Tag: casino

Jason Schwartz, blogging for Boston magazine, reports that Gov. Deval Patrick is relying on casino revenue numbers so wildly optimistic that even noted casino cheerleader Clyde Barrow of UMass Dartmouth doesn’t buy them.

Somewhere in my record collection is an album called “Sun City,” a project put together in 1985 by Steve Van Zandt, Miles Davis, “News Dissector” Danny Schechter and others to protest the apartheid regime in South Africa. Please click on the clip below — if you haven’t seen it before, you’ll be amazed. It might be the greatest music video ever made. It’s certainly the most socially conscious.

Sun City was a resort casino aimed at luring a wealthy white clientele. The idea was that money from high rollers would be used to prop up a crumbling, corrupt system that had exploited and oppressed the black population, whose most visible symbol, Nelson Mandela, had been imprisoned for many years. Eventually, of course, the regime fell, but not until incalculable damage had been done.

Who would be willing to profit from such evil? Sol Kerzner, for one. In today’s Boston Globe, Sean Murphy reports that Kerzner was the developer of Sun City, earning him accolades from Frank Sinatra as “the world’s best saloon keeper.” It’s not a secret. I had known about Kerzner’s South African ties. But I hadn’t made the connection to Sun City.

The main theme of Murphy’s story is not Sun City, but the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. It seems that Kerzner and Len Wolman, the principal investors in Mohegan Sun, found a loophole in a federal law that has allowed them to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars while the Indian tribe that nominally controls the casino receives relative pennies.

Getting rich by exploiting an oppressed native people? Well, that’s really old hat to Kerzner.

Kerzner and Wolman, as you may have heard, are also the lead investors in the proposed Middleborough casino. And Kerzner, as Stephanie Vosk and George Brennan remind us in today’s Cape Cod Times, “was charged in 1986 with bribing a South African official in exchange for exclusive gaming rights. The charge was dropped in 1997, but it has followed him each time he has bid on a casino license.”

The Middleborough deal was negotiated on behalf of the investors by Glenn Marshall, who chaired the tribal council of the Mashpee Wampanoags until he was forced to resign in August after his lies about his military service and a past rape conviction were brought to light. Tribal members tell the Globe that the details of the Middleborough deal remain a secret to them to this day.

And so it goes. This is what you get when you try to make common cause with casino gambling. This is what the Middleborough selectmen fail to understand. This is what Gov. Deval Patrick thinks he can avoid through extensive governmental regulation.

What legislators need to understand is that the best way to avoid such sleaze is not to head down this road in the first place. We ain’t gonna play Sun City.

When Middleborough’s town meeting approved the selectmen’s deal with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe last summer, there was an ominous context: Town officials were telling voters that the tribe would build a casino either with a deal or without one, and the town might as well get the best package it could.

That, indeed, is the most logical explanation for the fact that town meeting approved the deal, and then turned around and overwhelmingly voted “no” on an advisory question asking whether a casino should even be built in Middleborough.

Now Stephanie Vosk and George Brennan are reporting in the Cape Cod Times that the tribe continues to insist it has a right to build a casino in Massachusetts regardless of state law. As Vosk and Brennan note, it’s a position that state officials reject. Ultimately, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs will decide.

The Casino Facts blog goes into this in more depth. But the bottom line is that casino opponents should keep fighting. As Matt Viser writes in today’s Boston Globe, Gov. Deval Patrick is making little headway with a key legislative committee in his bid to saddle us with three casinos.

Opponents are winning. This is going nowhere. Even if the feds rule that the Mashpee can build a casino in defiance of state law, I would think opponents could keep it tied up in the courts for years to come. No one should feel intimidated by the alleged inevitability of casino gambling.

My last disclosure: Enough, already. Last month I was the guest speaker at a fundraising event in Middleborough sponsored by CasinoFacts.org. Middleborough is my hometown. My opposition to casino gambling is not a secret. I have neither taken money from nor donated money to anyone associated with this issue. From this point on, I’m traveling disclosure-free.

Peter Kenney of Cape Cod Today and Stephanie Vosk of the Cape Cod Times cover the election to fill two seats on the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council. No word of disgraced former chairman Glenn Marshall seeking write-in votes, as Kenney had predicted on Saturday — though he does say that Marshall was seen “cheerfully chatting” with his successor, Shawn Hendricks, and others.

But both Kenney and Vosk report that Brailyn “Bright Star” Frye — the tribe’s “Pow-Wow Princess” — was barred from voting even though she is the daughter of a council member and is so involved in tribal activities that she often appears at events in traditional Mashpee garb. Apparently Frye’s status as a voting-eligible member was questioned, although there is no information about the reason yet. Several other members of her family were barred from voting as well.

Vosk: “Multiple sources witnessed Frye’s mother, Cheryl Frye in a verbal spat with tribal council Chairman Shawn Hendricks outside tribal council headquarters yesterday. This is the tribe’s second election since former tribal council Chairman Glenn Marshall was forced to resign after his rape conviction and military lies were exposed. In both elections, tribe members have raised concerns about people who should be on the tribal rolls not being allowed to vote.”

Kenney: “She [Bright Star Frye] apparently fell victim to the mysterious virus that has taken hold of the tribal rolls. This once unknown ailment attacks the central record system of the tribe, rendering it uncertain whether life-long members will be recognized and allowed to vote. Those who oppose tribal leadership appear more likely to fall victim than those who remain silent.”

The Great Gadfly, Peter Kenney, writes that Glenn Marshall — the public face behind the proposed Middleborough casino — may be trying to make a comeback.

Marshall, the former chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council, was forced to resign last August after Kenney broke the news that Marshall had a hidden rape conviction in his past and had lied about his military record. Marshall is now under investigation for his management of the tribe’s assets.

Despite all that, Kenney hears that Marshall is trying to gather support as a write-in candidate for one of two open seats on the tribal council. The election will be held tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Matt Viser reports in the Boston Globe that well-organized casino opponents are outflanking Gov. Deval Patrick, taking advantage of the “tepid effort” he has made thus far to advance his three-casino proposal.

Gee, do you think Patrick now realizes his plan is a loser, and he’s hoping it will just fade away?

My standard disclosure.

It’s beginning to dawn on the Middleborough selectmen that there will be no casino coming to town. Alice Elwell reports in the Brockton Enterprise that officials just can’t understand why they’re not hearing anything from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which, as recently as this past summer, was very hot to build the world’s largest casino in Middleborough.

Of course, that was all a tribal-leadership meltdown and a federal (and state) investigation ago. It seems like such a long time.

The anti-casino group Casinofacts.org has a take on what’s going on here. And the inimitable Gladys Kravitz comments on Gov. Deval Patrick’s claim that anti-casino arguments are nothing but mindless emotionalism.

My standard disclosure of mindless emotionalism.

Final reminder — I’ll be speaking at a fundraiser tomorrow for Casinofacts.org, the leading anti-casino organization in Middleborough. The event will get under way at 7 p.m. at the Fireside Grille. Hope to see you there.

Boston Globe Magazine columnist Tom Keane offers a basic math lesson: “Does anyone seriously believe that Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun will sit idly by while a vast chunk of their business disappears? As the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation pointed out recently, like any good competitor, they’ll fight back. They’ll drop room rates, improve entertainment, and spruce up the buffet tables. Most important, they — and the states they’re in — will be compelled to offer gamblers better odds.”

My standard disclosure.

Gov. Deval Patrick, who is trying to foist three gambling casinos on the state, wants to make it a criminal offense — punishable by up to two years in prison and a $25,000 fine — to place a bet over the Internet. Crime, traffic and the associated disruption caused by a casino coming to your town? No problem. Gambling in the privacy of your home? Problem.

“If you were cynical about it, you’d think that they’re trying to set up a monopoly for the casinos,” David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, tells the Boston Globe’s Matt Viser.

Well, by all means, let’s be cynical about it. What could this possibly be about other than making sure the state scoops up every available nickel produced by gambling?

Among other things, Patrick’s go-straight-to-jail provision has managed to alienate U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, who had spoken in favor of Patrick’s casino plan just recently. Frank tells the Globe, “Why is gambling in a casino OK and gambling on the Internet is not? He’s making a big mistake. He’s giving opponents an argument against him.” Nice work, Governor.

In two other casino-related developments, it appears that the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is moving backwards in its bid to build a casino in Middleborough.

First, Boston Herald reporter Scott Van Voorhis writes that federal regulators may move to take some of the allure out of the high-stakes video bingo parlors that Indian tribes are allowed to open even in the face of state opposition. The idea is that such bingo games would have to look more like bingo and less like slot machines. This could damage the argument advanced by some pro-casino forces that if Patrick’s proposal is defeated, the Mashpee will open a sort-of casino anyway.

Van Voorhis’ piece is a follow-up to a story first broken on Oct. 29 by George Brennan in the Cape Cod Times.

Second, tribal leaders have reportedly been talking out of both sides of their mouths on the matter of whether they will enter the Patrick sweepstakes or instead pursue their gambling plans under the federal route. Boston magazine’s Jason Schwartz explains.

The most recent version of my standard disclosure.