Flim-Flammed by the Casino Vultures!

One did not have to be an 'EXPERT' to know how grossly overstated the phony Massachusetts projections were and how flawed the foundations were.

One only had to consider comparisons from the AGA's [American Gaming Association] web site.

These words from former Attorney General Scott Harshbarger and Gov. Michael Dukakis:

After jobs, the argument for casinos is that they provide a new state revenue stream. But the numbers don’t add up.

Commonwealth Magazine reported that in order to reach the revenue estimates when the bill was unveiled — of between $1.4 billion and $1.9 billion — somewhere between $5.6 billion and $7.2 billion must be bet and lost at the two proposed casinos every year.

In Las Vegas, it takes 266 casinos to bring in $11.6 billion in gross revenue, which translates into $924 million in tax revenue. Even the $300 million to $600 million now estimated here is a stretch based on that data.

To read the article in its entirety:
What’s the big hurry?


The projections are deliberately OVERSTATED to sell PREDATORY GAMBLING to voters and to dazzle elected officials.

Bad bet? Casino money misses states' forecasts

Michael Melia, Associated Press 6:02 p.m. EST February 21, 2015

 

 

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — For anyone betting on the Northeast's casino bonanza, the odds are long on projects hitting financial expectations.

 

In the last several states to open casinos — Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania — overall revenue is coming in below baseline forecasts, according to a review of state tax data. Officials blame miscalculations of spending habits and competition, but some also question how much the projected numbers reflected wishful thinking.

 

The casino industry has grown exponentially over the last decade as revenue-hungry states have moved to claim business that once went across state lines to Atlantic City, New Jersey, or the tribal-owned megaresorts in Connecticut. After Nevada, Pennsylvania has emerged as the country's No. 2 gambling marketing, overtaking Atlantic City, where four of 12 casinos closed last year.

 

As Massachusetts and New York prepare for a new round of casino building, they have added new levels of financial scrutiny, enlisting consulting firms to vet revenue projections. But the industry's growth in the Northeast's tight geography has made modeling more complex, and experts warn there are no guarantees.

 

"This isn't a science," analyst Alan Woinski said.

 

Projections are developed through so-called gravity models, premised on the concept that bigger casinos draw more people from farther away. They are used by developers and regulators to estimate how a property will perform based on factors including the affluence of surrounding towns.

 

The track record shows big margins for error. With access to the same data, developers regularly come back with higher projections than regulators who run the numbers themselves, especially when companies are competing for bids. A recent study by Cummings Associates, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm, found that projections done for the same project were, on average, 20 percent apart and, in cases where the casinos were actually built, almost always were proved too high.

 

USA TODAY

Atlantic City fears darkness after casinos close

Casinos generally remain big moneymakers, and some projects have far exceeded predictions, but state averages have been below forecasts that set expectations for tax revenue.

 

One of the biggest misses came in Ohio, where the state Department of Taxation weighed in on a proposed constitutional amendment in October 2009 with an estimate that casinos would generate at least $470 million in annual tax revenue. In 2014, tax revenue from the casinos totaled $267.5 million.
 

"In retrospect, we were guessing," said Mike Sobul, who was the tax department's director of research.
 

Sobul said the gravity model run by Ohio officials used industry assumptions that were overly optimistic, and, more significantly, officials underestimated how the recession would affect consumer spending. Sobul, who tracks the numbers now as a financial officer for an Ohio school district, said schools that once were expected to receive more than $80 per pupil statewide in casino money are now expecting about $51 per pupil.
 

In Maryland, casino revenue has been hundreds of millions of dollars short of a December 2008 projection by the Department of Legislative Services.
 

Chips sit on a blackjack table in the Lady Luck Casino Nemacolin shortly after its grand opening in Farmington, Pa. The odds are long on the Northeast casino projects hitting financial expectations. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File) ORG XMIT: BX701 (Photo: Gene J. Puskar, AP)

Even in Pennsylvania, the casino boom's success story, it took the addition of table games in 2010 to bring revenue beyond levels projected by a state task force that assumed they would offer only slot machines. Doug Harbach, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, said the projections were not badly inflated.
 

"You have to take into account that the market in surrounding states now has much more competition," he said.
 

For all the attention to revenue projections, many industry insiders say the real test is whether banks, which conduct their own research, will loan money for a casino.
 

"If a bank is going to put up a hundred million dollars, that's a tacit show of feasibility," said Michael Ross, president of the Innovation Group in Winter Park, Florida, one of many consulting firms in the forecasting business.

Where some earlier states were often guided by in-house analysis, Massachusetts and New York have brought in more outside experts to conduct their own market research, assess the numbers from the developers and guide state officials who acknowledge their limited experience with the gambling industry.
 

Even so, estimates made during a bidding process can vary so widely that even rival developers say they are sometimes mystified. The chief executive at Connecticut's Mohegan Sun, which lost out to Wynn Resorts in a competition for a Boston-area casino license, said the Canadian consulting firm working with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission should have challenged their rival's projections for spending by international high rollers.
 

USA TODAY

'Basic economics apply to casinos': Opposing view

"I don't think enough questions were asked by the consultants," CEO Mitchell Etess said. "If you're in meetings with the gaming commission, and you get the sense they like Wynn, you're not going to ask a lot of questions."
 

Massachusetts Gaming Commissioner Enrique Zuniga said Wynn promised lower numbers overall but from a broader area. He said officials are well aware that projections are only estimates, and they look at many other factors, including details of the proposed property, the developers' established clientele and market research.

"We're not taking any numbers to the bank," Zuniga said.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/02/21/casinos-inflated-expectations/23614343/

 

Time to say ENOUGH!

The complex structure of insulin in pigs differs from humans by only 2 amino acids.
Pigs are employed in testing because they resemble humans in their metabolism of alcohol.

For those, among numerous other issues, the utmost respect for pigs is deserved.

Pigs are really pretty neat critters!

How could it fairly be said that the conduct of the Massachusetts Gam[bl]ing Commission resembles PIGS FEEDING AT A TROUGH?


A partiality to foxes renders a similar disdain.....

How could we blame a FOX for guarding a HEN HOUSE?

...and the chickens are wide-eyed and innocent......

There seems no similar comparison to the reprehensible conduct by the Massachusetts Gam[bl]ing Commission beyond .....

They raised their hands and swore allegience to blindly FOLLOW....even they're not sure what they're following.....

From the beginning, the Political Hacks ignored common sense, ignored their own policy when they appointed and stood by Stan McGee......

Not only did it NEVER get any better......

Now they're spending TAXPAYERS' HARD-EARNED dollars to call ROOM SERVICE? ORDER + $100 MEALS? and much else.....?

The media has been more than kind and generous genuflecting to the clown car and ignoring faults....

...not only has the Clown Car taken on more passengers.....

THEY did it with your $$$$$.....

Isn't it time to say ENOUGH?


You've seen what PREDATORY GAMBLING has done.....


Let's REPEAL THE CASINO DEAL!

They Have No Control Even Over Themselves

Massachusetts taxpayers should be outraged!

Boston Business Journal included an extensive list of expenditures that's worth reviewing. Please take the time!

The only way to assure the safety of the Commonwealth of such excesses is to REPEAL THE CASINO DEAL!

February 24, 2014 - BOSTON – Repeal the Casino Deal’s chairman, John Ribeiro, responded today to an announcement by Steve Crosby, the state’s top gaming official, that he would investigate spending by the Mass. Gaming Commission on the heels of a Boston Business Journal report of a Commission employees spending extravagant amounts of money on expenses including room service, last minute flights around the world and hotel bills, while often receiving reimbursement from casino giants.

Ribeiro noted that while the gaming commission claims to be exempt from state public employee spending and travel guidelines because the commission was created with money from a state “rainy day fund” rather than a line item appropriation, Attorney General Martha Coakley contradicted that theory in a 2011 letter to Secretary William Galvin. In that letter she wrote that the law creating the state gaming commission was not subject to a referendum vote because the law appropriates money to fund the commission.

Massachusetts law states that "[n]o law . . . that appropriates money for the current or ordinary expenses of the commonwealth or for any of its departments, boards, commissions or institutions shall be the subject of a referendum petition."

Statement of Casino repeal chairman John Ribeiro on Mass. Gaming Commission spending

“It’s about time for Crosby to look into this extravagant spending. It shouldn’t have taken a newspaper report and public outrage to highlight the need for spending controls.

It is disheartening to see that the members of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission have disrespected taxpayers with lavish spending, like one employee’s room service tab that totaled upwards of $500, a dinner bill at $111 per plate and plane tickets that rung up at three times the cost of economy flights.

Furthermore, for state commissioner Enrique Zuniga to claim that the very casino giants that the commission should be investigating and policing picking up tabs for flights, hotels and gourmet meals does not create a conflict is absurd.

This report just highlights the casino moguls’ ability to buy their way into Massachusetts communities, and the gaming commission’s disrespect for the taxpayers for whom they are supposed to be working.

These findings create a reason for the state’s voters to distrust the gaming commission and yet another reason for all residents of Massachusetts to demand the right to vote on this change to Massachusetts’ moral fabric.”

Contact: John Ribeiro -- 617-981-4177

Stop Casinos For Good!

www.repealthecasinodeal.org