I am posting the invitation below with the hope that some of you will join me in covering this event as citizen journalists. The pro gambling industry is also having an event the same day; I would like to get the word out about this press briefing as well as report on the content online in as many blogs and sites as possible.
Invitation follows:
Good evening all,
I hope you and your colleagues can join us in Boston for a media briefing and release of the Casino Math Workbook for Beacon Hill, Executive Summary on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 (details below).
Pro-predatory gambling representatives are holding a meeting on “responsible gambling” the same day, with the gambling industry and the requisite enablers as spokespersons. Finding methods to make legislators feel better about making bad decisions to legalize expanded predatory gambling, slots/casinos must be their misguided goal.
The NASW-MA and addiction specialists oppose expansion of predatory gambling in the Commonwealth. The solution for pathological gambling is abstinence and behavior change, not legalizing the electronic device (slots) that doubles rates of addiction.
Casino Facts (dot) Org and the Western MA Substance Abuse Providers Association (WMSAPA) recently signed onto USS Mass and they support the call for an independent cost-benefit analysis before legalizing any expanded predatory gambling. I have been asked to speak to WMSAPA at their March meeting. It will be a pleasure to see and work with some of my former colleagues on this issue of mutual concern.
Casino Math Class for Beacon Hill – Media Briefing
What: Media briefing hosted by United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts (www.uss-mass.org) to release an executive summary of a new report refuting the predatory, deceptive and flawed math behind the casino proposal.
Where: Statehouse Room B-1.
When: Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 1 p.m.
Who: Kathleen Conley Norbut, M.Ed., LMHC, United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts (www.uss-mass.org)
Les Bernal, Stop Predatory Gambling (www.stoppredatorygambling.org)
Prof. Robert Goodman, Hampshire College, former director of the US Gambling Research Institute and author of “The Luck Business.”
Laura Everett, associate director, Mass. Council of Churches
Contact: Kathleen Conley Norbut, M.Ed., LMHC
President
United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts (USS Mass)
PO Box 376
Palmer, MA 01069
ussmass@gmail.com
(413) 267-3869
What is it with you politically-correct moralists that you waste everyone’s time with these ridiculous forums? You present an alleged “report” or “study” on the evils of gambling that resembles something an under-the-weather college senior would pass in as a term paper having written through the night in a weed-and-beer stupor.
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p>Really, the “alleged” report is an embarrassment. It’s just a diatribe of unsubstantiated assertions. There’s no factual evidence within it. It just screams “we don’t have any evidence but we’re against casinos so we’re going to yell and stomp until we get our way.”
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p>Come on, how manic are you anti-casino moonbats going to get? Don’t you have lives other than worrying how other people live theirs? Are your lives so bereft of fulfillment that you need to demand that people conduct themselves, live their lives, and spend their dollars only as how you see fit? Why are you so intent on dictating other peoples’ lifestyles?
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p>Why aren’t you involved in more tangible and hands-on initiatives like doing errands for shut-ins or reading to seniors at nursing homes, or volunteering your time working at a local animal shelter.
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p>I’m a professional who supports casinos. I also happen to spend four hours each weekend doing volunteering at a local animal shelter or nursing home. I’m not addicted to gambling. I don’t know anyone who is. I am a liberal and progressive Democrat who believes that the politically-correct wing of our party — typified by these anti-casino zealots — is guiding us to defeat in 2010.
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p>For those of you who were not around in 1978 or 1990, a sputtering economy combined with a far-too-politically correct group of Democratic activists, guaranteed the election as governor of a conservative Democrat who went on to become known as “Ronald Reagan’s favorite Democratic governor,” and the election of a New York import named Weld, who then led to a Cellucci, Swift and Romney in the governor’s office.
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p>Keep hassling your legislators and the governor over this casino issue and you’ll have yourself a Republican governor and many more Republican state reps and state senators come next January.
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p>You’re fighting the wrong battle. You’re helping the Republicans win with this endless blather over casinos. People need jobs. That’s what’ll save Patrick’s governorship. Not some sociological, feel good experiment of driving him so far left on the casino issue that he loses middle-of-the-road votes and liberals like myself who just can’t understand why giving people a job and the dignity that goes with it is somehow regressive. It isn’t!