Stupor Tuesday

I guess a bunch of people vote tomorrow, including me. But since I registered as Decline To State, I can't vote for a presidential candidate unless I request a ballot from either the Democratic or the American Independent party. I really don't care to choose between Clinton and Obama -- I'll happily leave that to the more interested and qualified folks. Obviously I also can't be bothered with the American Independents (I think that's who also threw open their primary, don't really remember). If memory serves (love that phrase, learned it from Mr. Spock), they consider themselves to be strict constitutionalists, but they are not, holding instead a number of predictable right-wing positions. They mainly exist so a bunch of small-government malcontents can band together and have tax-deductible dinner meetings and feel they are doing something rather than sitting on their behinds complaining and you know what? Nothing wrong with that. It's like these idiots in my home town. I disagree with the Boy Scouts' and the Marines' gay exclusion policies but also disagree that the Berkeley City Council should strip public access away from them for it. However, I have to hand respect to the people of that city for getting down to the public meetings and doing something, whether I agree with it or not, rather than just sitting around complaining.

(That my position on the BSA etc. amounts to enabling bad policy is a good subject for another post. Not this one.)

(No cites for the Berkeley thing but basically, the city has driven Boy Scouts out of schools and the Sea Scouts away from the Marina, and is now trying to drive away a USMC recruiting post.)

So, this election. The really big issue in our great state has to do with adjusting a few Indian gaming arrangements. All I know about it comes from the TV commercials.

Vote YES because it will generate more gambling tax revenue for a state that is suffering a horrible budget shortfall, and the opposition is in cahoots with the casinos in Nevada.

Vote NO because it will benefit four tribes but none of the others, and the money won't go to education, and it's all a big scam anyway.

Well, I don't know. The one thing no one talks about is where this alleged windfall will come from.

It's a fact that California's Indians got screwed by history, not just via the initial slaughter of gun and disease but also by subsequent isolation and enforced impoverishment. They are to be commended for coming up with a means to attract revenue into the reservations. This helped spread some of the good fortune enjoyed by the tribe or two whose lands happen to sit above productive oilfields. I oppose gambling but I also oppose undue restrictions on what people can do, and if people can make a living running a casino, fine, let 'em.

Trouble is, a liberal attitude like this can lead to problems in the wider society. That's why we end up with laws against gambling or drug use or street-walking or smoking in restaurants. If an action harms others, even indirectly, it is appropriate to consider outlawing it. So California doesn't allow Nevada-style gaming. But the state doesn't have jurisdiction over the Indian reservations (until now, I guess, with this attempt to tax them somehow), and so here we are.

Here we are watching a crowd of proud and calm-visaged Native Americans assembled by a marketing team to maximize this powerful image and encourage a vote for a structural change that will allow the "in" tribes more slot machines and thus allow them to help not only themselves but our very cash-strapped state as well. Good message, but.

Casinos create no wealth whatsoever. They do an awesome job of redistributing it. They redistribute it FROM retired persons and gambling addicts and TO the gaming professionals and consultants who have either come from Atlantic City or defected from Nevada, and to the tribes that hired them, and to the local services that ride their coattails, and to the local governments that tax them in turn ... but it comes FROM retired persons, gambling addicts and (according to my unscientific surveys) Asian immigrants, who can ill afford it too but there are matters of culture to consider, I suppose.

This is really the crux of the matter to me. The money they are all talking about does not come from some industry that develops products of value to Mankind and sells them at a profit to the world, thus building California's economy (e.g. semiconductors, oil products, rice, almonds, movies, computer games etc.). It all comes from Californians who, to one degree or another, have a problem that the proximity of a casino is only making worse. And no one who thinks it's a good idea to fund police and firemen on the pocketbooks of even more families left on the edge of ruin by a gambling-addicted mother or father is going to get any support from me. So I will vote NO on those propositions, even if by doing so I'm not addressing the real problem. (Unless of course I change my mind before morning.)

UPDATE: Read about 'em here and am even more convinced they're a bad idea. All they do is allow more slot machines and give the casino operators a pass on environmental impact. The only difference between these sweetheart deals and the deals that handed so much of the state over to oil, water, gasoline, tire and large-scale farming interests in the past century is that those bad guys were white men in dark suits, whereas these are fronted by a few well-chosen representatives of everyone's favorite noble-visaged victims of same.