I'm happy to use my 100th post to answer this question.

The song is "Big Yellow Taxi", written by Joni Mitchell. Is has been covered many times, most recently as a duet by Adam Duritz (Counting Crows) and Vanessa Calton. It was also heavily sampled by Janet Jackson.

"Don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot."

Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi".

Thank you, qreidel and Artie See, for the refresher.

Sleezyness and greed are truely bipartisan, and we need to do more than request a realistic look. We need to make it quite clear that voters will punish any politician who supports this garbage at the next election.

Your Montana observation is correct. I remember hearing all the broken promises (before they were broken), about the wonderful revitalization to occur in Atlantic City. Today you can't venture more than one block off the boardwalk without risking your life to the urban predators.

Gaming is just another method of lining political pockets and helping politicians dodge what they promised to do when they campaigned ... limit spending and growth of government and taxes. Instead of behaving like fiscally responsible leaders and making the tough choices, they would rather con the weak out of their disposal income, and take a cut of the take. No different than the thugs who operate in the shadows outside the parlors.

Amish struggle to adapt to tourism By Ewan Jones
In Pennsylvania


On a snowy winter day in Pennsylvania, the streets are deserted but for a solitary vehicle, which slowly trundles by. Bonnet gleaming, steam rising from the nostrils of its drivers, this however is no ordinary mode of transport - it is one of the antique horse-drawn carriages used to this day by the Amish.

< The Amish have long been a religious community that has fired the popular American imagination. Fleeing religious persecution their native Germany, they arrived on American shores in the 18th Century. Soon, they separated themselves from other Anabaptists, through their commitment to a traditional mode of life - meaning no cars, no electricity and no photography.

The ban on photographs, which the Amish see as "graven images", is clear enough as the carriage passes. Tourists take out their digital cameras, and the driver, wearing the distinctive black dress and slicked-back hair of the Amish, instinctively ducks away.

This kind of evasive action is becoming increasingly necessary for the Amish, as they unwillingly become one of most popular tourist attractions in the United States.

In earlier times, the community supported their distinctive way of life - which includes no schooling beyond the age of 11 and the random election of local officials - through agricultural labour.

However, as economic developments have hit small producers, the Amish have been forced to turn to other means of income.

During the 1990s, Lancaster County, where the largest Amish community resides, lost 7,855 acres of farmland a year to residential and commercial development.

A typical 100-acre farm, which would have cost $30,000 in the 1940s, was worth $1m by 2000. Increasing numbers of Amish began to work for the "English", the Amish term for all non-Amish Americans.

Tourist attraction

But the most dramatic new source of revenue has been the tourist industry.

The Pennsylvania Dutch Visitor's Bureau estimates that seven million tourists pile into Lancaster County each year, compared to the 22,000 Amish who form the subject of their attention.

How do the Amish feel about the tourist incursion into their community?

Donald Kragall, considered one of the leading sociologists on the Amish, says they "have a love-hate affair with the tourist industry".

"On the one hand, tourists have impeded their way of life, and made it hard for them to get around. On the other, they have to come to rely on it economically."

Mr Kragall identifies two types of tourist enterprise.

"The first, run by the Amish themselves, offers handmade products such as jam and quilting. But this group never refers to itself as specifically Amish," he says.

"The second, run by outsiders, offers general tours of the area, and generates the Amish brand."

The Amish are generally depicted in positive terms, Mr Kragall says, "as examples of a rare sense of community".

But a number of local residents feel that the industry is exploitative.

"The reality show Amish in the City was a perfect example of how Americans see the Amish", says Lancaster County resident Mary Pogatez. "It's an acceptable freak show, at a time when dwarf-watching is illegal."

At the Amish Homestead, the only genuine Amish house to be opened up to tourists, the truth seemed to lie somewhere between these two readings. In the gift-shop, Doug McBride, a tourist visiting from New Jersey for the day, holds a moulded key-ring depicting an Amish carriage up to the light. "They're kinda impressive", he remarks. "But kinda weird."
The above is from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4530802.stm

Lancaster is know for its Amish... shopping is known too, but not to the extent it is for its Amish. You can get outlet shopping in a million places, but our number of Amish is unique to Lancaster.
How could gambling effect this?