The Editor's Desk

After mulling over the possibility of no recommendation at all, I barely endorsed the passage of the four casino initiatives on the primary ballot for next Tuesday.

This is probably one of the situations where advertising did make a difference, but in a negative way. The anti-compact commercials’ constant invocations about the state not getting enough money and how the “taxpayers” were somehow getting a bad deal because the state bribe from the gaming tribes wasn’t big enough just filled me with contempt — that we’re owed some of somebody else’s money just because they have a lot of it.

As I explain, though, this doesn’t mean I’m happy with the existing relationship between the casinos in the state. I just think the culture of entitlement has gotten so bad that it’s a much bigger problem than the monopoly system we’ve got with the tribes. I, of course, would be much happier if gambling were legalized and treated like any other business, which I hope would avoid some of this nonsense in the future.

In my inbox:

Dear Desert Dispatch,

Dear editor

Sincerely

Joseph Rivani
[Address redacted]
Los Angeles, CA

In my inbox:

Dear Desert Dispatch,

Stop the ROCKETS

Sincerely

William & Sandy Cummings
[Address redacted]
Garden Grove, CA

I succumbed to the mistake I’m most neurotic about in a recent editorial.

I wrote on Wednesday speculating that the CHP’s latest speeding enforcement drive coinciding with the governor’s budget cuts announcement was more of a show that they are a source of revenue of the state

A reader politely e-mailed me to inform me that the money from speeding tickets given by the CHP doesn’t go to the state — the money goes to county or city in which the driver is cited.

I’ve written here that one of my biggest concerns about writing editorials is presenting an opinion based on a factual foundation that proves to be incorrect, which is exactly what happened here. It should have occurred to me to think about the complex relationship between the state and county funding in California, but it did not.

I’ll have to make this right in an editorial next week. I do stand behind the rest of the editorial though, that a two-day publicized crackdown on speeders in the middle of the week is going to be unlikely to result in any sort of change in driver behavior on our stretch of Interstate 15.

Tuesday night we arranged for a page with New Hampshire primary votes updated automatically. The results were astounding — we set a new record for page hits in one day for our site. People were really interested in following election information.

Now we’re adding a special feed of election-specific wire stories on our home page. Scroll down and you’ll see the links under the national and world headlines. I hope these help visitors stay up to date with the latest campaign news.

Reporter Aaron Aupperlee has posted our casual newsroom predictions of how the Iowa Caucus will shake out over on the “Off the I-15” blog. I e-mailed my local commentary writers to see if they wanted to make any predictions. Carol Jensen predicted Barack Obama for the Democrats and Mike Huckabee for the Republicans. Richard Reeb isn’t much for predictions. He said that he hopes Hillary Clinton loses and Mitt Romney wins.