The Massachusetts House tonight overwhelmingly approved casino gambling , bolstering confidence among lawmakers that slot machines and Las Vegas-style table games will be coming to the Commonwealth.
The bill, which passed 123-32 just after 9 p.m., would authorize three “resort” casinos and one slots-only gambling parlor in Massachusetts. The Senate expects to take up the measure later this month and Governor Deval Patrick has signaled initial support, meaning the first slot parlor could open within a year.
Last year, a similar bill passed the Democrat-controlled both the House and the Senate before a disagreement with Patrick over the size and type of facilities derailed it.
Lawmakers say the state is desperate for jobs and a new stream of tax money.
“Personally, expanded gambling, I suppose I could take or leave,” said Representative Joseph F. Wagner, a Chicopee Democrat and the lead sponsor of the bill, who confessed his gambling experience is limited to the “occasional game of Keno.” But “I can’t ignore the thousands of jobs and I won’t ignore the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.”
Patrick offered critical support for the bill last month, and has indicated he is inclined to sign it.
“The debate today I think is a long time coming,” the governor told reporters yesterday. “There’s a lot I like about the bill and I’ll be interested to see what shape it takes when it reaches my desk.”
Casino developers have spent millions lobbying on Beacon Hill, in hopes of cashing in on the multi-billion dollar industry. Organized labor, desperate for construction and service jobs, also pushed hard.
Though adamant that expanding gambling will do more harm than good, opponents seemed resigned to the outcome, after House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, Senate President Therese Murray, and Patrick, all Democrats, united behind a single proposal last month.
Representative Denise Provost said the current bill “may look like the perfect prenuptial agreement.”
“But I don’t think it’s a good basis for us to go forward and marry the casino industry,” she said today.
She argued that as soon as cash-flushed casinos are entrenched in the state’s economy, their owners would deploy armies of lawyers and lobbyists to strong-arm the state into rewriting the casino law to the detriment of taxpayers.
“Once we have married the casino industry they are ours and we are theirs,” said Provost, a Somerville Democrat.
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morality aside, and I don’t presume to be able to judge what is right or wrong for anyone but myself…
vice legalization is a decent way to increase economic activity and tax revenue. legalizing drugs would save whatever the “war on drugs” costs us, get tainted/bad drugs off the streets, free up probably tens or hundreds of billions of incarceration costs, strip the mob and criminals of revenue, general legitimate taxable revenue from farmers/labs/drug stores… and no doubt ruin the lives of a few people who wind up addicts and such, but in all honesty, and I’m as boring as HECK, and live in some bullshit midwestern state, but I bet you 20 bucks with a trip to the bar and a few questions I could get some drugs. With little to no legal risk.
Now, mind, thats not a legal risk that I’m willing to take, i’m just saying I can’t remember finding some weed being all that hard as a college boy.
tax it TO EVER LIVING HELL, and it’d still be a wildly profitable industry. keep it illegal to sell illegal versions, only sanctioned drugs.
generate probably hundreds of billions of revenue, save hundreds of billions in costs… create probably tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs.
AND IF YOU REALLY WANTED SOME DRUGS, COULDN’T YOU GET THEM ANYWAY? you can’t stop an industry with 10,000 percent profit margins.
And ditto other “vices”. People will tolerate virtually any level of taxation on vices so long as they are allowed to partake in them. Raise taxes on liquor, put cig taxes through the absolute roof, and such.
Heck, for htat matter, ditto prostitution. Same rules as above: illegal to not be licensed, etc, but allow it legally. There may well be prostitution here in my area, but I have never been aware of it, the only sex related crimes I’ve ever seen are like myspace busts in the local papers. But legalize it and allow it and I bet it generates some revenue. Tax both parties heaviliy, etc. Maybe my argument that “its available anyway” is not applicable to that industry, but I assume in Vegas or LA or Manhattan it’d be emminently possible to attain prostitution with minimal risk of getting caught, but, again, I have no idea. I’ve seen cocaine sold fairly openly on the streets New York and Vegas, thats gotta be MORE illegal than hiring a call girl, no? So I assume its available in big cities readily.
Just ideas, which would not sit well with a huge percentage of people on moral grounds, but at least in the case of drugs
1. people can get htem anyway, you can’t stop it
2. its an incredible expense to society
3. you could reverse that expense and turn it into a big societal profit
4. you could get unsafe drugs off the streets
it seems like the biggest fiscal no brainer ever.
#2 and #3 are questionable w. regard to what would be the worse “long term expense,” legalizing and incorporating the tax revenue but also the societal cost or keeping them hard to get and on the fringes.
Societal opprobrium is a great “free good” we’re coasting on right now.
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Morality is a separate question, and a legitimate one. There is also the “forbidden fruit” factor. Do American college kids go on wilder drinking benders than German college kids? Does having cocaine so illegal and naughty make it glamorous and more desirable, or do people desire it just for the effect of the drug?
I don’t claim to have the answers to that question, but I do think its fairly legitimate to ponder the question.
Forcing cocaine users to register when buying it at the pharmacy would go a way towards keeping it stigmatic. Say I really wanted some blow, so as to go all gorilla like into this here market, am I going ot be willing to put my name in a database of known coke users? Probably not.
Would, if it was available legally, I buy and illegal version and risk 10 years in the klink? Probably not.
I don’t think it’d be necessary to relieve the social stigma…
Outsourced all productive jobs to Asia? Sin your way to prosperity! Legalize crime!
Eggsactly. It’s like “the bad future” in one of those Michael J. Fox vehicles.
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