Video gambling is predatory gambling is gangster gambling is State sanctioned gambling
Saturday night the 21st of November, the Senate on a 60-39 vote (ALL 58 Democrats and the two Independents (Democrats) voted for the procedural motion to discuss the Senates’ version of Nationalized Healthcare. The Senate gutted H.R. 3590 and replaced it with Nationalized Healthcare. This version outdid the House version. It is 2074 pages long. I’ve finally downloaded it from http://www.senate.gov/. After passing the procedural motion, the Senate adjourned for the Thanksgiving holiday. (We can be THANKFUL they adjourned!!!) The Senate is scheduled to resume on Monday, November 30th to debate and possibly amend the bill.
All is not lost. Continue praying! Continue contacting Senators! Continue working to STOP this obscene proposal!
Tonight, back to video gambling:
From http://www.stoppredatorygambling.org/
“What is predatory gambling?
This is not a fight about just any kind of gambling. It’s not about Friday night poker games or buying a square in the Super Bowl office pool. This fight is about predatory gambling—using gambling to prey on human weakness for profit—and the most blatant form of predatory gambling is machine gambling. There are now close to 800,000 slot machines and video poker games in operation in this country—that’s one machine for every 395 Americans—and more are planned in Massachusetts, Maine, Kentucky and Pennsylvania (AND ILLINOIS—45,000 MORE!!!—my addition). And, it’s these machines that generate most of the profits for the casino trade.
Serious questions exist about the design, technology and marketing of these machines including whether these machines are cheating players by relying on complicated algorithms and virtual reel mapping to create an abundance of near miss illusions and distort a player’s perception of the probability of winning.
Our federal government along with many state governments across the country, acting in virtual partnership with the casino trade, have not only allowed these machines to proliferate, but in many instances, promoted it—fundamentally threatening three of the most important founding principles of our American democracy: self-government; public trust; and accountability.
With little transparency and public debate, these predatory machines have become the preferred method for government to raise tax dollars to pay for public services and to transfer jobs to a privileged few. (Gut, cut, and strut as practiced by the General Assembly of Illinois—my addition)
This has been achieved through gross abuses of the Indian Gaming Rights Act, the inaction of the Federal Trade Commission to apply the same scrutiny to slot machines as it does to other consumer products, and state governments that take the money and look the other way—all of which continues to intensely spiral more out-of-control, year after year.”
From http://www.stoppredatorygambling.org/
“Illinois is asking the right questions about video poker
By SPG August 26, 2009 at 10:15 AM EDT
Yesterday, the Illinois Gambling Board publicly shared some of its analysis about efforts to place 45,000 video poker machines in every bar and tavern in the state. One Board member described it as ‘the equivalent of putting up 50 new casinos in the state.’ (Did you read that? 50 NEW CASINOS. The State of Illinois will be the GANGSTER STATE of the nation—until other States try to outdo US!!!
The Board said they intended to move ‘cautiously’ because ‘this board has been one that has cleaned up a lot of messes, and we don’t intend to make any messes.’ The Chicago Tribune describes the entire proposal as a ‘fiasco’ in this must-read editorial.
It is a fiasco that severely undermines the purpose and promise of America for tens of thousands of Illinois citizens because the business model for video poker machines is dependent on addicted or heavily-indebted citizens. Video poker proponents attempt to elude charges of exploitation by pleading it is a ‘voluntary’ act, hiding under the cloak of ‘freedom.’ But by definition, someone who is an addict or someone who is in deep financial debt is not free. (In 2000, the population of Illinois was 12,419, 293 people [almost 12.5 million people]. Using the information from the Illinois Coin Machine Operators Association on its propaganda filled website http://www.icmoa.org/: “about 0.8 percent of Americans were ‘probable compulsive gamblers,’” that translates to 99,354 people who will become compulsive gamblers in Illinois and whose families will also be destroyed with them. Almost 100,000 [one hundred thousand] throwaway families destroyed to benefit a few specially selected businesses and our GANGSTER GOVERNMENT—“equivalent of putting up 50 new casinos in the state according to one member of the Illinois Gaming Board”!!!—my addition)
In a country where everyone is considered equal, where all blood is royal, how can the state regulate a product that renders some of our fellow citizens as expendable? How do you regulate a product with a business model that relies on people losing their savings, pushing them further into debt? How do you regulate a product that is designed to get its users ‘to play to extinction?’
The answer is…you can’t.”
From http://www.stoppredatorygambling.org/
“The Top 10 Best Practices in the Predatory Gambling Trade
By SPG September 22, 2009 at 08:49 AM EDT
Yesterday, a ‘Best Practices in the Gambling Industry’ conference sponsored by the predatory gambling trade was held at Suffolk Downs racetrack in Boston. Here are the trade’s Top 10 ‘Best Practices’:
1) Base your business model on 90% of the gambling profits coming from 10% of the people who use the product, which makes nine out of every ten patrons virtually irrelevant to your revenues. (Our .8% of the people of a State, county, or community!)
2) Design slot machines to ‘approach every player as a potential addict’(Our .8% of the people of a State, county, or community!) by making them operate like ‘loaded dice’, all in the name of getting the user ‘to play to extinction’—until all their money is gone. This recent Washington Post op-ed by a respected MIT professor explains it all.
3) Always make the political argument be about jobs, revenues and ‘inevitability’ instead of the business model, the product and the marketing behind it. Which is why you won’t find even one picture of a slot machine on our website.
4) Create the public impression we are concerned about problem gamblers with a disciplined communications strategy (like ‘best practices’ events such as this one). But in reality, aggressively defeat all efforts to meaningfully address the issue like how we roadblocked a bill in PA requiring casinos to mail monthly loss statements to frequent gamblers and how we funded a $15 million campaign in Missouri to repeal the state’s $500-in-two-hours loss limit law.
5) Intensively fund the public health research like the tobacco companies did to minimize public outcry about our business model, our product and our marketing. Here are two stories, one by Bloomberg News and the other by The Boston Globe, that describe how we do it.
6) Use state-of-the art consumer loyalty technology as a critical marketing tool to closely monitor a person’s wagering and the speed they gamble. The faster a person gambles, the more they lose. (One of the reasons why the gambling parasites promote video gambling—fast, generates guaranteed losses if one keeps gambling, and the “crack cocaine” of gambling—my addition.) When you add in how much they wager each time, we develop a revenue model for each person we call ‘their predicted lifetime value.’ (How can ANY government official support this destructive activity? FOLLOW THE MONEY and the absurd rationalizations!!!—my addition)
How good is our marketing? Companies like Harrah’s can trace more than 75 percent of its gambling revenue back to specific customers and with such state-of-the-art technology, we are vulnerable to the charge that we know who most of the out-of-control gamblers are that make up nearly all of our revenue.
But because our business model relies on 90% of its gambling profits coming from 10% of the people who use the product, we need out-of-control gamblers to survive. The consumer cards are how we identify who has the potential to reach the out-of-control category and then we aggressively market to them using free slot play, free food and lodging, telephone solicitations, direct mail and other marketing techniques to stimulate these people to reach their ‘potential.’
7) Outsource the ownership and management of the ATM machines inside your casino and then buy from the vendor the list of the people who take money out of them. These gamblers are highly valuable because they are the ones most likely to lose control of their spending—they lost the money they arrived with at the casino and then needed to withdraw more of their savings to chase the money they lost earlier. If they did it once, they are likely to do it again. And again. And again.
8) Give as much money upfront to government as you can because our business model only works if our government denies the core democratic principle of equal citizenship to other Americans and traps people in debt. We already know 90% of our profits comes from 10% of the people we target—addicted and heavily indebted people. By definition, someone who is an addict or someone who is in deep financial debt is not free. (FOLLOW THE MONEY!!! By the way, these parasites also have to generate NEW victims once the old victims are thrown into jail for crimes committed, go bankrupt, and/or commit suicide!!! Inevitably, there will be a continuing cycle of 100,000± addicts who are destroyed by these GANGSTERS—my addition)
In a country where everyone is considered equal, where all blood is royal, the state is actively promoting a product that renders some of our fellow citizens as expendable. There is no good answer for this truth so simply go back on message with the jobs, revenues and ‘inevitability’ argument.
9) Whatever you do, don’t actually use the product yourself. It’s a fact that most of us who own and promote casinos don’t use the product, like casino exec Steve Wynn, Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman or Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill, to name a few.
10) Casino capitalism is very, very lucrative—for a handful of people like us. (AND a guaranteed LOSS to most people who are using the machines. There can only be winners, losers, and those who break even. The GOVERNMENT and the owners CAN NOT make money unless there are many more LOSERS [total income wise] than winners!!! Simple economics!!! And our GANGSTER GOVERNMENT is promoting this organized THEFT of income!!! Is your State representative, county board member, mayor, city councilman, village trustee a coconspirator with our GANGSTER GOVERNMENT?—my addition)
These ‘best practices’ belong at the center of every discussion about predatory gambling in the weeks and months ahead all across America.”
Saturday night the 21st of November, the Senate on a 60-39 vote (ALL 58 Democrats and the two Independents (Democrats) voted for the procedural motion to discuss the Senates’ version of Nationalized Healthcare. The Senate gutted H.R. 3590 and replaced it with Nationalized Healthcare. This version outdid the House version. It is 2074 pages long. I’ve finally downloaded it from http://www.senate.gov/. After passing the procedural motion, the Senate adjourned for the Thanksgiving holiday. (We can be THANKFUL they adjourned!!!) The Senate is scheduled to resume on Monday, November 30th to debate and possibly amend the bill.
All is not lost. Continue praying! Continue contacting Senators! Continue working to STOP this obscene proposal!
Tonight, back to video gambling:
From http://www.stoppredatorygambling.org/
“What is predatory gambling?
This is not a fight about just any kind of gambling. It’s not about Friday night poker games or buying a square in the Super Bowl office pool. This fight is about predatory gambling—using gambling to prey on human weakness for profit—and the most blatant form of predatory gambling is machine gambling. There are now close to 800,000 slot machines and video poker games in operation in this country—that’s one machine for every 395 Americans—and more are planned in Massachusetts, Maine, Kentucky and Pennsylvania (AND ILLINOIS—45,000 MORE!!!—my addition). And, it’s these machines that generate most of the profits for the casino trade.
Serious questions exist about the design, technology and marketing of these machines including whether these machines are cheating players by relying on complicated algorithms and virtual reel mapping to create an abundance of near miss illusions and distort a player’s perception of the probability of winning.
Our federal government along with many state governments across the country, acting in virtual partnership with the casino trade, have not only allowed these machines to proliferate, but in many instances, promoted it—fundamentally threatening three of the most important founding principles of our American democracy: self-government; public trust; and accountability.
With little transparency and public debate, these predatory machines have become the preferred method for government to raise tax dollars to pay for public services and to transfer jobs to a privileged few. (Gut, cut, and strut as practiced by the General Assembly of Illinois—my addition)
This has been achieved through gross abuses of the Indian Gaming Rights Act, the inaction of the Federal Trade Commission to apply the same scrutiny to slot machines as it does to other consumer products, and state governments that take the money and look the other way—all of which continues to intensely spiral more out-of-control, year after year.”
From http://www.stoppredatorygambling.org/
“Illinois is asking the right questions about video poker
By SPG August 26, 2009 at 10:15 AM EDT
Yesterday, the Illinois Gambling Board publicly shared some of its analysis about efforts to place 45,000 video poker machines in every bar and tavern in the state. One Board member described it as ‘the equivalent of putting up 50 new casinos in the state.’ (Did you read that? 50 NEW CASINOS. The State of Illinois will be the GANGSTER STATE of the nation—until other States try to outdo US!!!
The Board said they intended to move ‘cautiously’ because ‘this board has been one that has cleaned up a lot of messes, and we don’t intend to make any messes.’ The Chicago Tribune describes the entire proposal as a ‘fiasco’ in this must-read editorial.
It is a fiasco that severely undermines the purpose and promise of America for tens of thousands of Illinois citizens because the business model for video poker machines is dependent on addicted or heavily-indebted citizens. Video poker proponents attempt to elude charges of exploitation by pleading it is a ‘voluntary’ act, hiding under the cloak of ‘freedom.’ But by definition, someone who is an addict or someone who is in deep financial debt is not free. (In 2000, the population of Illinois was 12,419, 293 people [almost 12.5 million people]. Using the information from the Illinois Coin Machine Operators Association on its propaganda filled website http://www.icmoa.org/: “about 0.8 percent of Americans were ‘probable compulsive gamblers,’” that translates to 99,354 people who will become compulsive gamblers in Illinois and whose families will also be destroyed with them. Almost 100,000 [one hundred thousand] throwaway families destroyed to benefit a few specially selected businesses and our GANGSTER GOVERNMENT—“equivalent of putting up 50 new casinos in the state according to one member of the Illinois Gaming Board”!!!—my addition)
In a country where everyone is considered equal, where all blood is royal, how can the state regulate a product that renders some of our fellow citizens as expendable? How do you regulate a product with a business model that relies on people losing their savings, pushing them further into debt? How do you regulate a product that is designed to get its users ‘to play to extinction?’
The answer is…you can’t.”
From http://www.stoppredatorygambling.org/
“The Top 10 Best Practices in the Predatory Gambling Trade
By SPG September 22, 2009 at 08:49 AM EDT
Yesterday, a ‘Best Practices in the Gambling Industry’ conference sponsored by the predatory gambling trade was held at Suffolk Downs racetrack in Boston. Here are the trade’s Top 10 ‘Best Practices’:
1) Base your business model on 90% of the gambling profits coming from 10% of the people who use the product, which makes nine out of every ten patrons virtually irrelevant to your revenues. (Our .8% of the people of a State, county, or community!)
2) Design slot machines to ‘approach every player as a potential addict’(Our .8% of the people of a State, county, or community!) by making them operate like ‘loaded dice’, all in the name of getting the user ‘to play to extinction’—until all their money is gone. This recent Washington Post op-ed by a respected MIT professor explains it all.
3) Always make the political argument be about jobs, revenues and ‘inevitability’ instead of the business model, the product and the marketing behind it. Which is why you won’t find even one picture of a slot machine on our website.
4) Create the public impression we are concerned about problem gamblers with a disciplined communications strategy (like ‘best practices’ events such as this one). But in reality, aggressively defeat all efforts to meaningfully address the issue like how we roadblocked a bill in PA requiring casinos to mail monthly loss statements to frequent gamblers and how we funded a $15 million campaign in Missouri to repeal the state’s $500-in-two-hours loss limit law.
5) Intensively fund the public health research like the tobacco companies did to minimize public outcry about our business model, our product and our marketing. Here are two stories, one by Bloomberg News and the other by The Boston Globe, that describe how we do it.
6) Use state-of-the art consumer loyalty technology as a critical marketing tool to closely monitor a person’s wagering and the speed they gamble. The faster a person gambles, the more they lose. (One of the reasons why the gambling parasites promote video gambling—fast, generates guaranteed losses if one keeps gambling, and the “crack cocaine” of gambling—my addition.) When you add in how much they wager each time, we develop a revenue model for each person we call ‘their predicted lifetime value.’ (How can ANY government official support this destructive activity? FOLLOW THE MONEY and the absurd rationalizations!!!—my addition)
How good is our marketing? Companies like Harrah’s can trace more than 75 percent of its gambling revenue back to specific customers and with such state-of-the-art technology, we are vulnerable to the charge that we know who most of the out-of-control gamblers are that make up nearly all of our revenue.
But because our business model relies on 90% of its gambling profits coming from 10% of the people who use the product, we need out-of-control gamblers to survive. The consumer cards are how we identify who has the potential to reach the out-of-control category and then we aggressively market to them using free slot play, free food and lodging, telephone solicitations, direct mail and other marketing techniques to stimulate these people to reach their ‘potential.’
7) Outsource the ownership and management of the ATM machines inside your casino and then buy from the vendor the list of the people who take money out of them. These gamblers are highly valuable because they are the ones most likely to lose control of their spending—they lost the money they arrived with at the casino and then needed to withdraw more of their savings to chase the money they lost earlier. If they did it once, they are likely to do it again. And again. And again.
8) Give as much money upfront to government as you can because our business model only works if our government denies the core democratic principle of equal citizenship to other Americans and traps people in debt. We already know 90% of our profits comes from 10% of the people we target—addicted and heavily indebted people. By definition, someone who is an addict or someone who is in deep financial debt is not free. (FOLLOW THE MONEY!!! By the way, these parasites also have to generate NEW victims once the old victims are thrown into jail for crimes committed, go bankrupt, and/or commit suicide!!! Inevitably, there will be a continuing cycle of 100,000± addicts who are destroyed by these GANGSTERS—my addition)
In a country where everyone is considered equal, where all blood is royal, the state is actively promoting a product that renders some of our fellow citizens as expendable. There is no good answer for this truth so simply go back on message with the jobs, revenues and ‘inevitability’ argument.
9) Whatever you do, don’t actually use the product yourself. It’s a fact that most of us who own and promote casinos don’t use the product, like casino exec Steve Wynn, Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman or Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill, to name a few.
10) Casino capitalism is very, very lucrative—for a handful of people like us. (AND a guaranteed LOSS to most people who are using the machines. There can only be winners, losers, and those who break even. The GOVERNMENT and the owners CAN NOT make money unless there are many more LOSERS [total income wise] than winners!!! Simple economics!!! And our GANGSTER GOVERNMENT is promoting this organized THEFT of income!!! Is your State representative, county board member, mayor, city councilman, village trustee a coconspirator with our GANGSTER GOVERNMENT?—my addition)
These ‘best practices’ belong at the center of every discussion about predatory gambling in the weeks and months ahead all across America.”
posted by Christian Gunslinger at 4:18 AM
1 Comments:
Two problems with the statistical analysis that you are presenting in your blog. One is that your number of gambling addicts is based off the entire population not the adult population, children are not allowed to legally gamble. Second you are assuming that video gambling would move Illinois from a state of no gambling addicts to the full amount. Seeing as Illinois already has legalized gaming in the form of casinos, race tracking betting, the lottery, and of course illegal gaming, both in person and online, it is extremely unlike that Illinois is at the zero state.
Post a Comment
<< Home