Our friend and colleague Pat Loontjer recently wrote an op/ed that was published by the Omaha World-Herald. In her article, Pat, the executive director of Gambling With the Good Life, describes just a few of the sad prospects a Carter Lake casino presents to the people of our area.For those of you discriminating consumers (like myself) who don't get the World-Herald, here's the text of Pat's article sent over to me by e-mail...
Opposition to the proposed Ponca casino in Carter Lake, Iowa, is in no way racially motivated. A casino is a casino is a casino, no matter who runs it. It is a detriment to our economy, and it hurts families.
Nebraska voters have rejected slot machines and casinos time after time. But the Ponca tribe, which has no reservation, purchased Iowa land along the gateway to Omaha for a “health clinic.” Now it has deceitfully changed the intended use to a casino.
The fact that “clinic” and “casino” both begin with the letter “c” does not make them interchangeable. One will bring benefits and blessings to those most in need, and the other will prey upon the poor and elderly and make them needy. Nearly two-thirds of the dollars gambled in today’s hightech slot machines come from gambling addicts. The latest slots are designed to hook people and drain them dry. They are so effective that casino revenues now overwhelmingly come from just one source: slot machines.
Slot addicts gamble away their paychecks, their Social Security checks, their mortgage payments. They gamble away money borrowed on credit cards, borrowed from banks, borrowed from family and friends. They gamble away food money, kids’ savings, money generated from drug sales and other illegal activities. They gamble away money embezzled from employers, stolen from other businesses, stolen from family and friends.
“I’ll see mothers get their welfare check and drop their whole welfare check in that machine at one time,” Santee Sioux tribal member Randy Thomas told the Nebraska Legislature a few years ago. “And I’ll walk outside the door, and they’re selling their food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar.”
The price of casinos is high and gets higher with each new casino that opens. Even without casinos in Nebraska, the state concluded in 2003 that problem gamblers in Nebraska represent a minimum social cost of $212 million. A Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce report from that time suggested that just one Omaha casino could increase Nebraska gamblers’ losses by 66 percent.
All of this is ignored in the recent Feb. 6 Midlands Voices essay by several Santee tribal leaders. Instead, the piece simply bashes critics of a proposed Ponca casino near Eppley Airfield as Indian-haters while pretending that opening a casino is like opening a bowling alley or a barbershop. Nebraskans know better.
Beyond the high costs of casinos themselves, tribal casinos are mired in a regulatory mess. Required background checks are delayed by years. Definitions are so twisted that illegal slot machines are made legal by calling them “bingo” (like calling a cocaine-laced Marlboro a “cigarette”). Tribal leaders are more accountable to their casinos’ Nevada management than to their members. As Thomas testified, “We have enough problems in our lives as it is without adding another.”
Nebraska has a stake in whether a casino should be placed near the heart of its leading city. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is upholding the clear and well-demonstrated wishes of Nebraskans by taking action against such a casino proposal. He would do so whether that proposal came from a horse track, a bar, a Nevada casino company or an Indian tribe.
Anti-casino is anti-casino. It is not anti-Indian. But where is Iowa’s voice? Where is its attorney general? Where is its governor? Where is our governor and mayor? And last, but certainly not least, where is the voice of the Omaha business community? Let’s unite to stop this travesty. We applaud Bruning’s action in support of the Good Life we all cherish in Nebraska.
