I should tell you to begin I’ve never understood the
appeal of casino gambling, or gambling in any form. I don’t do sports
pools, I don’t play cards (for money or otherwise) and as for the entertainment
value of watching a wheel spin with a jumping ball that needs to land on a
particular spot for me to make money, or wearing a work glove while I’m pulling a handle or pressing a button to “play” the slots, all of that makes as
much sense to me as betting on a horse or greyhound dog. And that makes no sense.
I grasp the concept and here in The Land of Steady
Habits, who a quarter of a century ago, permitted “Las Vegas Nights” one-night
gambling only as fund-raisers for charities (as opposed to bingo, I guess,
where some in my old neighborhood would grab six cards and the marker on their
way out of the confessional), we now have two HUGE billion dollar gaming operations
at the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos.
Between them they employ many thousands of people who in
the course of the (about) two decades they’ve operated have joined the
“New American Workforce” in the service
sector, probably I guess because we have enough engineers, programmers,
architects and mechanics and could use more bare subsistence wage earners.
Of course, we don’t call it gambling; how déclassé! Now
it’s called gaming. Sort of like Scrabble or “Go Fish” except you can lose your
life savings very quickly, but all in a family-friendly environment.
The best thing about the casinos in Eastern Connecticut
was, aside from some smallish upstate New York stuff and Atlantic City in New
Jersey, they were it. If not actually the Golden Geese, in terms of
revenues generated for the state of Connecticut who took a 25% cut of all slot
machine revenues, then very definitely some other yellow-tinged fowl.
The good times rolled as did the revenues to the state
(to satiate its appetite for spending) but other New England states eyed our
Connecticut casinos hungrily, as so many of their residents traveled to The
Nutmeg State for family-friendly entertainment, and wondered “why not us?” Indeed.
Eventually the Massachusetts’ statehouse and Governor
developed a licensing system to place a limited number of ‘gaming sites’ within
the Commonwealth. Operators bid for the right to run those sites, obviously
with benefits in tax revenues to the
state and perhaps some to the ‘hosting’
municipalities (and in all cases, at a handsome profit for the operators).
Among those who bid, but unsuccessfully, were the two Connecticut
tribal casinos who have now allied themselves with state representatives from
both the upper and lower chambers to try to pass legislation creating
additional casinos strategically placed along Connecticut’s borders to entice
gamblers (‘gamers’ is just too stupid to use in this context) driving through
our state on their way to Massachusetts.
This according to this news article and thousands like it in recent
weeks and months, will “save jobs here in the region,” which is laudable except
(and the point of my screed today), where was this concern to “save jobs” when
the bidding for licenses was hot and heavy North of the state border?
Was there a concern, to say nothing of a plan, at that
time while pursuing those bids about preserving and protecting the jobs that were back at the Mother
Ship in Eastern Connecticut? If so, why not just share that plan now with the
lobbyists and legislators who are being stampeded to support what is in essence
an expansion of gambling throughout a state that had historically run budget
surpluses until it discovered what it thought were Easy Riches?
If not, that’s the part of the equation that should disquiet us, decades too
late after we decided we could retain our balance while riding the tiger’s
back, because now we are in danger
of being in its belly.
-bill kenny
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