How many times is 'no' enough for casino crowd?

How many times is 'no' enough for casino crowd?

Mainers have turned down casinos four times since 2005, but dollar signs still beckon backers.

What is it about casinos that, no matter how many times Maine voters say "no" to proposals to put them here, there or just about anywhere, the hope of building one somewhere keeps popping up?

Oh, that's right, it's the money.

Which is not the reason this paper has, with one exception, opposed them. "Profit" is not a bad word, as long as the methods by which is it earned are aboveboard and positive.

Casinos may be aboveboard – nobody really hides the fact that they sell artificially generated excitement about winning a jackpot right along with odds that decisively favor the house – but it's hard to call that sort of enterprise "positive."

So, to get them going in Maine, all sorts of promises have been made about diverting some of gambling's profits to keeping the harness racing industry afloat, or providing money for education, or medicines for impoverished seniors, or some such goal.

They are also sold by pointing to the service-industry jobs that are "created" by them. However, that only papers over the two central facts of casino gambling:

First, for every person who leaves a casino with more money than he entered with, dozens leave with less.

And tons of dollars flow not to Maine workers or causes, but to the out-of-state "gaming industry" companies hired for their "expertise" in extracting cash from customers' wallets.

Indeed, reading accounts of how slot machines are scientifically designed to exploit patrons' psychological weaknesses to keep them pushing in money, despite their ever-increasing losses, is a fascinating, though horrifying, educational experience.

It's true that this paper did support a casino proposal, when Passamaquoddy Indians wanted one in Washington County, on the grounds that as long as state and local voters had backed one casino (in Bangor), an impoverished minority group deserved consideration for its facility own due to the discrimination it has historically faced.

Voters, however, rejected that proposal, as they have all the others brought to them since 2003, when the "casinos-at-permanent-racetracks" referendum was passed while a larger Indian-run casino in York County was defeated. Studies have shown that smaller casinos don't import money from far away, but instead reap dollars from local patrons who otherwise would have spent their money at local businesses. And when gambling turns into an addiction, the social cost in crimes, bankruptcies and family breakups becomes enormous.

Now, a group of entrepreneurs has announced its plans to put another casino referendum on the ballot next November to build one in Oxford County. And they have made the usual promises to fund all sorts of worthwhile causes with their proceeds.

But where will those proceeds come from? Mainers who enter with full wallets and leave with empty ones.