My Personal Political Dilemma

I face a personal political dilemma. I belong to the Democratic Party (as opposed to being a Democrat. I am a human that happens to believe in traditional Democratic principles, but I am NOT "a Democrat") and have nearly always voted for those candidates.

But in this year’s gubernatorial race the Democratic candidate, Steve Beshear, is not merely pro casino gambling, but is making that the central plank of his platform. Now casino/electronic gambling is the pre-eminent issue that will adversely affect not only the future of Kentucky, but also that of the whole nation. Therefore, although Mr. Beshear is an otherwise solid candidate, his promotion of casino gambling disqualifies him and I would not support him or any candidate who supported this losing enterprise.

The Republican candidate, Governor Ernie Fletcher, has now changed his stance on casinos from one of allowing a referendum to being adamantly opposed to them. He has thus made casino gambling the key issue in the race and has positioned himself as the savior to prevent its ugly tentacles from strangling Kentucky’s future.

I predicted this move by Mr. Fletcher. It is shrewd, but it is politically expedient. I would not trust that he would spend all his political capital opposing casinos if re-elected…but he might, I just don’t know. It would have been much, much more convincing had he been so opposed from day one.

That said, my realization of just how very, extremely critical it is for us to keep casinos out of Kentucky is such that I am so-o-o-o tempted to support Mr. Fletcher. For even though his past work in Congress helped degrade our democracy, his ultra-partisan attacks on Clinton and his proposals, and his near 100% support for President Bush and his anti-democracy, pro special interest agenda, his support of the Iraqi war, and his reneging of his promise to clean up the mess in Frankfort by instead making it worse--despite all that the issue now is Kentucky’s future. Should I not support at least the one candidate who now promises to oppose casinos?

But no, I just can’t and won’t support a past facilitator of the corrosion that has so infiltrated Washington, now up to the Supreme Court.

So I won’t support Beshear, nor will I Fletcher. Can I just sit on my hands and not vote this election? I, a proponent of exercising our hard fought democratic rights, chief among them the power of the polling place, can I go through a major election without placing a vote?

No. And the only other person I know who I trust to do the right thing, to surround themselves with good, honest people who with him will focus solely on what is best for the COMMON wealth of Kentucky and its future is…oh gosh, this is going to sound…I don’t know the word, it’s not quite egotistical, but close, it’s not quite delusional, but close…oh drat, forget what it sounds like---the only person I know who believes in the approach and the policies that I believe in is me.

But I am not a candidate. I belong to the party that has a candidate and I did not run, nor did I think I needed to with the field that did run. But then Beshear, late in the primary season, unleashed his pro casino agenda that thoroughly dis-heartened me.

Do I let the fact that I have no chance, that I have no track record, that it would dilute whatever credibility I might have and make me look ridiculous stop me from doing the really unthinkable: change my political affiliation to Independent and enter as a write in candidate, just so I can use my vote on the person I most trust?

The Answer for Workplace Fairness? It’s Unions, Jack!

Workers and employers of America…UNITE! For that is the most humane and effective way to increase the welfare of all. Unfortunately, the history of labor relations is such that workers too often suffer when employers have surplus power and deficient humanity.

Indeed it was that imbalance that originally led workers to unionize, a process that has lifted workplace standards for everybody. We take for granted such protections as the 40 hour workweek, paid vacations, safe workplaces, minimum wages, health care and pensions that all flow from workers uniting in a common cause.

Today, so well entrenched are those protections that many believe the unions have outlived their usefulness. Popular perception blames unions for gouging employers, forcing them to close or re-locate, or driving up prices and making them uncompetitive.

Yet nothing is further from the truth. In fact Washington is so caught in the corporate clutch that many workers are suffering anew under unscrupulous employers. And when they try to exercise their Constitutional right to organize employers are illegally harassing, threatening and firing them, escaping punishment under toothless pro-business laws and a Republican controlled regulatory apparatus where the wolves guard the henhouse.

But this could soon change when Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act, a long overdue law that would restore balance to the relationships between employer and employee. Specifically it would let the employees determine how to vote for a new union, not the employers. Currently employers choose a process that allows them plenty of time to intimidate, threaten, fire and hold mandatory anti-union meetings.

The Act would also strengthen financial penalties for companies guilty of coercion or intimidation and require mediation and arbitration when management and a newly certified union cannot agree on a contract.

More than half of Americans workers, 60 million, say they would join a union if they could and for good reason. On average union workers earn 30 per cent more and are more than 62 per cent more likely to have health coverage than their non union counterparts, such as those in the ‘right to work for less’ states. By the way, nothing is more anti-American than so called right to work state laws that allow new employees to refuse union membership in a business where a democratic vote established that union.

Teresa Joyce was a union organizer who suffered under hostile management at ATT wireless but enjoyed a complete turnaround when Cingular took over (Cingular respected the workers union vote and freely engages in a collaborative process that benefits everyone).

In her Congressional testimony supporting the new law Mrs. Joyce noted that ‘It is outrageous and shameful that the very freedoms they (her relatives in WWII and Iraq) fight to preserve are the very freedoms that are routinely trampled on here at home. Something is terribly wrong with our laws and our country when workers are systematically harassed, threatened and even fired for the simple act of exercising their right to form a union to improve their lives.”

With the middle class rapidly shrinking, the gap between rich and poor at historic highs and a political system too long in doing the bidding for big business, it is essential to protect basic workplace freedoms for all Americans. Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act and, above all, Kentucky must reject ‘right to work (for less)’ legislation.

Richard F. Dawahare

Blinders

Horse-drawn carriages make a walk through New York's Central Park even more memorable. The sturdy steeds dutifully plod where the drivers direct, aided in their task by distraction-blocking blinders.

Horse blinders are good. The horse goes where the driver wants it to go, and at the end of the trail it gets a bowl of water and bucket of oats. It occurred to me that human blinders act much the same way.Sometimes we put the blinders on ourselves, preferring blissful ignorance to inconvenient truths. But often, those who seek to control us do so by means of our unwitting submission to blinders.

The media, for example, do the bidding of their political benefactors by deftly using fear and hot-button emotional issues to blind us to higher truths. Indeed, truth is the enemy for those who revel in the thralls of righteousness, who believe in self-justification and demonization of enemies above all else. Hard-held traditions and fears trump science and rationality with blinders so securely in place.

Perhaps such control is good. We go placidly along, enjoying summer softball, rounds of golf and cookouts by the pool, merrily oblivious to political leaders acting against our long-term interests, against the very founding principles of our nation.

But how many bribes will we allow the politicians to take, how much public interest will we let them sift off to their special pals, how many innocents over there will we kill to vainly ensure a false sense of security over here before we yank the blinders off?

Fish, like a horse with blinders, can see only their little world directly in front of them. They are oblivious to the magnificent universe beyond the ocean. Yet the job of the fish is to be fish. As humans we are called to more. We are called to use reason, to seek truth and to follow it wherever it goes.

It is time to take the blinders off. It is time to see from sea to shining sea -- and especially beyond.

Frank Fahrenkopf Misleads Public on Casino Gambling

Preface: While surfing the net for gambling news Thursday, May 31 I found on the American Gaming Association's site, Frank Fahrenkopf's Letter to the Lexington Herald-Leader attacking my own essay that detailed the long term dangers and false claims of casino gambling. Please check it out:
http://www.americangaming.org/Press/letters/letters_detail.cfv?ID=436

AND NOTE THE DATE---June 4, 2007. BUT IT RAN TODAY, June 11! So I saw it FOUR days before they said it ran in the Lexington Herald-Leader, yet even that date was wrong. This is just indicative of the error and falsehood surrounding that industry and its promoters.
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I appreciate that Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr., President/CEO of the American Gaming Association, would want to attack my exposure of casino gambling as a long-term loser for Kentucky. As a million dollar lobbyist for casino gambling, it is his job to discredit those who would oppose it.

Yet he actually helped make my case. First, he admitted that the states I cited did in fact have economic problems. My point was merely that casino gambling did nothing to help those states’ economies, a fact that directly contradicts the false claims of casino’s proponents who are so quick to grasp the fool’s gold of slots salvation.

He then confirms the validity of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission as he selectively cites some data that is taken out of context in order to spin his desired result. What he fails to mention is the Commission’s bottom line conclusion, which after taking all the evidence into account recommended that:

1) There should be a moratorium on any expansion of casino gambling (“The Commissioners believe it is time to consider a pause in the expansion of gambling.” Overview page 1-7.);

2) Horse tracks should not have slot machines (“The states should refuse to allow the introduction of casino-style gambling into pari-mutuel facilities…” Recommendation 3.12, page 3-18);

3) States “should cease and roll back existing (convenience gambling) operations.” Recommendation 3.6, page 3-18.

Since Mr. Fahrenkopf was so methodical at picking apart my essay, his omission of any reference to my other citations may mean he actually agreed with them. Thus, the warnings of both Warren Buffet and President George Washington stand as a most credible criticism of casino gambling as a damager of the economy and citizens’ welfare.

Finally, he disparaged the academic standards of the University of Illinois and academia as a whole. If such research is as fraudulent as Mr. Fahrenkopf suggests, yank your children out of college, and if you’re a college grad, ask for your money back, for in his view the entire field of collegiate research and education is meaningless.

For the sake of brevity I did not mention other academicians whose work similarly exposes the harm of casino/electronic gambling. I will do so now:

1) Dr. Earl Grinols, who testified under oath in Congress to the soaring social costs of casino gambling as compared with its benefits, then concluded “If the choice is between prohibiting casino gambling or allowing its expansion, the evidence says we’re better off prohibiting it….The most important finding of my research is that gambling fails a simple cost-benefit test…costs outweigh benefits.” Other studies show those costs exceed benefits by a 4 to 1 ratio.
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2) Dr. David Mustard, who with Dr. Grinols authored the seminal research paper on casinos’ effect on crime that concluded: “Casinos increased all crimes except murder…the impact of casinos on crime increased over time and began about three years after casino introduction.”

3) Professor William Thompson, from Mr. Fahrenkopf’s home state of Nevada, co-authored a report that found “…the annual social cost of problem gambling in Southern Nevada ranging from $273 to $413 per adult per year suggests an important problem.”

4) Professors John Barron, Michael Staten and Stephanie Wilshusen co-authored “The Impact of Casino Gambling on Personal Bankruptcy Filing Rates” and found that “…the volume of casino gambling is directly related to bankruptcy filing rate in areas that have casinos nearby.”


Please be aware that the research Mr. Fahrenkopf uses to refute the findings that casinos drain money away from pre-existing, traditional business was done by none other than Arthur Andersen, the former Big Five accounting firm done in by its fraudulent accounting and auditing practices that contributed to the WorldCom and Enron bankruptcies.

Why on earth would we listen to a lobbyist from Washington about what’s best for Kentucky, especially when he doesn’t even want it in his own town? In an interview last fall he said, “Now if someone were to come along and tell me that they were going to put a casino in McLean, Virginia, where I live, I would probably work very, very hard against it. I just don’t -- what’s the old saying, ‘NIMBY, not in my back yard?’ Now I may be in favor of gaming, but I just don’t want it located in a particular area."

I realize that slots are recreational for many people and I believe it is in no way an immoral activity per se. Grandmothers gamble for goodness sake! But it is really a matter of POLICY and as such, casino style gambling is a proven economic and social loser for the community at large.

Kentucky cannot afford to fall for the false lure of casino gambling. We, the people, have the power to run our state in the right way, for our long-term welfare. As a famous philosopher once said, “Wisdom is proved right by her actions.”

Richard F. Dawahare 6/11/07