Curry of Life

I attended the Amherst Democratic Town Committee meeting for the first time in about 6 months. I resigned as secretary last year after the committee had, I felt, turned away from trying to represent or engage the community and had become the Impeachment Committee. I served for several months trying to redirect the committee toward a more productive and relevant course of action, but eventually gave up.

The main item on the agenda was a motion by Leo Maley against casino gambling. It was a good motion, narrowly crafted, that focused on gambling as a missed opportunity to have a more productive discussion about improving taxation. But I went to the meeting to oppose the resolution.

I personally don't think gambling is a good idea. People talk about it being like a regressive tax on the poor, but its really more like a tax on the stupid. I think it only affects poor people more because stupid people are frequently also poor. Maybe people think that, because they think poor people are stupider than other people. It also taxes the deluded and the addicted -- and some of those people ruin their lives with gambling. That's sad, but those people are doing these things today anyway.

As some of us have noticed, there is gambling available all around us. There are racetracks and booking facilities in Massachusetts. There are lottery machines in every convenience store. And you don't have to drive very far to go to a casino if that's really what you want. In fact, Massachusetts residents spend more than $800 million in casinos in Connecticut. Furthermore, it seems nearly certain that, irregardless of what the Governor does, the Wampanoag tribe is going to open a casino anyway.

Deval Patrick looked at the issues and decided to propose allowing a limited number of casinos. I think the primary reason he did it is jobs. In spite of the heated rhetoric on both sides, casinos don't seem to have big impacts on most aspects of the communities in which they're located. They do, however, result in more jobs, dispersed among more people.

I think Deval has been trying everything he can think of to fix Springfield. He's been trying get UMass to do anything it can think of to fix Springfield too. He doesn't have a magic bullet, so he's using what he's got. None of its perfect, but having more jobs seems better than not having more jobs. Unless you've already got a job.

I think Deval also thinks that, if we're going to have casinos, we might as well do it in a way that gives the state some ability to influence what happens. If our citizens are going to gamble -- and they are -- we can use revenues from it to help deal with the bankruptcies and ruined lives that inevitably result.

Everyone at the meeting was invited to speak on the motion. I spoke against it, but nearly everyone else was for it. In spite of Leo's motion being primarily about "improving taxation", most people cited a moral opposition to gambling as their primary reason for supporting the resolution. Someone claimed that the goal of the casino proposal was to increase the number of gamblers in the state and, after that, several others spoke passionately about how despicable that goal was.

The committee voted to adopt the resolution, with a few amendments. I proposed an amendment to the motion saying "Whereas casino gambling promotes sin and immoral behavior;" since that was the actual reason most of the people had cited in supporting the resolution, which actually didn't mention those things. My amendment was rejected.

It was an interesting discussion. The fact that Leo and I had actually brought some research on the topic, meant that it was not purely opinion that drove the discussion. Although I personally think that gambling is unpleasant and stupid, I don't have a problem with people choosing to spend their time and money that way. Its just another dumb way to spend money, really. I think professional spectator sports are stupid too, but I don't think they should be outlawed just because they're stupid and pointless.

In the end, I was most uncomfortable by the prospect that well-educated and well-off people were so willing to impose their morality on others in the guise of protecting them -- especially if it means that unemployed people won't get the jobs that they might otherwise get. I don't agree with everything Deval Patrick has done, but I think he's doing the right kinds of things.