This should be cut and dried. Casino owners have to pass a character test,and Steve Wynn just flunked. Check out the WSJ,then try to come up with a reason why the Everett casino should not be cancelled.
Please share widely!
Reality-based commentary on politics.
It’s also why we shouldn’t have wanted to do business with the likes of these folks in the first place.
I am not a gambler and never understood the attraction of casinos. But I have been forced to attend conferences and conventions hosted by casinos. Once I was stranded by snow in Milwaukee and the airline put me in a hotel room next to an inner city casino, full of addicts and the disabled, people who cannot afford to be fleeced by the likes of Wynn. People who wear lanyards around their necks with their wealth attached to a card. I cried.
I have had a deeply contentious relationship with Sal DiMasi but one of his best moments was when he fought Deval Patrick’s gambling legislation. Alas, the so-called progressive legislators who rallied with Sal against this bill turned tail when they got committee chairmanships under DeLeo and voted for this scourge on Massachusetts. Their small personal gain will never make up for the pain others suffer, including the women who work in the industry and suffer the assaults of people like Wynn.
I love casinos. Whether it’s Immokolee, MGM, or Foxwoods. I go, lose a few bucks, have dinner (usually free), see a show (also free) and have a night of entertainment. I usually do much better at the casinos than I do when I buy a state-sponsored lottery ticket. I lose more than 60% of the time, but it’s my choice.
I don’t understand people who smoke cigarettes. I’m glad they aren’t allowed in restaurants.
But it’s their choice. If the state really cared about people they wouldn’t allow people to engage in self destructive behavior but then they would lose the revenue. Don’t let people smoke, drink, gamble, and lose all that revenue. I don’t care what other people do as long as I don’t have to pay for their poor decisions.
“I don’t care what other people do as long as I don’t have to pay for their poor decisions.”
You do have to pay.
You (and we) have to pay with regards to people smoking, drinking, and gambling. In taxes for public safety, in higher medical costs for public health, in harm to other parts of our economy (like what happens to downtowns when casinos open) and with our lives sometimes as externalities of these things. The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs, and whether a prohibition is possible. The studies show that casinos do more harm than good and prohibiting them has nowhere near the risks of problems like we see with drug or alcohol prohibition.
One of the most depressing moments of my life was an evening I spent at Foxwoods. I had never been to a casino before. I expected to see the place filled with the people one sees on the TV ads. What I saw was nowhere close. An old man pushing his wife in wheel chair, a guy with torn sweat pants and a stained T-shirt, a women sitting at a slot machine adored with silly toys, pumping dollar after dollar into the machine, focused on nothing else….
I was with a group of friends and since I did not drive, I called my wife and begged her to drive down and pick me up, but it was too late and she was tired. I sat in the lobby for the next two hours, watching these poor people come an go before my group met me and we agreed to leave….
I’m with you TBD. I worked at the largest bankruptcy law firm in the Midwest, and the #1 cause of bankruptcy was illness followed by payday lenders followed by casinos. A lot of our clients were in the Milwaukee and Indiana suburbs and were addicted to gambling. A lot of public sector workers blew their pensions on the boats. It’s terrible. I don’t mind Vegas as much since you have to fly there and it limits the use to middle class people, but having one in every state really saturates the market and kills the revenue while also making it far too easy for the elderly and poor to be fleeced. We should never have allowed them to come in, and we all knew what we were dealing with the likes of Wynn.
Casinos are supposed to be thoroughly vetted because of the potential for corruption. But it seems as if the state didn’t review Wynn’s history nearly as carefully as did the Wall Street Journal.
You think that merits an investigation? From an IG? An auditor? Our news outlets? the AG? etc?
Sure. Although after the way the AG refused to investigate malfeasance in her own office, I’m not sure if she is up to it.
I am surprised I have not it reported in the MA media, but MGM Springfield is already in hot water. They held private lobbying meetings with Interior Sec’y Zinke to try and block a third Native American casino in CT. The N.A.s are fighting back and their may be an Ethics investigation into a conflict of interest charge between MGM and Zinke.
Generally, I place a pox on both sides but the Springfield MGM will be answering some questions posed by the feds. It is too bad Crosby and company are not paying attention to that also.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/01/zinkes-indian-casino-interior-312671
https://playslots4realmoney.com/2018/01/26/native-american-indian-tribes-mgm-resorts/
http://fox61.com/2017/12/29/mgm-seeks-to-become-part-of-lawsuit-over-east-windsor-casino/