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7/28/2008: Belleville & Slots
Letter to Editor: Belleville Intelligencer
It is hard to believe that Belleville is going to have a race track and slots.
One Ontario non unionized slot needs 3 jobs to feed it.
OLG operates 24,000 +/- slots, that work 24/7 to divert up to 100,000 job contributions away from Ontario economy.
Add in AGCO Nevada, bingo, Lottery, pari-mutual, and other gambling, but not to mention gambling related social costs.
Below are a few paragraphs of this summer’s news clips, partial, with source, not all local, which may help explain why the racetrack is a social disaster.
This is a fraction of the news that is out there, but alas, no one heeds.
Gambling addiction has created a sad new class of addict, and hence,
crime to support a new habit.
Three provinces have class action suits in progress.
OLG financing the race track is one thing, but why is this crown corporation gambling with the health and lives of its citizens?
New study rejects economic benefits
Brown, Damien Source: News.com.au Published Date: Jul 23, 2008
AUSTRALIA - Gambling in Tasmania is not a substantial contributor to economic or jobs growth, a major study has found.
And it said there was a link between serious crime and substance abuse and problem gambling.
The long-awaited Social and Economic Impact Study into Gambling in Tasmania was made public yesterday.
The report found claims the gambling industry significantly contributed to economic growth was not substantiated.
It also found there was no real evidence the introduction of gaming machines had a positive impact on employment or tourism
Gambling revenue declines across U.S.
July 27, 2008 6:00 AM
The realization — after years of steady, healthy gains — that the gaming industry isn’t immune to the distress of a troubled economy couldn’t have come at a worse time for Massachusetts.
“It’s ugly,” Andrew Zarnett, gambling analyst with Deutsche Bank AG of New York, said of the revenue losses and declining stock prices that have thrown the industry for a loop. “There’s an overall uncertainty in the economy and gaming is feeling the impact. It’s really bad.” From southeastern Connecticut to Atlantic City to Las Vegas, gaming operators are pulling in less revenue, leading to dramatic declines in stock prices for many of the companies that would be interested in developing the types of resort casinos envisioned by Gov. Deval Patrick From southeastern Connecticut to Atlantic City to Las Vegas, gaming operators are pulling in less revenue, leading to dramatic declines in stock prices for many of the companies that would be interested in developing the types of resort casinos envisioned by Gov. Deval Patrick.
No one’s doing a happy dance
Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal July 7, 2008
THE Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., spends large sums from the millions that it takes from gamblers to advertise the winners. You‘ve seen their smiling faces in the pages of this newspaper. You‘ve heard ecstatic new millionaires exclaim on radio and TV about their astounding luck. Other ads show a bunch of office workers doing their “happy dance” after getting the call from OLG. It‘s all good, or so it seems.
What the corporation doesn‘t advertise are the victims of its success. They won‘t show you the sad faces of the thousands of Ontarians who have lost everything in the firm belief that just one more bet will be the big one. The gambling arm of the Ontario government does not tell you that your odds of winning much more than a free ticket are extremely unlikely and that the odds of winning a million dollars are astronomical. But you should continue to practise that happy dance because, hey, someone‘s got to win, right?
The folly of that belief walked into a Thunder Bay courtroom Friday in the person of a 65-year-old grandmother. Madeline Flontek‘s descent into gambling addiction will hit bottom when she enters jail for 14 months while her husband comes out of retirement to begin paying back the $673,000 his wife stole from her employer.
The longtime bookkeeper and controller of a local contracting company, Mrs. Flontek wrote cheques to herself from the company account and, as her addiction escalated over the course of four years, took cash advances on the company credit card and cashed in all of her RSPs.
Every penny went straight into OLG‘s Thunder Bay Casino which hands a tiny portion of its enormous annual profit to the city, ostensibly to offset the damage that it does to lives and to the local economy.
Omaha Nun Sentenced To Prison For Theft
KETV News July 11, 2008
OMAHA, Neb. -An Omaha nun who admitted stealing money from the local archdiocese has been sentenced to prison.
Sister Barbara Markey and her supporters had expected her to get probation after pleading guilty to stealing more than $250,000. Instead, the judge gave her a three-to-five-year prison sentence, saying probation would have promoted disrespect for the law.
“I’m shocked and disappointed,” said defense attorney Bill Gallup. “If ever a person deserved to be put on probation, it was this nun.
“I don’t think the whole story has been told at all,” Markey said, as she was being escorted out of a Douglas County courtroom Friday.
Markey, 73, had taken the money to fund vacations, homes and a gambling addiction.
Problem gamblers launch suit against Ontario gaming body
COREY LAROCQUE Niagra Falls Review June 13 2008
Public Health raises awareness of problem gambling
Help is available in Hamilton March 21, 2008
Tell a friend Gambling may be more of a problem than you think, according to a recent survey, where 3.8 per cent of people in Ontario identified moderate to severe problems with gambling.
That equates to approximately 341,000 ** ( 2003 ##s)
Ontarians who feel there have been negative consequences associated to their gambling behaviour. Studies also indicate that the ripple effect of problem gambling affects others in connection with gamblers: family members, friends, employers and co-workers may also be affected by someone’s gambling.(5+ min)
Canada has a gambling problem
Responsible Gambling
Source: Globe and Mail Andre Picard January 06, 2005
One of the most pervasive fantasies of Canadians is hitting the jackpot — a financial windfall from winning the lottery, or striking it rich at the casino or the video lottery terminal in the neighbourhood bar.
It is a costly fantasy.
Revenues from government-run gambling operations exceeded $11.8-billion in 2003. That is a four-fold increase in just a decade. (And, to put that number in perspective, consider that the goods and services tax, the dreaded GST, brings in about $29-billion a year.)
The health and social costs of gambling — and problem gambling in particular — are a lot more difficult to quantify. But they include increased costs for policing, courts, prisons, medical care, social assistance and economic losses to individuals and businesses.
The havoc wreaked on communities and the undermining of our redistributive taxation system — one of the single greatest benefits to the health of Canadians — is rarely discussed.
The devastation, in terms of lives lost and families destroyed, is incalculable. Where there is gambling, there is increased violence, including higher rates of child abuse and domestic violence.
By some estimates, between 200 and 400 suicides in Canada are directly related to pathological gambling and the hopelessness it engenders. The number of attempted suicides related to gambling is likely five times higher.
Councillors want a bigger take from Ottawa’s slot machines
Jake Rupert The Ottawa Citizen July 10, 2008
(There is not a community that takes money from OLG that is happy with the arrangements… especially the business communities.)
Betting on gambling revenue is risky business for Ontario
Christina Blizzard Kingston Whig Standard July 5, 2008
From the auto industry to farming to forestry, this province’s traditional industries have been hammered by the soaring dollar and the price of oil.
These once noble industries of workers who made a living from the honest sweat of their brows are teetering on the brink.
And what does the province want to replace this bedrock of our economy with?
Apparently, all the Liberals have to offer is a plan to allow sports betting in casinos.
Your government is going into competition with organized crime? Hey, why let the little crooks make all the dough when you could have the OLG run things for them? Even provincial Ombusdman Andre Marin has criticized the government’s addiction to gambling revenues. A new revenue stream based on the weakness of humanity will really place our economy on a sound economic basis.
( losses of fewer than 5 % of population contribute 40% of OLG wins)
Czech municipalities want to limit gambling - minister
Prague- Some 80 percent of Czech municipalities would like to limit gambling on their territory, Dzamila Stehlikova, minister for human rights and minorities, told journalists today, referring to a survey she ordered.
Over 85 percent of the municipalities said the negative effects of gambling, such as crime, were more serious than the financial effects of casinos to their budgets, the survey conducted on some 100 municipalities showed.A working group recommended that the new law on gambling, currently drafted by the Finance Ministry, limit gambling to special premises “to protect adolescents and people from socially excluded communities from the offer that is everywhere, in cafes, restaurants, hotels, at train stations and many other places,” Stehlikova said.
She said many of the poor spend their welfare benefits in casinos.
The group also agreed that a fund should be established to subsidise campaigns against gambling.
Prevention campaigns should focus mainly on children, youths and socially excluded communities, but also women and senior citizens.
Video Lottery Terminals Class Action Newfoundland
(see another Canada class action re: suicide)
Gambling with science
Determined to defeat lawsuits over addiction, the casino industry is funding research at a Harvard-affiliated lab.
Eliza Strickland Salon June 16, 2008
Jean Brochu was a respectable attorney in Quebec with a wife and two kids. That was before he first punched the button on a video slot machine in 2000. Within 15 months, Brochu says he was losing $500 a day to the machines. He plunged headlong into debt, and lost his car and his house. He stole $50,000 from his union, and was consequently disbarred for three months. He claims that in several dark moments he contemplated suicide. He also says it was all the fault of those slot machines.
Now Brochu is the lead plaintiff in a massive class action lawsuit against Loto-Quebec, the government agency that runs all forms of gambling in the province. Brochu’s lawyer, Roger Garneau, says he filed the suit on behalf of the estimated 119,000 gambling addicts in Quebec province. Garneau says the slot machines dragged these citizens into addiction. “They have been conceived and constructed for trapping the mind,” he says. The suit asks for almost $700 million in damages.
bill clark