By now it's old news, but Pennsylvania has legalized slot machines.

Governor (and former DNC chairman) Rendell was on the radio yesterday sounding like a proud father who just landed a little more bacon, letting the kids know just how much better their lives would be. His example was far from convincing:

If you make $50,000 a year, he rhapsodized, and live within city limits, you will receive $600. That's right. $600. Basking in the glow of his own beneficence he beamed that this is "not an insignificent amount of money," nor is the $385 earmarked for those $50k/yr earners employed in the city but who live in the suburbs.

He repeated this for emphasis: $600 and $385 are not insignificant amounts of money.

(But I don't make $50,000 a year, Ed. So how significant is the rebate for the poor and working classes? The $50k city resident already pays $2,250/yr for a tax that was created to temporaily assist the government during the Great Depression. The suburbanite has been paying $1956.35. The sub-$50k crowd will get far less, so yes, $600 is insignificant.)

People, we have been assured, will benefit from having this money in their pockets.

Thanks Ed!

But wait! This is coming from a guy who thought in 2002 that Presiden't Bush's tax cuts were a really bad idea:

"The economy is in shambles because of that tax cut," says Pennsylvania Governor-elect and former D.N.C. chair Ed Rendell. "We can translate that into things people understand: 'You're not going to get money you need for social services to make your life better. Why? Because they gave all the money away in a tax cut.' Find everything that people are concerned about, everything that they need from government in their lives, and attach it to tax cuts."

Yes. You can't have money from the government because they already gave it back to you.

Ed wants to have it both ways. He'll give you a $600 check with one hand while with the other he takes more money via the state income tax, which has been his plan all along:

The Bush plan is not a "real stimulus plan," said Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania. He has proposed increasing his state's income tax and legalizing slot machines at racetracks to finance reductions in local property taxes and increased school subsidies.

"We need to stimulate our economy, pump money into creating new roads, new railroads, fixing up our airports," he said. "Those things create jobs, do good, and help American business."

In fact he doesn't believe that tax cuts are a good thing. He believes that the only way to stimulate the economy is to collect more taxes and hire more state employees (who are of course notoriously hard workers -- like that guy on the city road crew who sits on a bucket holding a "slow" sign for $28/hr).

Ultimately Rendell's cuts in the property tax and the city wage tax are a smoke screen. He realizes that people want more of their own money, and by throwing them a fatty bone, offset by slot machines, he can distract them from the real meat that's been stripped away.

Hm. I didn't mean to make him sound like Prometheus. Honest. But you do know how Zeus punished mankind for Prometheus' deceit, don't you?

Pandora.

One might say that Rendell's slot machines will release all evils upon men, while hope alone clings within, and no amount of pocket change will coax it out.

(Classical ending supplied solely for the amusement of Eric, the Beastly Overlord.)