Gamble, drink, smoke

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

It’s good to see an effort by some local casino workers to get those establishments to ban smoking. Smoking not only causes lung cancer and other illnesses in smokers, it can sicken nonsmokers near them. That’s particularly true for casino workers, who must be there 40 hours a week.

Casino operators love smokers because they tend to be more prone to addictions in general, including gambling and booze. Drinking, smoking and gambling neurologically reinforce each other.

Consider that Spectrum Gaming Group estimates  that 21 percent of Atlantic City casino visitors are smokers but account for  26.1-31.3 percent of the casinos’ revenue.  The casino owners and executives, seeking to maximize profits, and the states, seeking to maximize tax revenues from the industry, don’t want to discourage any high rollers.

As with such things as legalizing “medical” and “recreational” marijuana (which in some people is a gateway to harder drugs) – more tax revenue! -- government promotion of gambling tends to poison society.

If you think that drivers are bad now, just wait until full-bodied legalized “recreational” marijuana takes over the roads.

Chris Powell: A corrupt and ridiculous tribal casino duopoly

— Photo by Ralf Roletschek

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Gambling and intoxicating drugs mainly transfer wealth from the many to the few and the poor to the rich, so it is sad that state government is striving to get into the business of sports betting, internet gambling, and marijuana dealing. That's how hungry state government always is for more money.

Even so, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont may deserve some credit for the deal he seems about to achieve with Connecticut's two casino Indian tribes. The tribes long have claimed that the casino gambling duopoly state government conferred on them in the 1990s also gives them exclusivity on sports betting and internet gambling in the state.

Under the governor's plan the tribes drop their claim to exclusivity and share the sports betting and internet gambling business with state government via the Connecticut Lottery. The Mohegan tribe has fully accepted the plan while the Mashantucket Pequot tribe appears to have yielded on exclusivity and to be quibbling only about a percentage point or two in taxes.

So Connecticut may be glad that this much of its sovereignty would be recognized and that the governor didn't give the store away.

But just as this outcome could be worse, it could be better too. For state government has shown no interest in inquiring whether it really needs the Indian tribal duopoly to run casinos -- inquiring whether the casino exclusivity the state has conferred on the tribes in exchange for 25 percent of their slot machine revenue reflects the full value of the state's grant of duopoly.

After all, the duopoly has never been put out to bid. Would other enterprises pay the state more for the privilege of operating casinos and sports betting parlors in, say, Bridgeport, New Haven, and Hartford, locations far closer to heavily populated areas than the Indian properties in southeastern Connecticut's woods? Casino operators in those cities, much closer to more gamblers, might gladly pay state government more than 25 percent of their slot machine take, or their 25 percent tribute might produce more money because they had more customers.

This potential for greater revenue is implied by the complaint of Sportstech, operator of the state-licensed horse and greyhound racing and jai alai betting parlors throughout Connecticut. The company is threatening to sue the state because it hasn't been invited into the gambling expansion plan with the casino Indians. No other potential operators seem to have been solicited either.

So the governor's plan will preserve gambling in Connecticut as a business for privileged insiders -- the two tribes, which have come to control enough legislators in their part of the state to block state government from following the ordinary good business practice of soliciting bids.

The gambling situation in Connecticut is not just essentially corrupt but ridiculous as well, as indicated by the crack taken last week at the Mohegans by the chairman of the Mashantucket Pequots, Rodney Butler, who was sore that the Mohegans didn't wait for the Pequots before agreeing to the governor's plan. "It opened up wounds between our tribal nations that go back centuries," Butler said, referring to the alliance of the Mohegans with the English colonists in the war with the Pequots nearly 400 years ago.

Can ethnic hatreds really endure that long when the ethnicities have been so absorbed by the larger culture? Can a distant descendant of Chief Sassacus and a distant descendant of Chief Uncas really resent each other after their intermediary generations have lived in raised ranches and worked at Electric Boat like nearly everyone else where the tribes of old lived? Aren't these people with tiny fractions of Indian descent more likely to dispute each other over the Yankees and the Red Sox or Biden and Trump?

Or is the revival of the Pequot War just a pathetically opportunistic defense of lucrative privilege?

Connecticut is full of people who are suffering serious disadvantages arising from all sorts of things that were not their fault, disadvantages far greater than a tiny bit of relation to the tribes of old. Indeed, for decades that relation has been no disadvantage to anyone. State government offers these truly disadvantaged people nothing special.

While some of them soon may be given marijuana-dealing licenses, if Connecticut were to be run on ethnicity, they would deserve casinos far more than the people who have them now.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.

Wampanoags' bad gamble

The Old Indian Meeting House, in Mashpee, built in 1684 and the oldest church on Cape Cod as well as the oldest Native American church in the eastern U.S.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

The U.S. Interior Department has rescinded the reservation status of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, which has been seeking permission to build a casino on  land it owns in Taunton. The Cape Cod-based tribe itself will be allowed to keep federal recognition as a Native American tribe but the federal action presumably kills the plan for a casino.

The casino business is inherently sleazy and casinos (which aren’t open now because of you-know-what) are cannibalizing themselves. Far better to create a  highly diversified long-term economic development plan, but gambling revenues continue to look alluring as a quick fix.

The fewer casinos the better. But I still feel sorry for the tribe, especially knowing that their casinos would have competed with Twin River’s two nearby casinos, in Lincoln and Tiverton, R.I. Twin River has close connections with the Trump administration, ruled by a former and failed Atlantic City casino mogul. Surely politics had nothing to do with the decision…..?

Chris Powell: Connecticut should put casino rights out to bid

The Mohegan Sun casino, in Uncasville, Conn.

No government pursuing the public interest sells something without first putting it to bid. But for almost three decades Connecticut has given casino exclusivity to a couple of reconstituted Indian tribes out in the woods in the eastern part of the state and has never ascertained what anyone else might pay to operate a casino here.

The tribal casinos have been paying state government for this exclusivity -- a quarter of their slot-machine revenue, which over the years has amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars. But these royalties have been declining steadily as casinos open in neighboring states.

Meanwhile MGM, having recently opened one of those casinos just over the Massachusetts line, in Springfield, is arguing that Connecticut might do better by authorizing it to open a casino in Bridgeport. This would draw gamblers from heavily populated New York and Fairfield County, many of whom now journey to the tribal casinos two hours deeper into the countryside. These gamblers might be glad to lose their money closer to home.

Under federal law the two tribes have the right to run casinos on their reservations, and Connecticut can't change that. But the tribes do not have the right to exclusivity in the casino business in the state. Nor is the 25-percent tribute from their slot-machine revenue fixed permanently; it could be renegotiated. So now that state government is permanently broke and unable to economize, it should ask whether the tribes might be induced to pay more for their casino exclusivity or whether a different entity operating another casino or two might pay more tribute than the tribes pay.

It's telling that the supporters of the tribal casinos don't want to find out. Their argument for preserving the exclusivity of the tribes is only that the tribes have been "good partners" for state government and employ thousands of people in eastern Connecticut. But another casino operator might be just as good a partner, employ just as many people, if elsewhere in the state, and might pay more tribute.

As industrial-strength gambling, casinos are a nasty business. They pander to the worst instincts, exploit the worst weaknesses, and create terrible social problems as the price of the tribute they pay state government. They redistribute wealth from the many to the few and shift commerce from small businesses to big business. They create nothing of value. They are profitable to state government only insofar as they draw gamblers from other states, and as casinos proliferate, states increasingly will prey on their own people.

But Connecticut already has made its big policy decision by opting for casinos. This is bad enough and it should not be allowed to cancel ordinary good practice, competitive bidding for government-issued privilege.

The tribal casinos are warning state government against pursuing competition but the slot-machine tribute they pay actually gives them little leverage. For state government could cut off their traffic any time by surrounding them with casinos in, say, Bridgeport, Hartford, Torrington, Putnam and New London. A casino in Bridgeport alone might devastate them. Faced with that prospect, the tribal casinos might be willing to pay a lot more for their exclusivity, just as the state might profit more by ending their exclusivity. It's time to find out.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Chris Powell: Casinos transfer wealth to the rich from the poor but liberals still like them

The Foxwoods casino complex (the world's largest), in Mashantucket, Conn.

Nothing transfers wealth from the many to the few as casinos do, which is why they demonstrate so well the phoniness of what passes for liberalism in Connecticut. 

Libertarianism can justify casinos, but they are not justified by their claims of employment, since that employment is merely the mechanism of the transfer of wealth from casino patrons, disproportionately poor, to casino owners, always rich. 

So why does the clamor for enlarging casino gambling in Connecticut come mainly from supposedly liberal Democrats, most recently from Bridgeport's delegation in the General Assembly? 

Because the casino jobs will go disproportionately to their constituents while the victims of casino gambling will be drawn from all over, because the casinos will pay political graft locally, and because nothing matters more to liberals than raising government revenue, whatever the source. 

Fortunately for the advocates of a casino in Bridgeport there are two other issues -- the unfairness of Connecticut's current casino policy and its failure to maximize the state's royalties from the business. 

That is, state government long has conferred a monopoly on the two casinos operated by reconstituted Indian tribes in the southeast corner of the state in exchange for 25 percent of their slot-machine take. But the state has never required the tribes to bid again for their monopoly even as the revenue they send the state has been declining for years because nearby states have been getting into the business. 

Non-tribal casino operators  such as MGM, which soon will open a casino just over the Massachusetts line in Springfield,  would love to participate in an auction for casino rights in Connecticut. MGM maintains that a casino it would put in Bridgeport would pay royalties far exceeding what the tribes pay. Indeed, combined with the casinos being built in Massachusetts, a casino in Bridgeport might threaten the survival of the tribal casinos, cutting off most of their distant traffic and leaving them with a clientele that is mostly local and poor. 

The big question about a casino in Bridgeport may be how long it could operate before inducing New York to put full-scale casinos in New York City, Westchester County and Nassau County and New Jersey to put them in the Newark area. Such a time is almost certainly coming anyway, and Connecticut will have caused it by legitimizing the Indian casino racket in the Northeast in the guise of social justice and ethnic reparations 25 years ago. 

So what will happen with Connecticut's casino policy? Who will win -- the Indians, Bridgeport, or MGM? In any case it's not likely to be determined by any examination of the public interest. 

xxx

Jostling for a return to office in recent years, former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, a Democrat, has made herself a caricature of political ambition, opportunism, and calculation. 

She twice became a candidate for governor, withdrawing her second candidacy to run for attorney general, which offered her better prospects upon Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's decision to run for the U.S. Senate. But the state Supreme Court ruled imperiously that Bysiewicz lacked the lawyerly qualifications required by a manifestly unconstitutional statute. Bysiewicz then ran for U.S. senator but lost the Democratic primary. Lately she looked to move into various state Senate districts without Democratic incumbents. Last week she gave up on that and filed for governor again. 

So does Bysiewicz stand for anything besides ambition? Last week she celebrated having no connection to the administration of Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat not seeking re-election. Maybe that's a start. 


Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
 

Chris Powell: ACA a mistake, GOP bill is worse

MANCHESTER, Conn.

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, lost last week at the hands of the Republican majority in the House  because it didn't work well.

While it extended coverage to millions of people, for many the coverage was not so affordable. It failed to cover millions more and failed to enroll millions of young people whose premiums were necessary to the scheme's solvency. As a result it exploded premiums even without covering everyone. Cynics suspected that Obamacare was  planned to fail like this to become an inducement for the country to adopt a "single-payer" medical insurance system.

But the Republican "repeal and replace" legislation really isn't even insurance at all. It would reduce premiums mainly by eliminating coverage, giving states discretion to allow medical insurance policies to exclude treatment for serious ailments and to jeopardize coverage for the millions of people already afflicted with something.

The Freedom Caucus of House Republicans, which the new legislation was designed to placate, is celebrating only the freedom to be devastated medically and financially by catastrophic illness.

The Republicans in the House seem to know this, for they rushed the bill to a vote without waiting for an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. Some Republicans admitted that they voted on the bill without even reading it, which was a Republican criticism of Democrats back when the Democratic majorities in Congress hastened to enact "Obamacare".  

But maybe the Republican bill is meant only as a pose -- to show that the party, at least in the House, can keep its "repeal and replace" pledge and advance legislation supported by President Trump. For Republicans in the Senate don't seem to be taking it seriously. Instead they say they will revise it or offer their own insurance bill. Since Democrats control 49 of the Senate's 100 seats, the outcome will be determined by moderate Republican senators.

Congress's objectives should remain the unachieved objectives of "Obamacare" -- getting basic coverage for everyone efficiently, preserving substantial choice among policies and insurers, socializing the burdens of catastrophic illness, lifting the insurance burden on business, and taking advantage of the progressive income tax system.

This might be accomplished in part simply by extending Medicare coverage to all catastrophic illnesses, those causing annual expense of more than $100,000. If achieving these objectives costs a little more money, the country's constant and stupid imperial wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere might be liquidated. Call it "America first."

Ask more from Indian tribes -- and MGM

Connecticut's casino Indian tribes are distributing a video attacking MGM for wanting to make money by drawing Connecticut residents to its casino under construction in Springfield. The tribes say that with their proposal to build a casino in East Windsor to intercept Springfield gambling traffic, they want to save jobs for Connecticut and revenue for state government. Of course the tribes want money as much as MGM does.

State government, collapsing financially, should want money more than all of them. But state government assumes that the only way of getting more from the tribes is to give them the "interceptor" casino, though their only real asset is the state's own property, the casino monopoly the state has given them in exchange for a share of their slot machine revenue.

State government has more options than the "interceptor" casino. It should tell the tribes that they must pay more for their monopoly from the state, and it should ask MGM how much it would pay the state every year not to authorize an "interceptor" casino.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer,  in Manchester, Conn.

Chris Powell: Conn. to replace Mass. gamblers with its own

MANCHESTER, Conn.

With their joint venture to put a casino in East Windsor, Conn., to intercept potential traffic to the resort casino being built just over the Massachusetts line, in Springfield, the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Indian tribes say they aim to save jobs for Connecticut and gambling royalty revenue for state government.

This isn't quite accurate. The real objective of the interceptor casino is to replace gamblers from Massachusetts who have been patronizing the tribes' casinos in southeastern Connecticut and who are expected to start gambling in Springfield instead. The Massachusetts gamblers are to be replaced in East Windsor with gamblers from Connecticut itself.

This change in the source of gamblers and revenue should bear heavily on the General Assembly's decision whether to authorize the casino in East Windsor. For it is one thing to draw money from Massachusetts gamblers and send them home with the consequences of their excesses and addictions and their increased inclinations to rob and embezzle. At least then the money comes from out of state and the social burden is borne there.

It is something else to draw money from Connecticut gamblers and stick Connecticut with the consequences of excessive gambling. For if the casino revenue is to be drawn from Connecticut itself, it will come only from other commerce in the state, and the social burden of increased gambling will be borne here.

What then is the advantage of saving casino jobs in Connecticut if those jobs come at the expense of other commerce and jobs in the state? And gambling royalty revenue to state government cannot be fairly calculated without also calculating the expense of increased financial crime and broken homes and lives.

The casino racket is just about finished for state government. Connecticut has pushed its neighboring states into the business and now there's no one left to plunder but the state's own people. There's little profit in that except for the casino operators.

xxx

 This is income tax week, and a new book by Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution argues that Americans on the whole are "proud to pay taxes," considering it their civic duty to support their government. But on the national level, rather than the state and municipal levels, taxes are not really needed to support the government at all, since the national government has the inherent power of money creation and to finance its operations it does not need to borrow money or obtain gold or any other monetary commodity.

The purposes of taxation at the national level are quite different. In 1946 the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Beardsley Ruml, described them this way: "1. As an instrument of fiscal policy to help stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar. " 2. To express public policy in the distribution of wealth and income, as in the case of the progressive income and estate taxes. "3. To express public policy in subsidizing or penalizing various industries and economic groups. " 4. To isolate and assess directly the costs of certain national benefits, such as highways and Social Security."

That is, the purpose of federal taxation is to advance certain social and economic policies, to shape the people's behavior, and to allocate power in society. So while people justly can be proud of paying taxes on the state and municipal levels, where their taxes really do underwrite government, and while they can be proud of their country, on the national level their taxes are mainly the mechanism by which government controls them. On the whole those controls may be good ones but there's nothing particularly to be proud of in doing as one is told. Those controls are just the terms of the right to live in the country.

Chris Powell, a frequent contributor to New England Diary, is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

Chris Powell: What kind of a state would depend on money from casinos and potheads?

At the Connecticut state Capitol the issue is being framed as whether Connecticut should legalize marijuana. But that's not really the issue at all, since marijuana long has been effectively legal in the state for several reasons: because of its common use and the reluctance of courts to punish people for it; because possession of small amounts has been reduced to an infraction; because marijuana production and sales have been legalized for medical purposes; and because the federal government has stopped enforcing its own law against marijuana in those states that don't want it enforced.

The real issue is whether state government should get into the marijuana business -- licensing dealers and taxing sales in the hope of raising as much as $100 million a year to offset state government's financial collapse. Such a scheme would introduce marijuana to many more people, especially minors, who, even if the age for purchase is set at 21, will get it from their older friends, just as minors now get alcohol.

As has happened with legalization in Colorado, many more students will come to school stoned or get stoned there. Intoxicated driving will increase, even if much of the increase will result from Connecticut's refusal to prosecute first offenses. And since Connecticut's criminal sanctions against marijuana have largely disappeared already, legalization won't give the state much financial relief on the criminal-justice side of the budget.

There's another problem with licensing and taxing: It would constitute nullification of federal drug law. Nothing obliges Connecticut's criminal statutes to match the federal government's, but licensing and taxing, profiting from federal crimes, is secession -- and unless federal drug law was changed, the federal government could smash Connecticut's marijuana infrastructure at any time. In any case the half-century of President Nixon's "war on drugs" has shown that drug criminalization is futile and may have only worsened drug addiction while maiming millions of lives with prison sentences.

The drug problem needs to be medicalized, which, while increasing the availability of drugs, will also increase treatment and eliminate most crime and imprisonment expense. But the General Assembly isn't considering medicalization. Instead the legislature is giving the impression that the state's salvation lies in taxing potheads and more casino gambling. Even if that could close its budget deficit, what kind of state would this be?

xxx

 The big argument for the Connecticut General Assembly's approval of Gov. Dannel Malloy's renomination of Justice Richard Palmer to the state Supreme Court was that judicial independence required it. This was nonsense, a rationale for accepting whatever appellate judges do to rewrite constitutions. The freedom of judges to decide particular cases within established frameworks of the law is one thing. The freedom of judges to rewrite not just the law but constitutions themselves is another, which is what Palmer did in the Supreme Court's decisions on same-sex marriage and capital punishment.

His decision invalidating capital punishment was dishonest, opportunistically misconstruing the legislature's revision of the capital punishment law, which precluded death sentences for future crimes while sustaining pending sentences. Palmer maintained that the legislation signified that the public had turned against capital punishment though the new law was written as it was precisely because the public very much wanted the pending death sentences enforced. Public officials in Connecticut have certain insulation but none is completely above deliberative democracy. Governors and judges can be impeached, legislators expelled, and judges denied reappointment. The legislators who voted against reappointing Justice Palmer had good cause consistent with good constitutional practice.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Anti-marijuana-use poster from 1935.

Chris Powell: With casinos now everywhere, who needs Indian casinos?

 -- Photo by Ralf Roletschek 

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Casino gambling could make an argument in Connecticut a few decades ago when itcould prey on more people from out of state than on the state's own residents.  That is no longer the case, with casinos opening in neighboring states andthroughout the Northeast and with one soon to open in Massachusetts just overthe border in Springfield.   

Indeed, the "interceptor" casino now being proposed by Connecticut's twocasino-operating Indian tribes would prey exclusively on the state's ownresidents, diverting some of them from heading north on Interstate 91 to thecasino planned by MGM Resorts.   

With the "interceptor" casino the tribes would preserve the monopoly stategovernment has given them on casinos in Connecticut. The tribes would pay newgambling royalties to the state and millions in property taxes to East Windsor,  whose town government is supportive and where the tribes have secured land alongthe highway.   

The tribes say the "interceptor" casino will reduce the gambling revenueConnecticut loses to Springfield and preserve hundreds of jobs in the state.  More likely the casino will create a few hundred jobs and relocate hundreds morefrom the two Indian casinos in southeastern Connecticut as gambling trafficturns north.   

There are a couple of problems with this plan.    The first is that the pathologies of the increased gambling will be borneentirely by Connecticut itself -- the addiction, the theft and theconcentration of wealth, its transfer from the public to the government and thetribes and the weakening of nearby businesses.  

The second is that if casino gambling is to become pervasive, and not a specialthing in special places -- first Las Vegas, then Atlantic City, thensoutheastern Connecticut, then Indian reservations throughout the country, andsoon nearly everywhere -- why should Connecticut let any group monopolize it?  That is, for casino purposes, who needs Indians anymore? (Really, who ever did?)   

As New London Day columnist David Collins writes, last week the general counselof MGM Resorts, Uri Clinton, told a General Assembly committee that his companywill pay Massachusetts and Springfield far more for its casino rights thanConnecticut's Indian tribes are paying state government. That is, stategovernment continues to sell itself short for the benefit of the tribes.   

The MGM Resorts executive also noted that if it really wants to compete withcasinos in other states, Connecticut is forfeiting its most lucrativeopportunity, which is not near the Massachusetts line but in Fairfield County,  since a casino in Bridgeport, rejected years ago, might draw heavily from theNew York metropolitan area.   

Indeed, instead of opening a mere "interceptor" casino near Massachusetts, whynot open a full-fledged casino, entertainment, and sports venue in thenorth-central part of the state?   

After all, Connecticut just happens to have a bankrupt capital city whosedowntown is adjacent to both a big arena whose expensive renovations stategovernment can't afford and a new minor-league baseball stadium the city can'tafford. If such a venue could be competently operated, it might overshadow MGM'soperation in Springfield and push some of the burden of gambling's pathologiesback out of state.   

Instead of increasing gambling, it would be far better for state government toeconomize by questioning the premises of its most expensive, mistaken, andfailing policies -- government labor contracting, welfare and child protection,  and education.    But that would require more political courage than Connecticut has musteredsince the Civil War. If it can't bring itself to stand up to a few rent-seekingIndians, state government will never stand up to anyone else.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester,  Conn. 

Chris Powell: Politically incorrect crime data; illegals get preference; plutocrat Pequots

Cellphone video from around the country continues to suggest that white police officers can be too quick to confront and shoot black men. But whenever there is such cellphone video, nobody wants to wait for due process of law to determine exactly what happened. It's always "no justice, no peace" immediately, even as justice requires a little time.

Immediate justice constitutes lynching, which is as wrong when it is demanded today by black mobs as it was in the last century when it was perpetrated by white mobs.

A report issued last month by Central Connecticut State University, concluding that police in the state use their stun guns more often against Hispanics and blacks than against whites, is not helpful in pursuing justice. It seems meant mainly to intimidate officers out of doing their jobs with racial minorities.

Of course to some extent racial prejudice and racial fear will always figure in police work. Such prejudice and fear may be the most likely explanations for why black people are shot to death by white officers in confrontations that begin over trivia like a broken taillight or the sale of CDs in front of a convenience store.

But crime itself is correlated with race and poverty. For example, that the great majority of Connecticut's prison population is black and Hispanic is not mainly the result of racist cops, prosecutors, judges and juries; it results mainly from the concentration of crime and poverty among certain racial and ethnic groups.

So maybe Connecticut needs a study quantifying the racial disproportions in crime. But since its data would be politically incorrect, the state probably has no institution of higher education capable of the work.

 xxx

ILLEGAL ALIENS GET PREFERENCE. Expanding its campaign to nullify federal immigration law and devalue citizenship, state government will place at Eastern Connecticut State University 46 students from other states who are living in the country illegally.

The university won't pay for the students; a national scholarship fund for illegal aliens will cover their expenses. Most of the students are living in states that either prohibit the admission of illegal aliens to their own public colleges or charge them higher nonresident rates. But admitting the illegals to Eastern will reduce admissions for Connecticut's own legal residents and for U.S. citizens generally.

Since the plight of the illegal alien students is largely the responsibility of their parents, they deserve some sympathy. But what compels state government to give them such preference? Only the political correctness that seems to be the highest principle of the current state administration.

xxx

THEY LOOK LIKE PLUTOCRATS. Hardly a day passes when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doesn't say something insulting, mistaken, or stupid. So why last week did Connecticut's Mashantucket Pequot tribe bother denouncing him for his remark about the tribe in 1993?

Trump, a casino developer competing with the Pequots, told a congressional hearing, "They don't look like Indians to me."

The Pequots want to construe this as a slur on their ancestry. But Trump was actually challenging the casino privileges the Pequots had gained from the government. For while the federal law authorizing casinos on Indian reservations was presented as economic development for long-oppressed people consigned to Western wastelands, no modern Pequot had ever encountered such disadvantages.

No, the tribe was reconstituted to exploit the casino privilege meant for the oppressed. The people reconstituting the tribe were fully part of the broader community of southeastern Connecticut and had been living in raised ranches and working at Electric Boat like everybody else. Now, because of ethnic patronage and privilege, they're rich, and it's not necessary to support Trump to resent it.

Chris Powell,  a Connecticut-based essayist on cultural and political topics, is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

New England's risky bet on a population explosion of casinos

By PEARL MACEK for ecoRI News (ecori.org) 

NEWPORT, R.I.

Walk through the automated doors at the Newport Grand Casino and the cacophonic sound of more than 1,000 slot machines greets you. As your ears become accustomed to the multiple layers of sounds, an inundation of vivid purples, blues, reds and yellows flash before you as each machine tries to entice potential players.

Slot machines called “Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania,” “Sex and the City” and “Cleopatra” seem innocent enough, but after you insert your money, a digital message gives you a hotline number to call if your gambling has become problem. Nearby, virtual blackjack dealers, big-breasted women with smiling faces, wait patiently inside their respective screens for real players.

It’s a Thursday evening and the crowd, mostly an elderly one, sits before colorful screens waiting to hit the jackpot. On this particular night, however, the casino isn’t anywhere near capacity, which is probably one of the reasons that the Twin River Management Group (TRMG) wants to close it.

TRMG operates Twin River Casino in Lincoln, a Hard Rock Hotel in Biloxi, Miss., and Arapahoe Park, a horse-racing track in Colorado. The management group officially announced that it had acquired Newport Grand last July, but it was already public knowledge that the company would seek to move Newport Grand’s gaming license to a new site, possibly in Tiverton, which seemed more open to hosting a destination casino.

“When we acquired Newport Grand we acquired it not thinking we would be able to do many things with it other than operate it as it was,” said John E. Taylor Jr., chairman of the board of directors of Twin River Worldwide Holdings, the parent company of TRMG, during a recent phone interview with ecoRI News. “But we wanted to see if there was a possibility that there was another community in a more advantageous location that might consider hosting a facility like this.”

Table games are considered by the gaming world as a vital way of attracting a larger, younger demographic, but twice Rhode Island voters, particularly Newport voters, said “no” to table games at Newport Grand. It seems the last majority “no” vote, in 2014, sealed Newport Grand’s fate.

Gambling with economy

The fiscal 2015 financial report of the Lottery Division of Rhode Island’s Department of Revenue states that $516,262,400 in revenue was generated by video lottery (slot) machines and $106,640,942 was generated by table games. Together, they make up 71.9 percent of the gaming industry in Rhode Island, which brought in a total of $867,054,081 during the last fiscal year.

Rhode Island’s gaming industry is the state’s third-largest revenue source.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2015, TRMG held a series of talks and charrettes in Tiverton to explain to residents the company’s design plans for the proposed casino. According to Taylor, residents seemed receptive to the idea.

“We thought that the market could support 1,000 machines, comparable to the number that they have at Newport Grand, and we thought about 30 table games could be supported,” he said. “But what we told the residents is that we’re having this conversation to see what else you would feel comfortable with.”

In early November of last year, TRMG presented its plan to the Tiverton Town Council: a two-story, 85,000-square-foot facility with an attached 84-room hotel and 1,100 surface parking spaces. The proposed casino would be set on 23 acres on a 45-acre parcel just off Stafford Road and 400 feet from the Massachusetts border.

From this location, it’s a 50-minute drive to Plainridge Park Casino, in Plainville, Mass., and 30 and 43 minutes from Taunton and Brockton, respectively, where two casinos are slated to be built. A $1.7 billion Wynn Boston Harbor casino in Everett also has been proposed.

Taylor said TRMG isn’t too worried about the possibility of three more casinos opening in the area. “Convenience is critical,” he said. “The more convenient that we can make it for people to get to, the better.”

The proposed Tiverton casino would employ between 525 and 600 employees, according to Taylor, and all of Newport Grand’s 175 employees would have the opportunity to work at the casino in Tiverton.

Voters to decide

Earlier this year, both chambers of the General Assembly overwhelmingly approved legislation to give Rhode Island residents the opportunity to vote for or against a Tiverton casino. The legislation was signed by Gov. Gina Raimondo the next day. Questions regarding the casino will be put on the November ballot. The proposal will have to receive a majority “yes” vote from both state voters and Tiverton residents.

Should the ballot questions win approval, the state would receive 15.5 percent of table revenues and 61 percent of video-lottery terminals (VLTs), from both from the new Tiverton casino and Twin River. The legislation would also guarantee each host community $3 million annually from the casinos.

“They (casinos) have been, up to this point, considered to be a real success story, but I do consider the fact that they are such a large part of our state’s revenue to be a real issue for worry and to some extent, a failure of Rhode Island to really get its growth-oriented sectors going,” said Leonard Lardaro, an economics professor at the University of Rhode Island. “What we’re looking at, and I think it is important to put it in this context, is that the gambling industry is very over supplied, very, very oversupplied.”

Patrick Kelly is the chair of the department of accountancy at Providence College. He has studied casinos and their social and economic effects, specifically in the southeastern Connecticut region. Kelly said that in the coming years “there is going to be a lot more commitment to casinos for revenue and jobs,” not just in the Northeast but throughout the United States. He said that is a concern.

By 2018 he expects to see some 60 casinos along the Route 95 corridor between Maine and Maryland, including three or four in Massachusetts, two in Rhode Island and two or three in Connecticut. Kelly said this will ultimately lead to market saturation, but a greater concern of his are the social costs related to having so many casinos, such as problem gambling and an increase in criminal behavior to support gambling addiction.

About 3 percent of the U.S. population is addicted to gambling, while others are hooked by the lure of tax revenue and an economic rescue. (istock)

Addicted to gambling

Tawny Solmere is the director of Problem Gambling Services of Rhode Island (PGSRI). She said that between 1 percent and 3 percent of the U.S. population has a gambling problem, “so that means, with the census of Rhode Island, that we are looking at between 10,000 and 30,00 people” who have problems with gambling.

PGSRI is a hotline service. When people call, they are referred to a counselor at one of the six behavioral health-care clinics run by the nonprofit CODAC Behavioral Healthcare. The lottery subsidizes PGSRI, but Solmere said more help from the state would be welcomed, especially if the casino industry continues to expand.

She noted that co-dependencies, such as drug and alcohol abuse, tend to accompany gambling addiction. But there is an aspect to problem gambling that is particularly egregious. “This disorder, problem gambling, has the highest rate of suicide than any other addiction,” Solmere said.

Solmere said PGSRI and CODAC are neither for nor against casinos, but she is worried that unless more is done to help those with gambling addiction, the situation could easily spiral out of control.

“If we don’t get the resources to meet that need, Rhode Island is going to have an epidemic equal to the heroin epidemic we are looking at now,” she said. “It’s a scary prospect.”

Rep. John Edwards, D-Tiverton, said building the casino in Tiverton “just makes sense” and will offer local residents a large number of employment opportunities. As far as gambling addiction, he said, “You worry a little bit about that,” but, “if they are going to gamble, they are going to gamble somewhere.

“I think that it will be an asset for the Tiverton and the whole East Bay area.”

George Medeiros, a longtime Tiverton resident and owner of Tiverton Sign Shop, agreed. “It’s just something for this area,” he said during a recent phone interview. He noted that there is little to attract people to Tiverton, and for it’s residents, there are few dining and entertainment options.

“For me to get a pizza right now, I would have to go to Fall River or the other side of Tiverton,” Medeiros said.

He said he isn’t worried about traffic congestion, as the casino will be located just off the Route 24 ramp, and according to a TRMG press release from November 2015, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation is planning to build a roundabout on Canning Boulevard with a dedicated turn lane into the proposed casino.

The only thing that worries Medeiros is if the proposed casino in Taunton opens before the Tiverton casino. “They might not be fast enough,” he said.

Brett Pelletier is a member of the Tiverton Town Council and the only one to oppose putting questions about the casino on the November ballot. He also was the only council member to respond to an ecoRI News request for comment.

Pelletier, who is a real-estate analyst with a consulting firm in Boston, was appointed to a Town Council subcommittee to vet the casino legislation and provide feedback before it went to the General Assembly.

“Every time that the meeting was meant to take place, it was canceled for one reason or another,” he said. “We never actually met.”

In regards to Rhode Island’s dependency on the gaming industry, Pelletier said, “I think that it’s an atrocious way to run a government, preying on people who have an unjustified hope that they will strike it rich at a casino.”

Economic impact

The Brockton and Taunton casinos are scheduled to be built by the end of 2018. TRMG has taken the possibility of those facilities opening by then into consideration in its gaming market study.

The company has included four different scenarios, including the Brockton casino entering the market but Taunton doesn’t. The report estimates $127.6 million in revenue if that were to happen. If neither of those casinos opened, the report estimates $147.9 million in revenue for the Tiverton facility.

TRMG has worked closely with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management to identify developable land, according to the company, and it hired the firm Natural Resources Services Inc. to suggest mitigation plans for any adverse impact on local wildlife.

Rachel Calabro, a community organizer at Save The Bay, said the Providence-based nonprofit has yet to look deeply into the possible environmental effects of a Tiverton casino. She has seen the plans for the site and suggested that they reduce the amount of parking surface area by building a garage instead. The amount of concrete surface space initially suggested for the casino could lead to serious flooding issues, Calabro said.

She also suggested the installation of solar panels.

Casinos in Tiverton, Taunton and Brockton could certainly become go-to destinations, but the continued reliance on this revenue raises legitimate questions: Can the Rhode Island gaming industry continue to be a leading revenue source given the inevitable construction of more casinos in Connecticut and Massachusetts? Will the gaming industry last and will it be worth the social costs?

Chris Powell: Conn.'s casino and ID nightmares

MANCHESTER, Conn. Alka-Seltzer commercials touting the product's supposedly soothing form of relief used to ask: Why trade a headache for an upset stomach?

That's the question that Connecticut faces with the legislation pending in the General Assembly to authorize a few more casinos near the state's borders to try to keep state residents from visiting new casinos in Massachusetts and New York. (The two Indian casinos in the southeast part of the state already have the Rhode Island border defended as well as it's going to be.)

Yes, revenue at the Indian casinos, shared with state government, has been declining and will continue to decline as Connecticut's neighbors keep more of their gamblers home. The racket that Connecticut and the Indian casinos have enjoyed for 20 years, drawing most gamblers from out of state, is nearly over and soon gambling won't be a winner for any state in the Northeast. Instead states will be plundering mainly their own people.

When its casinos were fleecing so many out-of-staters, Connecticut could rationalize the antisocial behavior engendered by casinos -- addiction, family destruction and theft -- and presume to recover its costs. No more. Casino gambling is becoming just another method of taxing the local population, the revenue drawn disproportionately from the poor and troubled, the very people government supposedly means to help.

Who wins in such a system? Only the casino operators and those employed by state and municipal government. The poor and needy might be helped as much just by getting rid of casinos entirely and imposing better priorities on state government, redirecting its resources more according to the needs of the population rather than those of elected officials and the special interests that control them.

But the legislation authorizing more casinos almost certainly will be enacted. Why? Because while it will mean more headaches and upset stomachs for ordinary people, none will be suffered by government's own employees. That's where most state tax revenue goes now and where most revenue from any new casinos will end up.

xxx

Hartford, a "sanctuary city" like New Haven -- a city that refuses assistance to federal immigration enforcement authorities -- soon may follow New Haven in issuing its own identification cards to city residents to facilitate illegal immigration. Only illegal immigrants need such cards, other forms of identification being easily obtainable by anyone who can demonstrate citizenship or legal residency.

According to the Hartford Courant, Mayor Pedro Segarra estimates that as many as 20,000 of Hartford's 125,000 residents are illegal immigrants -- a sixth of the population -- and advocates of the ID cards say those people are "living in fear in the shadows." But then anyone violating the law may have reason to live in fear. That someone lives in fear does not necessarily make him virtuous.

An official of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says the city ID cards would "ensure that our friends and neighbors are embraced as equal citizens and residents." But most of those obtaining the cards would not be citizens at all; the cards would just allow them to pose as citizens so they might enjoy benefits meant to be reserved to citizens.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform notes that Hartford's ID cards, like New Haven's, probably would be used by many to create some false identifications, since the cities have little ability to verify whatever documents would be presented to obtain the cards and less interest in verifying them.

Indeed, the ID card project is meant only to nullify federal law, the sort of thing that was so contemptible when segregationist Southern governors did it to deny federally established civil rights a half century ago.

But these days liberal nullification has become respectable even though it aims to devalue not just citizenship but nationhood itself.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

----