Voters oppose online lottery, survey finds

By Sean P. Murphy GLOBE STAFF  MAY 16, 2017

Nearly 70 percent of Massachusetts voters do not support legislation that would allow the state lottery to sell tickets online, a new survey has found.

Just 5 percent said they support expanding the lottery to include Internet games “very” strongly, the survey found, while 7 percent said they support the proposal “somewhat” strongly.

The survey was conducted by Princeton Research Associates on behalf of a coalition of business owners who fear they will lose business if lawmakers allow online lottery sales. The coalition includes the Massachusetts Food Association, the Boston Convenience Store Owners Association, the New England Service Station and Auto Repair Association, and the Massachusetts Package Stores Association.

“We’re heartened by this poll because it shows the public is as skeptical as retailers are about taking the lottery online,” said Joanne Mendes, executive director of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association, which represents convenience stores. “We hope this poll goes a long way in educating lawmakers on how the public feels.”

State treasurer Deborah Goldberg, who oversees the lottery, has pushed for online sales. Last year, a bill to allow online lottery sales passed the state Senate, but failed in the House.

Proponents of online ticket sales note that lottery revenue has fallen 16 percent between 2008 and 2015, accounting for inflation. In an increasingly cashless society, fewer people are likely to have money on hand to buy lottery tickets at convenience and liquor stores, they say.

“The only way to reach the younger market is via online lottery games,” Goldberg has said. “It’s the future and we need to face it.”

Lottery officials declined to comment.

Lottery agents across the state say they rely heavily on lottery sales, and for several years have fought back online proposals.

Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, said the state’s lottery is the most successful in the country, raising almost $1 billion annually to help pay for police, firefighters, teachers and other local services.

“Abandoning the current system for a model which has yet to be proven successful anywhere in the country is simply bad policy,” he said.

The survey also found that 80 percent of respondents believe state residents already have enough access to the lottery through the more than 7,500 lottery agents at convenience stores, gas stations, package stores, and other locations. It found that 65 percent of voters believe stores would be better able to prevent minors from playing than an online lottery.

The survey was based on interviews with 550 residents, randomly selected from voter lists across the state.

Sean P. Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @spmurphyboston.

How irrational is the selection and the COST?

Isn't this ENOUGH?  

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/05/16/voters-oppose-online-lottery-survey-finds/zMPWRIaCePc5PSvmvDpLyN/story.html?s_campaign=bostonglobe%3Asocialflow%3Atwitter

As State Senator, Michael Morrissey spoke in favor of casino gambling at several 

public forums and was wholly uninformed. now he has a 'crime problem' as 

Norfolk DA? 

Expanded FREE Drinking Hours? 

I posted the entire Boston Globe article [it had been archived] when Beacon 

Hill mentioned  expanded ALCOHOL. 

If Rosenberg leaves, this will go through. [He was unmercifully attacked 

about future changes - no one else will remember. This is what Casino Vultures do.] 

 

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Norfolk DA wants state funds to deal with Plainridge Casino-tied crime

Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey’s office is asking the state’s gaming commission to help foot the bill for an attorney who would deal specifically with crimes – such as firearm offenses, domestic violence cases and even instances of assaults on police officers – tied to the new Plainridge Park Casino, reports the Herald’s Matt Stout. Crime associated with new casinos? We thought there wasn’t supposed to a big spike in crime tied to casinos, or at least that’s what we were told by gambling proponents. (Insert obligatory snort here.) DA seeks $75G for a casino attorney

DA seeks $75G for a casino attorney Norfolk prosecutors say the Plainridge Park Casino is driving up the number of criminal cases in their workload ...

Norfolk District Attorney ­Michael W. Morrissey confused?

Norfolk District Attorney ­Michael W. Morrissey confused? The Boston Globe presented information this morning about the personal communication between the discredited che...

Lotteries, payday lending, and the swindling of America’s poor

Lotteries, payday lending, and the swindling of America’s poor

By Michael Gerson

In that portion of the presidential field that does not view self-government as a stage for self-promotion, prejudice and blithering ignorance, one of the more encouraging trends is an increasing seriousness about the issue of poverty.

Events in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore have focused the public mind, just as the consequential publication of Robert Putnam’s “Our Kids” has served to inform and deepen the policy debate. The question is posed: Can the United States go on as it has been with a good portion of its working class almost entirely isolated from the promise of our country?

It is a yes or no question. A “yes” involves the acceptance of a rigid, self-perpetuating class system in a country with democratic and egalitarian pretentions — a system upheld and enforced by heavy-handed policing, routine incarceration and social and educational segregation.

A “no” is just the start of a very difficult task. The mixed legacy ofthe Great Society — helping the elderly get health care, it turns out, is easier than creating opportunity in economically and socially decimated communities — has left the national dialogue on poverty ideologically polarized. And many policy proposals in this field seem puny in comparison to the Everest of need.

But there is one set of related policy ideas that would dramatically help the poor and should not be ideologically divisive. How about a renewed effort to help the poor by refusing to cheat them?

I am referring to a broad and growing collaboration between government and business to systematically defraud and exploit the poor through state lotteries, payday lending and payday gambling.

The lottery is a particularly awful example of political corruption. Here government is raising revenue by selling the Powerball dream of wealth without work. Studies in a number of states have shown that lottery ticket sales are concentrated in poor communities, that poor people spend a larger portion of their income on tickets and that the poor are more likely to view the lottery as an investment. “This could be your ticket out,” promised one typical billboard in a distressed Chicago neighborhood.

Think on this a moment. In a place where government has utterly failed to provide adequate education and public services, government is using advertising to exploit the desperation of poor people in order to raise revenue that funds other people’s public services. This is often called a “regressive” form of taxation. The word does not adequately capture the cruelty and crookedness of selling a lie to vulnerable people in order to bilk them. Offering the chance of one in a 100 million is the equivalent of a lie. Lotteries depend on the deceptive encouragement of mythical thinking and fantasies of escape.

Another form of financial predation against the poor — this one in the private sector — is payday lending. If you live in one of the 36 states that allow the practice, you have probably seen the storefronts in depressed neighborhoods. There are now more of them in the United States than there are McDonald’s franchises. In theory, payday lenders offer small loans of a few hundred dollars without credit checks to cover emergency cash flow needs. In practice, lenders make their money on repeat borrowers who get behind in their payments and roll them over into larger loans often with triple-digit interest rates.

The result is a downward spiral of debt in which borrowers pay back many times their loan amount — often seized directly from their bank accounts. This is what used to be called loan-sharking and usury. It is now a $46 billion industry, with considerable political clout, selling a financial product to the poor that encourages debt servitude.

Business and government in many states have entered a full partnership on payday gambling — moving gaming out of destination resorts and into malls and riverboats, closer to middle- and working-class gamblers. State governments raise money by taxing revenue generated by slot machines that are really sophisticated computers, designed to encourage players to enter the “zone” and play “to extinction.” Compulsive behavior is the intended goal of the software program, and thus the intended goal of state legislators who would rather encourage addiction than ask the broader public for taxes.

The United States is bursting at the seams with populist energy. Here is a cause that should appeal to activists prone to camping in parks or to wearing tricorn hats: Let’s get government out of the business of treating citizens as marks and dupes. And let’s confront everyone — in business and government — who benefits from defrauding the poor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/refusing-t0-cheat-the-poor/2015/07/09/78154b9a-2670-11e5-aae2-6c4f59b050aa_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.88e5ccc80b40

Kingston: How Wyo. abused gov’t power

• By Tim Kingston

On May 8, 2016, my good friend Ed Atchison died. Though Ed had a long history of health problems, his death was unexpected, with only his dog at his side.

Ed was an Army officer in Vietnam, and after his service, he became a licensed counselor at the Cheyenne VA, including becoming the director of the Cheyenne/Fort Collins Veterans Outreach Center. Later, Ed moved to Las Vegas, where he counseled vets at the largest homeless shelter in the city.

When Ed moved to Las Vegas, he became concerned with the issue of gambling addiction, or “problem gambling.” He saw how gambling can take over people’s lives and cause them to lose their savings, home, family and even their lives.

He learned that suicide is a particular problem among problem gamblers. National studies show one in six problem gamblers attempts suicide.

He was particularly concerned with the issue of problem gambler suicide in Wyoming, because Wyoming has one of the highest suicide rates in the country. Ed became one of the very first nationally certified gambling counselors and was the only such counselor in Wyoming.

The Wyoming Legislature approved a lottery in 2014.

The legislation required that a percentage of gambling funds be used for the prevention and treatment of problem gambling.

The legislation also created a state entity known as the Wyoming Lottery Corporation to start up and run the lottery. During the startup phase, Ed worked with the Lottery Corporation on the issue of problem gambling and provided them his unique expertise and experience. However, Ed came to believe that the Lottery Corporation was not concerned with the issue of problem gambling and was not taking steps necessary to address the problem. The relationship between Ed and the Lottery Corporation became contentious, and there was a parting of the ways.

But Ed did not give up. He continued to push executives of the Wyoming lottery, including Jon Clontz, its executive director, on the issue. It is fair to say that Ed became a thorn in the side of the Wyoming lottery. He also wrote numerous letters to the editor and was interviewed by reporters and commentators, where he expressed his belief that the Wyoming Lottery Corporation was not doing anything close to enough to address problem gambling.

And this is the point of this piece. Instead of addressing Ed’s concerns, instead of trying to work with him, instead of adequately addressing the issue of problem gambling, the state of Wyoming, through the Wyoming Lottery Corporation, sued Ed Atchison for defamation.

I represented Ed in that case. I have had a lot of experience with First Amendment cases, and I can say that I have never seen, certainly not here in Wyoming, a governmental agency suing one of its own citizens for defamation. It was and is absolutely unprecedented.

For an entity of the state of Wyoming, armed with all of the resources and power of the state, to use that power to sue a private person for being critical of the state is an absolute travesty and should cause great concern to Wyoming’s citizens. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution absolutely protects everything Ed said and did with regard to the lottery.

Yes, Ed was difficult. Yes, he pushed hard and was critical of the Wyoming Lottery Corporation. But for a state entity to sue someone for being criticized flies in the face of everything we as Americans believe about our role in our own governance and government.

Without engaging in hyperbole, what the Wyoming Lottery Corporation did, what the state of Wyoming did to Ed, is what totalitarian governments do. Totalitarian governments crush dissent, and this is what the state was trying to do, crush the dissent of Ed Atchison.

I hope that this is the last time that the state of Wyoming and its entities engage in this kind of abuse of governmental power. We all must be vigilant to ensure that it never happens again.

Tim Kingston has been a Cheyenne attorney in general practice here and throughout Wyoming for the last 23 years. He represented Ed Atchison in the lawsuit referenced in the op-ed. Email: Kingston@rockymtnlaw.com.

http://www.wyomingnews.com/opinion/kingston-how-wyo-abused-gov-t-power/article_97275e28-6699-11e6-9641-a39196e8ee05.html

Iowa: 'They suffer in silence;' stigma high with gambling addicts

'They suffer in silence;' stigma high with gambling addicts

• Brian Wellner bwellner@qctimes.com
• 
  

Twenty-nine thousand Iowans struggled with a gambling addiction in 2015, but only 600 called the state's hotline, 1-800-BETS OFF.

That's a "huge disparity," said Eric Preuss, program manager for the Iowa Gambling Treatment Program through the Iowa Department of Public Health.

Preuss, who has worked in substance abuse treatment since the late 1980s, said the stigma surrounding a gambling habit is higher than other addictions. The rate of suicide is higher, too, he said.

"There is an extreme amount of shame and guilt," Preuss said. "They suffer in silence. These are people that are hurting. It takes courage to pick up the phone."

About 68 percent of Iowans, or 1.6 million people, have gambled in the past 12 months, statistics show. Of those, 85 percent stay within their means and very rarely or never exhibit problem behaviors.

"They seem to just have fun with it," Preuss said.

The 29,000 who struggle with a gambling addiction represent 1.2 percent of the state's population. Preuss said another 13 percent are considered "at risk," because they have exhibited at least one of nine criteria for determining problem gambling. That could include losing a large sum of money in one bet or lying to your spouse about where you were.

Blair Brown, a problem gambling counselor in Davenport, said where she often sees the addiction beginning to form is when the person is trying to duplicate the high he or she felt after winning the first time.

"They had a big win the first time gambling," Brown said. "They're chasing that high over and over again."

She is concerned that as gambling continues to become more available the risk of relapse will grow among those who already are struggling with the addiction.

Preuss shares the concern, too.

In 1991-92, the Quad-Cities went from zero to three riverboat casinos. Today, Iowa has 22 casinos and 2,400 Iowa Lottery outlets, and the state issues more than 2,800 social and charitable gaming licenses, such as for a church bingo event.

"Gambling has always existed," Preuss said. "Poker always existed. But now with the stuff you can do on smartphones, and there is talk of fantasy sports being legalized, what existed 25 years ago looks much different today."

http://qctimes.com/news/local/they-suffer-in-silence-stigma-high-with-gambling-addicts/article_d23716ac-4e6a-5d7a-bbed-8e922186548a.html

Former Tech employee indicted on felony theft charges to feed lottery addiction

Former Tech employee indicted on felony theft charges

Douglas Sims blames actions on addiction to Texas Lottery

Posted: July 28, 2015

Sims

By GABRIEL MONTE

A-J MEDIA

A former Texas Tech employee told a Lubbock police detective he stole from the university and from two other businesses to support his addiction to playing the Texas Lottery.

A Lubbock County grand jury indicted Tuesday Douglas Sims on a three third-degree felony counts of theft between $20,000 to $100,000.

Prosecutors accuse Sims of stealing thousands of items from three companies including Tech and pawned them at four pawn shops and at a metal scrap yard in Lubbock, according to an arrest warrant.

Sims later told Lubbock police Det. Bradley McMahan he initially lied to him about not stealing Tech property to save his job.

Sims is listed as an asbestos compliance manager for Tech’s engineering services, according to the Tech staff directory online.

However, officials said Sims’ indictment only alleges items stolen from two contracting companies.

More charges alleging theft from Tech may follow, the officials said.

Tech spokesman Chris Cook said Sims was fired earlier this month.

McMahan reported he went through a database pawn shops and jewelry stores update and discovered Sims received more than $56,000 from selling 1,076 items from pawn shops between January 2012 to June 27, the warrant states.

The items pawned included surveying equipment such as a level, a survey magnet and tripods; construction equipment such as a drill, a grinder and a power inverter; and air testing equipment such as a vaporizer, a pump and a microscope.

The items belonged to Wilkerson Properties and to X8 Environmental, for whom Sims worked on a part-time or contractual basis.

The owners of the firms said Sims had authority to use the property but not to pawn it.

After conducting surveillance on Sims, McMahan interviewed Sims at his office at Tech.

The detective reported Sims knew why he was there and admitted to pawning the property to pay back loans.

Sims initially denied stealing Tech property, but later admitted to stealing from the school.

McMahan reported Sims confessed to his employers he stole their property and was willing to return the property and make amends.

Sims left the detective a voicemail saying “I got pretty stupid there, and greedy.”

Sims also provided a list of items he pawned without permission, the warrant states.

Sims blamed his actions on his addiction to playing the Texas Lottery. He told McMahan his gambling addiction nearly cost him his marriage.

McMahan reported Sims gave him consent to search his vehicle and the detective found golf clubs, pawn tickests and literature on addiction recovery, the warrant states.

Sims was arrested July 14 and was released on bond July 17, according to court records.

A third-degree felony carries a punishment of two to 10 years in prison.

http://lubbockonline.com/crime-and-courts/courts/2015-07-28/former-tech-employee-indicted-felony-theft-charges#.Vbi2X7NVhHw