What would anyone really lose if all the casinos closed? Not a thing

If Republican State Sen. Pat O’Malley is elected governor, he will appoint a gaming board that will auction off casino licenses, when issued or renewed.

The state will collect billions of dollars and relieve or solve its financial mess.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

This idea has been coming for a dozen years in this column. It has been resisted by the gamblers and political insiders who got their casino licenses handed to them for free by the state. By the state I mean office holders who received millions from the gamblers for “campaign funds.”

But the public is catching on, and the politicians are getting the message.

The gambling industry made a major mistake when one of their operators tried to sell their license to build a casino in Rosemont.

In effect, Las Vegas sharpies would make hundreds of millions in profit selling a piece of paper given them by the state.

Even the most naive of us see through that deal.

O’Malley would ban all gambling in Illinois if he had his druthers.

A bunch of suburban mayors have urged the state to settle the Rosemont thing because the deal includes their towns getting a cut of the take.

They moan that the communities and the state are losing vast sums of money because Rosemont isn’t up and running.

What would happen if the casinos were closed? The state would “lose” a billion dollars?

People who play the slots and games would have the billion dollars in their pockets instead of having lost it at the casinos.

What would they do with this money? Buy some CDs at 3.2 per cent? Not gamblers.

They’d go out and buy cars and furniture and clothing and entertainment and food and pay off credit cards and pay tuition.

What a boost that would be for the state’s economy (and sales tax collections.) Billions would remain in Illinois instead of going to Las Vegas.

O’Malley’s two Republican opponents say they favor auctioning gambling licenses, but they’re not nearly as emphatic as O’Malley.

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One of Chicago’s most famous criminals, William Heirens, has been in prison for 46 years for murdering two women and 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan.

A Northwestern University group is trying to get Heirens released. Now 73, he has been a model prisoner. He certainly would be no threat to society,

Another notorious criminal, Nathan Leopold, who killed a boy, was released in similar circumstances and spent his final years fairly productively.

I think Heirens should be released, but I have no doubt he killed Suzanne Degnan.

The Northwestern people are challenging his confession.

Maybe it was flawed. But there’s another factor which can’t be ignored.

The girl’s killer left a ransom note. The note was written on a piece of paper which was traced to the note pad near the telephone near Heirens’ dorm room at the University of Chicago.

It is circumstantial evidence, but is hard to ignore.

An interesting aspect of the note involves the FBI. Chicago police couldn’t find any clues on the paper, so they sent it to the FBI in Washington.

The FBI returned it saying they couldn’t find anything.

The Daily News, where I worked, asked if we could take a look at the note. Law enforcement was pretty casual in those days.

We got the paper, and one of our artists, Frank San Hamel, examined it and found indentations on the paper, made by people who had jotted notes on the page over the kidnap page.

It was irrefutable evidence. We even found the letters from his name “eire” on the indentations.

In his second murder, Heirens wrote “Stop me before I kill more” in lipstick on his victim’s bathroom mirror.

He was a sicko then. He has paid dearly and has earned some peace.