after leaving the Big Apple. Advantage to Rodgers since Warner didn't do shit in Arizona until his fourth year there.
Only Starting Due to Injury The following don't count for this year: Cooper Rush and Jalon Daniels. In 2007, Cleo Lemon and Joey Harrington similarly didn't count.
Special Cases DeShaun Watson is in a class of his own, unprecedented in league history, made even more unprecedented by the unexpectedly good season he's had so far. Malik Willis was a 3rd round project who Miami signed as a starter after he had a few good weeks as a backup in Green Bay. Daniel Jones was a bust, then not, then went back to being a bust, then had a good start last year but the Colts missed the playoffs anyway. Geno Smith was a bust who had a mid-career renaissance before going back to being bad. Kyler Murray was a decent QB who didn't live up to the hype but his doing well in Minnesota. Nothing weird like this happened in 2007.
The Verdict QB play these days is better than it was 20 seasons ago, or at least isn't noticeably worse. There are 6 QBs in the top tier now compared with 5 in 2007. The second tier has 3 this year compared to 5 then, but this doesn't account for the comeback stories of Murray and Watson. All the other categories are either washes or give 2026 a slight advantage. Case Keenum starting for an injured Caleb Williams doesn't say anything, especially when he was promptly replaced by an undrafted free agent who played in Division 2 in college. The asterisk guys in particular are what gives it away. Of Bulger, Garcia, Boller, and Pennington, Garcia was the only guy who had any real hype, and he was never as good as Herbert was early in his career. Add in that Hurts won a Super Bowl and it's no contest. Boller was only ever good in the context of the low standards of Ravens starters, Bulger had one decent year and was then just sort of there, and Pennington got a little bit of hype for blowing out Peyton Manning in the playoffs but had accuracy and injury problems. If picking a team it would be hard for me to take any of the 2007 guys over any of the 2026 guys, though that may just be recency bias. Anyway, it's pretty clear to me that, at least based on this historic year, there's no reason to believe that QB play has declined substantially. I'm not seeing a few good QBs surrounded by a revolving door of dogs. If anything, teams in those days seemed to give aging veterans longer leashes.
You bring up the Colts signing Phillip Rivers off the couch last year, despite being 43 and out of the league for several years. Well, what were their other options? They lost their top 2 QBs to injury and were down to a rookie sixth-rounder who had played terribly in relief of Jones. The Colts were still very much in the playoff race at this point, but it was past the trade deadline. Rivers was old, but he was a borderline Hall-of-Famer and had played for the team before. And it didn't work; he lost all three games he started. Any available quarterback of normal age would have been one not good enough to play third string on another team. But there are occasionally old guys out there who will still play if they can start but aren't going through training camp and road games and what have you so they can sit on the bench all season. Rivers was one of those guys. Compare this to 2007, when the Panthers signed 43-year-old Vinny Testaverde off the couch after Jake Delhomme's injury, despite having David Carr and Matt Moore on the roster, both of whom were in their 20s and had prior NFL experience. It wasn't past the trade deadline, and Testaverde wasn't anywhere near the player Rivers was.
Rov_Scam
16hr ago
I grew up in a semi-rural area 3 miles from the closest small town (about 500 people) and it took exactly 6 minutes to get there. Hell, most people in the suburbs commute more than 5 miles in traffic, and it isn't a big deal.
Rov_Scam
18hr ago
If you think online poker rakes are astronomical you should try playing at a casino.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
By contrast, in Britain or America elite housing and business districts in the urban core routinely abut absolute shitholes full of the worst scum these societies have to offer. Yes there are suburbs far away from the chaos, but those exist in every country and true bourgeois professionals consider them crass anyway.
I'm not sure what golden age you think American cities had that compares favorably to today. If you're following my Pittsburgh series, one of the themes is that there are no golden ages. For all the problems American cities have these days, they don't compare to the problems they had in the first half of the 20th century, which you probably don't even think about because they have largely been solved. Have you ever smelled burning coal before? I have, and while it isn't entirely unpleasant when one house in a rural area is burning it, it's quite another when, say, everybody in Pittsburgh, or New York, or London is burning it all winter, not to mention railroad and industrial air pollution. Garbage collection wasn't the most efficient, and it was common for people to dump rubbish in alleys or over hillsides. Large portions of cities weren't paved until well into the 20th century, and the roads turned to mud whenever it rained, and dust when it didn't. It wasn't until midcentury that most cities had modern sewage treatment facilities and sewers, which were largely open at the beginning of the century, discharged into the nearest watercourse. Even into the 1950s, poorer sections of cities didn't have full plumbing facilities in every household. In some houses the only running water was in the basement. At the beginning of the century, there was often a shared spigot in a common yard area, that was a permanent mud pit.
Most Northeastern and Midwestern cities peaked in population in 1950. This wasn't so much "denisty" as modern armchair urbanists like to see it as it was overcrowding. Due to the effects of the Depression and War, there hadn't been any large-scale construction since the 1920s. For the generation who fought in the War, staying in the city meant living with your parents, or in a small, worn-out apartment. These problems had been evident in cities across the globe for decades, but progressive reforms ran head-on into a political class that wouldn't sacrifice economic growth. Le Corbusier's dream of bulldozing Paris and replacing it with The Radiant City wasn't just a personal affectation but a reflection of enlightened reform thinking of the time. This is why my paternal grandparents moved to the suburbs in 1940, and on my mother's side 1955. To that generation, there was nothing cool or nostalgic about urban life. There was no reason to be concerned about walkable cities when everyone had a car, and for corporations, there was no reason to be downtown if your entire office staff lived in the suburbs.
The result was that at at time when America was experiencing an unprecedented level of prosperity, major cities were experiencing an urban crisis that saw middle class residents decamping for the suburbs at an alarming rate, employers threatening to do the same, and tax revenues heading into a death spiral. Even New York, one of the few cities to gain population during the postwar period, suffered declining property values as new residents were poorer than those displaced. The urban renewal projects that are much-maligned today did not happen because city leaders collectively went insane, or because they all hated minorities (the deleterious effects to minority populations weren't apparent until well into the renewal era); they happened because governments at all levels were desperate to stanch the bleeding, and the only way they saw out of the crisis was to demolish everything that made the cities unattractive and outdated and replace them with what was attractive and modern.
We know now, of course, that these efforts were doomed to failure. Lots of projects were never completed after preliminary results looked grim, but even fully-realized projects never had the effects that were expected. The ensuing decades saw increasing crime and disinvestment, where abandoning properties in what should have been prime real estate was more cost-effective than rehabilitating them. New York almost went bankrupt in the 1970s, and most other cities outside the Sun Belt weren't doing much better. The crack epidemic and the rise of gang violence took things to unprecedented levels, and the crime wave that began in the 1960s has only subsided relatively recently.
The places that abut downtowns you are so appalled by have always existed, and it's only recently that these districts aren't like that. When everyone had to walk to work, downtown areas were the only desirable places to live, despite the disadvantages inherent to living in areas that were often industrial in nature. If you owned a foundry or a textile mill you preferred to live next to it, and so did your employees. Just outside of this downtown core was an area occupied by those who could not afford to live downtown. Since cities weren't as economically segregated in those days, this meant the poorest of the poor, usually blacks and immigrants, who were crammed into shoddily built tenements and in some cases lived in what were essentially shantytowns. When the railroad and later streetcars made commuting possible, the middle classes leapfrogged these slum areas and moved to areas further out, while the wealthy had what were effectively country estates. As better and better transportation became available, people moved even farther away, and what were once fashionable suburbs became occupied by those of decreasing means, but the areas closest in were never fashionable and became increasingly desperate as time went on.
In some cities, these were the target of renewal efforts, as with Pittsburgh's Lower Hill District, or Mill Creek Valley in St. Louis. In some cases the neighborhoods continued to deteriorate but were later revived, as in Cincinatti's Over-the-Rhine, Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square, and Boston's North End. And in some cases they simply never gentrified, like in the Tenderloin and Skid Row. You can complain about these areas now, but things were unbelievably worse 50 years ago. So please answer this question for me: When exactly do you think things were so great in American cities?
Rov_Scam
3d ago
The longer this war goes on, the more screwed Ukraine is demographically.
France in WWI had a population roughly equivalent to Ukraine in 2022 and suffered 1.3 million military deaths throughout the war compared to 200,000 Ukrainians in a similar amount of time. You can argue that the Ukrainian numbers are underestimates, that the overall demographic picture is different, etc., but that's not going to be anywhere near enough to account for a 6.5x difference. And France was not demographically screwed in the long-term; in fact, they managed to lose a Ukraine war's worth of military deaths a generation later and still turned out no more worse for wear.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Both parties have their moments, but this is an issue where the Democrats aren't going to be as nakedly exploitative as the Republicans.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Just because something hurts the other side's supporters more doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt your own supporters, and just because Republicans have lost all pretense that they aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage doesn't mean Democrats are willing to do the same.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
The SAVE Act's provisions would have hit Republican voters harder than Democrats in pursuit of a solution to a nearly non-existent problem and the Republican congressmen knew that, which is why it didn't pass.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
He didn't need to do anything. The only people who actually believe he was in a mental hospital are either incredibly stupid or so far up Trump's ass that they aren't voting for Talarico anyway, probably both.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
No, what I'm saying is that I can come up with equally ridiculous explanations for his absence as anyone else that are supported by a similar amount of actual evidence, i.e. none.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
It's actually going to get worse because about a month from now, for the first time since 2015, Trump's time in the spotlight will begin to wane. Come spring, when presidential hopefuls start throwing their hats in the ring, that's where all the media focus will be. By 2000, 2008, and 2016 respectively, everyone pretty much forgot that Clinton, Bush, and Obama were still president, and everything they did was framed in terms of how the candidates would respond. Trump is not cut out to be in this position, and he'll do everything he can to demonstrate that he is still relevant.
I like my theory better: He was burned out from campaigning and sick of running around the state to shake hands at Lions Club meetings and Chamber of Commerce events that nobody pays attention to who didn't attend and realized that a vacation would not only be refreshing but the Republican Party was full of enough morons that someone would fabricate a ridiculous conspiracy theory regarding his health and/or whereabouts that would get him much more media coverage than a speech in front of the West Lubbock Gardening Society. And that this all would happen despite the fact that he announced in advance that he was sick, and that even after whatever conspiracy was debunked there would still be a parade of Paxton supporters insisting that something suspicious was afoot despite lacking any evidence whatsoever. Do nothing, get tons of media coverage for it, and make your opponent's supporters look like idiots in the process. Seems like a win-win-win.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Poker and horse racing are different than most casino games since they make their money from the rake and not from people losing. Since poker has a positive expectation if you're good enough, it will attract professionals who will bet larger amounts of money than the typical schlub looking to gamble. There are definitely high rollers who will drop large amounts on craps and whatnot, but unless you're operating a high-end casino you can't count on them the way Vegas seems to be doing these days. Poker sites keeping rakes low is just basic cost competition.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
Ukraine is fighting an existential, defensive war. The country is being actively invaded and occupied. He gets more leeway than someone fighting an unpopular war halfway around the globe, and he refrained from attacking Russia directly for a long time.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
I'm not surprised that there has been no action, but I figured somebody in the state legislature would go to bat. Pace-O-Matic is certainly capable of buying legislators, but sitting ones were already bought by the casinos. They had to resort to funding unsuccessful primary challengers, so even those without a horse in the race may have been resentful that their colleagues were getting picked off. But industry influence aside, there are a lot of small businesses owners that made decent income on them with no risk; they weren't responsible for owning or leasing the machines, and the vendors serviced them. It was basically free money, and I assumed that someone would have stepped up, especially with the prospect of additional tax revenue on the table. While gambling has lost support, the machines aren't so controversial that anyone but dedicated gambling opponents has strong enough feelings about them for it to matter.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
The split is typically 20% to the company that makes the machines, with the remaining 80% split evenly between the vendor and the establishment. This typically nets a few thousand a month for the establishment with the side-effect of driving business. As for the return, you can't assume that you're going to double your money every 4 spins. While the actual payout may be in the 80% range or even higher, that includes jackpots and other amounts that more than double your money. It also includes times when you win less than the amount bet, and have to play the skill portion to get back to the 105% mark. So while you might theoretically be able to make $5.50/hour on average, the typical player who plays a couple hours or less at a time isn't looking to consistently end the session $10 ahead, but to play slots. The skill portion takes too long, is too hard, and pays too little to act as an inducement for the players to actually use it, especially since most aren't playing for anywhere near the max amount.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
This Week in Gambling
Several months ago, I wrote a post about the Brendan Sorsby situation. That same week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling that prohibited PA Skill Games. Tomorrow, all such games must be removed from establishments that operated them, and enforcement is expected to be thorough and severe. First, some background. In 2006, the state legislature passed a bill legalizing gambling in the state. This was largely a response to West Virginia having legalized slot machines some years prior. Large casinos had been built at Mountaineer Racetrack outside Weirton and Wheeling Island, both a short drive from Pittsburgh, and lawmakers saw the number of PA plates in the parking lots as tax money that could be staying in the state. West Virginia offered a cautionary tale, however. While the racetrack casinos drew the tourism, there were also slot machines in bars, gas stations, and dedicated "hot spots" throughout the state. The legislature did not want this outcome, and the slot machines were strictly regulated, with license eligibility limited to existing racetracks and a few preselected locations. For example, in the western part of the state, The Meadows in Washington and Presque Isle Downs in Erie would get licenses for casinos at racetracks, and a license for a casino in Pittsburgh would go up for bid.
Since this was sold to the public as a revenue thing, the slot machines were heavily taxed; 52% is the going rate. The money was supposed to go to property tax relief, but in typical PA fashion it just went to the general fund. West Virginia responded by authorizing table games, and PA quickly followed suit. Addicted to the revenue, further expansions were in the offing. There was also a Class 3 "resort" license that was only available for resorts, with patronage limited to resort guest. The definition of "guest", however, meant someone who spent at least $10 at the resort, and Nemacolin Woodlands in the Laurel Highlands opened a casino that simply charged a $10 admission fee to confer guest status on anybody. When the US Supreme Court allowed states to implement sports gambling, PA was among the first states to do so, in a bill that also legalized online gambling for good measure. Then they dropped the resort farce (so Nemacolin could stop charging admission) and authorized a new stand-alone casino in an old Sears store at Westmoreland Mall in Greensburg. And this is just what affected the western part of the state.
Meanwhile, "PA Skill Games" became a thing. These had been operating to a limited extent for a while, but became especially prominent after the pandemic. A PA Skill Game is a machine similar to a slot machine but which includes a skill element so as to obviate the need for a slots license. These popped up like weeds in bars, private clubs, gas stations, and even grocery stores, some of which rely on them for a substantial share of their revenue. For all intents and purposes, they're slot machines. They look like slot machines, they play like slot machines, and they pay like slot machines. The only difference is the "Follow Me" feature. The way this works is on a losing spin, a small button that says "Follow Me" appears somewhere on the screen. Pushing the button leads into a mini-game where you can win 105% of the amount bet. This consists of a Simon-like memory game that involves memorizing a progressive sequence of 25 steps. Since this feature ensures that a sufficiently skillful player can win every time, the manufacturers argued that it was not a game of chance, like a typical slot machine, but a game of skill.
Regardless of the general public's opinion on the proliferation of what were essentially gambling devices, those who took the greatest offense to the situation were the licensed casino operators. Here they were paying 52% tax and operating expensive casinos, only to have their customers stolen by mom and pop operations that weren't paying a dime to the state. No license, no tax, no regulation. So they sued. Lower courts, however, ruled that since they were incorporating a skill element that allowed players to theoretically win money on every spin, no license was needed. The case made it to the state supreme court, however, and on June 15, they issued a long, reasoned opinion that effectively boils down to "Are you fucking kidding me?" They first went back to an old case and noted that just because a game involves some element of skill doesn't mean it isn't a game of chance. The case involved video poker, whose manufacturers argued was a skill game because the player had to pick which cards to draw. True, the court had ruled, but the outcome was still determined by the initial deal, so no dice. The skill games tried to get around this, however, by making it so that, with sufficient skill, one could win every time, where one couldn't guarantee a payout on a video poker machine.
The court was not impressed with this argument. The Follow Me feature was so obscure that most players didn't even know it existed, and it was rarely used. To give a sense of what was involved, getting through the whole sequence took approximately 15 minutes and included several mandatory break periods. If a player made it through to the end and "won", he'd recover 105% of his bet; since the maximum bet was $4.00, one would be betting $4.00 to win $0.20. Betting the max and successfully playing the skill portion every time, the expected payout was less than a dollar an hour, assuming, of course, that you aren't expected to hit one in every four spins or more. On the other side of the coin, the minimum bet was 8 cents, and most players were risking nowhere near $4.00/spin. As the court put it, the Follow Me feature was implemented for the lawyers, not the players. The entire concept was ridiculous, a blatant attempt at circumventing the state's gambling laws.
Sensitive to the fact that the machines were everywhere, the court stayed enforcement of the ruling for 120 days. At the least, this would give businesses time to comply with the ruling before they got busted. At the most, it would give the state legislature time to legitimize the machines. I spoke with a number of bar owners who told me of several proposals that were in the works. The most common one involved an annual $1,000 fee per machine (in some versions of the story it was $500). The problem was that this was evidently nothing more than bar gossip. No bills had been introduced, and I couldn't even find a quote from a lawmaker suggesting that as a solution. It was anticipated that legislation would make its way into the annual budget bill, the most obvious place for it. The state typically passes a budget at the beginning of July for the following fiscal year. By "typically passes", I mean there's usually a budget impasse that takes months to figure out. Maybe Republican lawmakers would reach a compromise on PA Skill Games so the Democrats could get spending increases? Turns out we had the rare year where a budget sails through without controversy. Shapiro signed the budget bill into law on July 12, and the legislature (whose term technically doesn't end until December) went on vacation.
When they returned in September, there was still nothing in the offing, not even statements from legislators. The local news would interview bar owners who would whine about the lost revenue if nothing was done, but nobody was willing to put a proposal on the record. As the deadline drew near, a few bar owners held out hope that the imminent enforcement would spark the legislature to get off their ass, but at this point they seem resigned. Last week, a bar manager told me that they were leaving the machines in until they had to be gone, not because a couple days worth of the revenue would mean that much, but because the degenerates who played them would go to another bar that still had them, and might not come back. Last night, the owner of a different bar I was at got a call tipping him off that the law will be vigorously enforced tomorrow and that if he thinks he can slip under the radar, think again (before PA Skill Games, plenty of bar owners had illegal slot machines for years without being caught). He had already removed his.
I'm generally against the way those machines have proliferated and turned Pennsylvania into something we were promised it wouldn't become way back in 2004, but I'm still sympathetic to the small businessmen who are losing revenue. That being said, the question arises of why the legislature was so hesitant to do anything. I didn't necessarily expect them to pass legislation legalizing the machines, but I did expect some kind of concrete proposals, some suggestions, something. The best I got was from bar owners who told me what they heard from other bar owners. My theory is that there's no obvious partisan position on this issue, and a number of traps for legislators to step in. Back in May, Camera Bartolotta was defending her state senate seat against challenger Al Buchtan in the primary. I did a writeup here after the election about how they were still trying to out-Trump each other (which seems to have backfired since Bartolotta, who is one of the more effective members of the Senate, is now in danger of losing her seat to an Independent in a heavily Republican district). What I didn't mention is that the attack ads also focused on who was in whose pocket. Buchtan ran ads attacking Bartolotta for taking money from the casinos. These ads were, of course, funded by Pace-O-Matic, a PA Skill Game manufacturer. The court that ruled the games illegal is majority Democrat, but Republicans on the court went along with the decision, and the AG promising vigorous enforcement is a Republican.
After the election, Bartolotta made her stance clear, that she was against the skill games that proliferated in low-income communities and took advantage of the poor, but her dirty laundry had already been aired. The same can't be said for the rest of the incumbents facing reelection. Any lawmaker who takes a stance on the issue will immediately be accused of being on the payroll of one side or the other. With no default ideological angle to fall back on, such accusations will be difficult to dispute. It may not be the hottest-button issue—Bartolotta is vulnerable due to her past support for data center tax breaks—but it's still an unnecessary risk. The most we got was a statement from Senator Wayne Fontana in September proposing that clubs and fraternal organizations be permitted to keep up to 5 machines until the end of next year. A weak proposal for an extension from a Democrat who is running unopposed. It's telling that Fontana never actually introduced this legislation and instead proposed it during a radio interview. During the same issue, he said that it was unlikely that the legislature would take up the issue before the stay expired, though they may take it up next year, which explains the sunset provision in his proposal. It also explains that they don't want to go on the record regarding the skill game issue. As the Attorney General's warning indicated that the machines must be returned to the vendors and not merely unplugged, the PA Skill Game era is now over, as I doubt any bars are going to risk having them on-site tomorrow. Whether a new era will dawn remains to be seen, but I'm not holding my breath.
Though defenses have gotten more sophisticated, it's more a generational thing than a mark of sophistication. If you're not familiar, there are two basic kinds of pass defense: In man-to-man each defender is assigned a receiver to cover, while in zone the defenders are assigned zones of the field and will cover whichever defender enters that zone. Man requires players who are athletic enough to stay with the men they're assigned, and it fails when their unable to do that. Zone's weakness is that there aren't enough defenders available to cover every zone on the field, and a skilled quarterback will be able to read the defense ahead of the play and change the play at the line to direct receivers into holes in the coverage. Good receivers in turn will be able to adjust their routes based on what they see. When passing began to pick up in the 21st century, it was largely because guys like Brady, Brees, and Manning could pick apart zone defenses like nobody's business. So defenses adapted by playing more man. Now it was up to the receivers to beat the coverage, and guys like Darelle Revis made careers out of being unbeatable.
One feature of a typical man defense is a on-high safety look. Say the offense is lined up with one running back, one tight-end, and three wide receivers. A typical defense will respond with a nickel package, with four linemen, two linebackers, and five defensive backs. Four defensive linemen will rush the quarterback. Three of the defensive backs will cover the receivers, one (usually a strong safety) will cover the tight end, and one of the linebackers will cover the running back. The free safety will play a large deep zone. He will watch the quarterback to see where the ball is going and help that defender in coverage or to prevent a big play; he's the last line of defense. The other linebacker can be used for a variety of purposes. He may assist the linemen with the QB rush. One variation that the Patriots used a lot during this era is called "robber" coverage, where the second linebacker takes a zone below the free safety to guard against crossing routes. To beat man coverage, offenses relied on fast receivers like Tyreek Hill. Strategy shifted from finding holes in the coverage to managing matchups and figuring out where the extra help was coming from. The thing that really threw things into overdrive, though, was running quarterbacks.
Running QBs have existed to some degree for a while, but they were either guys like Steve Young who were good at scrambling, or novelties like Michael Vick. In the 2010s, coaches were increasingly willing to use running QBs like Cam Newton, Robert Griffin, and Colin Kaepernick, and towards the end of the decade, quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen took the running game to an entirely new level. But it wasn't these outliers that changed things. By 2020, guys like Manning and Brees, who were statues in the pocket, no longer existed. All quarterbacks had at least some scrambling ability, and were liable to take off if everything was covered. Remember the second linebacker? One of the things he could do was spy the quarterback as if he were a running back. But doing this takes him out of the coverage, and more is open downfield. In the early 2020s, defenses were routinely getting foiled by fast receivers, and if there weren't any fast receivers, there were receivers who could shake defenders underneath. And there wasn't any help from the linebacker, since the quarterback might run with the ball. How did defenses deal with this? They went back to zone.
More specifically, the dropped another safety to cover the deep part of the field. This turns a Cover 1, which I described earlier, into a Cover 2. Instead on one safety covering the entire deep field, there were two safeties. And since an offense in a 3 receiver set is usually only sending 2 deep, both of them are effectively double covered. Since the cornerbacks aren't chasing the receivers deep, the flat is covered in case the quarterback runs. Your extra linebacker can drop back into coverage, and you have three zones across the middle of the field. To make things even better, if the qb does go deep the ball is in the air long enough for the second safety to leave his zone and help out the other one. This isn't much different than the way things were when Brady and Manning were working their magic in the 2000s. But none of those guys are in the league anymore.
Since defenses switched to running mostly 2-high a few years ago, offenses have struggled to adapt. Speed isn't as much of an asset for a receiver if a safety is waiting for you downfield, which is why the Chiefs let Tyreek Hill walk; his skill set was no longer needed. Speaking of the Chiefs, the reason they've been continually successful despite the lack of receiver talent is because Mahomes is one of the few quarterbacks to adjust to the new defenses without batting an eye. It's why Travis Kelce was able to go from being a typical good passing tight end to one of the most prolific receivers in the league; both he and Kelce knew where the soft spot in the zone was. People often wondered why Kelce couldn't just be doubled or something. The reason is that any decent defensive back could neutralize him in single coverage, the problem being that that would only work by switching to man coverage, which would have let Mahomes run wild, hitting receivers deep and scrambling for yardage when they weren't open. The best bet was to hope that Kelce wouldn't find the sweet spot.
This obviously oversimplifies things, but it offers a general explanation of why passing is down from its highs in the late 2010s and early 2020s. It's still not off much from the late 2000s and early 2010s, which is still high by historical standards. These things come in cycles, and I wouldn't worry about it too much.
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