Thursday, October 18, 2012
Joe Volz: State gambling ballot question not a good bet
Walter Mills, the conservative Frederick barber, and I rarely agree on any political issue but in this election we both argue that Question 7, which allows voters to add yet another casino to the state, is a bad bet.
The fancy casino would be built at National Harbor in Prince George’s County.
Walter loves gambling more than most, but I don’t care one way or the other. I have rarely been to a casino, and I can’t think of the last time I bought a scratch lottery ticket at a gas station.
I am not morally opposed. I just think it is a good way to lose money. I would rather lose it watching a good movie.
If others want to gamble, though, I have no objection. Let’s just make sure we tax them. Maybe we should have a commuter tax, in which some of the money goes to Maryland, even though the casino, such as Charles Town, is in West Virginia.
Walter and I come at Question 7 from different perspectives.
Walter figures Prince George’s County is the worst place for us Fredericktonians to go to bet. For one thing, it is farther than the one-stop gambling spot at Charles Town.
The pro-National Harbor crowd argues that the revenue has been promised for schools. Well, maybe, but there is nothing in writing in the referendum that says that.
In the past, we have seen a lot of money supposedly raised for specific needy causes end up in the state’s general fund to be used for anything.
And Walter points out that the
state is nearly saturated with gambling venues now. There don’t seem to be enough gamblers to go around.
Perryville has had to give back some of its machines because they were not getting enough play. Arundel Mills has been doing fine — so far — but it is a new attraction and may wither in time, just as a lot of those fancy casinos in Atlantic City did.
Before you know it, those
promised 12,000 jobs for National Harbor gambling might evaporate, and we will be left with big mausoleums to our lust for gambling. Look how much trouble our race track industry is in right now.
Someone has surely paid their 'experts' gobs of $$$ to arrive at such outrageous projections.
These outright lies by Gambling Industry have remained unchecked and you will discover a category on the right of this blog or click below.
If any state had the sense to include within the legislation mandates on both hiring and revenue, you'd suddenly see reality injected!
Check these:
Gambling
Revenue Promises Rarely Met
Overstated
Projections
OVERSTATED PROJECTIONS
What should have happened was to establish casino gambling at the Maryland tracks so players could do it all at one location. But politics got in the way of that happening.
Walter has this to say about National Harbor: “They could pay my way down, give me free food and a free room, and I still wouldn’t go.”
Some days I long for the good old days when Pappy Poole ran his (legal) off-track gambling parlor and restaurant down at the Cracked Claw in Urbana. But Pappy was getting up there in years, and the state was cutting down on his take. So he shut the place down.
Too bad.
It wasn’t pretentious. The food was nothing to rival Volt’s, but it was a home-style Frederick County place. Not a fancy, expensive high-roller operation — as the one proposed for Prince George’s.
Yes, I actually did go to Pappy’s a few times (only for the atmosphere) and once won a couple of bucks, although I made the mistake of leaving the ticket on my table, and the waitresses swept it up with the plastic plates.
Joe Volz, a former Pulitzer Prize finalist, has written for newspapers in New York and Washington.
You can reach him at
volzjoe2003@yahoo.com.
http://www.gazette.net/article/20121018/OPINION/710189857/1014/joe-volz-state-gambling-ballot-question-not-a-good-bet&template=gazette
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