For a city about to open its first casino - and when I say about , I mean, like most developments in Pittsburgh, sometime between now and the fifth white-out in hell - the real action has already started. The most popular game isn't quarter slots or blackjack, but a no-limit "Who Can Whine The Loudest" championship. Like all high-stakes games, this one is populated by the already wealthy and well-connected. The players are rich real estate developers, business owners and other folks with more money than an average Pittsburgh neighborhood earns in a single year. But despite their already formidable wealth, the parties trying to corral Pittsburgh's first casino for themselves are jockeying with the ferocity of a Tour De France starting grid in hopes the recently formed state Gaming Control Board and Gov. Ed Rendell's administration will bestow them with the goose that lays golden gambling chips. Sure, to the super wealthy, a casino is as much an asset in the old portfolio as a blonde, leggy wife, a private jet or a hospital wing named in their honor. But not one of these fat-pocketed screech-monkeys actually needs a casino any more than an unemployed steelworker needs a $100 per day slot machine habit. Which leave us with the question of just who around Pittsburgh should most benefit from a casino? How about residents of the city? That's right, everyday working shlubs who are saddled with outrageous property taxes, a shrinking city budget and neighborhoods that haven't seen a new job - or at least one not requiring a paper hat and a spatula - since the Truman administration. As it is, the powers that be are so sidetracked by the whining over who gets the slots license that they can't even decide on a location. So far, Station Square, Downtown, the North Shore and other tourist-friendly locations have been considered, but what about placing the gambling hall in East Liberty, the central North Side or any of a number of locations were residents could really use an economic boost? Of course, this is less likely than a winning night on the slots. One of the rich guys will eventually cry loud enough to get their coveted casino and a few hundred luckless Pittsburghers will get minimum wage jobs working there. But if the odds were different, just this once, we'd take a gamble on opening a publicly-owned casino, where gambling could change people's lives for the better.

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