Watching the performance of some of the mindless Senators on Beacon Hill who blindly follow Senate President "Cha Ching" Murray and apparently believe the Senator "Lap Dog" Rosenberg's silly comments, Joe Fitzgerald got it right about this crowd being little more than a menace.
There have been some shining lights who continue to raise important issues and a number of impressive Senators who oppose expanding predatory gambling who made thoughtful amendments to make a bad bill less bad. At the end of the day it is still a wrong-headed direction for the Commonwealth that has been fueled by special interests not data. With deliberate intention the House and Senate have ignored the costs of bringing this predatory industry to Massachusetts. While many continue to oppose the legalization of casinos and slot parlors, others look forward to having the opportunities to educate our fellow taxpayers, citizens and elected officials on the true costs of doing business with the gambling industry. Consider the United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts site.
Casino-loving pols just keep upping the ante
By Joe Fitzgerald
It’s so dismaying, watching our so-called public servants performing moral acrobatics, trying to rationalize their enthusiasm for the malignancy known as casino gambling.
You simply can’t claim to care about the public while you’re beating the drums for an activity known to ruin lives, marriages, careers and reputations.
Nor can you pretend to see yourself as your brother’s keeper while you’re enabling and encouraging an addiction every bit as merciless as booze, butts or drugs.
The same Beacon Hill crowd that imperiously banned smoking in every nook and cranny of the commonwealth, citing an imperative to save us all from the perils of secondhand smoke, wrangled over whether casinos should be an exception, as if our health mattered less at a blackjack table.
That hypocrisy was almost as appalling as the preposterous notion of permitting casinos to offer complimentary drinks, transparently encouraging compulsive gamblers to remain in the game, desperately hoping the next bet might pull them out of an ever-deepening hole.
“Hey, buddy, was that the mortgage payment you just dropped at the roulette wheel? Here, have a brew, compliments of the Massachusetts state Senate; it’ll make you feel better.”
Free drinks, in an atmosphere bristling with anxiety and despair? What are these dolts thinking?
Have you ever heard them fretting over “secondhand alcohol?” Yet if someone else’s drinking could have been removed from the equation on Interstate 95 in Mansfield two weeks ago, state police Sgt. Doug Weddleton would have been going home to his family tonight.
Like all addictions, gambling is a family disease, meaning the ones you most love are the ones you most hurt.
“If you read the bill,” state Sen. Sue Tucker noted, “you’ll find references to wiretapping, money laundering, enterprise crime, but what really got to me were the lines requiring casinos to check their parking lots every two hours for abandoned children.”
This is insanity, including an aberrant amendment that would prevent most voters from having any input into whether this wretched industry can set up shop in their municipalities.
Indeed, there’s only one safe bet, and that would be to tell these bloodsuckers to scram, along with their legislative lackeys.
Public servants? Please. At this moment they’re a public menace.
Posts
1 comment:
Wow.
...watching our so-called public servants performing moral acrobatics, trying to rationalize their enthusiasm for the malignancy known as casino gambling.
That says it all. But are they listening? No. They're busy rationalizing.
Post a Comment