Boycott the Casino
Massachusetts has been a leader in the past. The Bay State was a close second after Vermont to outlaw slavery in 1779, the first state with marriage equality as of 2004, but alas, not the first state to say “no” to casinos. We are now the 40th state to be rolled over by big money.
We have only one hope now, which is to boycott the casino when it opens. Keep frequenting the local restaurants and theaters, visit the dentist, buy housewares and shoes for your kids. Never put your credit card into a slot machine, never take “casino credit” which is a lien on your house, never accept the free drinks from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. Never gamble your future away. That’s where the divorces and domestic violence start in. Never think of embezzling. You won’t need it if you don’t gamble.
MGM had about 4,000 paid TV ads, the support of the state government and the Springfield newspaper, which never printed my letters. Altogether, they did a fine job of misleading the public. That doesn’t mean we have to look like Las Vegas, Atlantic City or Detroit, which have three of the highest unemployment rates in the country due to casinos. Our taxpayers don’t have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to bail out casinos, as is being done in Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island and elsewhere, when area residents are impoverished. We don’t have to watch our local businesses close, as they always have when a casino opens. We can avoid all this if we don’t go in. Boycott the casino. Let that big glitzy thing just sit there.
Malita Brown
Wilbraham
Two-State Solution is Folly
J Street, a national organization, promotes a peace agenda for the Israelis and Palestinians. It believes a final status agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians embodying a two-state solution will guarantee peace in the region, but this is sheer naive folly.
Any agreement between Israel and the Arabs will be torn up by the Arabs when they believe they can conquer Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, ISIS, and other Islamic terrorist organizations will continue to promote attacks against Israel. All of the Arab/Persian countries in the Middle East either overtly or covertly support conflict with Israel or, at the very least, condone or tacitly approve military confrontation with Israel.
Israel must have top-notch intelligence services and a strong military, be alert to potential Arab attacks, and not allow development of a Palestinian territory which can threaten Israel.
Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, N.H.
Click, Clack, Dog Safety
Like millions of other listeners, we at PETA will always remember Car Talk co-host Tom Magliozzi for the lighthearted yet astute advice that he and his brother Ray gave callers—and not just when it came to their cars. “Click and Clack” were the first and only recipients of PETA’s Compassionate Mechanic Award, a tribute to their common-sense advice about animals.
Tom and Ray vocally supported the use of doggie car seats to protect traveling animal companions from injury, warned of the dangers of driving around with a dog in the back of a pickup truck, and asked why, since airbags save humans’ lives, couldn’t dogs’ lives be saved with “doggie bags.” But our all-time favorite Click and Clack bon mot came from Tom, who pointed out that “making leather seats involves removing skin from a cow, who presumably had other uses in mind for that skin.”
Daphna Nachminovitch
Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations, PETA
