[PEN-L:739] Re: Re: Re: Indian gambling casinos

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Craven writes:
>You know I just don't know how to answer this; I don't know the
>specifics of the initiative in California.

I didn't want to summarize the initiative because I have only a vague
description in my head, though I'm leaning toward voting "yes." The
initiative is pro-gambling on the reservations, allowing the use of video
poker machines. Las Vegas is spending money against it, fearing
competition. The tribes seem mostly for it.

If someone knows the initiative better than I do, please chime in... well,
here's an editorial from the local marginally left-of-center "alternative"
rag, the L.A. WEEKLY. They're against it.

>5 - No

>This is the Indian gaming initiative, on which $60 million has been spent by
proponents and $30 million by opponents. Basically, it requires the state to
permit certain kinds of casino games and accouterments that the state, through
its existing compacts with certain Native American tribes, currently does not
sanction. The chief point of contention is Vegas-like slot machines, which the
current compacts disallow in favor of a new generation of video machines that
are said to be like slots but not slots themselves.

>Proposition 5 raises three key issues: the economic effect on the tribes, the
economic effect on casino employees and the economic effect on the rest of
working-class California. Clearly, the effect of reservation gambling on the
reservations and their residents has been positive, though it's not at all
clear how
great the negative impact would be if the reservations were constrained to use
these "Class B" slots. The effect on casino employees is something else again:
The existing compact that the state has entered into with tribes, the Pala
compact, includes some remarkably democratic and pro-employee provisions -
notably, that if a majority of casino employees present cards affiliating
themselves with a union, their union achieves immediate recognition as their
bargaining agent (common practice throughout the advanced industrial world,
but unheard of in the management-friendly U.S.). Proposition 5
unceremoniously wads up the Pala compact and throws it away, along with the
rights it accords to casino employees.

>As to the effect on working-class California, the coming of the kind of
large-scale in-state casino industry that Proposition 5 augurs ensures the
creation of a kind of regressive recreation industry that
disproportionately soaks
Californians of modest incomes.

>It's a tough call, pitting the legitimate interests of historically
disadvantaged
communities against one another. By the ever-useful John Stuart Mill standard
of seeking the greatest good (or in this case the least harm) for the greatest
number, however, we come down opposed to Proposition 5.<

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html