Two wrongs...

In light of the timing, the title of this post may be a little misleading, so let me set the record straight on one thing - I am not upset that Barack Obama is our President Elect. Although I did not vote for the man, it was not because I thought he was a terrorist or a Muslim or an anti-Semite or any of the other unsubstantiated (sometimes quite vicious) rumors that hit my inbox on a regular basis. It was because I thought he was a neophyte. As I explained to my daughters on the way home from the polls (one of whom expressed her disappointed that I did not vote for Obama), I thought McCain had the right qualifications and experience to run this country, and I did not know whether the same was true for Obama. (This was an oversimplification for the sake of an 8 year old and 6 year old, my reasons for voting McCain over Obama are deeper and more complex, but since that ship has sailed I'm not going to expand on them here.)

No, the reason for the title has to do with the passage of ballot question 2 in Maryland - slots. Now I'm all for raising money for education, outside of raising our taxes. But is bringing pernicious gambling into our localities the best way, or even an acceptable way, to accomplish this?

Last weekend I got 3 messages from State and County leaders (O'Malley & Leggett, Anthony Brown, and O'Malley again) urging me to vote yes on slots in Maryland and letting me know it would raise 650 million dollars for education without raising taxes. They claimed to do this by keeping Maryland money in Maryland - a reference to all the money Maryland gamblers spend out-of-state like in Charleston and Atlantic City benefitting their states and not ours. So the schools get money, the taxpayers don't have their taxes raised, and gamblers get slots closer to home - seems like a win/win/win doesn't it?

Well, I can tell you something about gambling. It's addictive. It ruins businesses, families and lives. It is arguably worse than any other addiction because the potential for loss is only limited to how fast and how often a gambler can put his money in the little holes. And it does the most harm to the folks who are most apt to do it - poor people.

The thing about gambling is, it's not easy to do it outside a venue. Sure the internet has made gambling available to anyone who really wants it, but for many poor people getting a credit card or bank account, much less a computer with internet access, makes that avenue of gambling pretty much inaccessible. So making slots accessible to all these poor folks? Wrong, wrong, wrong.

"So what?" you ask. "We have the lottery already, how is this any different?" Three ways. First, the lottery is more limiting, the big ones can only be played once a day, and you don't get the same thrill as real gambling. It's the thrill that's addictive - not dreaming about beating the ridiculous odds of the lottery. Second, most of the revenues from lottery go to the state, not the lottery vendors. In slots, half the revenues go to the casino owner/slot purveyors. Half. So we're giving $600 million of Marylander money to these guys. Third, the lottery is wrong too, but it was already here and good luck trying to get rid of something like that. Two wrongs, eh? Now slots are here, and good luck getting rid of them too. And casinos will have a great argument to get another foothold when they point to slots and say, hell you MD folks are already most of the way there.

"So, the people were squandering their money in WV, DE and NJ, let them spend it here in MD." Not so much, folks. Traveling to WV or NJ made gambling there, for any Maryland resident, signficantly less frequent then it will be when the slots are located a 10 - 20 minute drive from one's home. The 650 million dollars that will be (allegedly) raised for MD schools, are not going to come from 650 million dollars less money in the WV, DE and NJ treasuries, no sir. I suspect a small fraction will be lost out of state - no this will be new money that would otherwise have been spent by poor folks on frivoloites like food, clothing, and shelter. Or is their argument, well WV, DE and NJ are doing it so why not us? Two wrongs don't...

"Well, at least the money's going to our education system." Well half the money. And $100 million subsidizes the horse racing industry, annually. Why is this important? Got me. Also, there are no provisions that require the budget for education actually increase, so nothing stops the government from using slot money for education and other monies from the general fund on other things. Result - no net increase in education, and using that old "do it for the children" saw, was just a way to gain additional sympathy for the measure.

Do most Marylanders feel differently, they voted for this ballot question didn' they? Ah hell, I don't think most Marylanders know what the heck they're voting for after the President question, and many don't even understand that one either. I also believe in a "yes" inertia - anything a governing body proposes, the body instinctively wants to trust that body and vote yes on it. The same principle applies in the corporate world where boards of directors make proposals to shareholders at large that almost always get approved or ignored in the proxy votes. People are lazy, and going with the opinions of somebody in authority that they trust is easier than having to make up their own minds. Getting strong endorsement calls from Gov. O'Malley, Lt. Gov. Brown, and your local county executive didn't hurt either.

Despite all this, I maintain Marylanders have made a grevious mistake. All the good intentions in the world, all the endorsements from our leadership, all the money for schools, or starving children, or world peace...well that doesn't make it right.

Ah, well.