Many of us first participated in our mission to oppose a regional casino or lottery in our part of the country. But after becoming involved in this good fight, we learned this issue has an equally damaging impact on our nation and its future.
Each of us needs to be a messenger in our local area and deliver the word about why the time has come to sunset this public policy. The message that we're giving to Congress today can be boiled down to 30 seconds and can be used to talk with anyone, regardless of their age, political persuasion and geography. Here it is:
A look at the facts of almost 40 years of government-regulated gambling leads to one unavoidable conclusion: Whether in the form of regional casinos or state lotteries, government’s regulation of gambling has been a spectacular failure by almost any measure.
1) It creates more inequality of opportunity than any other single act of government
2) It has shown over and over again that the almost singular focus of government-regulated gambling has been on driving maximum sales and profits, not protecting citizens: “Taxation By Exploitation”
3) It has led to higher taxes for less servicesfor the 2/3 of citizens who rarely gamble andto worse state budget problems over the long term: “You Pay Even If You Don’t Play”
4) It has supremely failed to reduce illegal gambling
5) It has proven to be about granting monopolies and awarding regulatory advantages to favored firmsand little to do with economic growth and free market principles
Please do your part to talk to your community members, your faith organizations and your public officials about why one of our local and national priorities must be to sunset the policy of government-sponsored gambling.
Build a more humane and just society: sunset the policy of government-sponsored gambling because it's dishonest, financially damaging to citizens and contributes to rising inequality of opportunity.
I'm inviting you to join us for two upcoming forums in Massachusetts on how
casinos contribute to rising inequality.
The first forum is sponsored by Stand Up for Brocktonthis Tuesday night, April
7th, at 7pm at Trinity Baptist Church located at 1367 Main Street in
Brockton.
The second forum is sponsored by No Casino Somerset on Tuesday, April
14th, at 7pm at Old Town Hall, 1458 County Street
in Somerset.
Many of you have much talent, knowledge and experience to share with citizens
in these communities who face casino referendums in the coming weeks. Please try
to lend a hand as much as you can. I'll be there and hope to see you there,
too.
End government-sponsored gambling because it is dishonest, financially
damaging to citizens and contributes to the rising unfairness and inequality in
our country.
The New York Times has been publishing a high-profile series on
inequality in America they've titled "The Great Divide" moderated by Nobel
laureate in economics, Joseph Stiglitz.
As part of its series, today's Sunday New York Times published a very
important op-ed about about how government-sponsored casinos and lotteries
contribute to inequality. This piece gives a voice to tens of millions of
Americans whose lives have been profoundly impacted by this public policy. It
also elevates the voices of all of you who have sacrificed for this just cause,
and who continue to participate, regardless whether you've been a part of it for
twenty years or twenty days.
I urge you as strongly as I can to read The Times op-ed and then share
it as widely as possible to your network of family, friends and co-workers. Here is the link to the op-ed on The NY
Times website and the tools to share it are on the left side of the
article. Please act to share it as soon as you're done reading because this is
the message we have been working so hard to advance and now that it is producing
successful results, we must seize the opportunity by working even harder to
share it.
The piece is written by Barbara Whitehead, one of the nation's leading public
scholars on government-sponsored gambling and director of civil society initiatives at
the Institute for American Values. Barbara was also the principal investigator
of the 2013 national report, Why Casinos Matter: Thirty-One Evidence-Based
Propositions from the Health and Social Sciences, which presented the
mounting independent evidence that government’s public policy of promoting
casinos is contributing to the unfairness and inequality in our nation.
Barbara's latest and maybe most important report The Incredible Shrinking
Problem: Gambling and the Politics of Expert Knowledge will be publicly
released at an upcoming national conference on government-sponsored gambling
being held on July 24-25. The full details of the conference can be found at this link. Here are some suggestions for travel logistics.
I'll be there and I encourage you to get down there if it is all possible.
I commonly tell journalists that it is not a question of if government
will phase out its policy of sponsoring casinos and predatory forms of
lotteries, but when. It's inevitable. Today, with this NY Times oped, the inevitable
just came a little closer. The more you keep pushing, the faster it is going to
happen.
If you learned there was a financial advisor in your community who never invested his own money in any of the financial products he offered, would you encourage your friends and neighbors to give him their money? Would you trust the future of your own family with a guy like that? Of course not. So if you knew casino operators, slot machine makers and the politicians they partner with don’t use slot machines or gamble, why would you allow them to target your family and the citizens of your community, luring them to gamble away their savings, often turning their lives totally upside down? Because that’s exactly what you will be doing if you allow New Hampshire state government to sponsor casinos. While many state leaders say that they are committed to fighting unfairness and inequality, their policy of sponsoring casinos is actually intensifying the very unfairness and inequality that they decry. And the most perfect example of it is this: a casino is the only product or service where the people who profit from it and promote it don’t use it. Despite reaping billions of dollars from the have-nots in America, nearly every major casino operator, including Steve Wynn, Gary Loveman, CEO of Caesars, and Jim Murren, CEO of MGM, does not gamble, which they have confirmed in media interviews. What about the guys who make the slot machines? In 2004, New York Times reporter Gary Rivlin toured the headquarters of International Gaming Technology (IGT), America’s biggest maker of electronic slot machines. Rivlin tells the story of his visit to IGT: “Most of the people I met inside I.G.T. told me they never played slot machines on their own time. When I asked one I.G.T. artist if he ever plays, he acted as if I had insulted him. ‘Slots are for losers,’ he spat, and then, coming to his senses, begged me to consider that an off-the-record comment.” Slots are for losers, he said. Many of those losers will come from your family, your friends and your community.
But casino operators and slot makers are not the only ones who don’t gamble. Nearly all of the politicians who sponsor casino legislation and promote this public policy across their states don’t gamble either. Let’s look right here in New Hampshire. Gov. Maggie Hassan has made partnering with casinos a top priority. Yet despite being a relentless advocate for casinos, she admitted she has never even visited a casino. How about the state’s leading advocate for casinos for the last 15 years, State Sen. Lou D’Allesandro? Remarkably, but not surprisingly, D’Allesandro confessed to an Associated Press reporter in January 2014 that “I don’t gamble.” After all, according to our friend the IGT slot machine designer, it’s for losers. Often described as “predatory gambling,” government sponsorship of casinos (and lotteries) is based on cheating and exploiting citizens. It is a mathematical certainty that the more citizens spend on gambling sponsored by the government, the more money they lose. Most indefensibly of all, a mounting pile of independent evidence further confirms that government’s public policy of promoting casinos is contributing to the unfairness and inequality in our nation. It is harming health, draining wealth from people in the lower ranks of the income distribution, and contributing to economic inequality. These are among the findings of “Why Casinos Matter: Thirty-One Evidence-Based Propositions from the Health and Social Sciences,” a report released from the Council on Casinos in September 2013, an independent group of scholars and public policy leaders convened by the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan New York City-based think tank. A vote against casinos is a vote for fairness and equality. A vote for casinos is a vote for unfairness and inequality. Or echoing the unforgettable words of the IGT slot designer, it’s another way of saying New Hampshire citizens are losers. Les Bernal is the national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, based in Washington, DC. http://www.unionleader.com/article/20140312/OPINION02/140319757/1004/opinion
Faith in action. Local faith leaders in Massachusetts unite against the unfairness and inequality produced by government sponsorship of predatory gambling.
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