Gambling with society for a few extra bucks
Here’s another Green Dart from the Whitey for Governor campaign, blasting both gubernatorial candidates Judy Baar Topinka and incumbent Rod Blagojevich for their stances favoring expanding gambling to boost revenue.
Feh.
As a libertarian I believe gambling should be legalized, and subjected to taxation no higher than any other legal business. Hell, put a casino on ever freakin’ street corner for all I care. It couldn’t possibly be more destructive to our society than a limited number of riverboat casinos have been, or the state-operated numbers racked called the Illinois State Lottery. Go stand in line at Super Liquors at the end of the month and see who’s playing number after number. Almost every single story I read about some trusted school secretary or mid-level elected official caught with his hand in the cookie jar has been addicted to gambling. I once saw what looked for the world like a homeless couple trying to check into the Par-A-Dice hotel, with the clothes in taped-up boxes and black garbage bags, trying to get a discount room rate based on the amount of gambling the’ve done at the casino.
Hey, but who am I to stand in the way of someone choosing to ruin their own lives? Let the private sector — and not just well-connected, campaign-donation-giving gaming industry — in on the fun. Let’s see some mom and pop start-ups provide this service. They can hire Cousin Guido to collect the debts and Sally from down the street to provide entertainment of another sort. We used to have a lot of these kind of businesses in Peoria. I believe it was called The Mafia.
Seriously, I simply do not get why it’s wrong for guys with Italian-sounding names to run a gambling operation, while it’s wholesome goodness for the government to do the same. If you ask me, the government is the bigger gangster.
So anyway, here’s the press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 24th, 2006
Contact: Jennifer Rose, Whitney for Governor, 618-528-VOTE, campaignmanager@whitneyforgov.org, www.whitneyforgov.org
Topinka’s Budget Plan Leaves Rich Whitney as Only Candidate Who Opposes Legalized Gambling – and the Only Candidate Who Stands for Fiscal Responsibility
Gambling Is A Hidden Tax on the Poor and Desperate, says Green Party Candidate Rich Whitney. Replacing Regressive Property Taxes With Regressive Gambling Revenue Is Not a Good Bet to Solve State’s Budget Woes.
by Rich Whitney, Illinois Green Party Candidate for Governor
With the release of Judy Baar Topinka’s Budget Plan today, it now looks like I am the only candidate in the Governor’s race who opposes gambling. I have always opposed legalized gambling as a matter of principle. I thought Judy Baar Topinka did as well. But now she herself is gambling that her dramatic shift in position will help her get elected.
It shouldn’t. Not only is her budget plan a bad idea because it relies on gambling to fund our schools. Her budget projections also rely on an awful lot of guesswork, unsubstantiated projections and generalities (e.g., eliminating $400 million in unidentified “pork”) on the revenue side, while making some grandiose promises on the spending side (e.g., “Record Education Funding and School Construction.”) In this regard, she very closely resembles her Democratic opponent.
Last January, I criticized Governor Rod Blagojevich for his ill-conceived proposal to finance school construction by bringing Keno to Illinois – breaking his promise not to expand gambling in the State. Now Judy Baar Topinka is following suit. Just like Blagojevich, she is claiming, “No tax increases” – and just like Blagojevich, she is instead looking to meet the budget deficit by getting into the back pockets of working taxpayers in other ways.
The fact is, gambling is a hidden tax on the poor. It preys on the poor by taking advantage of the desperate and the ignorant, who often fail to recognize that “the house always wins.” Those who can least afford it – people with household incomes under $10,000 – bet nearly three times as much on lotteries as those with incomes over $50,000, according to a recent report from the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. The rates are undoubtedly similar for casino gambling.
When Judy Baar Topinka assesses the benefits of state-sanctioned gambling, is she also taking into account the economic and social costs of higher suicide and divorce rates, more bankruptcies and homelessness, more broken homes, more abuse and neglect cases? Do any of the advocates of gambling ever consider that if working people hung on to more of their disposable income and expended it on real goods and services instead of giving it away to casino owners, there would be a positive, healthier economic impact?
Our State government needs to be placed on a sound fiscal footing, by enacting badly needed tax reforms to raise new revenue, while at the same time making our tax system more fair to lower- and middle-income taxpayers. And I am the only candidate in this race who is being up-front in pledging to do just that. No more gimmicks. No more hidden costs and fees. No more placing the burden of unpaid pensions on future taxpayers.
I am campaigning explicitly for House Bill 750. The product of a genuine people’s advocacy group, the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, the bill would couple a general increase in the State income tax and a broadening of the sales tax with tax credits for lower- and middle-income taxpayers, to make our tax system more progressive. Under this plan, the bottom 60 percent of wage earners would actually pay the same or lower taxes. Overall, the plan would raise enough funds to eliminate the structural deficit, adequately fund our schools, begin solving the pension mess, getting our social service agencies back on track and allowing us to fund projects that represent genuine progress – like my proposed job-creating “New Deal” to promote sustainable energy production and sustainable transportation in Illinois.
Judy Baar Topinka’s budget plan proposes a property tax freeze for four years – but at the cost of increasing even more regressive gambling revenues. Under House Bill 750, property tax owners would experience real relief, with a dedicated fund providing mandatory property tax abatements of 20-25 percent per school district.
House Bill 750 has been supported by a number of citizens’ groups, like Voices for Illinois Children, the Better Funding for Better Schools Coalition and A+ Illinois, a broad-based coalition supported by such diverse groups as the Illinois Farm Bureau, the Chicago Urban League, Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois and a number of labor unions.
This plan is not only fiscally responsible, it is what the majority of Illinoisans want. A recent survey of Illinois voters found that 66 percent would favor a comprehensive plan to cut the portion of property taxes that fund education, broaden the sales tax and increase the income tax in order to provide more money to the poorest school districts.
Yet Rod Blagojevich and Judy Baar Topinka have both rejected this plan. Being “corporate sponsored” candidates, they are too fearful of offending their big-moneyed benefactors to do what the majority of people want. In contrast, as a candidate of the Green Party – a party that refuses corporate campaign money – I am running to serve the public interest. That’s why I alone am standing up for fiscal responsibility in the race for governor.
Contact: Jennifer Rose, Whitney for Governor, 618-528-VOTE, campaignmanager@whitneyforgov.org, www.whitneyforgov.org
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Sorry to post this here but – Does anybody know what happened to Cruise Control??
This is the reason I don’t like libertarianism. I find it inherently self-centered and unconcerned about the plight of our fellow men. They seem to believe that people deserve no protection from exploitation. When you say, “Hey, but who am I to stand in the way of someone choosing to ruin their own lives?” it leaves me scratching my head wondering, wouldn’t you try to intervene in, say, your own son’s choice to ruin his life? If he were strung out on drugs or homeless, would you just say, “eh, who am I to stand in his way?” And wouldn’t you want — wouldn’t you need — help in that effort? These people may have made some bad choices in the past, but if they’re addicted to gambling or drugs or whatever, they’re now slaves to their addiction and victims of exploitation of that addiction. Are we to turn the other way and say coldly, “you made your bed by your choices, now you have to lie in it”? I, for one, would not want to live in such a selfish, heartless society.
On an unrelated note regarding a site issue: Why do I now have to put in a code to post my comments, even though I’m signed in to your site?
C.J.: Your understanding of libertarianism is flawed. Nothing prevents libertarian minded people from taking a concern with their fellow man. Essentially, libertarians oppose the use of force to impose your will on others. This is the part that people have a hard time understanding, but ALL laws are a form of force. All of them. A law is simply the government’s way of saying that it will — in the end — use force to ensure private citizens behave the way the government wants. This includes everything from murder to painting your home in an unapproved color. This this last example is a joke? What do you think will happen if anyone found guilty of this heinous crime refused to pay fines? Jail time, and the deputies WILL come knocking on your door to take you away if you don’t show up on your own. It has to be that way.
Which is why libertarians want municipal governments to leave people the Hell alone and do what the want with their property, along as it doesn’t interfere with health and safety of the public. Having to look at an ugly color scheme, tacky lawn furniture of, heaven forbid, a lawn jockey, doesn’t qualify.
That’s why it’s wrong for the government to threaten force against people for playing penny-ante Texas Hold-Em in some guy’s garage on Tuesday night, but perfectly acceptable for them to see hundreds of dollars of scratch tickets to little old ladies on Social Security.
Libertarians also believe that all taxation is accomplished with the threat of force. That’s not to say that ALL libertarians are violently opposed to all taxation. Year there are some. These tend to be the anarco-capitalist types who envision a perfect world where the only rules are those imposed by the free market.
Myself, I don’t mind paying taxes to have police protection (fighting real crime, not harassing people for not wearing seatbelts), fire protection, road repair and national defense. You know — essential services.
Naturally, people being who they are, there’s some disagreement over what the definition of essential services. Some folks, well intentioned, thing social programs are essential. It was hard to argue during the Great Depression that SOMETHING needed to be done. Well, here we are, nearly 80 years after the start of the Great Depression, and social spending is out of control. We’re dealing the predicted results of 80 years of the dole: Large segments of the population that have no respect for law, society, human life, who have come to expect that check in the mail as their birthright.
It doesn’t stop there. EVERYBODY wants their piece of the pie. Politicians are happy to run for office on “bread and circuses” platforms in which they promise to fix society’s problems by taking money out of one pocket and into another. We have ethanol subsidies (and ban importing of ethanol) because corn-growing states have early primaries. Here in Peoria, we slap a tax on hamburgers and movie rentals to subsidize basketballs the poor can’t afford to watch in person and high-brow forms of entertainment that poor people don’t WANT to watch.
But that’s OK, because politicians need to prove their love for us — or at least, their love for their preferred block of voters — by lavishing them with government spending. Naturally people who want government freebies object to paying for the freebies themselves, heaven forbid, so we have lotteries and sin taxes, essentially putting EVERYBODY, whether they like it or not, into the sin business.
C.J. suggests that libertarians propose a society in which people don’t care about others. No. Actually, what libertarians believe is that most government programs aren’t a form of caring as much as they a way to keep people beholden to specific politicians. Not that there aren’t people who really need held and sometimes get that help from the government. Libertarians are quite fond of charity (and a government check isn’t charity, because it wasn’t given willingly).
Sorry to ramble on.
Feh.
You are always harping about code enforcement regarding trash, paint, lawns, etc. Un-libertarian.
You are right, social programs and government subsidies are out of control. I think they should be cut back. AFTER we all get our free Muni WiFi of course.
Please.
HA!
Yeah, I have to agree with C.J. – It is assisted self-destruction when you look at the statistics. This to me..is like the government being like the “Kevorkian” guy, if you will. Just like the tobacco industry…too many people are getting paid politically to let their morals get in the way. Most, just chalk it up as social Darwinism so they can sleep at night.
First of all, current gambling laws are the very definition of hypocritical. As Bill has pointed out, it is ridiculous to allow lotteries and day-trading but ban slot machines and online poker. They are all equally ‘gambling’.
Second, legalized gambling is not a good example for C.J. to use as an argument that libertarians are cold-hearted SOBs who want to see us all live in a world like Lord of the Flies. Gambling is similar to motorcycle helmet use in that the downsides are obvious. Thus, the goverment is not adding any value by regulating/banning it.
What would be more useful is a regulated ‘games of chance’ industry. The government could add value by providing information about gambling to the populace. E,g., Casino ABC has slots that pay-out XX%, or Casino DEF’s comp schedule is such-and-such. That way, people can make their own judgements. The government should not nerf something just because people are too dumb to make a smart decision even with all the relevant information.
Note that the FDA’s clinical trial requirements for prescription drugs are a good example of the government adding value by the banning of certain things. No regular person could ever hope to have any idea what Drug XYZ might do (or not do) by looking at the pill. I’m not saying that private industry couldn’t do a better job, I just don’t know, but the FDA’s drug-approval wing is at least a ‘positive’ use of gov’t power.
What no one has said, and seems kinda obvious to me, is that all states that have used lottery and/or gambling revenues to increase the state’s coffers, the program has failed. I lived in Florida, and that’s an excellent example. Voters opted to use state lottery income for educational spending. Everyone thought, “Great, another $8 million (or whatever it was) annually for our kids’ education!” But what happened was, when that additional $8 million was written into the dept. of ed. budget, $8 million got moved out of it to something else that needed money. So it wasn’t an increase to the education budget, which IS how it was sold, it was just replacement so FL pols could fund some other thing. No improvements got made. FL’s educational system is near the bottom. With Texas. Hmm, weren’t two brothers their governors? Curious…
Anyway, it seems to boil down to this, basing state income on gambling revenues seems like gambling with the state budget. How about if we tax gambling establishments like everyone else, as Bill suggests, but just roll it up as regular tax income? Not apply some special purpose to it? Or make it a special tax. They’re a business, they pay taxes (gambling places), their money goes wherever all the other business tax money goes (which is probably a ton of places). But to specially tax them is unfair to them as business owners.
That said, in no way shape or form do we need gambling establishments on every freakin’ street corner, Bill. That would indeed be horrifically destructive to society. We just need to not tax them in any special ways. Again, expanding gambing in IL, as Blago and the smoker lady would have us do, is simply gambling with our state budget. It’s all a racket, gambling and what Blago and cancer lady are trying to do.
At least Rich Whitney is straight up about his position.