Sunday, May 09, 2004
 
Bare and....What's the Other One?

On the front page of its NewsWatch section, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers pro and con, emphasis on the con, of whether another casino would be good for the St. Louis area:
  • (No) Opponents of new casino tell tales of addiction's toll
      Looking back, Connie realizes she should have seen the problem. Her family members always wanted her to take a separate car to the casinos - they knew she would want to leave long before they did.

      She should have known the $50 here, $100 there that they borrowed was not a coincidence. She had lost a few bucks playing bingo before, she knew grocery bills were hard to cover sometimes. No big deal. They always paid her back.

      Had she been asked three years ago to vote on a new casino in Lemay, where she lives, "heck, yes, I was all for it," said Connie.

      The loan requests grew larger and more frequent.

      "They ran themselves low on one person, and they couldn't go to them anymore, so they would start on other people, and pretty soon, I realized they were all hitting on me," Connie said of her family members.

      None of these relatives had gambling problems before casinos came to the St. Louis area. They had never visited Las Vegas. There was a history of alcoholism in the family, and Connie smoked through three pregnancies before she finally quit.

      "I know about addiction," she says.


    So we start with an anecdotal lead that, I guess, will support the argument that government should pad the harsh walls of reality to make it safe for the least responsible or intelligent members of society, because if they can, stupid people will do stupid things.

  • (Yes) Supporters for new casino see cash for education
      Last week, Hancock High School Principal Jason Naucke bluntly told his students that if they even considering drinking, don't bother showing up for the prom. Fifth graders got a one-hour lesson from a police officer about the consequences of joining a gang, the 15th week of a 17-week course urging them to reject drugs and violence.

      Just another week in the "values" curriculum at Hancock Place School District, while the district's superintendent was pushing for a casino to come to the neighborhood.

      A casino means money, and Superintendent Ed Stewart hasn't seen enough of that.

    A new "casino" would mean "tax revenue" that "scare-quoted" "educators" could [Please punch up with use of term so-called. --Ed.] use in promoting "values" in their so-called curricula, and the unintelligent educators "educators" don't capture the "irony" of raising money from gambling while promoting other "values" (which are obviously "scare-quoted" because anything valued by someone other than the journalist is "suspect"). Thus begins the story favoring the casino.
Criminey, I pay money to have this delivered. At least I am getting some use out of it now that hockey season's over.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:26 PM
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To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."