Fitzgerald: Gambling bets on neglecting children

Monday, June 23, 2014

 

By:

Joe Fitzgerald

 

 

On its surface, it’s being framed as an environmental issue, prohibiting the inclusion of a day care center in Steve Wynn’s dream of building a casino resort in Everett. The commonwealth has labeled the site contaminated, unsuitable for housing kids. At first Wynn, the dynamic, supersuccessful developer from Las Vegas, sought to kill the regulation requiring on-site child care facilities for employees within his proposed complex.

 

Failing that, he then suggested they might drop off the kids at a substitute center somewhere down the road, somewhere “in proximity” to where other moms and dads are blowing the household budget at a blackjack table.

 

OK, that’s a pejorative scenario, but is it far-fetched? Not at all. Indeed thousands of families bear painful witness to the devastation wreaked upon loved ones when a provider becomes a gambler, ever in search of that winning bet, the one that will extricate him or her from an ever-deepening hole of despair. For the state to be encouraging such an addiction, sanctioning the activity, nurturing its allure, hoping to fatten its coffers with monies lost by its citizens, is simply unconscionable. Instead of being its brother’s keeper, the commonwealth would exploit that brother’s weakness for its own misbegotten gain.

 

How in the world does that square with government’s age-old mission to “promote the general

welfare”?

 

This dust-up over where to leave kids is about a lot more than contaminants in the soil; it’s a reminder of gambling’s corrosiveness in families, which our addle-brained legislators ought to understand. When the Beacon Hill push for casino gambling began a few years ago, state Sen. Sue Tucker was horrified by elements of the enabling legislation.

 

“If you read the bill,” she said, “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.”

 

Truth be told, Wynn would probably be better served if child care facilities were removed from his eye-popping Everett complex and placed where they could be hidden from view because just the presence of children might be enough to give some gamblers pause for thought. Out of sight, out of mind. What could be better? It’s reminiscent of the time merchants at South Shore Plaza urged management to ban the Salvation Army at Christmastime, ostensibly because its seasonal music was too loud.

 

Please. They didn’t want shoppers being reminded that some of their discretionary funds could have been used to help others down on their luck.

 

It’s no different with Wynn’s crowd. They don’t want guilt-ridden gamblers thinking about their kids.

Indeed, the only mention of kids they want to hear is, “7 come 11, baby needs new shoes.”

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/joe_fitzgerald/2014/06/fitzgerald_gambling_bets_on_neglecting_children



Mary Tufts Child abandonment in and around casinos is not a myth. It's much more common and harmful than people realize. http://www.repealthecasinodeal.org/child_abandonment.html