Cross-posted from Bellicose Bumpkin
MTA needs some edumacation
Having been doomed to read more about casinos than anyone should ever have to, I see the gamut of information from studies, to blogs, and probably most of all news articles that report on the unfolding story of casinos in Massachusetts including the proposed Mashpee Wampanoag casino being rammed through Middleboro.
Most of the articles, in addition to reporting on the news event of the day, tend to regurgitate the same old mantra:
We need the revenue
We need to recapture the money from CT
We need the jobs
We need a place for Davey Jones to play at
We need a place to send our kids for field trips(Don’t ask)
We need a place for our schools to buy second hand vehicles(Don’t ask)
etc.
An article in today’s Globe by Steve Bailey really hits the nail on the head. The article is critical of the Mass Teachers Association’s(MTA) short-sighted support of Patricks’ casino legislation under the guise of needing revenue.
Bailey puts some perspective on this with a story about accountant Richard Anzivino who embezzled $802,000 from the MTA to support his gambling addiction. This one gambler racked up over $1.1M dollars in costs to you and I. This is the sort of high end loser that contributes to the Grinols esimate of $13.6K in average costs for each problem gambler.
I’m going to keep this post short and spare you from my usual pontifications and leave you by saying that you are free to gamble if you choose. And I am free in my desire to not pay for it.
“This one gambler racked up over $1.1M dollars in costs to you and I.”
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p>Could you explain how “you and I” have racked up $1.1 Mil because of this? I didn’t get my invoice.
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p>With no casinos in Massachusetts, Richard Anzivino managed to feed his gambling addiction by simply driving across the border. Seems Massachusetts already has the problem in our state. We just don’t get any of the revenue gaming generates (and please we can debate if the Governor’s numbers are inflated for either revenue or jobs but the bottom line is we will have more of both with casinos). So how did no casinos in Mass address the Anzivino problem?
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p>I’m still waiting for the anti-gaming State Representatives and Senators to ask the Speaker to drop all lottery reveune from their local aid cherry sheets. After all if casino gaming causes these issues, it would seem lottery games have a similar impact.
$802K was embezzled from the MTA. The loss was covered by insurance. That comes directly out of the consumers pocket as far as I’m concerned. Another $300K was spent by the MTA in legal/accounting fees to clean up the mess. At a miminum that came of out the pockets of MTA members – though i don’t claim to know how their funding works.
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The data is pretty clear on this. If we load the state with casinos we’ll have a doubling of people like Anzivino and the costs that come with them.
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p>You can’t make the “all gambling is created equal” argument. The lottery is legal, casinos are not. Slots are engineered to be addictive – far more so than any other form of gambling.
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p>IMO – the onus is on pro-casino legislators to prove to me that the revenue generated and/or recaptured will exceed the costs of regulation, policing, social problems, loss in lottery revenue, etc.
I think this is shaping up to be a single issue race in Massachusetts.