The democrats have been promoting gambling as the answer to our budget woes. My experience has led me to question if the boat cause more harm than revenue. We know how much money we raise in taxes. We do not measure the harm caused by the following:
a. The number of men who don’t pay their child support because of gambling
b. The number of bankruptcies
c. The number of families who break up because of financial problems created by gambling.
More particularly, drug dealers and bank robbers use the gambling boats to launder their money. The boats make crime more profitable and are the easiest way known to law enforcement to launder money. Gambling exploits seniors, the poor as a regressive tax, and the mentally ill who go on a manic spending spree.
I’m not proposing making gambling illegal. We have enough people in prison. I wish to remove private industry from the business by gradually exercising eminent domain. Then, we can train the employees to spot suspicious activity. For instance, I know of one case where an individual had marked, sequentially bills from a bank robbery. The pit boss of a gambling boat saw it and told the individual to turn his bills over. He then gave the individual his own separate table so that noone else would see what was taking place. Government employees would not have the incentive to turn their heads from this criminal activity in the name of further profiteering.
Finally, when families break up over gambling financial problems, crime increases. Studies show that children of single parent families are far more likely to commit crimes that lead to incarceration than those of two parent households.