TodayGambling with Pennsylvania's future
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Harry Truman liked to tell people there's nothing new in this world except the history you don't already know.
And if there's an idea that wasn't new when this republic was founded, it's the often-voiced notion that society is declining to some lower level of general debasement and that the next stop will surely be the last.
Whether it's Professor Harold Hill admonishing gullible townsfolk to make sure their young male progeny are rebuckling their knickerbockers below the knee or today's self-appointed virtues czars crusading against rap lyrics, there will always be a market for this variety of Chicken Little-ism.
But I'm here to tell you that society tolerates - even celebrates - a certain amount of vice. And that's worth remembering as Pennsylvania moves closer to expanding the availability of gambling.
During Prohibition, the location of the local speakeasy was always the worst-kept secret in any town across the nation. Yes, a lot of anti-social types frequented these illegal barrooms - homes to strippers and wide-open gambling as well as liquor - but so did the politicians and businessmen of the day. A busy night in a speakeasy often was the equivalent a joint session of your town council and chamber of commerce.
Consider the rise of Las Vegas as an entertainment capital. While today's Vegas is run by multinational, publicly traded corporations with reputations to safeguard, there wouldn't be anything for them to profit from today if organized crime hadn't turned Vegas into a wide-open town dedicated to pursuits that would have gotten visitors thrown in jail in their own home towns.
Even at the neighborhood level, there's always "somebody who knows somebody" who can get you an inspection sticker for that old clunker, hang some sort of gimcrack off the back of your TV set that will get you free HBO and pay-per-view boxing matches, or introduce you to a bookie who will pay off bigger on the Daily Number than the state will.
And in all my years of writing and editing police news, I never heard of any of these "somebodies" being turned in by people they've approached. The lure of something for nothing often trumps civic order, not to mention common sense.
That's where gambling comes in. Small-stakes poker games among friends, playing the ponies, or a harmless bet on the home team now and then - I don't have any problem with this, but I never felt anything I ever won gambling was worth the losses I incurred on the road to that lonely win.
A sports reporter I used to work with deduced I didn't have the "gambling gene," whatever that might be. A lot of folks out there, however, do. And not all of them are capable of controlling their impulses in regard to it.
I hear people say slot machines aren't that much different from lottery tickets. Come on. The lottery is about as exciting as checking your savings account balance at the bank.
Slot machines, by contrast, are the crack cocaine of gambling. They're a cheap high, but the thrill doesn't last long. You get results something like 10 times a minute - a roll of quarters every four minutes, assuming you pay 25 cents a play.
While I accept the Bill Bennett principle that playing within your means is an acceptable pastime, I'm also quite aware that a lot of people who didn't think much about slots when they were a three-hour drive away will discover too late the limitations of their willpower when slots are about the same distance away as Hersheypark or the outlet malls.
This, in turn, will put an additional strain on social services. There will need to be more Gambling Anonymous chapters, more credit counseling, additional marriage and family counseling, not to mention direct financial assistance to people who have lost everything including the ability to hold a job.
None of the profits from gambling will be dedicated to these purposes, however. Social service agencies are already strapped under the current budget, and they'll have to absorb a significant number of new cases once the slot parlors open.
Nevertheless, the General Assembly and the governor are about to make the judgment that the social costs of expanded gambling will be less than the benefit to education funding. They're probably right. Professor Hill may have put a brass band together in River City, but the pool hall he railed against never actually closed down.
We don't have pool halls anymore, but we will have slot parlors and, hopefully, better schools because of them. Just be sure you're paying for all this from your wallet, not bartering your personal life for it.
