Leaping off Casino Cliff

Taking an anti-casino position didn’t spin out of thin air nor is it just another stubborn contrarian view for the sake of heedless spouting.

It is deeply rooted in insightful intuition: What does it all mean for the future of our people and island. It is a moral conviction to retain “our way of life” with a true sense of peace and tranquility. This is home! It isn’t just another place in the sun and not ready either to surrender it to organized criminal elements.

Research work and thorough analysis reveal trends in the casino industry across the country. I wanted to understand the beast, specifically, is it in fact the savior of bankruptcy? Well, the unexpected sunset finally sets at dusk and it is no longer the powerful source of revenue it used to be. Projections have withered and are headed Deep South between California and New Jersey. Nearby competition has definitely saturated the industry.

Of course, it’s hard stopping the happy carnival of public officials being wined and dined somewhere by wealthy casino industry executives as they mouth off the lure of millions of dollars the industry would bring to the island. But the cabal will never speak of the flip side of the issue, e.g., how the industry (when projections fail) turns to the poor to support its operations. We would be living not paycheck-to-paycheck but useless check stub to check stub. The humiliating betrayal of your people has heightened to the level of atrocity. Appalling!

Casino executives would make off with their loot from the back of our poor as it pays off politicians their loot to keep the flock happy slaves in obedience. Can you imagine our future under such dictates? If ever we sink into this situation it would take years to weed out the fatal seed of corruption from our midst. Many would eventually leave the island in search of the peace of paradise elsewhere.

An issue of such magnitude requires seeing beyond dollar signs and simplistic spouts of millions of dollars that will never be realized. After all, we never surrendered nor assigned our voice when twice we shot down casino in recent past.

Someone used the disoriented assertion of global confidence in casino investment here. Headed by the Asian organized crime? Furthermore, how many global corporations are run by organized crime? Is the business of organized crime the new fad in global economics? It’s a vacuous assertion that promotes intellectual dishonesty!

Now, here are examples of the new trend in the casino industry across the U.S. mainland.

• Six years ago, Ohio taxpayers were told casino would generate $1.9 billion in annual revenue. After the first year, it only generated $836 million or short by $1 billion. Ooops!

• New Hampshire shot down casino. Its legislators are paid $100 per year and aren’t beholden to special interest. They fully understand that a public policy built around inducing residents to gamble away their hard-earned money is a bad way to fund the government.

• Delaware found out the hard way that casino isn’t the savior to improve revenue generation. It recently gave its casino $8 million in subsidy. Have other businesses been given such concession when profits drop? Lawmakers are scrambling to prop it up. It goes to show that the House always wins.

• Atlantic City has seen revenues decline by 45 percent since 2006.

• Other areas where casino revenues plunged include Detroit, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Connecticut, and Illinois.

• Competition in the industry turns into cannibalizing among casinos.

• There are heavy increases in suicide, prostitution, heinous crime and family bankruptcy, among others.

Policymakers should have done due diligence peeking into the wisdom of establishing an industry here that has begun to reach saturation point across the country and soon in the Asian region. Japan would establish her casino industry in 2020 while others perk up services nearby like Macau, Singapore, the Philippines, and South Korea. Our baby casino would begin the quick journey into permanent bankruptcy!

Casino in swampland

The petition to place the initiative on the ballot to repeal the casino law has picked powerful steam islandwide. For those who think it won’t get anywhere, think again and think hard. The proposed repeal goes in tandem with the puncturing of your political career with a final exclamation mark (!) after the word, history.

It’s the spiritual conscience of our people who treasure traditional values versus politicians who never understood the importance of gravitas—integrity to leadership—thus the decision to sell the people and island for 30 silvers.

Indeed, there are a lot of educated and fully informed folks here who believe and appreciate the essentials of building strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life. Do we, in losing our conviction, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient cultural identity, and the cultivation of public virtues?

The dangers of cultural genocide is real and repealing the casino law is the way to restore infusion of intelligent public policy so we can begin addressing our issues and needs constructively. This is done by means of reasonable democratic process that would attract public support.

You never learned to “listen,” a highly important tool of leadership, nor make the effort to be mindful of the desire of your people on this issue. Obviously, you never learned to realize your egregious mistake, much less admit it. It’s a tale that you don’t deserve the office you now occupy.

Your heinous disregard for the voice of “we the people” you have decided to ignore and trash with raw arrogance will be reciprocated this November.