Bloomberg is New York’s ‘Little Berlusconi,’ Siegel Says

Newsweek and The Daily Beast senior editor Harry Siegel and Daily Download managing editor Ben Jacobs broke down the “wonderful, strange, bizarre, quasi-corrupt world of New York politics” in a new post on Bloggingheads.tv Tuesday morning. The two discussed the influence the mere mention of Mike Bloomberg’s name has on the press, and whether or not Empire State Governor Andrew Cuomo will run for president as a Democrat in 2016. Not to mention legalized gambling:

“Casinos are basically evil,” Siegel said. “Atlantic City did all right because it had no competition. When you see the business plans for any new casino – and New York now has its first casino in the city, it’s a ‘racino,’ it’s a lottery thing. It’s nominally a lottery, but it plays exactly like slot machines, poker, all these others games. It’s fairly ridiculous, to route around a prohibition in the state constitution …. They need to build new gamblers, they can’t all just compete for the same share. They’re like adult daycare, and moron daycare, and superstitious person daycare. They are very, very depressing. They provide no social benefit.”

Check out the full video at Bloggingheads.tv.