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OPINION

Editorial: Low road to revenue

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Comments (10)

Thursday, July 30, 2009

(Updated Monday, August 3 - 11:38 am)

The deeper the state's budget hole, the lower legislators' moral standards will fall. Or so it appears.

With support in Raleigh building for renewed legalization of video poker, it looks as if desperation for tax revenue overrides all other concerns.

State Rep. Earl Jones, a Greensboro Democrat, introduced his Video Gaming Entertainment Act all by himself in April and drew virtually no backing for it in a committee meeting. But he never stopped plugging away.

Meanwhile, a video gaming trade organization called the Entertainment Group of North Carolina started a clever lobbying campaign at the General Assembly, calling itself "the only group down here on Jones Street asking for more regulation and taxation."

EGNC says regulating and taxing video poker machines could raise $500 million a year for state government. The pitch has won over the State Employees Association of North Carolina and the Legislative Black Caucus. Both announced their support this week.

They use the same rationalization that led to introduction of a bill in California to legalize and tax marijuana (it failed but likely will return next year) and adoption of a measure in Delaware to create a sports lottery based on single-game betting.

All four major sports leagues and the National Collegiate Athletic Association have gone to court to try to block Delaware's sports gambling. Obviously, Delaware's elected officials don't care about the possible corrupting influence their new lottery might have as long as people play and pay.

North Carolina legislators should know better. Video poker's ill effects have been seen before. Many operators skirted regulations previously in effect, and some paid some local law-enforcement officers to look the other way. A long-time sheriff in Buncombe County was convicted of extortion and other charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The federal investigation that led to a corruption conviction against former N.C. House Speaker Jim Black began with complaints about $200,000 in contributions he received from the video poker industry.

Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina, who initiated those complaints, calls video poker the "crack cocaine of gambling" because it's addictive and very lucrative. Attorney General Roy Cooper said Monday that "video poker hurts families," and that sheriffs find it "problematic in their counties."

Raising revenue isn't a good excuse for perpetuating this problem. If it were, legislators also could legalize and tax real crack cocaine and other drugs, notwithstanding the harmful effects on users and their families. Or is it dangerous to make such a suggestion when the state faces a deficit and some lawmakers desperately crave a revenue fix?

What should happen is this: Gov. Bev Perdue, who last week said raising income taxes on working families is unacceptable, should vow today that she'll veto Jones' video poker bill if it emerges. Leaders can't lift up this state by lowering its standards.

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Interested

July 30, 2009 - 5:07 am EDT

By your reasoning (the POTENTIAL to be a corrupting influence or to be the object on an individual's addiction), the list of objects and activities to be outlawed would be limitless. Once again, a N-R editorialist tries to link Jim Black's incarceration to the wrong group. True, it may be where the investigation started, but it ended with chiropractors; they are corrupt - lets outlaw them. Doctors selling deadly prescription drugs to wealthy patients are corrupt - lets outlaw them. Cigarettes can be addicting - lets outlaw them. Alcohol can be addictive - outlaw it. There are shopaholics with literal addictions to shopping - outlaw malls. Lets not forget the sex addicts - . . . I would venture a guess and say that all addictions hurt families. The only way to help is to treat the addict. If someone is truly addicted to gambling, eliminating one avenue merely causes the individual to search for another not unlike an alcoholic who will purchase rubbing alcohol because he is refused a sale of beer/wine/etc. As to whether or not this is the "crack cocaine" of gambling, I would say get some numbers from Vegas or New Jersey and then I might believe you. I would assume if they are that addictive every casino in the US would be running these and making most of their profits from them.

Panacea

July 30, 2009 - 9:29 am EDT

You're skewing the issues, and comparing apples to oranges.

Black had his hands in a lot of pies: video poker, chiropractors, optomitrists, among many others. He would push legislation to benefit anyone who gave him money.

Video poker has no redeeming social value. Chiropracty, optometry, and medicine do--it's unfortunate that Black pushed a corrupt agenda to benefit those beneficial institutions but corruption in and of itself does not make a beneficient profession malign. Video poker isn't beneficient to start with, so we go from worse to worse. Sorta like politics.

Alcohol and smoking are detrimental to ones health, but a single bottle of alcohol won't get more out of you than the price of the bottle which is clearly marked. Video poker is easily manipulated and gamed--you can't possibly win.

Pulling all these other issues in with video poker just clouds the issue to try and make it seem like less of a problem than it really is.

Interested

July 30, 2009 - 9:42 am EDT

My guess is that the owners of these machines are not running not-for-profit businesses. Therefore, they will make a profit. Of course every player is not going to walk away a winner. This is an entertainment industry; that is what the customer gets. It should be up to the individual, not the state, to decide whether or not this is how they choose to entertain themselves. And that is the issue.

Panacea

July 30, 2009 - 9:29 pm EDT

The problem is the business owners who make ONLY profit and players who NEVER win. That's the problem with video poker. It was a problem when it was legal, and will be again if allowed back in.

What part of that didn't I make clear the first time?

Illiterati

July 30, 2009 - 8:54 am EDT

I'm addicted to Bejeweled. It is absolutely the crack cocaine of computer games. Should it be outlawed? Of course not. Neither should gambling. People have choices. Some people also have addictive tendencies. Outlawing these supposedly "sinful vices" isn't going to stop people with addictions from having addictions. Government is not our mother, and should stop acting as such.

Banpokies1

July 30, 2009 - 4:34 pm EDT

I am SO sick of hearing people say "machine gamblers must accept responsibility, it is their choice"! End of argument. That is an irresponsible attitude. Do we provide cars with no safety brakes...only then to tell people to drive and to stop when they choose? Choice for gambling machine addicts is not evident. Choice implies understanding, awareness...but gambling machines addict people without warning.

It is probably not their choice at all to become addicted. That happens way too silently and swiftly with those electronic gambling machines that we like to describe euphemistically as "entertainment". If any consumer wants to take responsibility and ask for a receipt for his spending, a record of his spending on the machines that have bled him dry no doubt...can he get one? Of course not...the machine does not even provide a receipt or any record of spending that makes a consumer "responsible" to start with! These machines are offered in an unsafe consumer environment that would not be tolerated anywhere else, by any "responsible" person....or government!

Face it...ignorant, uninformed people are happy to have gaming machines near them probably, so long as they and their own families are not harmed. We, the people ARE likely to be ignorant of the facts regarding these machines. We do not easily get told the truth at all. We therefore tend to blindly accept what we want to hear. Everybody loves to see somebody else have to pay tax, if it saves him that bother. The mistake is that too many people have been duped into believing that a) the machines make money long term for the state, b) that they are harmless and that c) cause no problem to almost all who "responsibly" use them. We let these beliefs prosper...to our loss. none of us "normal" people think that the dangers apply to us. They DO!

Nothing is further from the truth that gambling machines are safe products for most who use them. They are dynamite to normal human brains, designed to pick up on the frailties of our hard-wiring, designed to mess with our senses! The machines use our human weaknesses of reasoning to change our behaviour. Yet we are told that only the "defectives, the deviant social isolates" will fall prey to their electronic charms! That softens and calms us.

It should not. It is not true. Such erroneous rot is spread via a huge, well-oiled marketing program by the serenely ruthless, voraciously uncaring, greedy gambling industry.... to desperately inept government politicians who merely want a longer, easier term in office and higher superannuation... in a global downturn! What is worse, these machines possibly helped very much to create this latest downturn. Billions of dollars is lost annually via this form of "play". Billions of dollars is lost fixing the social havoc that is created.

The social costs of machine gambling are proven to be triple their profits for the state, the machines are known to be purpose built to be addictive and dangerosuly so.... and about 60% or more of people who use these machines in "recreational" venues develop serious loss of money/consumer spending issues. Families and children lose their life chances as family assets are dwindled...most likely by addict who do not yet even realise that they are part of that "great unwashed...the gambling addicted"!

How can any government in its right mind allow an industry that is created by selling dreams, to bleed our communities dry? No real product is created, jobs are fewer due to the "computerised" industry and no product is sold and resold between industries. Other industries are choked out as our spending dollars are consumed by the gambling industry. Money does NOT go round via electronic gambling machines! Only the machine makers and the machine servers profit! We ALL others miss out AND we pay the offensive social costs for decades following. Is THAT a situation we truly WANT to see?...

rmacz

July 30, 2009 - 5:16 pm EDT

Dittos period.

Interested

July 30, 2009 - 5:54 pm EDT

Impassioned though you are, you're arguments alone are not convincing. Outlandish adjectives (dynamite, deviant isolates, ruthless, voraciously uncaring) and baseless numbers with out citing sources should not convince any adult. Costs PROVEN to be triple profits - where, when? Sixty percent develop serious losses? Where do you get this from? Selling dreams? The only one trying to sell dreams is the lottery. And if the money doesn't go round and round, where is it? Stuffed inside a mattress? Surely these companies are buying equipment, supplies, paying employees who then pay house payments, buy groceries, go to the movies. It is basic economics.

rmacz

July 30, 2009 - 8:00 pm EDT

Then move to Cherokee on the reservation, better yet, Los Vegas it's farther away.

08Suez

July 30, 2009 - 8:31 pm EDT

"What is worse, these machines possibly helped very much to create this latest downturn. Billions of dollars is lost annually via this form of "play". Billions of dollars is lost fixing the social havoc that is created."

Banpokies1 you are right about that but guess who also runs the monopoly of hard liquor sales in NC. You got it the state government. How many billions are lost fixing liquor's social havoc that no one ever protests?