The Risk of Gambling

The streets are abuzz with the question of gambling.

 The streets are abuzz with the question of gambling.  Time Magazine wrote a piece on the gambling habits of McCain and Obama back in July, (McCain spends thousands of dollars in a night playing craps while Obama plays $1 buy-in poker with friends), but the debate didn’t really get cranking until more recently.

On September 27^th, the NYTimes ran a piece on McCain’s gambling habits and his ties to the casino industry. (Definitely worth reading if you haven’t already). In the weeks that followed, we have seen a cacophony of voices raised about McCain’s personal relationship with gambling and his professional relationship with the casino industry. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had an article. So did Connecticut’s newspaper, The Day, along with numerous others.

Perhaps more interesting still is the fact that despite Abramoff’s departure and the negative attention showered upon casino lobbyists, the gambling industry appears to be everywhere this election season.

On September 25^th, FD’s Eric Sapp wrote about Freedom’s Watch, the 527 group funded by Casino Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, and the damage they are trying to inflict on Democratic candidates across the country.

We’re also seeing Christians in Florida raising their voices, here and here, to protest Republican candidate Tom Rooney’s connections to gambling. Did you know, for example, that Rooney used the Palm Beach Kennel Club as his primary address when registering to vote? (It’s the family biz.)

So what are we to think about all this? The way I see it, there are two key issues at stake here.

1) Gambling

2) Special interest lobbying

Gambling

Ah, gambling. Guaranteed money for those who own the games and racetracks, but a wolf in sheep’s clothing for those who actually play and bet. Its one of the most effective ways ever discovered to make poor people even poorer. The trick works like this: They offer hope to the poor by promising them that they’ll be big winners, while simultaneously concealing the fact that it is virtually inevitable that those who play will lose, transferring what little money the poor had into the hands of the already rich.

Many Christians object to gambling as a personal vice, but as a person who believes in the freedom Christ gives us to choose virtue over vice, I try to avoid legislating morality. The issue, as I see it, is not about moral policing, but about how we treat an industry that is based not on providing goods or services, but on transferring wealth from the poor to the already-rich. We have outlawed pyramid schemes to protect innocent people from fraudulent promises of easy wealth, so why not outlaw the gambling scheme which makes the same fraudulent promises?

The issue is more complicated when it comes to casinos owned by Indian reservations because in such cases, historically oppressed (and presently impoverished) tribes receive revenues from the casino. Of course we want to help these tribes (the least of these), but it doesn’t make sense to free one group of people from the poverty trap by enslaving another group of people. Don’t Native Americans deserve a more dignified path out of poverty, one that does not force them to impoverish others?

Special Interest Lobbying

Not all special interests are bad. The American Cancer Society is a special interest. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a special interest. Disabled American Veterans is a special interest. I am not opposed to these organizations talking to my Representative and reminding them of the impact that legislation will have the sick, the grieving, and the forgotten. We should not buy into the McCain rhetoric that all special interests are bad.

But some special interests are less beneficial, less concerned with the common good, less concerned about the least of these than they are about protecting their worldly riches. Some special interests are downright dangerous. The difficult part about being a responsible citizen is that you must engage in the complicated task of separating the sheep from the goats. Luckily for us, we were given some instruction in how such decisions are made.

As we evaluate the candidates set before us, not just Presidential candidates but all those on the ballots, it is indeed worth finding out which special interests they are tied to. Will we support a candidate who has a “special interest” in promoting addiction, greed, and recklessness? Or a candidate who has a “special interest” in caring for the hungry, the sick, and the imprisoned?