Dear Casino Free Columbus,
I need you to please vote today in The Economist’s poll on this statement: “Government should have no restrictions on gambling.” The Economist is holding a debate on the issue and gambling interests are disproportionately skewing the results. Below is our opening statement in the debate. It is an important issue in an important forum and I strongly urge you to make your view heard. A vote to stop predatory gambling is a No vote.
Can you please vote right now? http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/178/Gambling
Please forward this request to your network and urge them to vote.
Best,
Les Bernal
Stop Predatory Gambling
Our opening statement:
The voice of government then The voice of government today Casinos and lotteries are the most predatory business in the world and their financial windfall is coming at your expense.
Gambling operators attempt to hide under the cloak of “personal freedom” as if the issue was about social forms of gambling like playing cards at the neighbor’s house on a Friday night. The issue is about predatory gambling and broken government.
Predatory gambling is using gambling to prey on human weakness for profit. Its business model is based on people who are addicted or heavily in debt. The casual player is virtually irrelevant. It explains why casinos like Harrah’s, America’s largest gambling operator, found that 90 percent of its gambling profits come from the financial losses of 10 percent of its visitors, according to Christina Binkley’s book, “Winner Takes All.’’ Matthew Sweeney, author of “The Lottery Wars,’’ found that in some states 70 percent of lottery sales comes from the financial losses of 10 percent of its users.
Making so much money from so few people requires the most predatory business practices in the world. Gambling operators issue loans to drunk patrons and dispatch casino staff to act as “hosts’’ to lure out-of-control gamblers back into the casino. They relentlessly pursue those who withdraw cash from casino ATMs because these gamblers have shown a compulsion to chase their losses – a top predictor of compulsive gambling. Lotteries push $50 instant scratch tickets and speed up their Keno games to every four minutes so people will lose more money at higher wagering amounts at faster speeds than ever before.
Electronic gambling machines like slots and video poker represent the purest form of predatory gambling and, not surprisingly, are the most profitable. According to the research findings of Natasha Schull, associate professor in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, the machines are designed to get every user “to play to extinction’’ — until all their money is gone — by using technology described as a “high-tech version of loaded dice.” Schull writes:
“… its (the gambling business) efforts to make slot machines so effective at extracting money from people yields a product that, for all intents and purposes, approaches every player as a potential addict — in other words, someone who won’t stop playing until his or her means are depleted.”
In case you thought you missed the high-profile Congressional hearings and the blue ribbon commissions investigating the predatory gambling trade and their unrivaled business practices, you did not. They have not happened. At least not yet. Gambling operators continue to thrive because the entity charged with promoting and protecting the public interest – our government – is a full-fledged partner.
We are in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression following a decade of phony prosperity. Our country has a shrinking middle class largely because of high levels of personal debt. Governments everywhere are on the brink of bankruptcy after years of undisciplined spending on unsustainable budgets. Yet the popular response by many political officials (and a few in the media) is to promote lottery tickets on every corner, build casinos on Main Street and if some in Congress get their way, bring Las Vegas into every home in America with a computer, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Of course, all of it is being underwritten by billionaire gambling interests spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and public relations.
What government incentivizes gradually shapes the national character. During the Great Depression, government was in a severe budget crisis, it needed to put people to work and it had a world war to fund. The country’s leaders challenged the citizenry to act together and buy savings bonds, ultimately spurring massive economic growth in which nearly everyone prospered. We now call the people who grew up in that era “The Greatest Generation” because they acted with a sense that we are all in this together.
Today, the daily voice of government to most Americans is casino and lottery advertising, relentlessly pushing people to lose their cash by dangling the false hope they can make money by not having to work for it. More than one out of five citizens now believe the best way to secure their financial future is to play the lottery. In the process, we have created an emerging national ethic of phony prosperity, living beyond our means, cutting corners and distrust. A Las Vegas ethic.
No image better reflects how our government is broken than the branding symbol of the Oregon Lottery represented by two crossed fingers – a symbol for luck. We have gone from Rosie the Riveter’s flexed biceps with the message “We Can Do It!” to crossing our fingers. It should really be two crossed fingers behind the back, which means knowingly making a false promise. How do we rebuild public trust in our democratic institutions when its daily voice plays the citizens for suckers?
You can’t. And that is why fixing broken government, despite all the other major issues we face, starts with ending predatory gambling as we know it.
