HOUSE TAKES ALL: STATE WINS WHILE CONNECTICUT FAMILIES LOSE

State-sanctioned Gambling has become a dirty if convenient panacea for some of the financial ills brought about by bloated and irresponsible spending by our state legislators. A murky cabal of professional casino promoters, armed with large amounts of industry funds, state legislators whose desperation to raise revenue overwhelms their sense of right and wrong, and state residents who through emotional weakness and materialistic desperation seek a quick “way out,” have managed to overturn decades of wise and proper laws against Gambling in the state.

The result of this has been a societal pox whose true social costs remain hidden in the victims’ decimated balance sheets, personal bankruptcies, countless domestic tragedies, destroyed families, impoverished seniors, financially drained lower income residents, and the resulting congestion, visual pollution and banality that these establishments exude. By selling cheap cigarettes the casinos further encourage the consumption of a product that kills and destroys people from within in a slow and horrible death.

The commercial interests of the tobacco and Gambling industries have found an expeditious and insidious way to increase utilization and penetration for their industries. These satyrs of disease and economic ruin have thus, through guile, executed one of the most evil casuistries in marketing history. They have broken open the gates and infected society with a multitude of unfortunate and unethical enterprises while proclaiming to be Messiahs providing economic benefits to the surrounding communities and the state.

The communities involved could have based viable industries on their soil, for example by providing a tax free zone to encourage manufacturing, distribution or other positive and socially enhancing economic activity. They could have provided for serious well paying jobs in serious, stable industries which provide an ongoing livelihood, and which would have benefited from a tax free trade zone. Major corporations could have decided to relocate to Connecticut, and skilled workers could have found jobs in industries making REAL LIVING WAGES that provide a decent standard of living, real taxable income and an economic multiple in the resulting spending. This would provide a true and lasting foundation to state and municipal revenues. No local resident would have been tempted to bet the rent money, or to deprive his or her family of food or other necessities because the weekly paycheck was spent at a casino. Seniors and lower income people would not be encouraged to give what little they have to this unfortunate addiction or starry-eyed hope of “winning big” so as to remove themselves from their unacceptable situations.

Gambling has become a rampant social disease, whether at the casinos or on Wall Street. It is indicative of a mindset created in a society where there are limited means for most people to make a return on their money; it is also consistent with the marketing of instant gratification.  Like Pavlovian dogs, people in our country have been conditioned by Madison Avenue to look for “quick” results. Quick fad diets allegedly to lose the weight and fat that quick fast food put there in the first place, quick plastic surgery to reshape our bodies, quick pills to enhance our sexuality, quick applications to get us into credit card debt, quick exercise machines to give us instant abs, quick instant food so you don’t have to cook, quick drive up windows. Like the proverbial assembly line, our society has brought the pace of life to such a quick pace that we no longer remember how to reflect or think for ourselves.  Gambling is another one of those quick remedies, which most of us intuitively know to be a bad solution to the long-standing problem of income generation.

Let me repeat – the problem is a limited number of perceived opportunities for people to make money. This is the real problem. Gambling is not the answer.  This proverbial societal syphilis of Gambling provides an illusion of prosperity while it provides dead end low-income jobs for most employees, while destroying what little the victims (i.e. Gambling participants) had in the first place. I have seen and worked with people who have had to go bankrupt due to losses engendered by casino Gambling in this state. I have seen and heard the tragic stories of people who have overwhelmed themselves with debt and had tragic, if not deadly consequences from the results. And I can assure you that busloads of individuals with decimated finances leave these places daily in a stream of silent agony and remorse, still infected with the involuntary need to repeat the painful experience.

Gambling is a foul enterprise. Our state legislators have prostituted themselves by taking money from this enterprise which respects no individual and which oppresses poor and lower income individuals to a much greater extent than their better off counterparts. It is a regressive tax, and as such, entirely unethical and incompatible with my ideals as a Green.

I believe that these enterprises should be banned. Connecticut state residents should be precluded from entering these establishments if they are entirely contiguous to land belonging to the state, and only out of state residents should be allowed to pass through roadblocks after being properly identified. The state should not accept funds from these houses and should learn to live within its budget or to find alternative revenue sources. The state is tainted by this unclean money.  No additional casino activity should be permitted in the state, and those in existence should be eliminated after a period of time permitting their original investors to recoup their depreciation.

True prosperity is born out of good jobs in industries making socially responsible products for the benefit of mankind. Gambling provides a number of low paying jobs for a few, destroys the economic wherewithal of all the participants, and makes enormous moneys for a few unseen investors. It destroys the environment by creating congestion and by concentrating large numbers of people in previously pristine areas. It makes unhappy babies and children when families fall apart. It fills our family and juvenile courts with workload from broken families. It leaves people with broken relationships and loneliness, unpaid rent and insolvency. Gambling’s legacy is truly unfortunate for all involved.