Gambling with your life

Here’s something to chew on this fine Sunday. When did gaming become the national panacea for financial problems? It seems like anytime a city or region has to come to grips with an economic shortfall they immediately turn to slots and poker to solve their lack of tax revenue.

I was reading my hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and there was an article about the beloved Penguins deciding that without the revenue generated by eight dollar hotdogs and ten dollar beers served in luxury suites in a state-of-the-art new stadium they own and operate the team would have to relocate to say Kansas City or Houston it was brought up that the solution to keeping the team was the new slots casino being planned in downtown.

Now I’ve been to Detroit and let me tell you, Greektown Casino has not made one bit of difference in what has to be the poster child city for urban blight and Coney Island hot dogs. It seems like everywhere we turn these days another municipal official is pushing for a massive gaming casino to revitalize the downtown area and generate tax revenues.

Anyone who has spent time in a casino would probably recognize that the majority of gamblers aren’t the cream of our society. And that gambling by nature attracts the part of us that is loud, obnoxious and addictive. There are few things more attractive than a hall filled with gambling addicts all trying to change their fortunes with some random act of providence that is completely outside of their control.

Which takes us back to these cities that somehow think that building one casino will generate millions in revenue and save them from having to do the unspeakable, raise taxes. Sounds like addictive thinking to me.

Ultimately the thing about this that kills me the most is that you are asking the residents of a depressed area, an area with no jobs and less hope, to spend their money at a casino so that they can pay for a stadium for millionaires to play hockey? To fund a stadium that most of them will never be able to afford to get into? Are these people supposed to get that much poorer to keep a hockey team?

I love the Pens. I love the Pirates and respect the Steelers (I’m a Cowboy fan), but is it worth it to ask a community down on its luck to pour money into a stadium for a sports team? What about the hospital? The schools? What about job creation and worker retraining and public works? They are asking to use all the revenue from said casino to fund a new stadium for the Penguins.

Are the Penguins worth saving? Is it worth saving any sports team? I mean is there more civic pride from a winning sports team or from low unemployment? I can’t help but think this is just one more way of the financial ogres of this world to help keep the average guy and gal down on their luck, living day to day, buying their goods, and dying without ever having had a chance to really taste the good life.

You can’t get blood from a stone. You can’t get extra money from people that don’t have it. Politicians think people don’t listen and don’t care so that they don’t have to do the hard work of creating opportunity for the regular Joe. All they have to do is make the rich people happy, build a casino, keep the sports team and everyone will be just fine.

I say let the Pens go, we’ll miss them, but if you must build a casino, use the money to revamp the city, find a way to bring in new business and find people jobs! It’s the human thing to do.