Polling Center: Playing the Numbers on Gaming in Texas
Like some kind of biennial flower — or bad penny, depending on your point of view — the discussion of expanding gambling in Texas has popped up at the edges of the legislative session yet again. Among the latest signs of the return of the gaming issue are two recently released polls, one produced by a coalition of pro-gambling interests and the other by Austin-based KXAN-TV, both of which seem to show substantial support for expanded gambling in Texas under certain conditions.
Taking a second look at the available polling data suggests why gambling expansion has fared so poorly in the Legislature ...
Comments (6)
Pickles Sorrell
Oh please don't reference those bogus internet polls you suckered the Tribune into paying for. These have been shown to be highly inaccurate and not real polls or surveys.
Proud Texan
Are you suggesting that the pro-gambling forces would use a "push poll" to cook the numbers in their favor? I can't imagine.
Using gambling money to pay for roads, schools, or anything else is just another lie being told by the same people who told us the Lottery would be used to fund education and that pari-mutual betting would save the horse racing industry.
As Forrest Gump says, "stupid is as stupid does."
Dormand Long
One thing is for sure, casinos and gambling do attract a lot of dollars.
The problem is that far too much of the dollars attracted come from those in the lower levels of the working class who can least afford to allocate scarce dollars to an area with virtually no chance of coming out ahead.
Some studies have disclosed that many in the working class were spending some seven per cent of their take home pay in the purchase of lottery tickets. I suggest that this is about as sound as an investment philosophy as putting one's life savings with Bernie Madoff.
Casinos are an interesting study in human dynamics. This industry has developed to a state of the art how to create the illusion of acceptance to individuals who are considered absolute losers in every other aspect of their lives.
Just bring your Social Security check or your paycheck to the smoke-filled casino and you will be treated like royalty, even given free drinks as long as you feed the machines or put your hard-earned cash out on those gaming tables. In the casino, you are suddenly not a loser, you are a hero. Until your money is gone, then out the door, as they don't want you taking up space. Go back to being a loser, perhaps borrowing money to pay your rent or to buy gas to get to work from one of those car title lenders that have popped up like weeds, or a payday lender.
This is one of the sad repercussions of our grossly inadequate educational establlshment, which has failed to bestow upon its former students any sense of probability. My son advises me that lotteries are a regressive tax on those who do not understand math,
Some of the Asian gambling establishments have found a good solution to this problem. They allow casinos, but require a buy-in of $10,000 to exclude those who are tempted to gamble away the rent money.
I have no problem with allowing gambling. I have massive problems with perpetuation of the underclass by highly organized manipulative schemes to relieve those who can least afford it of their meager funds in return for a brief period in which they are allowed to escape that label that society has burdened them with: LOSER!
If we did a better job of educating our young, we could dramatically reduce the portion of our society who qualify for that nomenclature.
Let's leave the casinos to the other states, recognizing that their parking lots will be filled with light trucks bearing Texas license plates. We need to study the social burden that the Texas Lottery has imposed upon our population to determine if it makes sense to let this leach continue to drain the life blood from those at the bottom of our society.
donald baker
At first blush I tended to favor casinos, but then I learned there is no financial advantage to the state when you consider the added costs to the state from increased crime, increased need for law eforcement and increased bureaucracy to administer it. I don't agree with Long that gambling addicts will be impacted, I see no need to keep foolish people from shooting theirselves in the foot at the expense of other citizens.
Samdavis
It always comes down to what the Southern Baptist Church and TEA Party lunatics (often the same thing) want to force on Texans.
Leonard Isaacs
It's simple..... Let Texans decide. Gaming will pass overwhelmingly and Shreveport, Ruidoso and the Indian casinos north of the Red River will suffer. Those locations contribute nothing toward the building of roads, bridges, schools and the infrastructure of the Lone Star state. Right wing conservatives who want to control the peoples' spending habits and personal decision making are contrary to the real spirit of Texas. Let Texans decide !