Gamblng news from http://www.concordmonitor.com/
Last week, the Rockingham Park horse track rolled out its multimedia public relations and ad campaign. The TV ads feature the Rock's sepia-tinged glory days, back when betting on horse racing was a novelty. We are reminded of how people rubbed elbows with movie stars at the track and how the track helped keep New Hampshire free from an income tax.
The ads promise: "100 years and the excitement is just beginning."
The campaign fails to specify the source of the new excitement for this dying private business. Unlike buggy whips, slide rules and rotary phones, which quietly exited their markets without ad campaigns, horse racing wants resuscitation through state-awarded monopoly revenue. With three other New Hampshire racetracks to assure that the pork is spread among the regions, the Rock wants an exclusive right to install video slot machines and turn itself into a gambling "racino."
Millennium Gaming, operator of two Las Vegas casinos, holds a purchase option on Rockingham Park and is a source of funding for the ad campaign. Millennium's investment will not pay unless it gets slots. But to win the campaign will take more than a wave of nostalgic ads.
A mountain of published evidence shows that slot machine casinos are net economic losers for a state. According to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, slot casinos double gambling addiction among those living within 50 miles. New gambling addicts progress through a three-year downward spiral of debt, crime, bankruptcy, family violence and attempted suicide.
If Rockingham gets its way, innocent New Hampshire residents will suffer an additional 6,000 serious crimes, such as physical assault, car theft, embezzlement and robbery, every year. Using only hard data, which yield extremely conservative numbers, the costs of crime, justice and social breakdown are at least two times greater than casino tax revenue.
Consensus opposition
Those who weigh this evidence without bias consistently oppose video slot casinos. Right, left and center, every daily New Hampshire newspaper has editorialized against legalized slot casinos. The police chiefs, the sheriffs' association and the attorney general - the people who see gambling crimes up close and ugly - are on record in opposition. Also opposed are New Hampshire's leading anti-tax groups, the New Hampshire Medical Society, the Children's Alliance, faith groups of every stripe, our hospitality industry and a dozen more organizations.
Rockingham's main problem and the actual target of its campaign is the Legislature, which has voted consistently against casinos for years. Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Coburn opposes casinos. Gov. John Lynch has set up the right litmus test: Would casinos harm our quality of life? But without a definitive statement that he will veto any casino bill, Lynch has left the door ajar.
Keep a close eye on Rockingham campaign influence on swing races, such as Senate District 19, where anti-casino Bob Letourneau faces pro-casino Frank Sapareto. Be sure to ask candidates asking for your vote whether they will vote against slot casinos.
Addiction isn't voluntary
Most misleading about Rockingham's campaign is its implication that slot casinos are an alternative to new state taxes. Using casino supporters' own numbers, if slots were allowed at the tracks, state tax burdens would increase by $250 million annually - a tax increase of 12 percent.
Once Rockingham admits that its campaign is for a monster tax increase, it will claim its gambling tax is voluntary. But gambling is not voluntary for the addicts who pay about half the gambling tax and who gamble until their lives are destroyed.
Rockingham's next 100 years of excitement is a campaign to double gambling addiction prevalence. Casinos also divert consumer disposable income from existing uses. So Rockingham's monster gambling tax is also not voluntary for the restaurants, car dealers, retailers and entertainment providers who will see their businesses shrink or close.
How about the truth about the Rockingham campaign? It is a campaign for a state bailout of a dying private business. It is a campaign to de-criminalize video slot machine gambling, double the number of New Hampshire gambling addicts, destroy lives and degrade our enviable quality of life. It is a campaign to convince the Legislature that a 12 percent tax increase can somehow be painless.
(Jim Rubens chairs the executive committee of the Granite State Coalition Against Expanded Gambling. The website is noslots.com. Rockingham's ad campaign can be seen at Rockingham100.com.)
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