Plainville should follow Foxboro lead on gaming
Sunday, May 13, 2012
To the editor: When Steve Wynn said that the only way to win in a casino is to own one, Foxboro was smart enough to listen. Is Plainville?
Slot parlors are the worst sort of predatory gambling. The only "entertainment" is to sit at a slot machine, hour-after-hour, and hit a button. Use your credit card or ATM card and the "house" knows and goes to work on keeping you there, losing money - "chasing your losses" - employing a high-tech, insidious method that involves "hospitality" staff, free drinks, free plays, and "special attention" until you "play to extinction." They don't win unless you lose!
In order for a Plainridge to "succeed", our friends and neighbors will have to lose, literally, millions of dollars. The money for anticipated tax benefits and jobs doesn't come in "gold ingots from heaven," as Andrea Soucy alluded to, but instead will come from the people who can least afford it - families, friends and neighbors within 30 miles of the slot barn.
Are you willing to let others lose their money, and in some cases their homes and businesses, to make your tax burden lighter? Are you willing to prey on the most vulnerable for your own gain? Are you willing to endure how slots will change your town with increased crime, traffic, bankruptcies, business losses and addiction?
Rob Rose says the neighborhood abutting the racetrack is "almost not in Plainville"; Andrea Soucy has always wanted slots; Bob Fennessey says there has not been a strong opposition movement here: in other words, the selectmen have been ready to give away the farm for years. Only we can stop them. Stop them!
Mary-Ann Greanier, Plainville
Slot parlors are the worst sort of predatory gambling. The only "entertainment" is to sit at a slot machine, hour-after-hour, and hit a button. Use your credit card or ATM card and the "house" knows and goes to work on keeping you there, losing money - "chasing your losses" - employing a high-tech, insidious method that involves "hospitality" staff, free drinks, free plays, and "special attention" until you "play to extinction." They don't win unless you lose!
In order for a Plainridge to "succeed", our friends and neighbors will have to lose, literally, millions of dollars. The money for anticipated tax benefits and jobs doesn't come in "gold ingots from heaven," as Andrea Soucy alluded to, but instead will come from the people who can least afford it - families, friends and neighbors within 30 miles of the slot barn.
Are you willing to let others lose their money, and in some cases their homes and businesses, to make your tax burden lighter? Are you willing to prey on the most vulnerable for your own gain? Are you willing to endure how slots will change your town with increased crime, traffic, bankruptcies, business losses and addiction?
Rob Rose says the neighborhood abutting the racetrack is "almost not in Plainville"; Andrea Soucy has always wanted slots; Bob Fennessey says there has not been a strong opposition movement here: in other words, the selectmen have been ready to give away the farm for years. Only we can stop them. Stop them!
Mary-Ann Greanier, Plainville
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment