Review: Wampum by Donald Craig Mitchell

The Californian

April 29, 2016

“Wampum — How Indian Tribes, the Mafia, and an Inattentive Congress Invented Indian Gaming, and Created a $28 Billion Dollar Gambling Empire” by Donald Craig Mitchell, published by The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc., available June 2016.

This is a disturbing exposé on the juggernaut that Indian gaming has become in the U.S.A., authored by someone who identifies himself as a recognized expert on federal Indian law. It is also a revealing tutorial on the serpentine workings of government with committees, sub-committees, bureaus, select committees, bills, initiatives, amendments; the finagling, obfuscating, muddying, rewriting, resubmitting, wheeling, dealing, and one-upping. We learn that so many thousands of bills are introduced that the lawmakers cannot possibly read or understand them all, and that many minor bills are presented to a nearly empty house, passed with unrecorded votes. The congressmen depend heavily on their numerous staffers who are usually lawyers and have their own agendas and loyalties.

It is well known in U.S. history how the Native Indians were treated with the arrival of the first settlers ... pushed further and further away into reservations as the settlers increased and the Indian lands were confiscated for their resources. Forty years after the end of the Indian Wars, the consensus of Congress and the Committee for Indian Affairs was to encourage Indians still living on reservations to abandon what remained of the tribal relations, and like the Italians, Irish and other immigrant minorities, assimilate into the national economy and popular culture.

However, in 1933, President Roosevelt appointed John Collier to be Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Collier had come to Washington D.C. to lobby against a bill whose enactment would have compromised Pueblo Indian land rights. Collier, a former social worker, had visited New Mexico in 1920 and had been profoundly affected by the Pueblo Indians’ mystical connection to nature. So, as commissioner, he set about writing a bill whose enactment would have Congress abandon assimilation as the objective of its Indian policy.

To help Collier with this bill, a young lawyer named Felix Cohen was hired. Cohen developed the doctrine of inherent sovereignty which states that each tribe begins its relationship with the federal government as a sovereign power, recognized as such in treaty and legislation. Cohen believed that Native Americans who live on reservations should have the autonomy to govern themselves. Cohen’s book, “The Handbook of Federal Indian Law” was published in 1941 and is still in use today. Therefore, the states have no authority to enforce their laws on a reservation.

In 1964, one of the first Indians who understood how that jurisdictional situation could be used for financial gain lived in Washington State. He started selling unstamped (untaxed) packs of cigarettes from just on the boundary of the reservation to non-Indians from the nearby town. Soon, many tribes were doing the same and the state laws could not be enforced. Indian Bingo began in 1979, unregulated by the states. Organized crime figures became involved, and there was much politicking and lawyering, to no avail, and slot machines/video gaming machines eventually followed, spawning the massive casino complexes that abound today.

The lucky tribes whose reservations were situated near major population centers fared very well. Mitchell reports that “every adult member of the Seminole Tribe now receives $12,000 per month as his or her share of the multi-billion dollar cash flow from the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casinos, four other casinos and their other businesses.” Tribes in remote areas, however, have to get by on welfare from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

When the first Indian Bingo Hall opened in 1979, there were 277 federally recognized tribes. In 2015, there are 340, Mitchell points out.

This book is packed with information and lawyer-speak. It is meticulously researched and cited, and not for the fainthearted.

Audience: Anyone interested in the history of gambling and current Indian affairs.

Joanna Brauer lives in Salinas and is an avid reader of many genres. If you wish to submit a book for review, send a copy to: Joe Truskot/The Salinas Californian, 123 W. Alisal Street, Salinas, CA 93901.

http://www.thecalifornian.com/story/life/2016/04/29/review-wampum-donald-craig-mitchell/83704040/

Addiction is not a disease.....

SATURDAY, JUN 27, 2015 06:30 PM EDT

Addiction is not a disease: A neuroscientist argues that it’s time to change our minds on the roots of substance abuse

A psychologist and former addict insists that the illness model for addiction is wrong, and dangerously so

LAURA MILLER 
(Credit: Alex Malikov via Shutterstock)

The mystery of addiction — what it is, what causes it and how to end it — threads through most of our lives. Experts estimate that one in 10 Americans is dependent on alcohol and other drugs, and if we concede that behaviors like gambling, overeating and playing video games can be addictive in similar ways, it’s likely that everyone has a relative or friend who’s hooked on some form of fun to a destructive degree. But what exactly is wrong with them? For several decades now, it’s been a commonplace to say that addicts have a disease. However, the very same scientists who once seemed to back up that claim have begun tearing it down.

Once, addictions were viewed as failures of character and morals, and society responded to drunks and junkies with shaming, scolding and calls for more “will power.” This proved spectacularly ineffective, although, truth be told, most addicts do quit without any form of treatment. Nevertheless, many do not, and in the mid-20th century, the recovery movement, centered around the 12-Step method developed by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, became a godsend for those unable to quit drinking or drugging on their own. The approach spread to so-called “behavioral addictions,” like gambling or sex, activities that don’t even involve the ingestion of any kind of mind-altering substance.

Much of the potency of AA comes from its acknowledgement that willpower isn’t enough to beat this devil and that blame, rather than whipping the blamed person into shape, is counterproductive. The first Step requires admitting one’s helplessness in the face of addiction, taking recovery out of the arena of simple self-control and into a realm of transcendence. We’re powerless over the addictive substance, and trust in a Higher Power, and the program itself, to provide us with the strength and strategy to quit. But an important principle of the 12 Steps is that addiction is chronic and likely congenital; you can be sober indefinitely, but you will never be cured. You will always remain an addict, even if you never use again.

The flourishing of the 12-Step movement is one of the reasons why we now routinely describe addiction as a “disease.” To have a disease — instead of, say, a dangerous habit — is to be powerless to do anything except apply the prescribed cure. A person with a disease is unfortunate, rather than foolish or weak or degenerate. Something innate in your body, particularly in your brain, has made you exceptionally susceptible to getting hooked. You always have and always will contain a bomb, the important question is how to avoid setting a match to it. Another factor promoting the disease model is that it has ushered addiction under the aegis of the healthcare industry, whether in the form of an illness whose treatment can be charged to an insurance company or as the focus of profit-making rehab centers.

This conception of addiction as a biological phenomenon seemed to be endorsed over the past 20 years as new technologies have allowed neuroscientists to measure the human brain and its activities in ever more telling detail. Sure enough, the brains of addicts are physically different — sometimes strikingly so — from the brains of average people. But neuroscience giveth and now neuroscience taketh away. The recovery movement and rehab industry (two separate things, although the latter often employs the techniques of the former) have always had their critics, but lately some of the most vocal have been the neuroscientists whose findings once lent them credibility.

One of those neuroscientists is Marc Lewis, a psychologist and former addict himself, also the author of a new book “The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease.” Lewis’s argument is actually fairly simple: The disease theory, and the science sometimes used to support it, fail to take into account the plasticity of the human brain. Of course, “the brain changes with addiction,” he writes. “But the way it changes has to do with learning and development — not disease.” All significant and repeated experiences change the brain; adaptability and habit are the brain’s secret weapons. The changes wrought by addiction are not, however, permanent, and while they are dangerous, they’re not abnormal. Through a combination of a difficult emotional history, bad luck and the ordinary operations of the brain itself, an addict is someone whose brain has been transformed, but also someone who can be pushed further along the road toward healthy development. (Lewis doesn’t like the term “recovery” because it implies a return to the addict’s state before the addiction took hold.)

“The Biology of Desire” is grouped around several case studies, each one illustrating a unique path to dependency. A striving Australian entrepreneur becomes caught up in the “clarity, power and potential” he feels after smoking meth, along with his ability to work long hours while on the drug. A social worker who behaves selflessly in her job and marriage constructs a defiant, selfish, secret life around stealing and swallowing prescription opiates. A shy Irishman who started drinking as a way to relax in social situations slowly comes to see social situations as an occasion to drink and then drinking as a reason to hole up in his apartment for days on end.

Each of these people, Lewis argues, had a particular “emotional wound” the substance helped them handle, but once they started using it, the habit itself eventually became self-perpetuating and in most cases ultimately served to deepen the wound. Each case study focuses on a different part of the brain involved in addiction and illustrates how the function of each part — desire, emotion, impulse, automatic behavior — becomes shackled to a single goal: consuming the addictive substance. The brain is built to learn and change, Lewis points out, but it’s also built to form pathways for repetitive behavior, everything from brushing your teeth to stomping on the brake pedal, so that you don’t have to think about everything you do consciously. The brain is self-organizing. Those are all good properties, but addiction shanghais them for a bad cause.

As Lewis sees it, addiction really is habit; we just don’t appreciate how deeply habit can be engraved on the brain itself. “Repeated (motivating) experience” — i.e., the sensation of having one’s worries wafted away by the bliss of heroin — “produce brain changes that define future experiences… So getting drunk a lot will sculpt the synapses that determine future drinking patterns.” More and more experiences and activities get looped into the addiction experience and trigger cravings and expectations like the bells that made Pavlov’s dogs salivate, from the walk home past a favorite bar to the rituals of shooting up. The world becomes a host of signs all pointing you in the same direction and activating powerful unconscious urges to follow them. At a certain point, the addictive behavior becomes compulsive, seemingly as irresistibly automatic as a reflex. You may not even want the drug anymore, but you’ve forgotten how to do anything else besides seek it out and take it.

Yet all of the addicts Lewis interviewed for “The Biology of Desire” are sober now, some through tried-and-true 12-Step programs, others through self-designed regimens, like the heroin addict who taught herself how to meditate in prison. Perhaps it’s no surprise that a psychologist would argue for some form of talk therapy addressing the underlying emotional motivations for turning to drugs. But Lewis is far from the only expert to voice this opinion, or to recommend cognitive behavioral therapy as a way to reshape the brain and redirect its systems into less self-destructive patterns.

Without a doubt, AA and similar programs have helped a lot of people. But they’ve also failed others. One size does not fit all, and there’s a growing body of evidence that empowering addicts, rather than insisting that they embrace their powerlessness and the impossibility of ever fully shedding their addiction, can be a road to health as well. If addiction is a form of learning gone tragically wrong, it is also possible that it can be unlearned, that the brain’s native changeability can be set back on track. “Addicts aren’t diseased,” Lewis writes, “and they don’t need medical intervention in order to change their lives. What they need is sensitive, intelligent social scaffolding to hold the pieces of their imagined future in place — while they reach toward it.”

Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site,magiciansbook.com.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/27/addiction_is_not_a_disease_a_neuroscientist_argues_that_its_time_to_change_our_minds_on_the_roots_of_substance_abuse/

Five reasons to kill the casino bill

Published 4:00 pm, Friday, April 10, 2015

 

It's getting hard to keep up with all the attempts to expand casino-type gambling in Connecticut. Last year, public opposition stopped legislative leaders from putting the gambling game keno in restaurants, bars and convenience stores, and earlier this year a lack of support derailed a proposal by a legislative task force to place video slots in OTB facilities.
 
Now, the Democratic legislative leadership wants to pass a bill that would allow the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes, owners of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, respectively, to jointly build three commercial -- not tribal -- satellite casinos in order to fight out-of-state competition.

The tribes want to open the first "convenience" casino on I-91 between Hartford and the Massachusetts border in an effort to keep Connecticut residents from going to the new $800 million MGM casino being built in Springfield.

They reportedly hope to open the other two casinos along I-95 and I-84 in Fairfield County to defend against New York's casinos. The Hartford-area casino would be heavily oriented to slot machines, with up to 2,000 slots and 50-75 table games, no entertainment, and limited food and beverages. There are about 5,000 slots and 300 table games at Foxwoods.

The bill's supporters argue the new casinos would help both the tribes and the state by slowing the decline in gambling revenue and helping to preserve casinos jobs. But the bill is a bad one for Connecticut for five reasons:

1. The primary economic benefit of Connecticut's casinos has come from their success in drawing over half their combined customers and billions of dollars from other states. These out-of-state customers are the ones who are disappearing because they have new casinos in their own backyard. Building new scaled-down casinos in Connecticut will do nothing to bring them back.

2. While opening convenience casinos would encourage current Connecticut gamblers to stay in state, it would also encourage them to gamble more and attract thousands of other Connecticut residents to gamble, with a corresponding increase in gambling addiction, debt, bankruptcies, broken families and crime.

3. There is a growing body of research on the negative effects of casino gambling's spread. According to a recent report by the nonpartisan Institute for American Values, the new local and regional casinos drain wealth from communities, prey on low-income people, weaken nearby businesses, hurt property values and reduce civic participation, family stability and other forms of social capital that are at the heart of a successful society.

Here in Connecticut, a 2014 study from Western Connecticut State University shows that despite a sharp drop in crime in the state as a whole, the number of violent crimes, including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, increased in nearby towns after Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun opened.

While the number of thefts declined modestly, the value of property stolen skyrocketed by nearly 40 percent. Interviews with police and judicial officials also indicated increases in prostitution and illicit drug use.

4. In disregard for Connecticut voters, the bill makes no provision for residents of proposed host towns to vote on whether they want a casino in their community, but simply gives the municipality's legislative body the power to make this far-reaching decision.

5. Just over a decade ago, Connecticut showed its opposition to more casinos by repealing the charity gaming law that opened the door to our two current Indian casinos, and then mounted a successful effort to keep its other tribes from gaining federal recognition and the right to open casinos.

Now our governor and congressional delegation are in a battle to stop the federal government from changing regulations that would again create the possibility of more Indian casinos -- and land claims -- in Connecticut. Passage of the new casino bill would make a mockery of the state's argument that it opposes more casinos and would destroy its ability to win that fight.

More casinos are not an answer to Connecticut's economic problems. Instead of encouraging our citizens to gamble away their savings, we need to attract productive, living-wage jobs, promote stable revenue streams and end the runaway spending that's put the state so deeply in debt.

Robert Steele, of Essex, was a U.S. representative from eastern Connecticut and is author of "The Curse: Big-Time Gambling's Seduction of a Small New England Town." State Sen. Tony Hwang, R-28, of Fairfield, is an assistant Senate minority leader, representing the towns of Easton, Fairfield, Newtown, Weston and Westport.


http://www.ctpost.com/opinion/article/Five-reasons-to-kill-the-casino-bill-6192037.php


If you haven't read the book, I encourage you to do so.

CAUGHT Reveals Life of Gambling Addiction

March 20

2015

👤by Books News Desk

CLINTON, Miss.
CLINTON, Miss. - The National Council on Problem Gambling reports that approximately two to three per cent of Americans meet the criteria for problem gambling. The same organization describes problem gambling as "gambling behavior which disrupts any major area in life." In her new book titled "Caught: (From Correctional Officer to Federal Inmate)" (published by Xlibris), Janice Singleton takes readers beyond statistics to offer a humanized look into this form of addiction and how she was able to overcome it herself.

Singleton has always thought of herself as resilient and determined. These qualities helped her overcome great odds in her life, including an unplanned pregnancy at just 16 years old. Undaunted, Singleton pursued her dreams, resulting in a successful tax preparation business which she started at 18 years old. She also became the first in her family to graduate from college and was able to build a comfortable life in Jackson, Mississippi. The biggest hurdle, however, would come much later, in the form of gambling addiction.

Singleton's gambling problem and bad decision-making resulted in her losing almost everything she worked hard for. But most unexpectedly, the tragedy became a major turning point for her. In "Caught," Singleton opens up about her fall from grace and the arduous journey to redemption. She describes with unflinching detail the highs and lows of her life and how she was able to put her life back on track. This memoir not only offers an intimate glimpse into the author's struggles, it offers hope to those who are going through a similar ordeal.

"Caught: (From Correctional Officer to Federal Inmate)"
By Janice Singleton
Hardcover | 6 x 9in | 292 pages | ISBN 9781503511637
Softcover | 6 x 9in | 292 pages | ISBN 9781503511644
E-Book | 292 pages | ISBN 9781503511620
Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Janice Singleton is an author and entrepreneur who has overcame incredible odds. At just 18 years old, she launched her first business in tax preparation that later skyrocketed. She holds an associate's and bachelor's degree in criminal justice and has worked for the Jackson Police Department and the Mississippi Department of Corrections She is currently employed as an operations specialist for Goodwill Industries while pursuing an accounting degree and regularly attending Gambling Anonymous meetings. Her mission is to be an advocate for others battling gambling addiction. She resides in Clinton, Miss.

Xlibris Publishing, an Author Solutions, LLC imprint, is a self-publishing services provider created in 1997 by authors, for authors. By focusing on the needs of creative writers and artists and adopting the latest print-on-demand publishing technology and strategies, we provide expert publishing services with direct and personal access to quality publication in hardcover, trade paperback, custom leather-bound and full-color formats. To date, Xlibris has helped to publish more than 60,000 titles. For more information, visit xlibris.com or call 1-888-795-4274 to receive a free publishing guide. Follow us @XlibrisPub on Twitter for the latest news.


http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwbooks/article/CAUGHT-Reveals-Life-of-Gambling-Addiction-20150320#

We Need to Talk About…

Comedian Kevin Bridges reveals how Celtic legend John Hartson helped him to beat gambling addiction

Oct 05, 2014 10:57

By Jennifer Hyland

THE 27-year-old comic was squandering up to £800 a day at the bookies before the Hoops star convinced him to stop betting.

Comedian Kevin Bridges

FUNNYMAN Kevin Bridges has revealed that he won his battle against a gambling addiction thanks to former Celtic striker John Hartson.

In his autobiography We Need to Talk About... Kevin Bridges, released this week, the Scots stand-up comedian confesses that during his rise to comic stardom he began betting obsessively and would blow up to £800 a day.

The 27-year-old said: “I was 18 when I discovered the bookies and then lost £800 in one day. It was my first decent comedy club money and I blew it. I was gambling on coupons, machines, everything.”

Bridges, who grew up in Clydebank, near Glasgow, says his love of the occasional flutter got out of hand when he was on tour in 2005.

He said: “ Stupidly I was gambling more frequently. I had maybe too much free time during the days. I’d stand in the bookies on the roulette machine, thinking I could double my £40 and £50 fees from gigs, thus enabling me to book travel and accommodation for London.

“Everything I made I was betting. I wasn’t making that much money, thankfully, but it was becoming a bit of a problem.”

Bridges, who recently donated cash to a foodbank in Maryhill, recorded his first stand-up DVD to a packed audience in 2010.

It was on a night-out in a casino in 2012 during a tour with a number of sell-out shows that the comedian first realised he was squandering all his hard-earned cash.

He said: “ I could see it was going to get worse. I was just living the life. You’re betting on football and blackjack, then the casino starts sending over the ‘free’ drinks and looking after everybody.

“Everyone gets a steak dinner, then you start going, ‘This complimentary food and drink is costing a lot of money.'”

But it was a chat with former gambling addict and Hoops star Hartson that convinced Bridges to battle his addiction.

He said: “ I’ve not had a bet in two years. It came after one of my shows. I was talking to John Hartson, the footballer, afterwards and I’d just been to the bookies, putting a bet on greyhounds or something.

“He had a real problem with gambling and lost a lot of money. I told him, ‘I don’t think I’ve got a problem.’

“He said, ‘Well don’t wait until you’ve got a problem. Just stop it!’"

In his book, Bridges admits he stopped gambling just in time and says quitting was “one of the best things” he ever did.

We Need to Talk About…Kevin Bridges, published by Michael Joseph, is out on Thursday.


http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/celebrity/comedian-kevin-bridges-reveals-how-4382374

 

Tails I Lose: the Compulsive Gambler Who Lost His Shirt for Good

Real lives: 'My husband gambled away everything we owned'

• Justyn and Emma Larcombe appear to have the perfect life and family
• But Justyn's £10,000 a day gambling addiction has crippled their marriage
• In midst of his compulsion he plundered Emma’s savings as well as his own
• He sold everything, from her jewellery to children’s christening presents
• His autobiography Tails I Lose details how his gambling addiction led to him squandering £750,000 in online betting over just three years

ByCatherine O'brien

Published: 18:01 EST, 12 July 2014 | Updated: 05:08 EST, 13 July 2014

It started with a £5 online bet and ended up costing Justyn Larcombe the family home, thousands in savings and very nearly his marriage. But despite Justyn’s gambling addiction, his wife Emma is standing by him as they rebuild their lives. Here she tells Catherine O’Brien why

Justyn and Emma Larcombe live in a picture-postcard cottage overlooking one of the loveliest village greens in Kent.
On the summer’s evening that I visit, their sons Matthew, seven, and Oscar, four, are in the garden playing with their labrador puppy Bella. Justyn is running around with them while Emma potters in the kitchen.
They appear to be a model – indeed blessed – family. In reality, nothing within the Larcombe household is quite as it seems.
Seven years ago, when Justyn and Emma married, few who knew them could have doubted that they were a golden couple.

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Emma and Justyn with their sons Oscar, left, and Matty. Their lives have been turned upside down by Justyn's £10,000 a day gambling addiction

He was a dashing former Army major turned insurance executive who was earning a six-figure salary and owned two cars, one of them a £30,000 Porsche.
She was his elegant, independently successful wife who worked in the country house hotel business.
He proposed at the top of a mountain in Val d’Isère; they honeymooned on Italy’s Amalfi coast, and when she announced she was pregnant just weeks after they returned home their future seemed assured.
Today, their relationship is hanging by a gossamer thread and the reasons why are laid bare in Justyn’s soon-to-be published autobiography.
Tails I Lose documents, in jaw-dropping detail, how a gambling addiction led to him squandering £750,000 in online betting over just three years.
In the midst of his compulsion he plundered Emma’s savings as well as his own and secretly sold everything, from her jewellery to their children’s christening presents.
By the time Emma realised what was happening, he had accrued £100,000 of debts on credits cards and in payday loans and was gambling an astonishing £10,000 a day.
Unsurprisingly, their marriage collapsed. Justyn hit rock bottom and Emma filed for divorce. But at Easter this year, after 18 months apart, they started living together again.
Justyn’s reasons for wanting a second chance are simply explained. Emma is, he says, ‘the only person to truly know me’. Her motivation for the reconciliation is more complex.
To enable us to talk freely, Emma and I head off, at Justyn’s suggestion, to the village pub.
She is strikingly beautiful, despite the tiredness in her eyes.
Justyn’s book is the centrepiece of a highly vocal crusade – he is now a regular attendee of Gamblers Anonymous and, with a zeal found only in those who have reached redemption, often speaks publicly about the destructive impact gambling can have on people’s lives.
By contrast, Emma has discussed the devastating fallout of Justyn’s addiction with nobody outside her close circle of family and friends – until now.
‘There are two sides to every story, and from my side it has felt like being in the middle of a storm, but I’ve tried not to become hysterical. Luckily, I’m a rational person,’ she says.
Now 40, Emma, the youngest of four children, grew up in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, where her parents owned Callow Hall, a luxury 16-bedroomed hotel and restaurant on the edge of the Peak District.
Although privileged – she was educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College – she also grew up understanding, through witnessing her parents build up a business, the meaning of hard work.

 

Emma Larcombe has vowed to stand by her husband, despie his fall from grace. 'He's a different man from the one I married, and a better man, because he has fallen so badly,' she said

After university, she returned to Callow Hall to help her parents as a front-of-house manager and it was there, in 2004, that she and Justyn met.
He had checked into the hotel to attend a management course and the moment he spotted her, it was love at first sight.
She was not so immediately smitten, partly because she was going out with someone else.
But Justyn proved persistent and eight months later she ended her other relationship and they got together.
A month after that, on her 31st birthday, Justyn proposed. ‘He was charming, spontaneous,’ she says. ‘We were very happy.’
She loved his Tiggerish ebullience; he was soothed by her calm, capable demeanour.
But Justyn was more complicated than he looked – the son of a schoolteacher father and counsellor mother, he is the second of six children and had served almost nine years in the Army, completing tours of Northern Ireland and Bosnia before becoming the successful businessman that Emma fell in love with.
He had also been previously married and had a son, Harry, now 13, whom Emma readily embraced. ‘I love Harry – he’s a great boy,’ she says.
Shortly before their wedding in May 2007, Justyn, who had previously worked in London, started a new job which enabled him to be based in Derbyshire. Harry lived with his mother just outside Birmingham and it became much easier for them all to spend time together at weekends.
It felt like everything had slotted into place, and the birth of Matthew – known as Matty – in May 2008 was another joyful cause of celebration.
Matty was around five months old when Emma and Justyn realised things weren’t quite right. Although an otherwise contented baby, he didn’t use his right hand.
When, at ten months, he wasn’t crawling, they took him to a private specialist. Matty was diagnosed with hemiplegia –a form of cerebral palsy which had caused paralysis to the right side of his body – and a brain scan showed scarring, which meant it was likely that he was also going to suffer from epilepsy.
‘It is difficult for any man to accept that his son has a disability,’ Emma says. ‘I don’t want to blame everything on Matty’s condition, but that diagnosis had a massive impact on Justyn.’
Although equally upset, Emma and Justyn’s responses differed significantly. Emma immersed herself in the pragmatics – seeking expert advice through a surgeon friend and research online.
‘I felt I had to be prepared but Justyn didn’t want to read a single thing – it was like he was in complete denial,’ she recalls. ‘That’s probably why he sought a secret coping mechanism.’
Shortly after his first birthday, Matty had his first seizure.
And there were other setbacks – Emma suffered an early miscarriage and Justyn’s job wasn’t going as well as he had hoped. Then Harry’s mother decided to move to Jersey with her new partner – bringing to an end their regular weekend outings.
One Saturday in September 2009, Emma had taken Matty to visit her parents and Justyn was alone and feeling despondent.
As he sat down to watch a rugby match, his gaze was drawn to a Betfair advertisement on the pitch-side hoarding. Impulsively, he opened his laptop, set up an account and placed a £5 bet. An hour later, he had doubled his money.

 

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Emma and Justyn on their wedding day in May 2007. Justyn now attends Gamblers Anonymous meetings weekly and is working again

Justyn’s version of events is that he had never before placed an online bet. Emma’s recollection is that she had occasionally seen him grazing on gambling websites and he had told her, ‘I’m just playing – everyone in the City does it.’
Whatever the reality, he pinpoints the rugby match as his turning point; before long, he was betting modest amounts most weekends.
He liked watching sport and ‘the slogan I kept hearing all the time was, “It matters more when there’s money on it,”’ he recalls.
He didn’t tell Emma, and she was oblivious. With other addictions – drinking or drug-taking, for example – there are, she points out, likely to be more signs. ‘Gambling is much easier to conceal.’
By late autumn, Justyn had started to up his stakes – despite being more strapped for cash than they had ever been.
Emma’s parents had sold the hotel and retired, and with Matty to look after, Emma was no longer working. Home renovations had depleted their savings. And although Justyn was too proud to admit it, his work bonuses had dried up. But it was easy to arrange an overdraft. In an attempt to chase his losses, he placed a £1,000 bet and his gambling rapidly spiralled out of control.
He discovered horse racing, darts and tennis and although he had winning streaks, he frequently lost spectacularly. During the Cheltenham Gold Cup, he put £3,000 on one of the favourites to win – but the horse fell at the last fence.
On another occasion, he bet £5,000 that his football team Tottenham Hotspur would draw against Arsenal. But Arsenal scored in the second half and won the match.
One of his biggest losses came during a tennis tournament when he backed Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, then world number one, to win against an unknown.
The odds were weak and to make up his shortfall on the day, he needed to wager £17,000 to give him a return of just a few hundred pounds. Azarenka had seemed like a dead cert – until she was injured and conceded the match.
Had she been hyper-vigilant, maybe Emma could have spotted some of the signals – Justyn traded in his Porsche for a more modest estate car, telling Emma it was silly to be driving a gas-guzzler. He spent long hours in his study glued to the computer – Emma thought he was busy on international conference calls; in fact he was betting round the clock. And he started to quibble about extraneous expenditure.
‘I belonged to a lunch club – about ten of us would get together every week and take it in turns to cook,’ she recalls. ‘He began to resent me doing that.’
But although Emma was increasingly baffled by Justyn’s behaviour, she was also hugely preoccupied. Oscar’s arrival in May 2010 meant that she was juggling a new baby with the continuing needs of Matty, who was diagnosed with autism shortly before his third birthday.
Although it was another blow, it also meant that they could get some of the specialist help they needed (he has gone on to make great progress).
Just before Oscar was born, they had sold their house and moved into rented accommodation while they looked for somewhere bigger.
The equity of £75,000 went into a savings account and Justyn secretly began to work his way through it. Shortly afterwards, Emma received a £100,000 lump sum owed to her as a former director of her parents’ hotel. She did not hesitate to ask Justyn to invest it along with the cash from the sale of their house – after all, he worked in the financial sector. ‘I trusted him,’ she says. ‘What was mine was his.’
She has a snapshot memory of thinking during Christmas 2010 that she was happier than she had ever been. ‘I had lots of close friends. My family was nearby. We were comfortably off, or so I thought.’ By the time of Oscar’s first birthday, five months later, however, an intangible unease had set in.
Justyn was moody, but she put it down to him working hard. ‘I told myself this was what marriage was all about – it couldn’t always be perfect but we were strong and we would keep going.’

'With other addictions there are signs. Gambling is easy to conceal'

In fact, Justyn’s world was imploding. He had spent the deposit set aside for a new house, along with Emma’s investment, and had started taking out high-interest loans.
He lied endlessly about why he was too busy to take the family on holiday, why none of the houses Emma was viewing to buy were suitable, and why he wasn’t wearing the watch she had bought him – he had sold it but told her he had sent it off for repairs. Other items began to disappear – the wedding band she had had inscribed for him, his military memorabilia. With his back to the wall, he began using his company credit card, which was meant to be just for business expenses.
When he was rumbled in the summer of 2012, his company told him that he was out of a job.
The showdown with Emma came a month later, during the London Olympics.
Some of her friends came to stay for the weekend but Justyn could barely engage with them. ‘He kept disappearing to watch rugby league and tennis – he didn’t even like tennis.’
On the Monday morning, while Justyn was out, Emma’s friend persuaded her to look through his office. ‘And that is how I found out he was spending £10,000 a day on Betfair,’ she says.
‘It was on an unopened bank statement.’ She called Justyn immediately. ‘I told him I had seen everything and asked him if he had anything to say.’ It was a short conversation.
The ensuing months were a maelstrom. Despite the anger and recognition of the scale of his betrayal, Emma attempted to support Justyn and took him to counselling.
He stopped gambling briefly, before starting again and also drinking heavily. In despair, she walked out, leaving behind her wedding and engagement rings.
Within hours he’d sold them and gambled away the proceeds. The same fate awaited the last of their possessions – including irreplaceable christening silver and antiques that had been in their families for generations.
In October 2012, following calls from Emma, Justyn’s parents and his younger brother Duncan arrived at his front door. They took him to their home in Kent and arranged for him to see debt advisers and start attending Gamblers Anonymous.
Emma moved to another cottage in Derbyshire and initially refused to give Justyn the address. Eventually, for the sake of the boys, she allowed him to visit, but told him she wanted a divorce.
So what has now made her – against the advice of many – change her mind? She breathes in deeply. ‘It’s the boys.
They missed him terribly, particularly Matty. He needs to be with people who love and understand him. So I am trying to do my best by my children,’ she says. ‘But I also know Justyn is trying his best. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t seen a change in him.
And people ask me how I can be sure that he is not gambling. But I am, partly because I can check the bank account, but mostly because he is present – when he was gambling, he was mentally and emotionally absent.’
Justyn now attends Gamblers Anonymous meetings weekly. He is working again – he’s set up his own business education consultancy – and he has paid off his debts. He is also campaigning for changes to help curb excessive online gambling.
Recently he addressed a committee of peers in the House of Lords about the need for ‘one-stop self-exclusion’, which would enable problem gamblers to bar themselves from the estimated 2,500 betting websites with one click of a button.
‘He’s a different man from the one I married, and a better man, because he has fallen so badly,’ says Emma.
None of this means that she trusts him. ‘I cannot know if and when that trust will come back.’ She remains deeply hurt that he took all she had worked so hard for.
‘But if you are going to move forward, you have to accept that material goods are not what ultimately matter. His children love and need him.’ And does she love him? ‘I think I must do, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’

Tails I Lose: An extract from Justyn's book

Justyn Larcombe

The day my runaway train finally came off the tracks was a Sunday. The golf was on television and I had just persuaded one of the online betting companies to give me a ‘free’ £10 bet when there was a knock at the door. It was my younger brother Duncan and Mum and Dad – they’d driven up to Derbyshire from their home in Kent. Mum was crying.
We went through to the lounge. Dad held up a piece of paper. There was nothing on it. ‘We just want you to know we care about you. We don’t have a plan. But we want to help you. This is what we have, a blank page. You fill it any way you want. We can find you some care. There are courses, residential courses, they cost money, but if that’s what you want…’
Duncan broke the silence. ‘Tomorrow at 10am, a removal van is coming to pack up the house. The lease runs out on Wednesday. The rent has been paid up by your father-in-law. He’s helping to pack up tomorrow and he doesn’t want to see you. We are leaving today and you need to come with us.’
I realised I had two options. I could go home with Mum. Or I could walk the streets. I started to cry uncontrollably. I told Mum and Dad I was sorry, sorry that I had let them down. I called Emma. ‘I’m going back with Mum. Can you bring the boys over?’
‘I think it would just confuse Matty. But I’ll drive over on my own now.’ There was no warmth in her voice. We walked along the lane where we used to push Oscar in his pram. ‘Maybe one day you’ll be able to forgive me,’ I said. ‘Look after the boys, please. I wish you’d let me say goodbye to them.’
‘Matty’s confused enough. He keeps asking where you are. And Oscar can’t work out why you don’t read to him at night any more. Get real!’
I was crushed and teary. I wanted to reach out and touch Emma, but the fear of rejection held me back. She walked with her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her eyes were cold, her lips set tight. I had stolen not only her money, but also her dreams and her smile. She drove off and I felt hopeless and broken.

• Tails I Lose: the Compulsive Gambler Who Lost His Shirt for Good by Justyn Rees Larcombe is published by Lion Hudson, £8.99

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2688788/Real-lives-My-husband-gambled-away-owned.html#ixzz37M4IreN6
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This is a MUST READ book if you want to know the TRUE cost of Predatory Gambling.... 

When Mr. Steele has a speaking engagement nearby, please go to hear him speak and ask questions about the economic damage Tribal Casinos have done in Connecticut that no one will tell you. 

Book propels Steele's anti-casino campaign

By Brian Hallenbeck
Publication: The Day

Published June 16. 2014 4:00AM

Tim Cook/The Day

Former congressman Bob Steele says he is convinced that governments have no business promoting an industry that many believe is predatory.

Ex-congressman travels all over to warn of downside

Bob Steele steps to a lectern at the Liberal Club in Fall River, Mass., and proceeds to tell another audience about the impact of southeastern Connecticut's Indian casinos.

It's a stump speech, of sorts, but it's devoid of partisan politics, which is perhaps a little surprising in the case of Steele, a former Connecticut congressman and one-time Republican gubernatorial candidate.

He speaks compellingly, his tone measured, his message almost entirely fact-based. Like the 2012 book
whose publication led to this early-June appearance - and the nearly 200 other appearances he's made the last 18 months or so throughout Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island - Steele delivers a cautionary tale.

He tells an audience of fewer than 40 people that Congress opened a Pandora's box when it passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, authorizing Indian casinos. Now, he says, the country is "awash" in casinos, both commercial and tribally owned. And, he adds, state governments are shamelessly promoting the development of more of them, eager to raise revenues without directly raising taxes.

"One wonders how closely they've looked at the downside," he says.

The 75-year-old Steele has immersed himself in that downside, convinced that governments have no business promoting an industry that many believe is predatory, relying, he says, on problem gamblers for 40 to 50 percent of its profits. He recites a litany of social and economic costs casino opponents associate with gaming: local economies skewed toward low-paying service jobs, pressures on housing markets and school systems, and spikes in the numbers of drunken-driving arrests and embezzlements.

In an interview days after his Fall River talk, Steele was asked about his motivation. What drives him to keep showing up wherever casinos are on the agenda? Why travel to Albany one week, Fall River and Granby the next, Boston and Worcester the one after that?

"It's all since the book," he said, referring to "The Curse: Big-Time Gambling's Seduction of a Small New England Town," the "fact-based novel" he worked on for parts of 14 years. Set in a fictional version of Ledyard, where Steele lived from 1977 to 1998, after he left politics, the story plays out against events that took place during the 1990s.

Steele, who now lives in Essex, all but shelved the project after a major publisher lost interest in it around 2009. Then, in 2011, Massachusetts authorized the Bay State's first casinos.

"I thought, if there's ever going to be a strong interest in this topic, it's now," he said.

After the book came out, Steele promoted it at bookstores, libraries and historical societies. Soon enough, he started getting invitations to speak to civic groups, at colleges and before anti-casino groups in places where casinos had been proposed, such as Citizens for the Common Good, the Fall River organization that called him.

Steele typically sells copies of his book at his appearances, but "in 99 percent of the cases" receives no compensation for speaking.

"I do it because I believe in it," he said. "For me, it's a public policy issue. The question is: Should government be encouraging people to gamble just because our political leaders don't have the courage or the foresight to develop more stable forms of revenue?"

About 70 percent of his talk is the same every time, Steele said. The rest is tailored to the audience, be it in Leominster or Palmer, Tewksbury or Milford, East Boston or Newport.

Sometimes he's appeared on panels, but usually he's by himself. His audiences have ranged from five to 500 people, he said.

He offers his listeners hope, pointing out that several Massachusetts towns have rejected casino proposals in referendum votes. Recent poll results even suggest a drive to repeal the Bay State's expanded-gambling law could succeed if the state's highest court allows the question to appear on Election Day ballots in November.

"Nobody gave Repeal the Casino Deal a chance six months ago," Steele said. "Now look at it. The arrogance of political leaders saying it shouldn't be on the ballot is mind-boggling."

He holds up the example of Palmer, the western Massachusetts town that shocked many observers last November when its voters narrowly shot down Mohegan Sun's plan to develop a casino and water park off Exit 8 of the Massachusetts Turnpike.

"Four to five weeks before the referendum, the opponents had no organization," Steele said. "They pulled it together in the last two weeks and educated people. They kept saying, 'The more you know about casinos, the less you like them,' and the message got through. ... And for anyone to suggest that Mohegan Sun didn't make a full effort to win is preposterous."

Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International, which proposed a project in Springfield, was left without competition for the sole western Massachusetts casino license, which gaming regulators officially awarded Friday.

"I have no doubt the Springfield casino will be very successful - in the first year," Steele said. "After that, who knows?"

b.hallenbeck@theday.com


http://www.theday.com/article/20140616/NWS01/306169957/-1/NWS

Casino hosts turn to stats in rating players, giving comps and worshipping EXPLOITATION!

Kristina Binkley wrote a great book ['Winner Takes All'] that described Gary Loveman's genius in originating the tracking of 'patrons,' creating LOYALTY, ensuring a patrons return by employing 'COMPS,' and much else. [Several other books have been written subsequently that describe Loveman's amoral genius of carefully avoiding any consideration of COSTS - the COSTS of Gambling Addiction, the personal cost and of sucking every last dollar from those least able to afford it, the transfer of wealth.

As a nation, when did we relish exploitation as virtue?

When did we support EXPLOITATION by Government?

Why would we endorse and support WEALTH TRANSFER?

This defines how it's done:

 

 

Casino hosts turn to stats in rating players, giving comps

About Mark Gruetze

Mark Gruetze 412-320-7838
Administrative Editor
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Mark Gruetze has been a recreational gambler for more than 30 years, focusing on blackjack, video poker and poker. He is administrative editor of the Tribune-Review.    

Details

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Money trail

 

Statewide loss by slots players, week ending Jan. 26: $33.61 million, down from $39.18 million in the comparable week last year

 

Statewide slot payout rate since July 1: 89.91 percent; for every $100 bet, the machines return an average of $89.91

 

High and low payout rates: 90.75 percent at Parx in Philadelphia; 89.2 percent at Penn National near Harrisburg

 

Rivers: 89.72 percent payout; weekly slot revenue $4.35 million, down from $4.67 million last year

 

Meadows: 89.95 percent; weekly revenue $2.69 million, down from $3.96 million

 

Presque Isle: 89.57 percent; weekly revenue $1.53 million, down from $1.77 million

 

Lady Luck Nemacolin: 90.68 percent payout; weekly revenue $226,753; not open last year

Player charged in fake-chip scheme

A Fayetteville, N.C., man was charged with sneaking fake chips into a tournament during the Borgata Winter Poker Open in Atlantic City.

Christian Lusardi, 42, was arrested at an Atlantic City motel after $2.7 million in tournament chips were found flushed down a toilet at nearby Harrah's Resort, the Associated Press and CNN reported.

 

Officials said Lusardi won $6,814 during the Open's first tournament. That event was canceled with 27 players still in contention after 160 of the fake $5,000 chips were found among the legitimate chips. Other events in the Open went on. The chips have no value outside a tournament and cannot be cashed in.

Daily Photo Galleries

Monday - February 3, 2014

By Mark Gruetze

Published: Sunday, Feb. 2, 2014, 9:00 p.m.Updated 15 hours ago

That nice casino host who hands out free meals, concert tickets and fancy suites isn't paid to be a player's friend.

The host's primary job is to increase the casino's bottom line by getting gamblers to play and spend more, says Stephen R. Marshall, senior vice president of relationship marketing for the Fine Point Group, a gaming management and consulting company based in Las Vegas.

 

“If you're a host, your role should be to increase the casino's revenue,” Marshall says. He spoke last week at a webinar encouraging casino executives to adopt a data-driven approach to providing comps for their best customers.

The Fine Point Group began in 2005, founded by veterans of Harrah's Entertainment who had been deeply involved in gaming operations and marketing.

Keeping the big players happy is essential for any casino, Marshall says, adding that it's not unusual for 40 percent of a casino's gross gaming revenue to come from fewer than 10 percent of its customers.

 

[Harrah's, now Caesars, determined under Gary Loveman's genius that 90% of their profits came from 10% of the patrons, a statement never disputed by Caesars.]

 

Casinos judge players with statistics such as average daily value, or how much the casino expects to win each day a player visits, and cumulative value, which tracks a player's loss over several months or a year. A player who bets relatively small amounts but visits a casino several times a week might have a low daily average but a high cumulative total.

Marshall suggests that casinos track a player's action closely to determine his value to the casino. He recommends knowing the theoretical loss, which is based on the average bet, hours played and the house edge; the actual loss; days played; and total trips. Then casinos can identify their most valuable players and encourage them to return with offers of free play, comps and other amenities.

Understanding what casinos are looking for can pay off for players. Recognize your value to the casino. Never gamble more than you can afford simply to try to qualify for a particularly attractive comp; whatever it costs, it's cheaper to pay for it yourself than play over your bankroll in the hopes that the casino will pick up the tab.

Realize that no casino wants its big players to find another place more attractive.

“The No. 1 rule is to keep them away from the competition,” Marshall says.

He says a host's techniques should distinguish between “active” players who visit frequently and those who show up only once in a while. The host should use a “moderate” approach on those already visiting frequently, enough to keep them coming back, while being “aggressive” with the infrequent player in the hopes of turning him or her into a regular customer.

“Make clear: The relationship (between host and player) is a business relationship, not a personal relationship,” he says. The host is a salesman for the casino and should follow the ABC commandment: Always Be Closing.

Generally, casinos are said to return about 40 percent of a player's expected loss in comps. A blackjack player who bets $10 a hand and plays for four hours would have an expected loss of $48; that would mean comps of about $19.

However, Marshall recommends that executives know what nearby casinos offer and stay competitive. That means areas with little competition, such as Pennsylvania, won't necessarily have to be as generous as facilities in destination areas such as Las Vegas.

Marshall says the most common mistake for a host is focusing on the wrong customers, paying too much attention to those already loyal to a property instead of going after the player who will bring in new revenue.

 

“Ultimately, it's about making more money,” he says.

 

 http://triblive.com/aande/gambling/5509017-74/casino-player-percent#ixzz2sGWMsYG1