If you use email, you might have seen a note in the last few
years that included some pithy comical sayings called
”
The Laws of Reality.
”
For example, one of those
”
laws
”
is called The Law of Avoiding Oversell. It says:
”
When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the
mouse.
”
If you use email, you might have seen a note in the last few years that included some pithy comical sayings called “The Laws of Reality.” For example, one of those “laws” is called The Law of Avoiding Oversell. It says: “When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse.”
Thinking about the issue of “oversell”, it appears to me that The Dispatch’s liberal Saturday columnist gave readers a whole lot of cheese in her recent column, and conveniently forgot to leave room for the mouse. While her column indicated the Web source of a “real” report conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, touting the economic benefits of a casino, I’ll confess that I doubt the neutrality of such a report, and next I confess that it was me who used the “vague” reference to “research … back east” in a previous column.
If you want specifics on problems associated with legalized gambling, then check out the web site of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling at www.ncalg.org.
And by the way, the problems associated with gambling are not just all addiction or family-relational issues, or crime breeding matters, but include real economic problems for a local area influenced by a casino – a part of the gambling “iceberg” kept under the “water” by those who don’t care if the societal “ship” hits the berg as long as money flows to the casino investors.
This same columnist thinks that it’s an exercise in “tilting at windmills” to oppose a casino, since she says they’re not going away. Maybe so, but that does not mean that a casino can’t or shouldn’t be kept out of our own backyard. And maybe she’s been tilting at too many windmills herself to arrive at her implied conclusion that because any development brings crime, and because retail brings crime, and because Gilroy has “embraced retail with seeming abandon,” a casino therefore, would be on par crime-wise with the Outlets.
I found it ironic that The Dispatch the same day included a letter to the editor from Kenneth Hawkes of San Martin, with a different opinion. And Mr. Hawkes appears to have insight into crime and the problems that a casino bring with it that our Saturday columnist does not have and won’t acknowledge.
Mr. Hawkes indicated he served for 30 years in a major city police department and was an acting deputy chief upon retirement. So he’s no “Andy of Mayberry” when it comes to dealing with crime issues. Mr. Hawkes said he suspects that “[casino] gaming may have become one of the leading sources of organized crime income.” He continues “Loan sharking and the need to enforce collections, a lot like the narcotics industry is rampant around casinos.” That hardly sounds like the kind of crime associated with the Outlets.
Our columnist also points out because of the Internet, every home with Internet access now has the ability to gamble. And that might be true to some extent. But we’re talking apples and oranges. Internet gambling can be regulated if the government wants to regulate it. Think not? If it would produce another revenue stream for the government, then technology is available that can regulate it.
But as far as I see, tribal casino gambling cannot be regulated in the same way, because it’s located on sovereign land where United States law does not apply. And of course, if Internet gambling is so successful, then basic market economics should apply making it probable that no new tribal casinos would be built, or existing tribal casinos would be put out of business.
But that’s not the case. Obviously the investors in back of this local casino effort are well persuaded that there will be ample profit for them.
This reminds me of the argument years ago when television started to become popular in homes. The movie theaters cried that television would put them out of business. It didn’t happen, and it won’t happen for Internet gambling forcing casinos out of business either.
The fact however, is that there still are a lot of low-income people in Gilroy, Hollister and Salinas who do not have access to the Internet, and who would have the ability to drive over to a local casino and gamble away their rent and grocery money. So it’s hardly a speculative, specious, straw man argument that casino opponents ought to abandon.
