Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Gambling Casinos: A Sound Investment

Organized crime, and the other folks who put up the money to back new casinos, make more money than bankers. No matter how many dollars or quarters or pennies the suckers put on a table or stick in a machine, the house is guaranteed by law a percentage of it, and win-win is always a sound investment. A while back a woman, who deals cards in a casino, spent a couple of days at our home. She told me that the casino destroyed her town. She barely scrapes by on her card shuffling wages. If you live in a town that has been infested by a casino, you already know that your taxes go up. If you think about it, it makes sense: Roads need more repair. You need more social workers and teachers and schools to accommodate the many legal and illegal low-income families that quickly move in to take the low paying jobs. More police are needed to settle domestic matters, the increase in petty crime and code violations when ten or more newcomers crowd into a small apartment. Most casino customers never set foot in town: they are bussed to the casino, buy their meals in the casino, and are bussed out broke. This, and the social and economic cost of a casino to the community and state, is never mentioned in the glittering ads they can easily afford to run on TV. Nor is it mentioned by the lobbyists who are well paid to “explain things” to our friends in the Maine State Legislature. If there is anything that sucks money out of an area quicker than a big box store it is a gambling casino. Aren’t you surprised that Maine doesn’t have a lot more of them?