California’s governfuhrer is proving to be one slippery dude. Ahnold sidestepped his problems with drugs and groping women to win his office handily over an opponent weakened by a smear campaign and a recall. He has so far kept his pledge not to raise taxes, but like a good sneaky Republican he slipped in a $15 billion hunk of debt instead that will be being paid off long after his steroid-pumped physique has flabbed out . But most recently he has maneuvered to strike a deal with the state’s Native American tribes to grab a chunk of their substantial casino winnings. In return for a piece of the take, der gov wants to let the Indians vastly expand their numbers of slot machines, a move that could well turn Kaleefornia into the gambling capital of America. This knife in the back of the people of the state evoked memories of an essay nearly a decade ago about the growing sleazy relationship between gambling and public finance.
©2004, UrbisMedia
Was there something wrong with my car radio, or did I really hear it announce that the program I was listening to was being brought to me with funds from a local Indian casino, whose tribal traditions of governance, its promotional tagline asserted, said something like “. . . served as a basis for the democratic principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution.” ? That’s not an exact quote since I can’t drive and write at the same time, but it’s close enough.
Somehow I missed this little tidbit in my somewhat Eurocentric history classes. Maybe there is some historical basis for it. But why did I first hear it from the promoters of Indian gambling—excuse me , gaming ? It seems to me that the U.S. Constitution has never done Native Americans all that much good in the past, so if their casino operators can gain a little positive PR by claiming some authorship it might even the score a bit. But I’m not sure that this ‘spin’ on American history will enhance the prospects for Indian casinos, or the reputations of Native Americans. After all, it’s not about historical revisionism; it’s about gambling!
Games of chance are as old as recorded history, and most societies have permitted or looked the other way at gambling. In our national land use scheme we have allowed a few places, like Las Vegas, to function as our national casinos and brothels and nice “legit” businesses for our mobsters. This is not to naively imply that one can’t get a bet down in any town in the country on anything from the next Chargers game to whether the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. Regulation, formal or by social sanction, not prohibition, has been the accepted practice.
And there have always been the handy rationalizations: What’s the harm in putting a couple of bucks down on a horse, a quarterback’s arm, or some numbers in the lottery. It’s not immoral to get one’s kicks pulling down slot levers, or trying to fill an inside straight at the casino; it’s ‘entertainment.’ I have no quarrel with these ‘justifications’. They are personal choices. But I do have a quarrel with the gambling ‘industry’ when it seeks social acceptability by sleazing its way into the sickroom of public finance.
The traditional accommodation of the odds-makers with guardians of the public’s health safety, morals and purses, has been to imply that a little bit of vice not only never brought down or destroyed a city or a society (and indeed supplemented some of those anemic public paychecks). But the approach employed by Indian gaming, with due credit to their non-Native American precursor hucksters of lotteries and sweepstakes, is an amalgam public relations and political correctness.
How could any reasonable citizen gainsay the casino operator’s claim to providing jobs in ailing local economies? What local economy wouldn’t give its regulatory imprimatur for a hundred or so croupiers, cocktail waitresses, cashiers, and parking valets? Just the thing for those laid-off aerospace and defense workers.
Not buying that one? Try this: Those public-spirited casinos grease a couple of high profile charities, or the perennially mendicant arts and culture organizations like public broadcasting, or a symphony, and every time you pop a coin into a slot, or double down on a pair of aces—Bingo!—you’re supporting the arts and curing fatal diseases. You remember how those state lotteries saved public education, don’tcha?
Maybe that pitch gives you pause, too. Obviously you’re having trouble learning to say “gaming” rather than “gambling”. And you’re more than a little ill-at-ease about septic money backing medical research. Does the prospect of the local ballet company staging The Nutcracker Vegas-style (“Mommy, the Sugar Plum Fairy isn’t wearing anything on top!”) make you a trifle nervous? Or the symphony leading off each program with “Luck Be A Lady Tonight”? Maybe it’s too much of a stretch for you accept that Sesame Street and Mister Rogers Neighborhood are brought to you by a grant from underwriters who toss us some splash from their take on bets, booze and bimbos. Heck, Las Vegas is trying to portray itself as a family fun center; so its all in good fun if The Cookie Monster has already shown the kids how to calculate roulette odds.
Still not buying? Don’t worry, here comes the rhetorical designated hitter: it’s politically correct to support Indian gaming! We’re talkin’ abused minority here, stripped of their land and dignity, lied to in treaties, who don’t even get royalties on Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves paraphernalia. Never mind the sovereignty issue: how can the rest of society bet in their office football pools, go to the track, play Lotto, blow their rent in Vegas, Atlantic City or on some River boat, and not allow Native-Americans a chance to bring some jobs and money into their reservations, and improve their schools, health programs, and housing? It’s like compounding genocide with hypocrisy. Right?
Yeah, RIGHT! Native-Americans have gotten a raw deal, and it would be hypocrisy to keep them from getting a piece of the “gaming” action. Heck, it must seem like every blue-haired woman walking into an Indian casino with her purse full of her social security check or her husbands life insurance payoff looks like General Custer ready to blow his own brains out. But that’s not the really point. But there are some points: one for the Indians and Indian gaming in particular, and two for everybody and gambling in general.
One. Do Native-Americans really want to do this? Yes, there’s money in “gaming” and some of it might even end up in those noble causes and projects. But there’s a down side, not the least of which is that Indian’s are a minority, and hence their “association” with an enterprise that has neither restored dignity nor brought respect to any minority associated with it is a reputational sucker’s bet. Ask an Italian-American.
Two. There’s a down side for society in general. “Gaming” in all its forms is little more than the junk bonds of the 90s: another economic shell game. It drains resources mostly from those who can least afford it, addicts or indebts some to the point where families and society suffer and must pick up the pieces, and the jobs it creates are mostly low-wage, dead end, and sometimes socially destructive. That makes the “public spirit” grease that casinos are offering little more than chump change.
Three. And what can “gaming” do for our cities? Well for Vegas and Monaco its an economic base. But for the rest its an economic activity that does not create new wealth; it re-distributes it, according to odds sets by the house. Like a pyramid or a Ponzi it makes some people very well-off and a lot of people worse-off. It adds next to zip to the local economic base. So, in public economic terms, “gaming” is a “zero-sum” game.
So, will the public and the pols and other seekers of the short and easy money get wise before they learn to their regret that Indian “gaming,” like all gambling, is a sucker’s game?
Don’t bet on it.
___________________________________
©1995, ©2004, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 6.26.2004)
Originally published as “ Zero-Sum Gam[bl]ing,” in the San Diego American Planning Association Journal Dec. 1995