Looming Gambling Veto is Deval Patrick's Moment of Truth as Governor

Cross posted from BMG --


For those of us who have been working for years to oppose the expansion of predatory gambling in Massachusetts, the last few months and weeks have brought a strange combination of horror and satisfaction. Horror, because we have seen so many otherwise reasonable -- and progressive -- legislators accept the misleading or downright false information that has been force-fed to them by lobbyists, racetrack owners, and secretive billionaires. Satisfaction, because the whole tawdry process -- of closed meetings, illogical argumentation, self-delusion and unfettered greed -- is finally being aired on television and the newspapers every day.

The arguments about the damage slot machines will inflict on individuals, small businesses, and local communities are starting to sink in, so that even long-time Democrats who have tended to think of gambling as a question of personal choice are starting to feel a groaning sensation in their guts. They are starting to remember that the Democratic Party officially voted at their June 2009 convention against slot machines in Massachusetts. And no wonder: the numbers are horrific.

Let's run through them again. Three casinos at 3,000 to 5,000 slots each equals as many as 15,000 for the state. The compromise proposal seemed like it was cutting the numbers of slot barns from four to two, but it also doubled the number of slots they can have -- an amazing sham -- so that is another 3,000.

Since most slot machines -- which run 24/7 -- pull about $300 a day out of people's pockets, that is a direct drain of $2 billion on local economies. Then, because Native American tribes are allowed to build the same kind of gambling facilities that have been approved for the rest of the state, we can easily predict two more casinos. That brings the total to five casinos, two slot barns, and as many as 28,000 slots machines dragging $3,000,000,000 out of the economy every year.

What has been even more shocking is that even though legislators paid lip service to the idea that the bill would have negative effects, they refused to commission an independent cost-benefit analysis that would have detailed the actual costs of regulation, law enforcement, community mitigation, addiction services, lost lottery revenues, increased crime, embezzlement, and social destruction to families. Why? Because, as Jack Nicholson said, they couldn't handle the truth. They grabbed on to a single number of 15,000 jobs produced by pro-casino consultants and used it in every speech and statement as a shield to rational thought.

Which leads us back to Deval Patrick, a man many of us have admired since he appeared in public life. Some of us worked as hard as possible for him, beginning early in the cycle, because we believed in his three stated principles: no financial gimmicks, focus on long-term solutions, and always stand for the idea that the people of the Commonwealth, were "all in this together."

This is why many of his supporters were shocked when, in 2007, he appeared in Gardiner Auditorium to defend the idea of three "resort casinos" -- a lovely term whose benefits have rarely materialized in the many states where lobbyists shilled for the concept.

He later introduced some nuance after learning more about slots, known as the "crack cocaine" of the gambling industry. The benefits of casinos, he insisted, were still real (even though casinos rely for their profits on addicted gamblers), but the proposed slot barns being promoted by racetrack owners were too dangerous.

The House and Senate then put themselves through months of contortions. The House introduced their bill on April Fool's Day and rammed it through without hearings on April 14, the one-year anniversary of the murder of Julissa Brisman who was allegedly killed in a theft to fuel the gambling debts of Philip Markoff. The Senate announced that they would do things differently, so they released their bill on a Friday and held one day of hearings the following Tuesday. The bill came within six votes of failing in the Senate, which would have killed off the whole prospect.

For the last few weeks the House and the Senate have tangled about their respective formulas for distributing large amounts of public money to private interests. They finally produced a bill that is a clear win for the Speaker Robert DeLeo, who has staked his entire public reputation and Speakership on getting what he wants on this issue.

Offering to resolve the matter, Deval Patrick suddenly switched positions again-- another disappointment -- and announced that now he was for three casinos and one slot barn - still as many as 16,000 slots.

What did his offer get him? DeLeo tonight assembled his followers on the Grand Staircase and openly challenged the governor to exercise his veto. The Speaker is so confident of his power and so certain that he is right that he has just kicked sand in the governor's face.

So what will the governor do? Cave in to the Speaker's demands and sign the bill. Or veto it outright, and let the legislature attempt an override. The Speaker has the votes in the House, but an override could fail in the Senate. I am sure that the Governor's political advisors are being flooded with threats from unions and others that a veto would cost Deval Patrick a second term.

I suppose that's true. It might. It is also true that Charlie Baker, who has been a little slow on the uptake, might transform his tepid "one casino, maybe" position into a sustained attack that will dampen the enthusiasm of progressives and independents for the re-election of Patrick. The argument runs both ways.

That is why the governor should now do what is right: stand up for the principles that got him into office, accept his responsibility for having steered the legislature towards this brink, and now pull them back courageously with a decisive veto of this whole appalling bill.



Bob


(cross posted to Blue Mass Group)

Senate Hearing Testimony

Below is the testimony offered by Rev. Bob Massie at today's Senate Hearings on Predatory Gambling:

This post is based on my testimony today against the Senate Gambling bill

In the rush to pass a casino bill without adequate public awareness or evidence, there are many unanswered questions which senators -- and citizens -- should consider. Here are my top ten, though unlike David Letterman's list, this is no laughing matter.

10. Why did the Senate hold hearings on Tuesday on a bill that was released only last Friday? There was no time to digest it or to react to it properly.

9. Why is the Senate preparing to vote on a bill for which there has been no independent assessment of the costs? Specifically, exactly how much will regulation, law enforcement, community mitigation, addiction services, lost Lottery revenues, increased crime, embezzlement, and bankruptcy cost the economy and taxpayers?

8. Can the legislators point to a single state where the introduction of expanded gambling has closed the budget gap? If not, what proof is there that the rosy predictions of the casino billionaires and their paid researchers and lobbyists will come true?

7. What will happen to the market when neighboring states all rush to add more casinos and slot machines to respond to the "threat" from Massachusetts? Will states be fighting over the same limited pool of dollars -- or will the result be to create hundreds of thousands more gamblers who throw their money away?

6. What will the legislature say to parents, especially those from outside Massachusetts, who are worried that slot machines and casinos which target young people will be easily accessible to students throughout the state?

5. Can Senators who favor this legislation point to any city or state where sucking disposable income out of a local economy has improved the quality of life? Since it has been shown that every slot machine destroys one permanent job, are we prepared to cope with the loss of 9,000-12,000 jobs that casinos will destroy? Similarly, does gambling help the creation of small businesses? Does gambling reduce corruption? Do major national companies want to locate their operations and their employees near gambling centers?

4. Why do so many use the term "gaming" to sugarcoat an industry that is predatory in nature? We reject predatory marketing, and predatory lending, and predatory pricing because of their hidden harm to citizens. Predatory gambling does the same and should also be rejected. Casinos rely on addicted customers for most of their earnings; "gaming" is a trick phrase designed by pro-casino marketers to hide the destructive principle at the heart of their business model.

3. How carefully has the Senate studied the scientific and industry data -- for example the work of Dr. Hans Breiter at Mass General Hospital -- that proves that electronic slot machines are designed to be addictive?

2. If the medical industry could show that by infecting tens of thousands of our neighbors with a new virus they could increase hospital construction, local employment, and sales of technology would the House, Senate, and governor support this idea as a jobs bill? If not, how is the medical scenario different from authorizing casinos?

1. Finally, the number one question: under what political or moral theory do our elected representatives believe that governments have the right to increase addiction among one group of citizens in order to help another? The Senate acknowledges that some lives and families will be destroyed by this action. What is the "acceptable" number of destroyed lives? Even if compulsive gambling only affects 2% of a population, that's 120,000 people in Massachusetts. Exactly how many of our neighbors and colleagues, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters is it acceptable for this industry to entice, ensnare, and obliterate?

The only number that is consistent with the purpose of democracy, the principles of both parties, and the moral duties of a public servant working for the common good is zero. That it is why predatory casino and gambling are currently illegal in Massachusetts -- and why they must forever remain so.

Bob Massie

Vice President

United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts (USS-Mass)

A Letter from Somerville To My Friends Throughout the Commonwealth - from Bob Massie

To my friends and all others who care about the Commonwealth:


I have always considered myself a proud and progressive Democrat. For the thirty years that I have worked on social justice issues I have been aligned with progressive organizations in the environmental, labor, human rights, human services, and corporate responsibility fields.

I think I can even claim some history of progressive leadership as the founder of the Global Reporting Initiative, the leading form of corporate disclosure on social, environmental, and economic impacts, now in use by over 1,000 multinationals worldwide and mandatory in many countries. And I have served my party: as co-chair of a state issues convention, member of the national Rules Committee, and as Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 1994.

Though my party affiliation has been important to me, it has never barred me from friendships with people of differing parties, views, perspectives, or beliefs. Today I write to you all.

I, like many people, have friends all through the Democratic party. Some became my friends because they were such good candidates.

In this category I count Deval Patrick, who impressed me so much when I first spoke to him that I realized that I might have found a truly new candidate, representing a new kind of politics. My wife and I, after thinking carefully, organized the first major house party for Deval in Somerville, a full year before the election, where we carefully brought together more than 100 representatives of all the major political factions in the city. They were also impressed. Deval went on, through his own hard work, to win 59.7% of the city's primary vote against two opponents.

I am as appalled as anyone in this state at the damage our declining budget is likely to do to real human beings who need help. I have lived and worked in Somerville for more than 25 years and for part of that time I was the pastor of a small Episcopal church where I saw the need for social services up close - among many parishioners, among the 12 "shut-in" senior citizens whom I regularly visited in their homes, among the children on the streets and in the parks. My children attended public school next to the Mystic View projects. So I yield to no one in my sense of urgency about what a dollar cut from the budget can mean in the life of a citizen or family who has no where else to turn.

But I must say - reluctantly, but bluntly - that I am shocked by the behavior of many friends in the face of this recent budget crisis. Because of their understandable concern about the nature of the current budget mess, they have allowed themselves to be silenced by the cynical forces pressing for predatory gambling in this state. And every time I receive - on the dozens of the listservs that I get - another plea to put pressure on the governor to find more revenue, I wonder if the people who are putting out these appeals fully realize what a cruel irony they are perpetuating.

Let's start with the unions....

bmass :: A Letter from Somerville To My Friends Throughout the Commonwealth - from Bob Massie

I have not been a member of a union, so I can't call myself a brother or a sister, but I have worked on virtually every issue that unions have cared about: equal pay, health care, worker protections. I cheered when Bob Haynes, another friend, says that unions are there for those who can least protect themselves. And I grieve when I listen to the electricians and carpenters and others who talk about the astronomically high unemployment rates in their ranks.
But here is how they have chosen to do handle the problem: they have - not for the first time in labor history - been bamboozled by the wealthy. They have bought the false numbers and false arguments that have been advanced by industry consultants and lobbyists who are using them. They have ignored the bankruptcies around the country and the huge amount of evidence that has been piled up by economists from outside the state. I won't go through it here - much of it is available at the website of [United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts - http:www.uss-mass.org] Please read up, then sign up.

One point, proven over and over again, but conveniently forgotten: every slot machine kills one permanent job in an economy. Why? Very simple. A slot machine requires no labor. It is simply a reverse ATM that sucks money from your account into the casino or racetracks account - money that you could have spent somewhere else.

Labor, sadly, has denied, blocked, or avoided any serious discussion with gambling opponents. The political committee meeting was a love fest with casino owners. Their "Jobs With Justice" dinner committee refused to run an ad from a long-time member, Tom Larkin, paid for with his own money, simply asking for a serious debate. They have held "informational meetings" at Suffolks Downs. They have used long discredited numbers produced by casino-company reports with flawed or deceptive methodologies.

And every time I have mentioned this to Bobby Haynes, he says, "I know, I don't like slot machines, but we need the jobs." The jobs are fake Bobby. It's not worth selling the birthright of the labor movement for this mess of pottage.

And it is not just the construction trades. The SEIU, which should be trembling at the thought of tens of thousands more gambling addicts sweeping down on our overburdened system, has been silent. The people concerned about domestic violence or co-addiction or criminal justice have taken a little stroll. The nurses are on break. The Mass Teacher's Association, to their lasting discredit, has endorsed a system of "job creation" created by a predatory industry that is targeting our video-game loving children for the next wave of gambling traps.

The social service advocates and good government advocates are also embarrassingly silent. Common Cause, of which my grandmother was a founding board member, has decided that they care about corruption, but only at a limited scale - the wholesale distortion of the an entire process in the legislature by gambling interests - not only here but around the country - is something they wish to ignore. Please, Pam. do a little more reading about what is happening around the country.

I could list a large number of groups that have intensified the pressure on the governor and on Beacon Hill not to pursue cuts, but who seem so out of touch with politics that they don't realize that this sets up the perfect hole-in-the-pocket shot by Big Gambling. ,

And then there are the churches. The Mass Council of Churches has been an opponentbut the individual denominations and congregations are too busy worrying about problems in other countries or other decades to pay any real attention to what it is about to happen in their midst. The evangelical communities like Park Street Church and Gordon Conwell seminary - proud heirs to many social movements - have wandered off into the wilderness on this. The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization - an organization I love and of which my church is a member - is proud of the 400 of their financial literacy program that has moved people out of debt. How many people will people will be cast into debt through thousands and thousands of neurologically addictive slot machines. Even though their leaders know - in their bones - that we will reap the whirlwind, they do not speak out. Rev. Hamilton, you are my hero in many ways, please speak the truth here as powerfully as you have throughout your life.

And what about my friends in politics? Some have stood up to fight this - such as those who passed a resolution at the Democratic Issues Convention making it the policy of the party to oppose predatory gambling. There have been powerful leaders against predatory gambling such as Susan Tucker in the Senate, and Dan Bosley in the House - they will eventually be proven to have been not only courageous but right.

The U.S. Senate candidates have, with one exception, been an embarrassment. Michael Capuano, someone I have known for 20 years in Somerville, usually deserves his reputation as a straight-up shooter, who will tell you what he thinks. But he is ducking the question, saying that gambling is not a national issue.

Tell that the people in Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Iowa,and other places who have been fleeced by national and international companies working their way state by state across the country like locusts. Tell that to Congress, which passed the perverse Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which has allowed international cartels and billionaires to use Indian tribes as fronts for their investments. Or to the Supreme Court which squashed "reservation shopping" for casino lands, something that can only be reversed by an act of Congress. At the very least, it is a regional issue, where a strong social justice Senator could bring together all the parties to slow, stop, and reverse the race to the bottom. Come on, Mike, step up to the plate.

Martha Coakley said that as chief law enforcement official she is working with the legislature to craft the laws that casinos will be necessary if legislation is passed. Martha, if you are elected you will no longer be in this job - in a few weeks. What will you do as a Senator? You used to be opposed to gambling - is your current silence due to your union support and to Senate President Teresa Murray's enthusiasm for your candidacy? Martha, we want to see some spark, some fire in the belly for what's right, not a recitation of your current job description.

Steve Pagliuca says that he hasn't really been able to evaluate whether would be good or bad. That's amazing. The man has spent his career assessing companies, but suddenly his skills disappear when he hits controversy. Steve, step up to a real challenge, something a little more robust than telling Democrats you are for health care reform.


Only Alan Khazei has said - today - that he believes
casinos and slot machines are predatory. He deserves
praise for his courage. When something is predatory, it
means that a practice takes advantage of people who aren't
aware of the dangers, which are deliberately concealed.
Democrats have opposed predatory pricing, predatory
marketing, predatory lending, and now they should oppose
predatory gambling. Again, that is the official position of
the State Democratic Party.

But do the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, or the Governor of the Commonwealth care? Apparently not. What about the House and Senate? We will see.

And why is this? In part because our legislators are desperate for revenue. But the darker side is that many former campaign managers, operatives, field organizers, pollsters, and even former candidates and public officials themselves - have gone on the lobbying payroll of different casino or slot companies. I won't embarrass them further by listing them here, but I think that Blue Mass Group should publish a list of every consultant and every lawyer whose firm is now working on the inside, spending some of the $1 million of lobbying funds that have already been spent to our legislature.

All these forces are going to come to a head in the next few months. The House and Senate are holding joint hearings on gambling this Thursday that will be packed with union members who have been bussed into to support something that won't help them and will harm their communities and their families. The churches will twiddle their thumbs, holding meetings on other topics in other places. The social service groups advocates will demand more money - we don't care how you get it. The lobbyists will smile and adjust the cuffs of their expensive suits and admire the shine of their expensive shoes. The governor will forget that people elected him not for his managerial skills alone but also for his moral courage.

The decision is still in the hand of legislators, many of whom have staked their entire careers on their progressive records. They don't realize that they may be about to cast the vote for which they will most be remembered, wiping out the good work they did through years - even decades - in the legislature.

None of us can escape the simple truth that how we raise money to pay for public services says as much about our values as how we spend it.

If a vote comes in the new year to bring in a set of destructive forces because ALL OF US refused to raise our heads for a few minutes from the distractions offered to us by those who are in this for private gain, unless we look with wisdom and compassion to the hills of the future, then we will have sacrificed the principles of the progressive movement, the Democratic party, and the Commonwealth at one stroke.

This is what will happen. Unless there are enough of my friends - and others inside and outside the legislature - who have the courage to stand up and say:

No.

Bob Massie

Predatory Gambling

Bob Massie offered the following comments about Predatory Gambling that provide a compelling argument against the expansion of Gambling in the Bay State and are worth a re-visit:

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I know this is much longer than most people want to read, so I urge you to skip it if you don't want to follow the more precise discussion about why "two wrongs don't make a right" in the gambling debate.
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Part of the argument in favor of expanding slot machine gambling in Massachusetts is that it is taking place in Connecticut. Let's take a look at this argument from a formal standpoint, which could be presented in this form: "Since X, which we acknowledge has some bad consequences is going to happen anyway somewhere else, then we should permit X to happen here."
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There are two particularly noticeable flaws in this logic. One is the it relies on the well-known and flawed argument of futility (for those who are familiar with the work of economist and philosopher Albert Hirschman in his book The Rhetoric of Reaction). Arguments of futility are all variations on the theme of inevitability, i.e. "resistance is futile." The basic notion is disempowering. Arguments for futility are generally used to defend the status quo because of some apparently hidden law of reality that "realists" have identified and "idealists" ignore.
For example, the argument of futility was used for several hundred years in response to the proposal to enfranchisement of African Americans on the grounds that since blacks would obviously never be accepted as equals, then there was no sense trying to force this on white people. Or (another version) many white Americans argued that since blacks were not capable of complex mental decisions, they could never be full members of a democracy. I would be happy to expand on the historical nature of this debate as it applied, for example, to whether African-Americans could be enlisted as soldiers in the Civil War. Hirschmann discusses its application in Europe.
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The apparent but false power of this kind of argument is that it is really a tautology, a self-fulfilling or seemingly self-confirming prophecy. It basically says that people should give up fighting injustice and then, when people do, argues that the fact they have given up is proof that the injustice was intractable.
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So, with regard to recent events, if those who had proposed the vote against slots at the Convention had accepted this argument -- "don't even bother because it would never pass" -- then it would never have been filed and indeed it never would have passed. But fortunately we did not accept the argument of futility and it turns out -- at the very least -- that the supposed inevitability that has been touted by the Speaker, the Senate president, the racetrack owners, the casino moguls and their lobbyists, the unions, the Globe, the Herald, the Wampanoags, and everyone else who has been suggesting that this was a done deal were, perhaps, mistaken. By the way, we could negotiate a deal to roll back predatory gambling all across New England and replace it with a system of economic development based on systematic personal savings - the only thing we lack is political leadership.
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What's so odd about the debate in Mass if that If anyone wants to spend anytime on Google you will discover that casinos, slot parlors, etc are crumbling all over the country. Where they are "succeeding, " they are blowing hundreds of small businesses and thousands of low income people into little pieces.
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In Russia, where they had 2,600 casinos (we have 1,800 in the US), the Russian government decided eventually that they were causing so much crime and so much economic dislocation that they recriminalized all of them and simply shut them down. Of course, that's a much more authoritarian approach than we are likely to see in the US. But people are waking up all over the country.
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The backlash against casino gambling as both a) a victimless form of entertainment and b) a cost-free form of state revenue is building across the nation. There was a wonderful non-violent protest by more than 100 people at the Harrah's casino in Philadelphia yesterday, partly in response to Pennsylvania' s decision -- under Democratic governor Rendell -- to put in 65,000 slots all over the state.
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(By the way for those who are interested in the voluminous facts, I urge you to review the Reports and Findings of the U.S. International Gambling Commission, edited by Professor John Kindt, J.D. MBA, etc. of the University of Illinois. But don't do it at night, because you will lose sleep.
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One estimate in that study suggests that every slot machine removes one job permanently from the local economy. Why? Because when you think about it, it is a reverse ATM. It spins some lights and sucks money out of your bank account and out of the local economy, transferring to a wealthy corporation. ).
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The second formal flaw "bad things are going to happen, so we might as well be the ones to do them" is that it ignores that basic concept of human responsibility and moral agency. This argument was most wonderfully rebutted by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was presented with this same argument about American investment in the brutal South African system of apartheid about 25 years ago.
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Many executives said to him "look, if we don't invest in the country, some other company or nation will, and wouldn't it be better for Americans, who might be marginally better employers, to employ blacks than some other country that doesn't care at all?" His memorable reply: "This is like saying to me, "Sir, I know that someone is about to rape your wife, so wouldn't it be better if it were me?" The argument makes no sense logically or morally. If something is harmful to people, it is not made less harmful if we somehow feel personally more comfortable with the people who are causing the harm.
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Predatory gambling damages people whether it is inflicted on the citizens of Rhode Island or Connecticut or Massachusetts. We somehow are forgetting, even in the age of Obama, that these citizens of other states are actually all Americans. Remember, we are not talking about social gambling, but about promoting a flawed and dangerous product that it intended to harm the many for the benefit of the few.
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I know that people will continuously come back with the idea that people "choose" to do this. But, speaking as an economist and an ethicist, I would like to point out that this assumes fully informed consent. If people knew how severely they are being manipulated, then they might "choose" to do less of this. And the entire point -- which unfortunately we need to keep repeating -- is the harm is actively concealed.
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If someone swallows a fake medicine that is falsely promising benefits and concealing the potential damage, we do not say that the person "chose" to do so. There are explicit legal and moral limits to the principle of "caveat emptor". Indeed, the government is supposed to spend its time educating us about those potential problems, not promoting potentially harmful products because it is an easier way to raise money than discussing the real cost of our common life together, such as taxes.
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The reason I have gone on at length is that people are making arguments that go beyond personal preferences or opinions into the realm of claims and formal arguments. That is the field of ethics, law, philosophy, research, and facts. I am big fan of discussing political philosophy, just as we are doing -- what are the right boundaries from freedom, for government restriction, for choice, for transparency, etc. And I know that many people, including me, are perfectly happy to carry the discussion into this more technical realm if that will help us make better decisions. My apologies to those who find it tedious.
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Prior to the Democratic Convention Bob Massie posted the following:
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I am also concerned about the bland "statement of values" which amounts to very little on health, environment, etc.
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I would also like to add -- surprise -- that even though many people did what they were supposed to and attended platform hearings and spoke against slots and predatory gambling, this issue was ducked by the platform committee.
For example:
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The Cambridge-Somerville hearing voted unanimously that we should not have slots in Massachusetts, yet there was no mention of this being worthy of discussion.
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Democratic State Committee members asked for a break out group at the Convention to talk about the merits - and they were blocked.
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Some people wanted to run a very fair ad asking for a full discussion in the Jobs for Justice dinner ad -- this was blocked as "too controversial. " Having a discussion is too controversial!
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Some people asked to come to the AFL-CIO COPE meeting (at which casino owners were given the chance to make glitzy presentations filled with misleading facts) -- those who wanted to talk about the costs, and not just benefits, were blocked.
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In fact, one of the few places where there has been an open discussion has been on this group and on BlueMassGroup. So I think the platform committee largely failed in its mission.
For this reason I hope that those of you who are delegates at the Convention -- as I am right now -- will sign the resolution on predatory gambling so that there can be a very brief (10 minute) debate and then a vote to signal that members of the party have not had the chance to debate this thoroughly.

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We have had three speakers who have gone down in flames on corruption charges. We now have fourth who is pushing an issue that has been more closely linked to public corruption (i.e. gambling) than any other issue in the country. Remember Jack Abramoff, Glenn Marshall, Vincent Fumo, and all the others who are now in prison? Do we really think that this legislature or party can have "ethics reform" while simultaneously unleashing millions of dollars of hidden slot machine lobbying money into the back halls of Beacon Hall without consequences?
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