Ravenous Lawmakers....

Massachusetts might well be substituted for each mention of Pennsylvania in the editorial below, except that Massachusetts will bear the Big Dig Legacy for decades to come.

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If the camel is an animal created by committee, what does Beacon Hill create? Predatory Gambling designed to enrich the few, exploit the least of us, increase crime and impoverish us all.

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The consequences will weigh us down when lawmakers are out of office and collecting fat pension.

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Fiscal responsibility dictates that an impartial cost benefit analysis is the reasonable path.

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TO BE BLUNT, ONCE RAVENOUS LAWMAKERS' FACES LIGHT UP, TAXES TO KEEP UP WITH JONESES SELDOM NIPPED IN BUD

This may turn out to be one of the final frontiers in terms of potential tax-revenue sources for Pennsylvania and other states: Marijuana, grown for medical use.

You can't do that here now. That doesn't mean it won't happen. We can well imagine the arguments, the warnings of the slippery slope.

We argued loudly against the institution of casino gambling, for what good that ultimately did.

There is no moral argument that can stand against the weight of a monetary one when made to a politician. If the thought process holds that the politician stands to gain some campaign war chest dollars from support of a moneymaking cause, there's not much a moral (money-less) argument is going to do.

Granted, there will be some politicians who will fight the moral battle. There were those that fought casino gambling. The casinos are here. They're going to be expanded, all in the name of increased tax revenue to the state.

The legislation to allow table games in Pennsylvania didn't pass—yet. However, it was viewed as the linchpin of budget-balancing, and the weight of the argument for tax revenue and the job creation aspects of the legislation make it all but a sure thing. It's going to happen. Rail against it as you will. We've railed considerably.

Casinos and their minders can make all the arguments they'd like about the reasons casinos are here and the benefits therefrom, but the bottom line reason they exist in Pennsylvania is because they provide another revenue stream for a desperately greedy state government.
There's been a legal opinion reached recently that the state of Colorado can tax dispensers of medical marijuana. The race to collect the taxes is of almost cartoonish proportions, and The Denver Post, in an editorial of its own, has asked the state government (in more diplomatic terms) to slow down, stop hyperventilating and at least figure out how the industry fits into the state's tax structure before scratching for cash like chickens hunting gravel.

Why worry about mechanics? There's money in them there hills! Dig it!

In the face of such desperate lust for new cash channels to be cut, can anyone realistically believe that such a system won't also come to Pennsylvania? It's money, remember. Tax money. Money to spend. Irresistible.

We think it will come sooner rather than later. Table games this year provided an out for the Legislature, injecting cash into what should be a soul searching, line-by-line combing of every expenditure and every revenue source in the state. Our budget structure, our methods of taxation, are a mess. We need a full redo, and there aren't nearly enough legislators who have the stomach for such a thing, especially since it might involve the shrinking of the Legislature, both its budget and its membership.

Thus, there is certain to be another budget crisis next year, and the acrimony is likely to be even higher than it was this past season, since almost everyone involved in the debate will be up for re-election (in the case of the Legislature and quite a bit of the Senate), and gubernatorial candidates posing for voters for the November election will also be catcalling from the sidelines to make their points and gather their votes.

Another temporary bandage will be needed. Something medically necessary, say. Enter marijuana.

If it can happen elsewhere, it can happen here. Forget about why it's being grown and used. Forget about the moral relativity. We might soon be forced to forget the fact that it was ever illegal for anyone—if a limited revenue source is good, an unlimited one is even better. Can the politicians survive the voter anger? If so, then just focus on the potential tax dollars and the campaign cash. That'll make enough of an argument to get the vote of most politicians.
As to what's best for the people, that's not even up for consideration.
—Lebanon Daily News