June 15, 2009

Make A Tax-Deductible Contribution To Help Us Fight the Predatory Gambling Goliath

GSCAEG Board

Jim Rubens, Chair

Tom Boucher

Herb Hansen
David Lamarre-Vincent
Ed Naile
Peter Schmidt

Chief Ted Smith

Katrina Swett

GSCAEG Organizations

NH Lodging & Restaurant Assn
NH Chiefs of Police
Granite State Taxpayers
Coalition of NH Taxpayers
NH Advantage Coalition

NH Citizens for A Sound Economy

NH Council of Churches
United Church of Christ
NH Baptists Association

Unitarian Universalists Group

for Social Responsibility

Episcopal Diocese of NH

Cornerstone Policy Research - Action
NH Retired Educators Association
Children's Alliance of NH

NH Citizens Alliance
League of Women Voters of NH

The Duprey Company, LLC

Stonyfield Farm, Inc.

Anti-Casino Organizations

National Education Assn - NH

NH Medical Society

NH Republican Party

Roman Catholic Diocese, Manchester

Advisory Board

Phil McLaughlin

Warren Rudman

Donna Sytek

Brad Cook

Lew Feldstein

Gary Hirshberg

Meg Cadoux Hirshberg

Patty Humphrey

Neil Levesque

Legislative Anti-Gambling

Caucus Leaders

Sen Martha Fuller Clark (D)

Sen Bob Letourneau (R)

Rep Dan Itse (R)

Rep Peter Schmidt (D)

For full documentation,

please visit our website

NoSlots.com

Greetings!

I have just learned from a reliable source that Las Vegas-based Millennium has spent or budgeted between $30 and $35 million in its attempt to get slot machine casinos legalized at the Rockingham horse track.

This sum includes Millennium's purchase option for Rockingham, its TV ads, campaign contributions, strategists, economists, pollsters, a grinning TV spokesperson, and its army of lobbyists who fill Concord's committee rooms and hallways.

$30 million sounds over the top, but not when you consider that Millennium probably values the 40-mile radius slots monopoly around the Rockingham and Seabrook tracks (that its lobbyists wrote into the Senate budget) at $1/3 to $1/2 billion.

Further cooroboration as to the credibility of my source can be found in a recent study by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Gambling interests spent $27 million in Ohio on a 2006 legalization referendum. That same year, gambling interests spent nearly $23 million on a Rhode Island ballot measure to permit a tribal casino.

Sums of money like these are intended to overwhelm New Hampshire's political system ... to buy our legislature.

Are slot machines (the revenues from which will not come in soon enough to balance the budget) worth selling control of our political system to the predatory gambling industry?

Please phone Governor John Lynch, 271-2121.

Ask him to take this scourge off the table.

Ask him to consider this advice by Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri, whose state has two casinos:

"Gambling is a very poor source of economic development. There is no evidence whatsover that those states that have large sources of gambling revenue are any better off financially, or any better off in terms of what services they are offering and delivering ... [Casino are] "a big vacuum cleaner that wants to suck into it everything around it. The notion it will create new business and spawn activity is just nonsense."

Thank you,

Jim Rubens, Chair
Granite State Coalition Against Expanded Gambling
(603) 643-6059