Glossy Casino Dreams Face Test At Ballot Box

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REPEAL THE CASINO DEAL

Glossy Casino Dreams Face Test At Ballot Box


June 26, 2014

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court shuffled the deck in New England public affairs Tuesday when it ruled that there shall be a referendum in the Bay State this fall on legalizing state licensed casinos. This was good news on many counts.

The principle of the people having a say in their own affairs requires constant affirmation in an age of bossy government. Casino opponents had collected tens of thousands of signatures, far exceeding number required to put a question on the ballot. Martha Coakley, the state attorney general whose authoritarian instinct is never far from the surface, had dismissed the petitions and blocked the referendum.

The Massachusetts decision was a rebuke to Coakley as she plods along in her race for governor, a Democrat in an emphatically Democratic state. The casino interests that haven't already been voted down in local referendums are also unhappy. They will have to spend millions to persuade the state's voters not to repeal the law that allows three regional casinos and a slots parlor.


The poorly funded but spirited opponents of casinos in Massachusetts have shown themselves to be dab hands at defeating proposals in local votes in West Springfield, Milford, Palmer and East Boston. Springfield voters approved a casino referendum last year in a campaign that saw casino company MGM Springfield spend millions to win the vote in that beleaguered city.

The airwaves will be full of testimonials on the benefits to the economy and tax receipts. Opponents of repealing the casino law will trot out every manner of familiar types to proclaim that casinos will mean more police, better schools, construction jobs and the obliteration of every ill known to the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, birthplace of the American Revolution. By November, some may wonder why there are not casinos planned for every town since their supporters see them as an elixir for any ailment.

Neighboring states ought to be rejoicing over this obstacle to building three casinos and a slots parlor in New England's largest state. Those resorts, if completed, will threaten Connecticut's two Indian casinos in the southeast corner of the state. Connecticut's government has a significant stake in the money spent on gambling at Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun.

The campaign to thwart casino opponents will feature many colorful drawings of gleaming buildings. Voters possess a more measured view of these proposals than do the politicians. Our elected officials are unusually susceptible to architects and their renderings of the future. It's their drug of choice.

Maybe that provides another reason Hartford's leaders fell so hard for a local taxpayer-funded $60 million minor league baseball stadium they want to build downtown. If that dull grocery store that developers were considering for a location close to the stadium site had been accompanied by unrealistic drawings, it might still be in the game.

One reason stadiums elicit stronger reactions from than public than casinos is that rich team owners want the public to pay for their facilities. Casino operators do not. City Council leader Shawn "Bringing Baseball Home" Wooden has learned this at considerable cost to his state Senate primary campaign against incumbent Democrat Eric Coleman.

Wooden brought a wide grin to the announcement of the Rock Cats stadium deal. It's turned upside down into a deep frown as the public has made its displeasure known over the price tag the poverty-stricken city would have to pay for a stadium. Other issues have won some attention. The entire process was conducted with a contempt for public participation. Stadium-loving consultants were hired in a manner that kept that expenditure secret until the unveiling of the process.

Hartford citizens will have been cast in one role by their leaders: the patsies who pay for the joint. There was talk that if Hartford had not reached a deal to move the Rock Cats from their home in New Britain, the team would have gone to Springfield. That appears not to have been true.

The Massachusetts casino vote offers some relief to Hartford's taxpayers. If the casino law is repealed, there are a couple of spots suitable for a stadium. I wonder how eager the people of Springfield would be to pay for one. They like colorful drawings.



http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-op-rennnie-massachusetts-court-allows-casino-re-20140626,0,177552.story




 

Martha: Too busy running for Governor to do your job?

Attorney General Coakley:

While I realize that you're pre-occupied with running for Governor....I know! I know! It's just so time-consuming!

But maybe you could do your job?

The disqualification of Plainridge from holding a Slot Barn License raises FAR MORE QUESTIONS than were answered.

Your office ignored, then buried the ILLEGAL RAFFLE conducted by Plainridge for many years in clear violation of Massachusetts clearly written laws.

To allow

'we promise we won't continue to break the clearly written statute as we have for MANY, MANY years....'

is NOT ACCEPTABLE.....unless you want to soft-peddle BREAKING THE LAW.

Don't want to make waves in your run for Governor by upholding the law?

Don't want to put it in writing?

Let's just sweep this little puppy under the carpet!

Too many unanswered questions remain about the PLAINRIDGE CORRUPTION SCANDAL!

 

WHO IS ASKING? 

Just a few.....

1. What duties does the person in the 'MONEY ROOM' bear as far as disbursing Piotkowski's Piggy Bank?

2. If records were kept, who had access and was privy to those records?

3.Were taxes paid on Mr. Piontowski's CASH WITHDRAWALS?

4. Isn't the RACING COMMISSION supposed to audit the financial records of a race track? Who is?

5. If the CASH WITHDRAWALS were disclosed, who knew? who questioned? What's the governing statute?

6. If the Commonwealth is supposed to receive the FUNDS from Plainridge for disbursal, how was that accounted for? Who got short-changed? Was it the Commonwealth who was supposed be paid based on the 'HANDLE'? Was Plainville short-changed?

7. If this is CRIMINAL, can we count on more than 'we promise not to do it again' from the Attorney General's Office?

8. If Gary Piontkowski resigned in APRIL and the Town of PLainville negotiated and accepted a "Host Community Agreement" subsequent to that time, does that invalidate the Agreement? Doesn't that constitute 'NEGOTIATING IN BAD FAITH'?

9. Who is going to raise questions about the BLIND FAITH, LOYALTY and DEDICATION Plainville Town Officials seem to have placed in a bunch of CROOKS?

10. Plainville abutters were forced to endure MONTHS of endless BLASTING while Plainville Town Officials turned a deaf ear.....

The PEACEFUL ENJOYMENT of their property was superseded by Town Officials genuflecting to Plainridge as a PARKING GARAGE was erected in their backyards.

 11. Plainville lackS WATER, yet Joe Fernandes has dedicated himself to silencing questions and FACTS about WATER.  Doesn't he seem OVERLY DEDICATED to cramming ANY flawed deal through, surrendering any pretense of PROFESSIONALISM.

Where is the protection of Plainville's FUTURE?


Many more questions come to mind.....maybe you can interrupt your campaigning.....



 CROSS POSTED: Martha: Too busy running for Governor to do your job?

Mashpee Wampanoag: Tribe leader was arrested on drug charge

Tribe leader was arrested on drug charge
By George Brennan

MASHPEE — The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's recently hired director of child welfare was arrested on a drug possession charge just four months before taking the job, according to court records.

Ronda Jones-Hughes, 35, was arrested Jan. 20 and charged by the Broward County (Florida) Sheriff's Office with possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana, according to records filed online by the Broward County clerk of courts. She pleaded no contest to the charge, according to court records, was ordered to pay a $100 fine, plus a $50 court fee.

Jones-Hughes is still listed on the tribe's website as the director, but a source said she was fired from the $70,000 per year job during a closed-door tribal council meeting on Dec. 29.

Court records show Jones-Hughes was returning from a cruise to the Bahamas when a police dog sniffed out the drugs in U.S. Customs.

In Massachusetts, Jones-Hughes would have been issued a civil citation because the amount she allegedly had in her possession was less than an ounce, but in Florida it's a misdemeanor charge.

The charges against Jones-Hughes were first reported on Reel Wamps, an anonymous blog that comments on Mashpee Wampanoag issues. Shortly after it was reported, the blog was taken down and Reel Wamps launched a website by the same name.

Paul Mills, a tribal elder and outspoken critic of the tribal council administration, said the hiring of Jones-Hughes is an example that tribal leaders are not running the tribe properly.

"We should have a no-tolerance policy in place for something like that, especially for someone working with children," Mills said. "The administration needs to be consistent with (criminal background) checks; everyone hired should be subject to one. That should be a matter of routine."

Tribal Council chairman Cedric Cromwell refused comment through a tribe spokeswoman. "The tribe does not comment on personnel matters," spokeswoman Brooke Scannell said in an e-mail.

In 2008, a tribe member was removed from his job as coordinator of Indian education with the Mashpee Public Schools after it was learned that a drug charge was overlooked.

Repeated calls Thursday and this week to the child welfare office and to Jones-Hughes cell phone listed on the tribe's website were not returned. A woman who answered the cell phone Tuesday said Jones-Hughes calls are now forwarded to her and she can no longer be reached at that number.

According to the tribe's website, the child welfare office provides children and their families with "access to community-based, culturally appropriate services that help them grow up safe, healthy, spiritually strong, and free from abuse." The office collaborates with the state's Department of Children and Families to "prevent out-of-home placement, to maintain family ties and responsibilities, to reunify families and to provide kinship permanency plans for children who cannot return home."

When she was hired for the job, Jones-Hughes, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, was heralded in the Mashpee Wampanoag's monthly newsletter for being an "active and visible advocate for American Indian children."

According to the newsletter, Jones-Hughes graduated with both bachelor's and master's degrees in social work from Rutgers University. She was also credited with establishing the Red Path Child and Family Agency in North Carolina, a first-of-its-kind placement agency for American Indian Children.

She was crowned Miss Indian North Carolina in 1998, the newsletter reported.

Mills and other elders are also once again raising questions about the tribe's finances in letters to Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.

In a Dec. 14 letter sent to Coakley signed by Mills, Ann Peters Brown and Patricia Oakley, the elders specifically question a $17 million loan the tribe has received from Malaysian investors Kien Huat. "The council refuses to produce valid financial reports or the audio tapes of minutes of meetings a concrete proof of government actions and votes," the letter states. "We have no way to stop the spending spree committed in our names while we have many tribal members homeless and hungry."

Scannell declined to comment on the letter but noted that Cromwell has written about finances, including the loan from investors, in the tribe's newsletter.

Coakley's office acknowledged receipt of the letter, but had no further comment. O'Keefe's office said there is no active investigation of the tribe as a result of the letter to his office.

State and federal courts have repeatedly ruled that they lack jurisdiction since the tribe was federally recognized in 2007, making it a sovereign nation with its own government and court.

The latest incarnation of REELWAMPS

Speaking of Gambling Lobbyists ...

In Campaign Contributions, the following were included --

In the McDermott search, the following cropped up --
Timothy Cahill Deposited 11/26/07
McDermott, Terence P. 21 Custom House Street, #300 Boston, MA 02110 Attorney McDermott, Quilty & Miller $200.00McDermott, William P. 21 Custom House Street, Suite #300 Boston, MA 02110 Attorney McDermott, Quilty & Miller $200.00Miller, Stephen McDermott, Quilty, & Miller Boston, MA 02110 Attorney McDermott, Quilty & Miller $200.00

Coakley, Martha 5/16/08 - 5/31/08 for 13182 Coakley, Martha
5/16/2008 McDermott, William c/o McDermott Quilty and Miller, 21 Custom House Street, Suite 300 Boston, MA 02110 Attorney McDermott Quilty and Miller $200.00
5/16/2008 Miller, Stephen c/o McDermott Quilty & Miller, 21 Custom House Street, Suite 300 Boston, MA 02110 Attorney McDermott Quilty & Miller

This is by no means a thorough search, but it raises concerns about elected officials who have received campaign contributions from gambling interests, the access that is granted and their votes. Does it raise concerns about the impartiality of the Attorney General?

In the seat of Wampanoags' power
Lawyer a strong force in tribe's bid for casino