Proponents of casino gambling like to characterize those who oppose such schemes—schemes hatched by politicians in the name of economic development—as far-leftwing killjoys, fussy, abstemious folks who can't see the fun and potential benefits of gaming because they're too blinded by their own snobbery.
The media plays into such stereotypes. In our nearest two-newspaper town, Boston, both the gritty Herald and the genteel Globe have tended to make the opposition to casinos appear out of step and politically extreme. The Globe has described the proposed legalization of casino gaming as the next likely step for a state that only a few years ago began to reform its "Puritanical blue law culture," referring to the now-defunct law banning liquor sales on Sundays. The Herald simply describes the opposition as "ultra-liberal" or "the extreme left."
This effort to marginalize the opposition is neither surprising nor, as recent history suggests, particularly effective, but it's about all the casino industry has in its arsenal—that and a new governor who can be bought for a little taste of the action. Any serious study of casino gambling shows that casinos do more to hurt than help local economies and communities, a conclusion reached a few years ago in the exhaustive report on gambling in Massachusetts by state Rep. Dan Bosley—a report that should have put the casino issue to rest the last time it came up.
Of course, Deval Patrick didn't campaign as a casino proponent. Nor did he run as a zealous libertarian bent on freeing people and businesses from onerous restrictions and taxes. So why exactly he's chosen to expend his limited political capital to legalize casino gambling is still a mystery.
Though Patrick looked courageous in last year's campaign when he refused to indulge in "no-new-taxes" pledges and focused attention on the piss-poor tax policy of 16 years of Republican governors, it turns out he'd rather take a fly at casino gaming than muster the balls to deal with taxes. Where he once planned to fund 1,000 more cops, invest in higher ed and provide property tax relief at the same time, Patrick now says he'll spend casino-related revenue, optimistically estimated at $400 million per year, on roads and bridges. Apparently he's responding to a convenient mid-summer Pioneer Institute report placing the cost of bringing and keeping state infrastructure up to snuff at $19 billion—money the state doesn't have.
Patrick's plan for three resort casinos has caught many of his supporters off guard and threatens to stand in the way of whatever else he hopes to accomplish. When Chris Collins and I interviewed state Rep. Steve Kulik (D-Worthington) on WHMP radio last week, the ardent Patrick fan said he was disappointed and puzzled by the governor's decision to back casinos.
"I thought Deval Patrick possessed the sort of enlightened intelligence and objectivity to see the gambling issue for what it is: a lot of false promises of big payoffs," said Kulik.
Kulik didn't spend a lot of time harping on the harm gambling can do to people, to families—harm Patrick hopes to mitigate by setting aside some of the casino-related revenue to fund anti-addiction programs. Instead he focused on the big downside for the state as a whole: the resort casinos—"big, out-of-town consortiums," "obscenely profitable"—suck financial capital out of the state and region, hurting local businesses that once competed for the lost discretionary spending.
Beyond his willingness to alienate supporters like Kulik by carrying water for the casino industry, Patrick has put himself in the position of having to play an ugly, anti-progressive brand of politics. To win the battle over casinos, Patrick must hope that voters will see the legalization as no big deal, a move whose time has come—and that those who oppose it will be seen as self-righteous prohibitionists, puritanical meddlers who don't want people to have any fun. He must hope that the body politic feels its acceptance of a $900-million-a-year lottery compels it to reject any moral argument against the next scheme to raise revenues on the misery of others.
This from the governor who admonishes voters to reject cynicism??
