Free lunch

Sept. 9, 2010

Dear Julie,

Our annual Labor Day weekend at the Castor River concluded with the annual visitation by trombiculid mites, better known as chiggers. As parasites go, they're probably less troublesome than many. By the time your ankles are itching the mites are already gone. They just chewed on you awhile.

There are different kinds of parasites. Some benefit the host. A casino could be viewed that way, as a parasite that helps fatten the host.

Cape Girardeau already has a deal with Isle of Capri, a Delaware-based casino company, even though the state gambling commission hasn't yet awarded the lone available license and even though the city's voters won't decide until November whether or not they want a casino in their midst. The deck is being stacked.

The city's downtown redevelopment organization and the chamber of commerce have embraced the casino as good business. Seeking to attract other new businesses to Cape Girardeau, will they trumpet that we're a casino town?

That the state will award the casino to Cape Girardeau is almost certain. The projected tax revenue here is many times greater than at any of the other three possible locations.

Governments everywhere are desperate to find new revenue. If Californians legalize marijuana in the November election it won't be because they've finally accepted reality. It will be because they need the tax money.

The casino expects the city and county to reap $3 million in taxes annually. That's a big reward for doing next to nothing. It's the proverbial free lunch.

Except a study of Wisconsin casino gamblers found that half had household incomes below $30,000. The people who will rain tax dollars on Cape Girardeau are people who can least afford to lose, and lose they will.

Gambling is a regressive tax that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. Go inside any casino and you will find the regulars are people who can least afford to be there. That's not fun on their faces. That's more desperation.

DC wonders if concern for those who will lose too much too often is trying to be your brother's keeper. My answer is yes. We are our brother's keepers. And our sister's keepers. And our children's keepers.

Plenty of people go to a casino, drop their 50-buck limit and leave, happy to have spent a few hours being entertained by the clanging bells and flashing lights and games. They are not the concern.

Sunday the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about concern in Pennsylvania's Bucks County because gamblers have been leaving their children in the car while they go inside the casino.

The story cites a Louisville Courier-Journal review of Indiana Gaming Commission records that counted 37 incidents of 72 children being left unattended at casinos in that state in 1999 and 2000.

For me this isn't an economic issue or a moral issue. The question the casino poses is spiritual. If we believe that we are all God's children, all equally beloved, we want to do what's best for everyone. How then do we justify inviting this symbol of greed at the expense of others into our community?

The real Capri is a resort island off the coast of Italy. This Capri will be in the middle of a pond. Would we become, the Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee wonders, a world that has lost its center, "a world that believes in its own advertising slogans?"

The free lunch is tempting. But what is the real price?

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.