Governments Should Leave Gambling And Other Vices To Organized Crime Syndicates – They Do A Much Better Job

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Don’t know about you, but I have just about had it with Ontario and other governments – local, state and elsewhere across this continent – wringing their hands over gambling casinos and who is going to profit from the spoils.

Just keep dropping those coins in those slots suckers. We could use the money to fill potholes.

Gambling casinos are just another scam governments are using to pick the pockets of anyone sucker enough to haunt them, and who cares about those idiots anyway? If they are stupid enough to throw their money down slot machines or crap tables, why in hell should the rest of us care about them?

I mean, let’s put things in perspective here. In a province on a continent where there a far short of enough decent jobs for young people graduating from college and university with record-high debts, and where people are struggling to get access to decent social and health care services, we’re supposed to worry about where gambling casinos are located and what government is going to get the biggest cut from the suckers that frequent them?

I know, from reading and turning on the mainstream (dare I use Sarah Palin’s term “lame stream”) news outlets here in Niagara and elsewhere that for them, what flock of vultures is going to profit the most from gambling joints in this region and others is a big deal.

I turned on CBC radio this May 6 to repeated news that the opposition parties, including the NDP which one might count on to place other issues like affordable housing, or water quality in our Great Lakes, above the issue of who or what community in Ontario gets a bigger cut of gambling revenues, nevertheless made who gets the gambling spoils a big part of question period in the provincial legislature.

This may seem like important news to CBC radio and to other media outlets in the GTA and Niagara around all of the buzz over whether the Ontario Lottery Corporation should be giving any casino that may be built in Toronto a special $100 million per year in hosting fees, and whether casinos in Niagara Falls should get the same, and on and on.

NDP Finance Critic Michael Prue, who is a pretty good finance critic who might better spend more time asking why corporate tax cuts in Ontario aren’t limited to corporation that actually hire people in Ontario, was quoted saying the following this May 6 in a release the party’s communications group wasted its time circulating to the media; “Even the bookies couldn’t peg the odds on whether Toronto will hit the jackpot for hosting a casino.. …. As Kenny Rogers once sang, ‘You gotta know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em. ….” To which I say, who gives a flying fig!

Who gives a fig what back-door deals are made for gambling joints in Ontario? I know that it might mean something to some politicians and business groups in Niagara who appear to have come to the conclusion that they need these casinos, along with acrobats walking a wire of the falls and daredevils running the rapids downstream, to draw tourists to Niagara Falls.

Maybe they are right. Maybe the natural Niagara Falls has become so boring in this world of high-tech, digitalized effects and individuals who are willing to risk their lives at stunts that the roaring rush of a huge percentage of the world’s fresh water over one of the great escarpments on the planet doesn’t mean much anymore. If so, we might all ask what that says about how little we care any or value the experience any more of connecting with what are left of the raw, natural features around us.

If you have ever taken the trouble to walk through one or both of the two casinos on the Ontario side of the Niagara River, as I have on a few occasions, you will note that there are no windows to the natural Niagara Falls or anything else outside. It is all about the slot machines, crap tables and so on and throwing more of your money on the line while you are working your third or fourth gin and tonic. There is no evidence, from any of the studies on gambling casinos that I have ever heard of, that these people are interested in anything else in the community around them, even if there are some nice museums and restaurants and natural features there.

And yet this is what our governments are promoting to grab more revenue that they could otherwise have if they better spent what stash they already have from us or if they had the courage to increase income taxes, if necessary.

But not one government we’ve had in Ontario, at least, over the past 30 years – not Conservative, NDP or Liberal – has had the courage to say that they would rather raise income taxes than suck people in to gambling.

That leaves me saying this. I will support any government that helps people who lost their jobs because John Deere shut down a plant in Niagara or because the cost of supporting children have become too out of sight for a single parent on a fixed or minimum income. But someone who has been stupid enough to blow their life savings gambling? Forget it?

I have never believed that government should have anything to do with operating and promoting gambling and I am totally against any tax money going to helping the suckers who lose in these places.

Governments should leave gambling and other vices to the likes of Vito Corleone. They can run them better and if governments licence and tax them, then hey, there’s a little extra money they are afraid to get by raising income taxes

I also believe that gambling operations should have been left and should be given back to organized crime syndicates, who have had long-time record across North America of running operations like this much better.

If governments still want a cut on the action, then simply licence them and apply a tax. And while they are at it, why not do the same with prostitution and street drugs like marijuana. If that sounds offensive, just think of it this way. If governments can try to clean up the image of gambling or playing craps by calling it “gaming,” as if you were going out on the lawn to play croquet. It is not, but if you are going to engage in that kind of sanitation, why not clean up other time-honoured underworld vices like prostitution by calling it “sex therapy” and by referring to marijuana and cocaine as “recreational stimulants?” And just image how much money governments could haul in if they taxed them?

So please spare us any more high and mighty about “gaming revenues” in Ontario or elsewhere on this continent. Leave this stuff to the likes of Vito Corleone, who knew how to run these rackets and vices most efficiently.

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