A little honesty, please
William H. Perkins, Jr.June 12, 2008
Gambling has wrought many changes in Mississippi since it was legalized in 1992, but did you know that it has created employment for everyone in Tunica County and put a pickup in every driveway? That’s what the mayor of Biloxi apparently believes.
According to the May 14 edition of BaldwinCountyNow.com, a web site that covers south Alabama news, Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway addressed the recent Southern Gaming Summit in his fair city and said the following:
“[Legalized gambling] has been a big boom for Mississippi… [Tunica County] was the Sugar Ditch of the United States before casinos came in, and they have a new pickup truck at every house now… The casinos came and everybody in and around Tunica got a job…”
Well. That’s quite a mouthful, even for a reliable gambling apologist like Holloway. The problem is, Holloway’s hyperbolic statements are untrue at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
Rob Chambers, a consultant for the Mississippi Baptist Christian Action Commission in Jackson, was intrigued by Holloway’s pronouncements on the Tunica County economic “boom.”
“I find this perplexing, near mathematically improbable, and even contradictory to the facts,” Chambers said. “How can it be that everyone in Tunica has a new truck and has a job when Tunica unemployment rates have been hovering around 12 percent the last few months?
“I gather that he presupposed that casino gambling creates a positive environment by creating more jobs and state-based assistance that will result in a ‘better’ community. That begs the question, does the evidence show that the infusion of money has indeed made Tunica a better community?”
A modicum of research by Chambers provided the stark answer to his question. “With little variance in population for Tunica County over the last 18 years, the number of violent crimes reported in Tunica County went from four violent crimes in 1980 (12 years before casino gambling) to an average of 83 per year or an increase of 2,075% each year from 2001-2005,” Chambers said.
“In 1980, when unemployment averaged 11.7%, there were six property crimes reported. From 2001-2005, when unemployment averaged eight percent, there was an average of 619 non-violent crimes reported per year for an average annual increase of over 10,000%,” he pointed out.
“Even if it were true that that people in Tunica County have more jobs and money, it does not follow that casino gambling has made Tunica a better community. The statistics… speak for themselves regardless of what pro-gambling politicians say,” Chambers concluded.
Time after time, from the Governor’s Mansion to state legislators to the occupants of city hall, far too many Mississippi politicans have consistently deceived us about the economic wonders of legalized gambling. Holloway is merely the latest in that long line.
While lives are ruined, families shattered, and careers and reputations destroyed daily by the scourge of legalized gambling, we get the same pablum form our politicians. First, we were promised that legalized alcohol would solve all our economic problems, then gambling was to be our salvation. As public schools struggle to meet their budgets and the state Medicaid system faces disastrous cuts in services (to name only two areas among many) it is inarguable that most of the promised miracles have not come to pass, regardless of what the politicians say.
When it comes to the cold, hard realities of gambling in Mississippi, a little honesty is apparently too much to ask of our leaders.
This article is reprinted with permission from The Baptist Record, Vol. 132, No. 24