Tag: casino

The DiMasi indictment

Three quick points on the indictment of former House speaker Sal DiMasi and three associates:

  • The Boston Globe deserves an enormous amount of credit for its dogged reporting on DiMasi, precisely the sort of public-interest journalism that’s endangered by the meltdown of the newspaper business. Given current trends, life will be easier for future DiMasis, and that’s a shame.
  • The prosecution’s case against DiMasi will never look stronger than it does today, and we should wait to see what develops. But the story that prosecutors tell is a sordid one. My personal favorite is the $25,000 DiMasi allegedly demanded and got following a bookkeeping error on the part of the co-defendants.
  • Never forget that DiMasi’s leadership saved the state, at least temporarily, from the evils of casino gambling. With the House now led by Rep. Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop, who reportedly wants slot machines at dog tracks (although his support may be waning), and the Senate led by Sen. Therese “Ka-ching!” Murray, D-Plymouth, there are darker days ahead.

Gambling mecca drowning in red ink

Think casino gambling is going to save Massachusetts? Here’s how Lynn Doan begins her story in today’s Hartford Courant, the leading newspaper in Connecticut, home of two resort casinos:

With the state’s three-year budget deficit forecast hovering between $6 billion and $9 billion, Democrats are pushing a tax plan that economists warn will wipe out thousands of jobs both in old-line and emerging Connecticut industries.

The tax package unveiled by the state legislature’s Democratic majority earlier this month includes three main hits to business: a 30 percent surcharge on the corporate earnings tax; an end to sales tax exemptions on some key purchases such as computer services; and stricter limits on tax credits, including the lucrative research and development credits that keep many startup businesses afloat.

As both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald report, expanded gambling is looking increasingly likely as Massachusetts officials scramble to make up for plunging tax revenues. Senate President Therese Murray is pushing for resort casinos, while House Speaker Robert DeLeo wants slot machines at race tracks.

The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s plan to build a casino in Middleborough quickly deteriorated into a tragicomedy of corruption and recriminations. But state officials, starting with Gov. Deval Patrick, think they know what’s best. So it’s likely that we’re going to end up with some form of expanded gambling.

Still, the facts are clear, for anyone who’s interested.

Behind the pro-casino propaganda

The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald today are atwitter with excitement over surveys showing that support for casino gambling is on the rise. With the new Massachusetts House speaker, Robert DeLeo, in favor of expanded gambling, it looks like Gov. Deval Patrick is going to renew his ill-considered push to impose this blight on the state.

So leave it to Jon Keller of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) to dig a bit deeper into one of those surveys, put out by UMass Boston, which supposedly shows that casinos create better jobs for non-college-educated workers than other businesses.

Keller finds that the study was funded by construction-industry contractors and executives, who would stand to profit mightily from building casinos. The study also fails to mention the inconvenient fact that the huge “resort casinos” favored by Patrick are now cratering and shedding jobs. Keller writes:

Let’s face it, folks, casinos have been sleazy but lucrative money pits in the past and they may be again, but they are not anything close to a valid answer to the prayers of the working class.

The only kind of survey that matters is the one that asks people if they want a casino built in their community. Last I checked, two-thirds of Massachusetts residents are opposed. That’s not likely to change.

You’d never know it from reading the Globe, but even Middleborough residents voted overwhelmingly against a casino on the one occasion they were given a chance to express their views.

This is a loser, and Patrick’s obsession with staking his governorship on it is appalling.

Middleborough meltdown

This is all too weird. But if you oppose casino gambling, you can’t help but love it.

Adam Bond, chairman of the Middleborough Board of Selectmen and the guy who did more than anyone to try to bring the world’s largest casino to his adopted hometown, has quit the board. It seems that Bond wanted his fellow selectmen to try to grab more money from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which would own the casino, and which is now beset by legal problems, starting with the crimes of its former leader, Glenn Marshall.

(As an aside, it’s a shame that Sal DiMasi’s replacement as Massachusetts House speaker, Robert DeLeo, is a fan of casinos. Casino gambling is bad news, and we shouldn’t want it anywhere. More than anything, though, we need to keep it out of Middleborough.)

Cape Cod Times reporters George Brennan and Stephanie Vosk have a thorough account of the Bond shenanigans, and Alice Elwell of the Brockton Enterprise offers a good overview as well. In the Boston Globe, Christine Legere reports that Bond plans to keep his weekly radio show, which is broadcast here on Thursdays at 11 a.m. I shouldn’t, but it’s hard not to look when you happen upon a car crash.

As Elwell reported in a previous story, Bond had already alienated the board with his blog, which, I have to confess, is too tedious for me to wade through — though I do enjoy his claim that one of the selectmen, Mimi Duphily, “wanted to ‘rip my face off.'”

So I’ll give the great Gladys Kravitz the last word:

[A]s the person who has been putting Bond under a microscope since 2007 — believe it, this is a good day. This is a great day. It’s a pick up your American flag, go outside and stand on your porch or the hood of your car and let out a big WhooHoo type of day.

The king of all drama queens had a meltdown and provided you with an extra seat on the Middleboro Board of Selectmen. Now pick up a broom and sweep away the damage. Then pull back the curtain on the light of a better day.

One down, four to go.

More: The Enterprise editorializes on Bond’s “unconventional and inappropriate” behavior.

A wistful farewell to Sal DiMasi

Many of you will miss Sal DiMasi before too long. Not me. I miss him already.

Mr. Speaker, as Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham notes while kicking him to the side of the curb, saved us from casino gambling, pushed the idea of a higher gas tax as an alternative to toll hikes, was a stalwart on preserving same-sex marriage and much more.

We are almost certainly going to get less good government with DiMasi’s successor, whoever that may be. Do you really think we’re going to get cleaner government? Please.

Look — the Globe did terrific work on exposing DiMasi’s less-than-wonderful side, and prosecutors can hardly ignore the possibility of criminal wrongdoing. I understand that. But we are going to miss him.

More: The casino forces are celebrating already, as you can see from this post at Casino Gambling Web. It begins with a falsehood — “Governor Duval [sic] Patrick ran for office in Massachusetts on a platform of expanded casino gambling” — and ends with this:

Lobbyists who have already been working hard to have casino legislation are relieved that a major roadblock is now out of their way. When DiMasi won re-election, casino proponents felt deflated, but now that door has swung wide open.

Look out below.

Still more: Jon Keller has similar thoughts.

Corruption charges cloud Middleborough casino

Glenn Marshall, the former chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council, faces federal corruption charges in connection with his efforts to win governmental recognition for the tribe. Marshall was the driving force behind plans to build a $1 billion casino in Middleborough.

According Jay Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald, the charges include making illegal campaign contributions to members of Congress, guided by imprisoned former superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose name has come up before in connection with the tribe.

Marshall stepped down in August 2007 after it was learned that he was a convicted rapist who’d lied about his military service. No word on whether his new legal woes are tied to Shawn Hendricks, his handpicked successor.

All this at a moment when the casino industry is falling apart — making it unlikely, Matt Viser reports in the Boston Globe, that Gov. Deval Patrick will revive his three-casino proposal any time soon.

Given the charges against Marshall, it looks like everything is up in the air — not just the proposed Middleborough casino, but whether the Mashpee are even a legal tribe with the right to build such a monstrosity.

It truly is a great day for Middleborough.

Update: Gladys Kravitz says all that needs to be said.

Casino jobs without an actual casino

The $1 billion casino that will never be built in Middleborough is already producing jobs, according to reporters George Brennan and Stephanie Vosk of the Cape Cod Times:

Consultants providing legal, lobbying and public relations services were paid $2.2 million by investors, according to internal financial records for fiscal 2008. In total, the casino investors provided $4 million for the [Mashpee Wampanoag] tribe’s budget including nearly $1 million for pay and benefits of tribal council officers and staff members.

Nice to see that the South African moguls who are the real forces behind this miserable idea are providing some much-needed economic stimulus.

Let’s hear it for DiMasi (again)

I shouldn’t be blogging, because I’ve got an interview to prepare for. But I didn’t want the shift away from a toll hike and toward an increase in the gasoline tax to get by me without saying anything.

This could turn out to have been choreographed. But assuming everything is as it appears on the surface, it’s hard not to notice that, for the second time, House Speaker Sal DiMasi — invariably described as “embattled” these days — has stood up on the right side of a major public policy issue, and Gov. Deval Patrick hasn’t.

Without DiMasi, we might very well be sliding toward Patrick’s disastrous proposal to build three gambling casinos. And Patrick is reportedly still reluctant to support “broad-based tax increases,” as his spokesman, Kyle Sullivan, puts it.

If DiMasi’s enemies succeed in driving him from office, where is that going to leave us?