Over the past week The Economist has been conducting a debate on whether government should have no restrictions on gambling. Stop Predatory Gambling was invited to make the case against the proposition. Here are the opening statements, the rebuttal statements and the closing statements which were posted this morning.  

MIT’s Natasha Schull posted an excellent analysis about what distinguishes slot machine play from other gambling activities. There are also some very good arguments posted in the Comments section for each stage of the debate.

Bill Kearney, a former gambling addict who has become a persuasive and effective advocate to stop predatory gambling, speaks out in this Pennsylvania TV story about how casinos lead people into major, life-changing debt. It is a business practice that state government would stop immediately if it was not a full-fledged partner with the predatory gambling trade.

Below is yet another example of the daily voice of government to most Americans, this time from the North Carolina “Education” Lottery.

Today, one out of five Americans believe the best way to achieve long-term financial security is to play the Lottery. The Lottery Class. Instead of encouraging citizens to save money to help lift them out of debt during these difficult times like government did during the Great Depression by promoting savings bonds, government instead incentivizes people to lose their money on virtually worthless gambling products.

And as a result of the government program of predatory gambling, all the people who don’t use the lottery or casinos (those who practice saving money for retirement and college funds for their kids – the Investor Class) are paying more in taxes and receiving less services.

The water theme in this ad is right on the mark because predatory gambling is soaking both the Lottery Class and the Investor Class. The only winners are the gambling operators themselves.

California casinos continue to reel from news reports that the state’s casinos are profiting from the gambling losses of welfare recipients using taxpayer-funded debit cards.

 

How did the casinos respond? They expressed surprise that the ATMs can be used by welfare recipients to access benefits.

 

“We had no knowledge EBT cards are even accepted,” said Mickey Burke, general manager of Konocti Vista Casino.He said it wasn’t until the publicity surfaced about the misuse of the welfare cards at the casinos “that we checked it and found out.”

 

Some casinos have more than 1000 cameras closely watching patrons and they track every penny wagered inside the casino with one of the most sophisticated consumer technology systems in the world. Yet, they claim they did not people were using EBT cards inside their casinos.

 

The question for every citizen and policy maker to be asking is this: how much casino profits are coming from the losses of people receiving some form of government subsidy? It’s substantial and it explains why nearly every state with an expansive government program of predatory gambling has high taxes and is facing serious budget deficits.

 

The Boston Globe has an excellent story this morning about how predatory gambling continues to expand once it enters a state.

Why during these severe economic times does government continue encouraging its citizens to lose their money instead of urging people to save money through vehicles like savings bonds?

Some very smart, well-intended people have serious concerns about casinos yet rationalize their support for them by saying “casinos are better than nothing.”

That’s not true. Casinos are worse than nothing because they are a something-for-nothing scheme that veils the most predatory business in America.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a somber story about Michael O'Neill, a local tax collector who embezzled $225,000 to feed a gambling addiction at the Parx Casino just outside of Philadelphia.

Many public officials defend the government program of predatory gambling as “voluntary taxation” so there is tragic irony to the news that the life of a local government tax official - a man who collects the taxes that all of us pay to fund our schools, roads and bridges - is now destroyed by this “voluntary” tax collection system.

By definition, someone who is addicted cannot act voluntarily. They have no free will. They are addicted. To exist, the government program of predatory gambling must take away the free will of millions of Americans because its business model based on people who are addicted.

Vice President Joe Biden said during the 2008 campaign that “paying taxes is patriotic.” What would he say about “voluntary” taxes like those paid by Mr. O’Neill?

The federal government has awarded $54 million to Connecticut's politically well-connected Mohegan Indian tribe, which operates one of the highest grossing casinos in the U.S.

The Mohegan tribe, which owns the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn., has been awarded a $54 million loan from federal stimulus funds. The tribe runs the sprawling Mohegan Sun casino, halfway between New York City and Boston, which earned more than $1.3 billion in gross revenues in 2009.

With federal, state and local government budgets all in dire straits, it is stunning that taxpayers dollars, intended to act as a economic stimulus, were awarded to a casino tribe who run a business based on milking existing wealth rather than creating new wealth.

The New York Times is reporting the Obama administration has approved the Shinnecock Indians on Long Island for federal recognition on Tuesday, culminating a court battle lasting three decades and paving the way for the tribe to build a casino in New York City or its suburbs.

The NYT article described the Shinnecock as a relatively impoverished tribe, whose members live on 800 acres in Southampton, N.Y., in the midst of some of the nation’s wealthiest and most famous celebrities.

On the one hand, it is saddening a significant group of people lived in poverty alongside some of America’s wealthiest families for so long. On the other hand, it is equally saddening that the primary avenue we allow Native American tribes to pursue in order to build wealth is through casinos – the most predatory business in the country.

Today, six out of the top ten funders of political efforts nationwide are Native American casino tribes. The Indian Gambling Regulatory Act (IGRA) has wildly exceeded the original intent of the legislation when it was passed in 1988. Funded by millionaire casino investors, tribal casinos continue to force their way into communities across the nation. There are now more than 450 tribal casinos in America.

The Shinnecock case presents a political opportunity to reform IGRA and stop America’s slide towards becoming a casino republic.

The Baltimore Sun reports Maryland state government agreed this week to pay nearly $50 million to buy about 1,000 slot machines for the planned Cecil County casino. Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot, a longtime leader against the government program of predatory gambling, strongly challenged the contract calling it a "windfall" for the gambling industry.

The contract was approved by members of the Board of Public Works who were given just hours to review the deal, in which the state will spend an average of about $46,542 per video lottery terminal, nearly five times higher than the typical cost of an electronic gambling machine.  

Our government is investing billions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq to build roads, bridges and schools to improve the living conditions in those countries. Yet many of the big public works projects in our own country focus on building casinos and adding slot machines – a government program that milks existing wealth rather than creates new wealth. And on top of it all, our government grossly overpays the gambling interests to do it like what happened in Maryland. A huge ripoff indeed.

East Coast casinos are intensifying their targeting of Asian-Americans in an effort to get them to lose more money. They are hiring directors of Asian-American player development, expanding dining areas and menus, and spending money on foreign-language advertising in newspapers and on billboards.

"The fundamental thing is that these businesses are predatory," said Ellen Somekawa, executive director of Asian Americans United, a Philadelphia advocacy group that has been fighting plans to build a casino near the city's Chinatown neighborhood. "We're concerned that it will have a harmful effect on the Asian-American community and all the communities in Philadelphia."

Ms. Somekawa continues to be a persuasive and passionate leader against the predatory gambling trade. We applaud the work she and other Asian-American leaders are doing to end the exploitation of their community.

There are dozens of high quality reporters across the country who do excellent investigative journalism into the government program of predatory gambling. We try our best to consistently recognize their efforts because their work is very important to awakening America’s conscience about this problem.

But unfortunately, there are some in the media who work like they are simply another marketing arm of the government’s predatory gambling operations. The media has a pivotal role to play in examining the most predatory business in America and news coverage like this recent clip from a Maryland NBC affiliate abdicates that responsibility.  

The Dallas Morning News has a terrific story this week in which they ask area faith leaders this question: If Texas is looking at cutting spending on education, health care, and other vital services, is it wrong to turn to more gambling as a way of minimizing the damage?

Most of their answers were very insightful and compelling. We urge you to visit the story link above and read through it for yourself.

America’s faith community has always been the backbone of the major social change movements in our nation’s history. Abolition, women’s suffrage, child labor and civil rights. We applaud them for continuing to work against the injustice of predatory gambling and helping keep America true to the principles it represents.

The Erie Times (PA) has a report about a local man who was denied a $2001 jackpot at Presque Isle Downs & Casino because he put himself on the state’s self-exclusion list. He now faces a summary criminal trespass charge.

Key questions that were left unanswered in the initial story include:

1) Was the man using a player tracking card prior to winning the money? If yes, the casino already knew this addicted gambler was losing money inside their building and only took action when the man was in line to collect a small jackpot.

2) How much money did the man lose that day (or other days) prior to winning the jackpot? If he needs to return his winnings, doesn’t the casino need to return his losses?

3) He had signed up for the self-exclusion program in April 2009. How many times over the last 13 months had this man entered and lost money at Presque Isle Casino?

Let’s hope The Erie Times follows up and digs a little deeper. The business model for casinos is based on people like this addicted gambler. Just ask the president of the Parx Casino just outside of Philadelphia.

A Florida woman is suing the Florida Lottery over its refusal to pay a $500,000 prize on an allegedly misprinted ticket.

Ann Marie Curcio received the $20 ticket from her husband for Mother’s Day in 2007. But when they tried to claim the prize in Tallahassee the next day, lottery officials told them the ticket was a misprint: The number 1 worth $500,000 was supposed to be a number 13.

Curcio’s husband died last month, but the 58-year-old widow is pursuing the claim. She filed suit this week in Leon County asking the state to honor the ticket and accusing the lottery of unfair and deceptive practices.

Lottery officials say the ticket’s bar code proves it’s not a winner, and the Curcios haven’t followed the procedure to dispute a claim.

Let’s make it clear. The widow has a winning number on a ticket she bought randomly yet the lottery refuses to pay because they say the ticket is not on their list of predetermined winners.

This is yet another example of why it is impossible to restore public trust in government institutions as long as the government program of predatory gambling exists in its present form.

The Hartford Courant, the largest daily newspaper in a state with two of the biggest casinos in the world, published an editorial yesterday with the headline “Is gambling worth it?”

It strongly questions whether the small percentage of overall budget revenue the state receives from the casinos has been worth hosting the most predatory business in America.

The editorial was a response to a recent Foxwoods Casino press release announcing the casino's slot machines have contributed $3 billion to Connecticut's treasury over the past 18 years. What other business regularly issues press releases telling the public how much money they provide to the state budget?

Last night Andy Rooney took aim at the government program of predatory gambling and scored a direct hit. Here are his comments:

Philadelphia Citypaper newsman Isaiah Thompson, the reporter behind what may be the best investigate news story into the business practices of the predatory gambling trade to date, predicts this week how Pennsylvania will attempt to fund its billion-dollar budget shortfall.

Despite legalizing casinos in the name of “property tax relief” in 2004, Thompson suggests government will cynically attempt to legalize electronic gambling machines in every bar and tavern in the state. It's almost happened twice already but “the proposal was dropped for a different expansion of gambling: table games — oh, and the extension of credit to slots players, and the creation of another casino, and a slew of secretive earmarks. I can't wait to see what extras they pack into the video poker proposals. Intravenous tubes for loyal "gamers," maybe?”

No issue better symbolizes broken government than the government program of predatory gambling. Fixing our broken government will require active, sustained engagement from citizens everywhere and high quality reporting from more journalists like Thompson. Thanks for staying on it, Isaiah.

A heart-wrenching story from The Albuquerque Journal:

The countdown to Kathy Borrego's judgment day had already begun. In less than 55 hours, she would be standing in front of state District Judge Stephen Pfeffer to find out her punishment for embezzling an estimated $3.4 million from the small Jemez Mountain School District. She faced up to life in prison.

 

Instead, Borrego, 51, apparently committed suicide Saturday, suffocating herself.  It was a tragic end for a woman who had been living the high life until her embezzlement scheme began to unravel about 11 months ago. Borrego gambled away hundreds of thousands of dollars at New Mexico casinos, apparently using money that should have gone to educating children in one of the poorest areas in the state.

The government program of predatory gambling has created thousands of real stories like Kathy Borrego’s. In a nation where all blood is supposed to be royal, where everyone is equal, how can we continue to deem people like Borrego as expendable?

The Miami New Times has a terrific cover story this week portraying the business and politics around predatory gambling in Florida, all done with the government’s blessing. It is a must-read.

Within the story, the reporter described a frequent casino visitor he interviewed as a “deadbeat optimist.” It is a compelling phrase.

The government program of predatory gambling has helped foster a culture of deadbeat optimists in which only one party actually enjoys a successful outcome - the gambling interests.

Lottery players across the United States purchasing Powerball tickets with the Power Play option will have a chance to increase their “winnings” by ten times starting May 1. But like everything connected with the government program of predatory gambling, there is a catch to the scheme: Power Play costs an extra $1 per ticket.

There are two primary ways for lotteries to achieve higher profits: get existing lottery users to lose more money or entice non-lottery users to start through aggressive marketing and expansion into new products and venues.

It is much easier and cheaper to get existing users to lose more which is why we see $50 scratch tickets. “PowerPlay” represents more of the same strategy.

Powerball and MegaMillions recently merged so now states can sell false dreams four times a week instead of two. The user who may have lost his money twice a week now can lose it four times a week. With the addition of PowerPlay, the state is attempting to swindle the Lottery Class for even more of its dollars.

On the eve of Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, much is being written about the economic decline for horse racing. Money bet on horse races, known as the handle, is off nearly 30 percent, to $12 billion in 2009. Casino interests have taken advantage of the downward spiral of horse racing over the last two decades, claiming that legalizing slot machines will “save horse racing.” The facts are clear that slots have not and will not save it yet casino interests continue to deceptively perpetuate the myth as they lobby for slots at even more racetracks.

Harrah’s executives explain why in this recent story:

Harrah’s calls racing a giant waste of money and resources — including real estate that could be used for more profitable enterprises.

 

“It’s like a horse and buggy manufacturer getting a subsidy from an auto manufacturer,” Harrah’s spokesman Gary Thompson says. “We’re subsidizing a dying business.”

 

Using slot money to support tracks never made much economic sense to begin with, though racetrack casinos were more politically palatable at the time, adds Jan Jones, the company’s senior vice president of communications and government relations.

 

“Horse and dog breeders have their share of political influence,” Jones says. “There were jobs at stake. And these facilities existed to begin with. It just seemed easier to put slots where betting was already taking place.”

The notion that casinos will save racing is nothing more than a big deception in a business based on deception.

A Massachusetts firefighter/­paramedic was arrested for embezzling $46,000 from his labor union’s bank account to feed a gambling addiction at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut.

As the 35-year old firefighter was arraigned in court, the defendant’s elderly father watched from the second row of the gallery.

“I feel very sad," said the father through a friend who acted as an interpreter. The father said he came to America as a refugee from Vietnam in 1980. His son, then 5, and his older sister came with him, he said.

“He’s a very good kid,” the father said. “Recently he had become a very compulsive gambler, and that got him into trouble.”

The business model for casinos like Foxwoods is based on exploiting out-of-control gamblers like this firefighter. They avoid scrutiny because our government is a partner.

In America, equal citizenship is one of our most sacred democratic principles – all blood is royal here. Yet casinos only exist because our government willingly deems some of our fellow citizens as expendable. Citizens just like this firefighter.

The New York Times has a story about Off Track Betting, another example of the government program of predatory gambling in action. Despite losses of tens of millions of dollars, the New York OTB’s board of directors voted to keep at least some of the 66 state-run betting parlors alive for another year.

The reporter visited two OTB parlors in writing her story. She observes:

“To me, that flash of good fortune, as bright as a comet and about as easy to catch, is anything but inspirational. If I were in the bad spot that many of the guys there seemed to be in — broke, in ill health, separated from family — I think a glimpse of that kind of long-shot payout would feel like fate mocking me.”

Yes, indeed. But fate is not alone in its mocking. On this issue, our government is mocking its citizens and mocking our democratic principles. Here is OTB Director Meyer Frucher speaking about the promise of this government program: with updated technology, “We could go head to head with pornography and win,” Frucher said, referring to possibilities such as an around-the-clock horse-racing channel or virtual racing.

The mission of our democracy, established clearly in our Constitution, is “to promote the general welfare.” The government program of predatory gambling violates this mission. Can you imagine any of America’s formative leaders over the last 225 years declaring that “we could go head to head with pornography and win”?

A hospital nurse, curious about what tipped patients into suicidal crisis, prompted a screening program in an Australian hospital's emergency department. The program's findings are depressingly stark: problem gamblers made up almost one in five of the 898 suicidal patients seen by the hospital over six months last year. The figures show problem gamblers are over-represented in the crisis group - appearing at about 20 times the rate of problem gambling in the community. In addition, a growing proportion of this state's electronic gambling machine revenue - a large body of research puts the figure at roughly half - comes from the serious gambling addiction of between 1 and 3 per cent of the population

Yet in a reflection of how little most opinion leaders around the world understand the issue, one newspaper’s editorial board recently described a plan to expand the government program of predatory gambling as “sensible.”

Unjust. Deceptive. Predatory. Addictive. These are the words that accurately describe casinos and lotteries. Sensible is not among them.

Many policy makers and members of the news media regularly draw on images of "casino" capitalism, which is front and center again as controversy swirls around Goldman Sachs. The critique is implicit in the image/metaphor.
 
But they rarely apply the same scrutiny to a critique of actual casinos.  Casino interests are overwhelming state capitols across America, spending hundreds of millions to push their something-for-nothing scheme into every corner of the nation yet few policy makers and members of the news media challenge any of it.

A Las Vegas ethic has come to permeate Wall Street because the same ethic, through its promotion of lotteries and casinos, has been the daily voice of government to most Americans for the last twenty years.

A Federal Reserve research paper just released Thursday stated that Pennsylvania casinos are not revitalizing local communities as gambling interests promised. In Philadelphia in particular, the local benefits of casinos could be outweighed by costs such as increases in pathological gambling, crime and personal bankruptcy, and the loss of valuable waterfront property to other uses, stated the paper, "Economic and Social Impact of Introducing Casino Gambling," by Alan Mallach. He produced the paper for the Community Affairs Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Read the full report here.

In a sign that some of the casino jobs are going elsewhere, Harrah's Chester (Pa.) Casino & Racetrack this month is holding job fairs in Atlantic City and Delaware.

Speaking of Philadelphia casinos, he said, "It is possible that although resulting in some increase in the aggregate number of jobs in the local area, the effect of the casinos will be to reduce the average wage for city residents."

Gambling interests spend hundreds of millions of dollars promoting the false notion they represent economic development but the truth will always be the same: predatory gambling is a something-for-nothing scheme which only benefits those who own it and promote it.

The California Lottery announced yesterday it is increasing the prize pool for the scratch tickets it sells to increase its profits. 

Higher prize pool (i.e. payout percentage) = more people win = more people put their winnings back into scratch tickets (which is mathematically certain they will ultimately lose) = increased sales.

"There are more prizes to give out, so people are going to win more often," said lottery director Joan Borucki. "When people win more often, they feel like playing more often, which in turn will increase sales, and as sales go up . . . our contribution to education goes up."

A contribution to education which makes up just 1.3% of the state’s education budget, according to this Los Angeles Times story – a figure even smaller than the 2% we posted about last week. 

The facts can no longer be denied: the time has come to reconsider the government program of predatory gambling.  

While states like Massachusetts are hotly debating whether to bring casinos into their states, the Orlando Sentinel has a story about another major element to the government program of predatory gambling: the Lottery.

The Florida Lottery “has shelled out millions” for its marketing firm, Ipsos-Reid, to help the agency understand its players and come up with strategies to get them to play more. That’s right. Government is actively trying to find ways to get its citizens to lose their money in these hard financial times.

The firm says players come in six categories, the most notable one being “Thrill-seeking dreamers.” According to the story:

This group makes up 13 percent of the population but accounts for 50 percent of lottery sales. Average age: 48. And 54 percent of the group is women. Players here are middle-income earners with slightly lower education levels. They have the highest level of play on all lottery games, especially scratch-offs and daily games. They visit Indian casinos, play bingo and are the most active of any group in Internet gambling.

Instead of encouraging people to dream and then go work for it, our government exploits those who dream, pushing millions of people into even deeper debt.

SPG executive director Les Bernal has a column about predatory gambling in today’s Boston Globe.  We urge you to check it out.

America was once a country that ran public campaigns using now classic images like Rosie the Riveter, with her biceps flexed declaring “We can do it” - an icon symbolizing a generation of people we now call “the Greatest Generation.”

As a people, we have lost much of that “We can do it” swagger. No issue better reflects this change in attitude than the government program of predatory gambling.

But Americans everywhere are doing their very best to bring the swagger back by working to stop the government program of predatory gambling in their community and state. Just yesterday, casino operator Steve Wynn pulled out of his deal to build a casino in Philadelphia, due in part to strong opposition from the citizen–led Casino Free Philadelphia and their coalition partners like Asian Americans United.

Our democracy is broken and it is up to us to fix it. We can do it.

Rachel Norton, a San Francisco School Board member, recently wrote an excellent post on why the Lottery has failed as a public policy:

“…I was chagrined to read in the PAC/PPS report that more than a few people are still wondering why education funding in California is in trouble -- don't we have all that lottery money? Now, anyone involved in K-12 education in California knows that the lottery has never been a significant source of income for California's schools, no matter what voters were told in 1984 when the lottery was created. But how to explain why?

Thank goodness for the California Budget Project (CBP). I subscribe to their daily "California Budget Bites" e-newsletter (highly recommended, by the way!), and this week they sent out a kind of top ten list detailing urban legends about California's budget. Number four is "California's schools don't have a money problem," but I wrote in to ask whether they couldn't specifically address the lottery funds (or lack thereof) in a future post. A few days later, that explanation appeared! In a nutshell, CBP calls the lottery, as a school funding mechanism, a "sucker bet," because it provides less than two percent of revenues for education. Even if lottery revenues tripled, in 2007-08 that would have amounted to five cents of revenue for every dollar the state spent on education.

That’s right. 2% of revenues for education. So in addition to being the most predatory business in America today, how can anyone argue that the California Lottery has been successful as a revenue source? Why should it continue to exist?

In the early 1990’s, David Osborn wrote a book titled Reinventing Government which for a time received significant national acclaim for its ideas on how to make government work better. The energy around reinventing government was so infectious in the country that the Clinton Gore administration made it a centerpiece of their agenda.

Today, some state governments across America show virtually no energy to reinvent themselves. The latest case comes from New Hampshire. While he opposes allowing slot machines and casino-style gambling, Gov. John Lynch said over the weekend he might support the legalization of online gambling to close a growing budget deficit.

The New Hampshire House is now debating a Senate-passed bill that allows up to 17,000 slot machines and casino-style games at six locations in the state but Lynch opposes it because he said it fails to prevent the proliferation of gambling.

The Boston Globe reports this morning that the Massachusetts House will not hold a public hearing on a bill to legalize casinos and racinos in the state that was released yesterday.

The government program of predatory gambling is one of the rare issues where the more people understand it, the more they become opposed. A public hearing on this bill would present the opportunity to intensely analyze at least four critical aspects of the issue that have not yet been investigated: the casino business model, the technology and design behind slot machines, the predatory marketing practices used by casinos and the central role the government program of predatory gambling has played in America’s debt culture.

When most citizens and legislators become aware of just how predatory the casino business really is, they will strongly oppose it. But awakening a person’s conscience requires understanding. A public hearing will only further that understanding.

A Colorado woman won $42 million at a penny slot machine but the casino says it was a “glitch” and will not give her the money. This story adds even more credibility to the description of slot machines as a "high tech version of loaded dice."

Casinos are the most effective something-for-nothing scheme ever devised and electronic gambling machines are the most lucrative part of their scheme. The woman would be wise to take the casino all the way to trial and make them explain the technology and design behind electronic gambling machines.

Here is an excellent example of how citizens are exposing the truth about predatory gambling in a very persuasive way. This brief video was put together by a woman in Massachusetts who continues to be very active in the state fight to stop predatory gambling, especially through her blogging.

Liz Benston of The Las Vegas Sun has a story this week about how casinos are trying to shed greyhound racing as part of their predatory gambling operations because it is no longer profitable.

Casino gambling would not exist in many states but for dog and horse tracks and their financial problems. Over the past two decades, several states legalized casinos at the site of dog and horse tracks for the stated purpose of subsidizing these businesses with slot machine profits.

Casinos shrewdly positioned themselves as the vehicle “save the racing industry.” Yet wagering amounts on greyhound racing continue to plummet year after year. Now companies like Harrah’s are offering money to states to allow them to stop it all together. Iowa’s two casinos with greyhound tracks (including one owned by Harrah’s) want to pay the state $10 million a year instead of diverting $12 million a year in slot revenue to supplement the prize money divided up among dog owners and breeders.

According to Benston:  

Harrah’s calls greyhound racing a giant waste of money and resources — including real estate that could be used for more profitable enterprises.

 

“It’s like a horse and buggy manufacturer getting a subsidy from an auto manufacturer,” Harrah’s spokesman Gary Thompson says. “We’re subsidizing a dying business.”

 

Using slot money to support tracks never made much economic sense to begin with, though racetrack casinos were more politically palatable at the time, adds Jan Jones, the company’s senior vice president of communications and government relations.

 

“Horse and dog breeders have their share of political influence,” Jones says. “There were jobs at stake. And these facilities existed to begin with. It just seemed easier to put slots where betting was already taking place.”

This year, it is greyhound racing. In five years, it will horse racing. So why are states still considering the legalization of slots at racetracks to “save jobs”?

The Morning Call, a newspaper based in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, ran a story yesterday revealing that much of the roughly $4.8 million a week being lost at Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem is likely coming from people who are poor.

According to a survey taken by the Lehigh Valley Research Consortium, 48 percent of Valley people living below the poverty line said they intended to gamble at the casino in south Bethlehem.

Of the 450 people surveyed in January and February 2009 -- four months before the casino opened -- people making less than $20,000, by a wide margin, said they were likely or very likely to gamble at the casino.

That compared with 29 percent for people making $20,000 to $60,000, 33 percent of people making $60,000 to $100,000 and 20 percent of those making more than $100,000.

The idea that the Valley's poorest residents are doing much of the gambling was a sobering reality to consortium researchers, who say it should sound an alarm for officials statewide to commission a more comprehensive study about exactly who is losing the more-than $40 million every week at the state's nine casinos.

Legislation that would allow the imposition of a new gross receipts tax in New Mexico’s Lincoln County has been signed into law. Revenues from the potential tax would finance a casino tax credit for the Ruidoso Downs Race Track and Casino. In addition, a special election costing the county $25,000 must now be held to approve the casino tax credit.

The casino tax credit through the new gross receipts tax was the regular legislative session's second effort at reducing the gambling tax for the racino owned by RD Hubbard. A first attempt that would have had state coffers provide a tax break failed.

The act allows the credit to be sought by racetracks in New Mexico that have a net win (wagering minus winnings) of less than $15 million. Currently only the Ruidoso Downs racino would fit that that requirement.

Officials with the Ruidoso Downs Race Track & Casino have threatened to move to the Las Cruces area without "tax parity" with nearby tribal casinos.

Why would government at any level subsidize a business based on pushing citizens into even deeper debt, especially since much of the money being lost comes largely from Social Security, unemployment and other government support? Taxpayers are already paying for these government programs that make up a large source of profits for the gambling operators and now they are being asked to subsidize the same business by paying more in taxes.

You pay whether you play or not. And you are paying a lot. 

The Day newspaper in Connecticut reports about a national survey on predatory gambling by PublicMind, Fairleigh Dickinson University's research center. Here are some of the findings:

• A majority of those with an opinion on the subject think casinos hurt local communities.

• The survey also shows that two out of three Americans oppose the legalization of Internet gambling while 53 percent oppose the legalization of sports betting.

• Forty-six percent said casinos have a negative impact on the local community while 38 percent said casinos have a positive local effect. Those who indicated they had visited a casino in the previous 12 months split evenly on the question. Among those who hadn't visited a casino in the last year, 61 percent said casinos have a negative effect.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Monica Yant Kinney writes a first-class story exposing the most predatory business in America. Here are a couple of the most remarkable excerpts in which she quotes the President of the former Philadelphia Park racetrack now known as Parx Casino:

Parx president Dave Jonas says his revenue comes almost exclusively from local low rollers."We underestimated significantly how many trips our customers were going to make," Jonas said at last month's Pennsylvania Gaming Congress in Valley Forge. "When I was in Atlantic City, to have 12 to 15 trips out of customers, they were VIPs," Jonas said. At Parx, "it's not uncommon for us to have 150 to 200 trips."

 

"You said 150 to 200 times a year," he (the moderator) repeated. "That's three to four times a week, essentially."

 

"Yes," Jonas confirmed, most of his players fit that profile. In fact, because Parx players tend to live within 20 miles of Street Road, many go even more frequently. "We have customers," Jonas boasted, "who give us $25, $30 five times a week."

 

It didn't take much to lure them, beyond proximity, free valet parking, and $50 comps. "If you live 15 minutes away, you really don't need a room," Jonas told the casino group. His customers "come in, grab a hot dog or maybe a chicken sandwich," gamble three hours, "then go home and sleep in their own bed."

Except for work, where else do any of us go 200 days a year? That is more than we require kids to attend public school.

Unlike our schools, the government program of predatory gambling runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year pushing people into deeper and deeper debt by promoting a “product” that is designed to approach every user as a potential addict so they will “play to extinction” – until their money is all gone.

Casinos like Parx only exist because government is a partner. Any other business with such predatory practices would be shut down immediately. It is a government program based on addiction and indebtedness. The casual visitor, as we know from the numbers from Parx and other casinos, is virtually irrelevant to the business model.

Government cancels school and sends state workers home during heavy snows because it is rightly concerned for the safety of kids and state employees.

But there are no “snow days” in the government program of predatory gambling. How could there be? After all, so the reasoning goes, someone needs to pay for the streets to be plowed.

Please contact your state and local officials and ask for public hearings on the business practices of the government program of predatory gambling – the most predatory operation in America today.

Reporter Lindsay Peterson of The Tampa Tribune wrote one of the best investigative stories on the lottery that has appeared anywhere in America in recent years. Read it here. Some of the story's highlights include:

“The state pays millions to probe the thoughts and habits of potential lottery players. Consultants ask what they buy at convenience stores, whether they rent videos, go to theme parks, even how they feel about owning things and belonging to a group.

“The results show the lottery relies on the poorest and least educated — "Thrill Seeking Dreamers," it calls them — to spend more than everyone else. Floridians shelled out nearly $4 billion on lottery tickets in 2008-09, with the Thrill Seekers accounting for half of those purchases.”

“The lottery needs to "reach people who have never played," Florida Lottery Secretary Leo DiBenigno said, partly because of the recession but mostly because the state's growth has slowed.”

“Adjusting for inflation, the lottery's contribution to education will soon be lower than in 2002. A continued slide, the state analysts said, would cast doubt on the purpose of the game.”

“Anthony Miyazaki of Florida International University in Miami has spent more than a decade researching lottery players. He questions whether the state should promote a practice that exploits human weakness. "How do you have high expectations for people when the government itself is promoting what is likely a false hope?" he asked.”

“Lottery officials pay game creators and researchers millions to monitor players' responses to new games and advertising. For about $2.4 million a year, global market researcher Ipsos Reid regularly surveys thousands of Floridians. The researchers ask hundreds of questions about the lottery games people play — where, why and how much they spend on each one. They ask about the messages they perceive from lottery ads. And they ask about their attitudes toward life, fate and gambling. The consultant breaks out the answers by gender, race, age, income and education, devoting special attention to Hispanics.”

“Studies of lottery spending, including one from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, show the money comes largely from Social Security, unemployment and other government support. Government, in other words, is paying government — with a lot of money siphoned off in the process. It's inefficient, the reserve bank writers concluded.”

Inefficient, for sure, but it is also the most predatory business in America today.

The government program of predatory gambling is dependent on addicted or heavily-indebted citizens. Predatory gambling operators attempt to elude charges of exploitation by pleading it is a “voluntary” act, hiding under the cloak of “freedom.” But by definition, someone who is an addict or someone who is in deep financial debt is not free. In a country where everyone is considered equal, where all blood is royal, how can the state actively promote a government program that renders some of our fellow citizens as expendable?

The Buffalo News has a story today listing just a few of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have been deemed expendable:

Thomas Pokrywczynski, a former union treasurer, admitted this week to stealing $71,000 from Transit Workers Local 1342.  He stole an additional $183,000 from a statewide lobbying group representing the rights of transit workers, making his total theft $254,000.

Pokrywczynski told a federal judge that he stole because he needed cash to gamble at casinos.  He is the latest of several local people convicted of large-scale embezzlements linked to legalized casino gambling.

"I've had at least 10 cases like this, and we're seeing more of them," said Thomas J. Eoannou, attorney for Pokrywczynski.  "And a lot of them are people who have never broken the law before in their lives."

Another of Eoannou's clients is Peggy Gaiser, 53, of Grand Island, who awaits sentencing in State Supreme Court for stealing $175,000 from a greeting card store she managed in the Town of Tonawanda.  Gaiser also admitted that she stole money to gamble at casinos.

"[Gaiser and Pokrywczynski] are extremely good people who had a weakness … casino gambling," Eoannou said.  "Neither of them had any criminal history before these incidents."

In recent years, other local cases have involved:

-- Ronald Brdeja, 45, of Niagara Falls, who last year began serving a state prison sentence of one to four years for stealing $60,000 from his 90-year-old aunt, leaving her penniless.  Authorities said he and his wife used the money for casino gambling.

-- Lon Coldiron, 43, a Buffalo businessman, who was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison last year.  He was convicted of burning down his Elmwood Avenue coffee shop to get an insurance settlement to pay gambling debts.

-- Mindy Hernandez, 36, former manager of a Buffalo law firm, who was sentenced in 2007 to two years in prison for stealing $289,716 from her employer to pay for casino gambling and debts including online gambling.

-- Kenneth A. Mangione, 63, longtime chief financial officer for a school and residence for troubled children in Hamburg, who embezzled $192,679 from the school to finance casino gambling and was sentenced to six months in jail in 2007.

Over the weekend there was a news story about the Bethlehem (PA) casino, built on the site of the former Bethlehem Steel- once a symbol of America’s industrial might.

It was supposed to be a “destination resort casino” yet they opened the casino but never even finished building the conference center, mall and hotel where all the supposed jobs were to be created.

The phrase “resort casino” is nothing more than a political frame to artificially inflate public support for the scheme and veil the most predatory business model in America today.

Kent Glowinski, an attorney and former gambling addict, speaks out against the government program of predatory gambling. Glowinski rightly argues that government is unwilling to aggressively stop the predatory business practices used by casinos because it depends on the revenue. And without people like Glowinski, casinos don’t have a business.

The Las Vegas Sun reported yet another lawsuit has been filed involving Harrah’s for its unparalleled predatory business practices. Christian Peterson, a 41-year old Wisconsin business owner, has testified that Harrah’s pressured him into signing a $3.45 million loan- known as a “marker” in predatory gambling parlance- despite knowing he was a problem gambler. Grand jury testimony indicates that Harrah’s furnished Peterson a jet for transportation to-and-from Las Vegas in April 2008. Peterson says that about 45 minutes into his flight home on April 22, 2008, a flight attendant informed Peterson the jet would be returning to Las Vegas for an emergency landing due to mechanical difficulties. Upon arrival in Las Vegas, Peterson was greeted by a Harrah’s representative who told him he had to sign a casino marker before he could leave on the company jet.

Peterson’s case comes on the heels of two other high profile lawsuits involving Harrah’s predatory business practices. One case involves Terrance Watanabe who lost $127 million in one year. According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, a Harrah’s employee said Watanabe often appeared incoherent and had trouble remembering details of conversations. Other employees recall Mr. Watanabe stumbling around and dozing off at casino tables, some of which were located next to a nightclub blaring loud music.

Another lawsuit presently before the Indiana Supreme Court involves Jenny Kephart, a woman who went to a Harrah’s owned casino in Indiana and lost $125,000 in credit provided by the casino, money lent to her after Kephart had already lost at least $8,000 of her own money the same night. “They knew I had money, and they went after it," Kephart said, who attributed her gambling addiction to her former job as a dealer in the mid-1990s. Since that time she estimated that she'd gambled away at least $900,000.

What other business in America is allowed to use these kinds of predatory practices? The only reason it survives is because our government has partnered with casino operators and is receiving a cut of the gambling losses. It is a government program like no other.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote an excellent column yesterday about what will be required to face the serious economic challenges in front of us:

“Our parents truly were the Greatest Generation. We, alas, in too many ways, have been what the writer Kurt Andersen called “The Grasshopper Generation,” eating through the prosperity that was bequeathed us like hungry locusts. Now we and our kids together need to be “The Regeneration” — the generation that renews, refreshes, re-energizes and rebuilds America for the 21st century.”

Yet to most Americans, the commercial below represents the daily voice of government: deceptive marketing of a something-for-nothing scheme with “life changing jackpots” at impossible odds of 1 in 195 million.

Any effort to renew, refresh, re-energize and rebuild America - The Regeneration -needs to start first with the government program of predatory gambling. Otherwise, it is like trying to build a foundation on top of a pit of red and yellow colored ping pong balls.

The San Jose Mercury News reported this week that six of the top 10 largest donors to political causes nationwide were Indian casino tribes, spending a total of $160 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics study. The figure does not include the tens of millions of dollars spent by commercial gambling interests like Penn National and Harrahs. By comparison, the powerful Service Employees International Union spent $35 million and the National Association of Realtors dished out $28 million.

It says a lot about why our government is broken when the most predatory institution in America is also the biggest player in the nation’s politics. We used to refer to corrupt and inept governments as "banana republics." Today, the more appropriate term is "casino republics" and America is sliding into becoming the world's biggest.

Anyone who wants to bring real change to our government, regardless of where he or she stands on the political spectrum, needs to first take aim at the government program of predatory gambling.

Today, thirteen Philadelphia citizens arrested in a highly-publicized but peaceful demonstration against the government program of predatory gambling were found not guilty. The citizens had lined the entrance to the proposed SugarHouse casino site which recently started construction.

The Sugarhouse 13 range in age from 25 to 72 and include several grandparents, two members of the clergy, several public school teachers, and veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Each defendant testified on her or his own behalf.

SPG Executive Director Les Bernal traveled to Philadelphia to support these 13 people as well as the many others who helped them. He had the privilege to speak at a rally held right before the trial began.

He let them know that there are thousands of citizens across the country just like them who are challenging the government program of predatory gambling in their own states.

But Bernal also responded to the people who defend the predatory gambling trade and label those who stand against them as “extremists.” He pointed to Dr. Martin Luther King’s celebrated Letter from Birmingham Jail in which he wrote: “The question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremists will we be?” 

The government program of predatory gambling commands us to answer that question. Will we be extremists for exploitation or will we be extremists for patriotism? Will we be extremists for personal greed or will we be extremists for the common good?

Thirteen people in Philadelphia showed us their answer through their actions. If you want to demonstrate your answer by organizing a direct action in your state or donating money to finance one, please email or call us at SPG. To donate, click the link on the right side of this page. America needs you right now.

Georgia lawmakers are pushing the Georgia Lottery Corp. to end its practice of handing out bonuses when teachers and state workers experience furloughs and no salary increases.

The Georgia Lottery handed out nearly $3 million in bonuses to its staffers last year. Lottery president and CEO Margaret DeFrancisco received a $204,034 bonus on top of her $286,000 annual salary.

Since the lottery was created by the legislature in 1992, employees have collected bonuses, but the amounts have alarmed members of the General Assembly because the state is mired in one of the worst economic downturns in its history.

The lottery does not consider its employees as state workers. Yet how is it not a part of government when the lottery president reports to a board appointed by the governor? What other “business” has its president answer to a board controlled by an elected official?

Yesterday in Massachusetts a top executive of the Mohegan Sun Casino helped release recommendations for dealing with problem gamblers if casinos are legalized in the Bay State.

For public relations purposes, casinos spend tens of millions of dollars trying to create the impression of being concerned but problem gamblers and heavily indebted people are the money makers for casinos. Without them, their business model does not function.

Casinos can trace 75% of their gambling revenue back to specific customers through their state-of-the-art player tracking system technology. Despite this highly sophisticated technology, they claim not to know who the problem gamblers are that make up 90% of their profits.

After Mohegan Sun’s formal press conference, the casino operator conceded in an interview that the Mohegan Sun failed to adequately deal with an addicted gambler from Western Massachusetts who said he lost a net $450,000 mostly at the Connecticut casino over the course of a year.

The addicted gambler said he would sometimes gamble 23 hours straight at the Mohegan Sun and often several days a week. “Nobody mentioned a thing about intervention,” said the gambler.

Mohegan Sun knew that a man inside their casino had been gambling for 23 hours straight yet did nothing to stop him. What other signs do they need to identify someone as an out-of-control gambler?

Make no mistake. Once that man had lost all his money and all his credit, only then do casinos like Mohegan Sun take action to deal with problem gamblers because now they are worthless – or as the casino operators call it – “played to extinction.”