Do we need more tribal Casinos? Or, is it time for state governments to go after that entertainment dollar? We've seen what corruption has done to Chukchansi, what greed has done to the Pechanga people and what power has done to the Pala Tribe. Here's an article from Connecticut who may look to end the tribal casino Monopoly
Connecticut seems unlikely to accept the favor Massachusetts has just done it by affirming plans to develop its own casinos, especially in Springfield, just over Connecticut’s northern border along an interstate highway, a casino that might become more of a draw to Connecticut residents than the two Indian casinos in the rural southeastern part of the state.
So suddenly there is clamor from state legislators and the Indian casinos themselves for Connecticut to increase its gambling options and facilities, particularly on the way to Springfield, to keep the state’s gamblers home and prevent Massachusetts from doing to Connecticut what Connecticut did to Massachusetts three decades ago by authorizing Indian casinos here. State government is being told that it must protect the revenue it receives from the slot machines at the Indian casinos, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, as payment for their monopoly.
That revenue has been diminishing for years as gambling proliferates throughout the country in a trend that Connecticut may have made inevitable by dressing up state government’s insatiability as a form of recompense to people who had been dead for hundreds of years, people whose distant descendants were living in raised ranches and working at Electric Boat in Groton like nearly everyone else in the old stomping grounds of the ancient Pequots and Mohegans.
These are some of the policy issues:
• Since gambling produces nothing but merely redistributes wealth, and does so disproportionately from the poor and other entertainment businesses to the government and gambling operators, the government’s cut comes at much greater social cost than ordinary taxation does. State government might as well install in the homes of welfare and food stamp recipients slot machines that run on electronic benefit transfer cards.
Read the FULL ARTICLE HERE
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