This CottonMouthBlog EXCLUSIVE Video is provided by John Leek. It features Carl King (Senior Pastor of the Crossroads Church of the Nazarene) as the last speaker at the prayer rally.
The event which happened today at 3pm today (5-20-07) had an attendance of 60 to 70 people and a sizable number of local pastors. They stand in opposition to the building of a casino in Jackson County which currently has none and has never voted to approve them. They fear that if the Mississippi Choctaw are able to build, nothing will stop others from following.
Pascagoula Mississippi Press
Jackson Clarion Ledger
The Sun Herald
ORIGINAL PROPRIETARY CONTENT!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIsn't it grand?!
ReplyDeletei never got the deal with gambling (yeah, i know it's bad for you in exess...but a little here and there...not too bad). Maybe they think that like the slot macheine will replace God in your heart or something. Whateverrrr
ReplyDeleteIt's estimated that more than 5% of the population is problem gamblers and that problem gamblers make up as much as half of all casino business (higher in places like Natchez where it is more local focused, and lower in places like Vegas that are more destination focused). It is also estimated that people who start gambling as youth are at a 10% risk for compulsive gambling. Gambling takes money out of community businesses, increases the rate of divorce, crime, and bankruptcy and generally is followed by a lower quality of life for most. Those are some of the reasons folks oppose gambling.
ReplyDeleteoh yeah, i understand.
ReplyDeleteboth my mom and my aunt's first husbands were really bad gamblers...nearly messed up both of their families ={
I thought the whole "no gambling" thing was in the same vein as gay-marriage (i.e. "We don't like it so let's ban it for everyone)
I think the gaming thing is a complicated, but ultimately badly directed argument-- there's a moral angle to it. Gambling takes money that could be used for taking care of the church and the family and uses it frivolously. I don't know what scripture that comes from, but it's probably the same ones that discourage all sorts of excessive levity. Probably James. James is down on lots of things. But that feeds into the social angle.
ReplyDeleteIf we accept, which largely we do, that we should be a parsimonious, hard working, profitable society, gaming, in particular problem gaming becomes a really bad thing. You're working so that you can throw money away on entertainment. You do things that you hadn't expected, like mortgage a house, commit robbery, whatever.
Those are the angles that John's dutiful ministers are pointing out and that have up to this point, taken up the bulk of the conversation here. The problem is, those are pretty shitty reasons to oppose it. 1. There's that whole undue influence of religion issue which I hate. 2. It ignores the facts surrounding the debate.
Expanding gaming is generally a bad policy decision. It's part of tourism revenue, which legislators tend to consider "magic money", cash they can spend but don't have to work hard for. This encourages the development of programs dependent on gaming revenue. The problem is that these revenues aren't consistent. You can get 100 million one year and 12 million the next depending on how the tourism market swings. If it's hip to go to Vegas in a particular year, then Vegas gets a ton of revenue. If it's not, they don't. It's difficult to budget for things like education if you don't have stable revenues. So you can have gaming, you can get the free money, but it really can't be dedicated like we do with the gaming revenues in MS. It becomes an issue of "how much money are we willing to spend in order to develop a residual, but inconsistent revenue source?" So it's basically a bad idea.
The social argument is almost statistically irrelevant. If John's stats are correct, then only 5-6% of the state's population has a gaming problem. Yes, for those individual families, it's a problem that might cost the family up to 40-50k a year. But for the population at large, you're talking about a revenue, tax base liability of less than 1 million. A drop in the state economy bucket. So gaming hurts people, it doesn't hurt 'society' in the broader sense. Problem gamers are an extreme example of the bad things that are possible, but they're hardly the norm.
My analysis- Gaming is ok. It's good money if you have a responsible state legislature. It has varying effects on communities (how many people on the coast make a better living than they could other wise by working as dealers, etc...) but it becomes a problem when the state develops a gaming revenue addiction.
If that casino will help you economy, you have no problem on it...
ReplyDelete