Stop Predatory Gambling
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Newspaper blisters the sham of casino “responsible gambling” programs
After many years of watching government’s failed predatory gambling policy unfold in their state, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial unloads on the recent efforts by casinos to eliminate the last of Missouri’s precautionary operating restrictions: offering loans to gamblers. Here… Read more
Massachusetts Lottery Congratulates Itself for 40 Years of Failure
The Massachusetts Lottery is throwing itself a State House party to tout its 40th anniversary even though it has been a failed public policy by nearly every measure. How has the Massachusetts Lottery failed over the past four decades? It… Read more
Michigan editorial reveals the naked truth about casinos in Michigan
A Michigan newspaper editorial strongly urges voters not to fall for the sham argument that casinos represent “economic development” for Michigan. Here’s an excerpt: “Expect to hear a lot about economic development and tax revenue. Indeed, the one group that… Read more
Pennsylvania’s bet, bait and switch
This just in from Stop Predatory Gambling Board member Paul Boni: “In every state, lawmakers legalize casinos on the justification that state proceeds would be used to fund certain special interests (thereby securing votes in the legislature) and then, in… Read more
The gambling revenue “success” in the U.S.
More than two-thirds of states that legalized casinos, lotteries or racetrack casinos in the past 10 years have yet to see the state and local revenue that political and industry champions of legalization had promised. This fact, reported by Stateline.org,… Read more
“We need to pretend we care…just long enough to get the casino bill passed”
Boston’s Fox 25 has an excellent report this morning about how states ultimately strip funding for problem gambling treatment even though grand promises were made to help the tens of thousands of new addicts created by government’s predatory gambling policy…. Read more
Virginia Lottery’s bait and switch
From The Virginian-Pilot on the big fraud of government’s predatory gambling program: Virginia’s lottery receipts are supposed to boost funding for schools. Instead, the annual $450 million goes everywhere but. A quarter-century ago, Virginians approved a state lottery on the… Read more
Massachusetts predatory gambling bill gets even worse
Below is a strong Boston Globe editorial makes the case why the Governor of Massachusetts should veto the casino bill that may make its way to his desk: THE CASINO bill that the Legislature is sending to Governor Patrick is… Read more
Who knew public libraries were based on creating addicts and pushing citizens into deeper personal debt
When you are promoting a failed public policy, deceit and dishonesty represent your only way to win and it is all made possible by spending millions of dollars to spread a phony narrative. This explains why as Maine attempts repel… Read more
Government creates addiction in order to feed off of it then breaks promise to fund help for the victims
From The Miami Herald’s Fred Grimm: It was the sop lawmakers tossed to Floridians apprehensive about the social effects of legalized gaming: Don’t worry. Some portion of these suckers’ losses will fund a prevention program for problem and pathological gambling…. Read more
Government official personally thanked those who were scamming the Lottery for propping up flat sales
As if there was not a mountain of evidence already showing how government’s predatory gambling program is a major failure, along comes another damning news report. Andrea Estes of The Boston Globe has a must-read account about how the Massachusetts… Read more
One day closer to getting government out of the predatory gambling business
The Daytona Beach News-Journal rips the failed government policy of predatory gambling in a must-read editorial. Read it below: Lawmakers escape into gambling fantasyland Florida is on the cusp of becoming the Disney World of gambling. Uh, make that gaming… Read more
Is there any state where people are not going over the border to gamble?
Below are three TV ads from different parts of the country that perfectly capture the phony narrative that predatory gambling operators promote in state after state to deceive voters into supporting the legalization of casinos. A central part of the… Read more
Unwieldly and unprofitable to taxpayers, the failed government program of casinos and lotteries will ultimately follow the path of OTB
The New York Times has an excellent story about one example of the failed government policy of predatory gambling – Off-Track-Betting in New York. Here is the the key excerpt from The NYT Times story which holds true for the… Read more
Pressure mounts on Connecticut’s failing casinos
The Hartford Business Journal reports again about the decline in annual slot revenues at Connecticut’s two casinos, continuing a six-year slide for Foxwoods and a four-year slide for Mohegan Sun. Read the report below. CT casinos’ slot revenue short again… Read more
More evidence why government needs to get out of the gambling business
False promises. Predatory practices. Deeper levels of personal debt. Expendable citizens. There is perhaps no present government policy that emits a more wretched stench of failure than government’s policy of predatory gambling. Here is the most recent evidence in what… Read more
Fake comments, fake supporters, all in the name of sneaking through a failed policy
Jessie Powell of Massachusetts, a citizen leader against the failed government policy of predatory gambling, recently spotlighted testimony about how predatory gambling interests paid a viral marketing firm to post fake comments on news websites to give the appearance of… Read more
Maine moves closer to “casino republic” status
Dennis Bailey, the talented, longtime leader of CasinosNo! in Maine, sent out the news alert below early this morning. From Dennis: Yesterday, the Maine House of Representatives bowed to the unprecedented lobbying campaign by the pro-casino forces and approved three… Read more
North Carolina Community College Students Become “Collateral Damage”
The North Carolina House recently voted on a budget that will cut financial aid from lottery funds to low-income community college students. Since creating the state Lottery in 2005, lawmakers have “tinkered with the formula” that initially allocated 10 percent… Read more
“The smell of desperation on slot machines permeates our political class”
Responding to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s drive for a Chicago casino, journalist James Warren writes one of the best op-ed pieces we have read in some time about the failed policy of predatory gambling. It is a must-read. Here are… Read more
Casino Companies Send Workers Home Due to Fear of Tax Increase
On Wednesday, the predatory gambling industry halted construction of 2 casinos in Ohio after the state legislature proposed increasing taxes on them. After already spending $200 million dollars on the projects, executives at Rock Gaming and Caesars Entertainment sent hundreds… Read more
Is there a soup kitchen across the street from Pebble Beach Golf Course?
In states across America, predatory gambling operators and some political officials have deceptively framed their proposals as a push to legalize “destination resort casinos.” They use the frame to avoid arousing serious questioning by media, legislators and citizens about the… Read more
State’s take of Lottery profits continues to get smaller and smaller
Chris Joyner of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reveals how less and less money from the Georgia Lottery is going to its stated goals of funding college scholarships and early childhood ed – further evidence that lotteries are a failed policy. Check… Read more
Local Iowa citizen pulls back the curtain on the state’s “good corporate citizens”
Antonia Russo of Iowa wrote an excellent guest commentary in the Iowa City Press-Citizen that underscores how casinos in Iowa have failed to deliver the mythical economic and public revenue boost they promised twenty years ago. Nice work, Antonia. Read… Read more
Professional lottery ticket cashers provide a window into another reason why state lotteries are a failed public policy
The Boston Herald’s Hillary Chabot breaks a major story this morning about the prevalance of “professional lottery ticket cashers.” These individuals hand in multiple winning lottery tickets given to them by people who want to avoid back taxes, evade child… Read more
Ohio taxpayers are only beginning to see the bill for their state’s predatory gambling program
Alexander Coolidge of The Cincinnati Inquirer has an excellent news story about how the state revenues from proposed Ohio casinos will be 40% less than what the casino interests promised during their unprecedented $60 million campaign in 2009 to amend… Read more
Chrysler Super Bowl ad pointedly leaves out Detroit casinos
In what may have been the best TV ad of yesterday’s Super Bowl, Chrysler ran a powerful ad showing rap artist Eminem driving one of its sedans with visual images of the city of Detroit as a backdrop. You can… Read more
Georgia’s “Education” Lottery Proving to Be Hopeless
The New York Times ran a major story on Friday about the tenuous future of the Hope Scholarship program- a merit-based college scholarship program funded by the financial losses of Georgia’s working poor. The money gets redistributed thanks to the… Read more
The facts clearly prove the North Carolina Lottery is a failed public policy
In yet another expose about how the government program of predatory gambling is a failed public policy, The Winston-Salem Journal (NC) editorial board unmasks the North Carolina Lottery Here it is: The looming state budget crisis that threatens to land a staggering… Read more
New Jersey bill doesn’t “reform” casino regulations – it destroys them
Below is a must-read column written by former N.J. Casino Commission member Carl Zeitz that appears in today’s Press of Atlantic City newspaper. It is a response to the push by predatory gambling interests to emasculate New Jersey’s oversight of casinos…. Read more
Aqueduct jobs come from out-of-state but its profits will come from the neighborhood
Local political leaders in the Queens borough of New York pushed through a deal to legalize slot machines at Aqueduct horse track in the name of jobs for their constituents. Now with its slots license in hand, the overseas casino… Read more
Who knew the Garden of Eden was really a casino?
To get their something-for-nothing schemes passed, predatory gambling operators rely on relentlessly promoting their very tall tales. But even by their own standards, the “artist’s rendering” of the proposed Catskills casino may be among the tallest tales of all. The citizens of… Read more
Backpedaling starts already in Ohio
Predatory gambling interests recently spent more than $60 million on an Ohio referendum to promote a false narrative that legalizing casinos would bring back the state’s fading job base and revive some of its cities. It is a false narrative because casinos milk… Read more
Arkansas Lottery director scolded by legislators
From Arkansas News: An Arkansas state audit has revealed a variety of deficiencies in how the Arkansas lottery is being run, and one legislator told the lottery director he “would be gone” if he led any other state agency. Members… Read more
When the facts don’t support their answer, gambling interests change the question
For almost twenty years, racetrack owners across the country have pushed for slot machines at their facilities in the name of “saving jobs at the tracks.” Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on PR and public affairs work… Read more
“Gambling-addicted governments enslaving others”
A must-read column today by Susan Martinuk of The Calgary Herald. Read it below: Most of us don’t wake up each morning wondering what we can do to lose a lot of money today. But, apparently, a growing proportion of Canadians do and,… Read more
Rendell’s something-for-nothing scheme leaves Pennsylvania in a fiscal mess
Outgoing Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s primary legacy will be the introduction of casinos across the state. To sell his predatory gambling plan politically, he tied it to “tax relief.” So what does the future look like for the state’s taxpayers… Read more
Missouri casino revenue is not going to fund education as promised
To help pass casino and lottery legislation, predatory gambling interests run PR campaigns promoting how their profits will benefit the public yet in the end, it seldom ever happens. In Missouri, they promised their profits would go to fund education… Read more
An Iceberg of Greed Sinking Foxwoods Casino
For more than ten years, Jeff Benedict has been one of the most articulate and politically astute leaders to stop predatory gambling in America. Today, he published a must read op-ed in The Hartford Courant about the dire situation facing… Read more
Casinos are worse than nothing
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… Read more
A huge ripoff even by the standards of a business based on ripoffs
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… Read more
The truth still the same 18 years later
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… Read more
Staying on the predatory gambling story
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…. Read more
Federal Reserve Bank study reaffims the truth
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,… Read more
Casinos look to end their support for racing
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… Read more
Now the Symbol of Phony Prosperity
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… Read more
One of the undeniable truths about predatory gambling
Our growing movement to stop predatory gambling is the most diverse social movement in America. The reason for our opposition is not based on partisanship: we are non-partisan and our movement is made up of people whose views span the… Read more