According to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s own projections, $1 billion dollars a year in local spending will be shifted away from existing businesses to the casinos.
Whether it’s 1,000 Massachusetts businesses each losing $1,000,000 in sales, or 10,000 Massachusetts businesses each losing $100,000 in sales, no business is going to absorb that loss without laying off employees. Are you willing to sacrifice your job so someone else can get a job at a casino? Should your friends and neighbors have to sacrifice theirs?
On November 4th, Vote YES to Repeal the Casino Law
Vote YES on #3
Vote YES to STOP the Casino Mess
Donate/volunteer here to stop the casino mess!
Please share widely!
…stopped by to talk about the Yes on 3 campaign in my latest episode of “All Politics Is Local”:
Well done, folks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvQclv4YbG4&feature=youtu.be
Your statement is designed to deceive. Right now Massachusetts residents go to casinos in CT, ME and RI and spend $1 Billion a year on entertainment. As long as Massachusetts has no resort casino to go to, they will continue to to contribute to the economies of our neighboring states. Their entertainment of choice is helping CT, RI and ME raise $400 Million in tax revenue a year to pay for their schools and public services.
The Gaming Law proposed by Gov. Patrick and passed by the legislature was created to generate jobs her in Ma and to stop the loss of that revenue. $400 Million a year in increased tax revenue here could help cities and towns who have flat local aid and increasing costs. Thousands of jobs resulting from gaming facilities here could help employ people right here. Employed people spend money and pay taxes…that is a positive in any community.
let me guess: the gambling syndicate. Amiright?
“entertainment”? or gambling? Are you saying that Celine Dion will be a headliner at Springfield Slots & More?
It sounds to me as though you’re whistling so hard to get past the graveyard that your face is turning purple.
Perhaps one of you can find and publish a link to the report in question. Without reading the report, it’s impossible to know what it says or even how it arrives at its numbers.
The “thousands of jobs resulting from gaming facilities” is pure hogwash. Those are low-paying jobs, and the money used to pay them DOES come from outside the gaming industry. Gamblers who blow their life savings on slots do NOT spend that money on local contractors, trades people, grocery suppliers, hardware stores, and all the other local businesses that actual CONTRIBUTE something to our culture. The gamblers turn their life savings into pennies that they feed into the collection bins of large out-of-state conglomerates, cleverly designed to be “fun” to “play”.
The economics are clear, and your bluster doesn’t change them. Whatever amount is actually collected in taxes from casinos (if they ever happen) is more than offset by taxes NOT collected elsewhere in the state and by increased government spending on the host of increased services that will be required to address the enormously negative social impacts of that same gambling.
This “jobs” argument is an utter red herring. I remind you that herring is a bait fish, a piece of the chum offered by the gambling industry sharks gathering to feast on a Massachusetts population already weakened by decades of plundering by the very wealthy — aided and abetted by government officials of both parties who are bought and paid for by the very wealthy.
I think the “jobs” argument is the excuse hoping supporters overlook the negative aspects of casino gambling. Any time a questionable scheme is proposed, jobs are used to rationalize it. If we are so seduced by the promise of easy gambling revenues, then why don’t we just massively expand our already successful lottery system and harvest that money with our existing lottery infrastructure? At least then, we won’t be shipping billions of dollars into the casino company’s coffers. The fact that they are so willing to spend on expensive pro casino campaigns and promises of “billion dollar resort casinos” should tell us how lucrative they see the opportunity.
George Carlin documented this in his stand up routine about people who justified nuclear weapons as job creators “i can stand a little radiation if I can draw a check”, the inevitable result of a downsized economy no longer committed to full employment.
Similarly, desperate places and people need those jobs and like the Music Man/Monorail Salesman good old-Steve Wynn sweeps in.
We are getting creamed in the polls, the addiction and social harm arguments won’t resonate (‘well, we legalized alcohol right?’ ‘what about the lottery?’-wrong attitudes that can’t be corrected in a 60 second tv spot). Corruption, taxpayer fraud, Beacon hill cronyism, Big Dig 2.0. That’s the angle, and its the only angle that will work.
We are catching a falling knife in the form of in-person gambling. Massachusetts dragged its feet for 10 years and during that time, casino gaming peaked. It’s going down now.
Go to a casino. Count the people over 50. Now count the people under 50. Now use your common sense.
Connecticut, New Jersey and New York are among states seeing their casino industries and the revenue that comes from them, shrink.
And what about the future:? Why gamble in person when you can gamble online? Or, holy crap — on your phone? New Jersey nearly legalized online sports betting recently and it will becoming to a state near you very soon, the tip of an arrow that will make large-scale casinos all dinosaurs just like the ones being mothballed and auctioned off in Atlantic City.
If we build 3 resorts–and if we do Everett and Springfield, there will be at LEAST one in SE Mass–how long before one or more starts to suffer? Aren’t the odds pretty good that at least one will fall short of its original projections?
What’s troubling to me is that by nearly no one’s standards do we plan to do this in a sustainable way in environmental terms either. We’re also going to build at least one casino (probably 4) that fail to meet the most basic test of sustainability in 2014: The vast majority of those who go to these casinos will get there by motor vehicle, past places already crammed with traffic in some cases.
If we’re a progressive state,we should care about sustainability, for our environment, our communities and our economy. Our lawmakers want to grab the money because … NOW is what matters for them. Because if they balance enough budgets and bide their time, their asses will be sitting pretty in lobbyist chairs by the time the long tail of this move snaps around to crack us.
As citizens, it is time for us to say NO because … we don’t just care about now but about the future as well.
A bunch of polluting, predatory and cannibalistic casinos appears to be part of the legacy we are going to live our children and theirs.
And we’re supposed to be a progressive state?
Bad things create jobs. Hurricanes create jobs. Ebola creates jobs.
Here’s a job description from the “Careers” section of a casino website. Who among us has not have dreamed of a job duping our neighbors into thinking they are about to hit it big on the slots?
I think construction trade jobs are wholesome jobs. I think being an accountant, bookkeeper or secretary are wholesome enough, don’t you? I think being a chef, baker, florist, interior decorator are wholesome enough ways to earn a living. I think hotel reservationists, plumbers, electricians and painters are wholesome breadwinners. A maitre de, a musician, an events manager, a communications director, a beverage manager…all wholesome enough for me, how about you? Nice, productive wholesome jobs that are paid by the resort casino/hotel facility…and they pay a living wage and have benefits. These jobs may be beneath hesterprynne, but for many people in this Commonwealth who have no job, they will be a Godsend.
It brings jobs for construction, lumber yards, lunch wagons, tool suppliers, book vendors, school furniture suppliers, cabinet makers….oh, so now we look forward to hurricanes?
I know that people quote the “broken window theory”, in which someone rationalizes breaking all the windows in a town to get people employed fixing them, but if you think about it, there is some merit to this theory if it diverts money from an external capital market into the consumer economy.
So if a hurricane destroys a school, then yes, all those places will benefit by money being spent. If that money comes from outside the local economy (i.e. the federal government), then the local economy will benefit. If that money comes from a progressive income tax, diverting money out of stocks and capital markets, then yes, the local economy will benefit.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should be cheering for hurricanes to destroy our towns, but the fact that hurricanes are destructive doesn’t negate the economic benefit of using unproductive money to rebuild after one hits.
…postulated that if even one publicly visible window is broken it is worth repairing to avoid sending the message that a certain part of town isn’t an aesthetic priority and will be allowed to fall into disrepair or become a target of vandalism.
You are living in la-la-land.
We’ve already shown that casino gambling will destroy at least as many wholesome jobs as it creates. The states that were foolish enough to bank on this fantasy are paying the price now.
A few construction jobs will be created while these dinosaurs are being built. Those same construction jobs would be created if something more valuable to our state were built.
This argument is a scam.
Maybe we should be be happy with the fact that we don’t put good sense and morals on the backburner so that we can grift tax money from people psychologically addicted to gambling.
CT can keep their dirty money.
And yes, I would also be in favor of elimination of the mass lottery.
…but I could easily argue that increasing revenue is an intrinsic good because I can think of plenty of things we should be spending money on.
…then our legislators should raise that revenue through appropriate taxation. Casinos amount to an ENORMOUS regressive tax.
I was just directly answering the title question to the comment above mine.
Unlike other industries, the casino industry does not provide any actual benefit to society. It doesn’t improve productivity. It doesn’t help the environment. It doesn’t improve people’s mental health.
Yes there will be some jobs for a time, but never as many as you think. And who is going to pay for those jobs? At best, the money is going to come strictly from people who already play at casinos in neighboring states, so we will only be hurting the neighboring states. But we all know that is not is what is going to happen. In fact, if the casino developers thought they were only going to pick up the existing casino goers, they probably would not be interested. That means there is going to be more money coming from mostly middle class patrons. That is money that is not going to be spent on going out to dinner locally, or going to the theater, or maintaining people’s property.
It does in fact matter to the economy what people spend their money on. Casinos will hurt rather than help.
And clearly presume that the the pre-recession forecast for the gambling industry is coming back. The region is already over saturated, experiencing a severe and now permanent downturn in spending habits, is not attracting replacement users, and bigger and more attractive casinos in Foxwoods, Mohegan, and Atlantic City are shedding jobs and in danger of going into receivership with Ch 11 trustees. This is not an industry on the up and up by any stretch and will be a tremendous waste of money, depress property values in Springfield and Everett even further, already has extensive public corruption controversies in the preliminary phases of implementation, and all hlpeary can retort with are talking points from the 2004 casino debate about all the lost money to CT.
CT is losing money with or without MA jumping on board, and it may well be left with bailouts, unemployment benefits for the laid off workers, white elephant properties to contend with, strained tribal relations and obligations, as well as the increased crime and social costs associated with the practice. Reno is running towards the economy we already have, why would we want the economy they are running away from?
jconway: There is a lot of current information available about gaming businesses that is much more recent than the decades old stereotypes and myths circulating on this issue….and it’s just a Google search away. The Commonwealth has paid for an independent studies as did the Boston Chamber of Commerce (which Paul Guzzi referenced just last week on the NECN Business program) that do the cost /benefit analysis and projections. There are also current statistics collected by public safety agencies in CT and ME that indicate that crime did not in fact increase because a casino was cited in a community. As far as addiction prone patrons, some studies set the rate at 5%, some at 3%…which ever group you believe, it still leaves at least 95% of the casino patrons able to go to a casino, spend entertainment dollars responsibly and go home without becoming addicted or depressed. As far as the tidal wave of bankruptcies you fear, you should be more worried about medical bill costs, unemployment and divorce because those are by far the major documented causes of bankruptcy filings in our state. (Maybe all those jobs created by casino/hotel complexes will actually cut unemployment as a bankruptcy cause!)
My “old links” are about as recent as this past summer, the stream of headlines about the trouble the CT and NJ casinos are in, the other front page headline about how NY state can’t handle the ones Cuomo wants to build since the ones he already built are at half capacity and struggling, hotel vacancies down in Vegas, and Reno trying to build a ‘high tech, education and health care oriented economy’ which sounds awfully like the wanna be like Mass-why on Earth would we want to be like them?
If that information is so easy to get, then cite it. You are simply hand-waving.
Each time I’ve seen that quoted it’s been suspicious. In the case of Connecticut, the last pro-casino contributor made the same claim and posted a link (something hlpeary is yet to do). Dutifully, I went off to the link and learned that said crime had indeed fallen in the towns around the casino but not as much as in surrounding towns. The trouble with the claim “but crime didn’t increase!” is that we have experienced a sustained general decrease in crime for a number of years now. Oddly and happily the recession did not spark a big crime wave.
So the claim, “crime didn’t rise,” actually may hide the fact that casinos really did cause more crime. That contribution to crime was just hidden by the general downward trend.
Crime has been decreasing since the seventies, when we banned lead paint and leaded gasoline. But one crime in particular is on the rise near casinos – do a Google search for “Ledyard CT embezzlement”
Source: http://theday.com/article/20091120/NWS02/311209913/1018
Massachusetts, are you ready for some embezzlement?? Vote Yes on 3!!
As your post illustrates, middle aged women are the (dare I say) cash cow for the slot houses that seek out the grinders that play to extinction. Just search the Web news for “embezzlement casino woman” and read the daily headlines. Yes, men do it as well, but the casinos know that slots are attractive to women and easy $$.