The solution is right in front of your face. Legalize gambling and North Carolina can become a filthy rich sheikdom where kids can receive a first class education (well, maybe… the educationists will have to go), citizens can create personal wealth, the jobless will have jobs, tourism will burgeon, taxes can be kept low
to attract new industry, roads can rival the autobahn, the poor can be cared for, parks and green spaces can be subsidized. Paradise is ours for the taking.
But no, the civic agenda is dominated by same-sex marriage, mass transit and mediocrity. Legislators divide up a dwindling pie of tax revenues, spreading less money over too many demands. Raising taxes becomes the inevitable solution. Productivity and entrepreneurial growth are smothered. This great state, with human resources second to none, is sinking under the weight of third-rate elected officials hidebound by slivers of constituencies that weigh down progress and dampen hope for the future.
It was the Legislature that refused to allow the people of the state to vote on whether or not they could buy a mixed drink for decades. It was not until 1979 that the House passed a bill allowing local option elections to permit cocktails to be sold in cities and counties that voted locally for “liquor-by-the drink.” And that nearly didn’t pass. The vote was called on the final third roll-call reading. The solons hit the newly installed electronic voting buttons. You could hear their collective breaths inhaling, each fearful that the folks back home in some under-populated and forsaken county would vote them out for daring to allow the debauchery of mixed drinks.
The electronic system broke down. The Reverend Coy Privette, the Baptist minister who led the crusade to prevent the issue even coming to a vote, stood up in the Visitor’s Gallery, his arms outstretched to heaven: “God has spoken,” he proclaimed. You could feel the drama in the room. Now the issue could only be concluded with an alphabetical roll-call vote, meaning legislators with last names beginning with an L or an R could see which the way the wind was blowing and change their original vote. The reading clerk read the names one by one, the only sound you could hear. Coy Privette bowed his head in intense prayer… he knew if the vote failed it would be 10 years before the issue could come up again.
It passed by one vote. The Representative from Buncombe was absent with his vote that could sway the decision either way. After the bill passed, he strode into the House and apologized to the Speaker, explaining his son was playing in a school ball game he had to attend.
Twenty-six years after the mixed drink vote things are not that different in the State House. Self-important big fish from little county ponds still come up to Raleigh and act important. Lobbyists court them; party whips cajole and persuade. There’s always a need for their petty little vote, whether for a bill or an internal election to committees. Their importance here sure beats the hell out of the boring lifestyle back home. Puffed up with power, they care more about their role in the machinations of the process than what actually is achieved.
Today, the smaller counties don’t have the same sway over events in Raleigh. Up until the late 1970s, more than 50 percent of North Carolinians still lived in “rural areas.” That has changed dramatically, with 15 urban counties controlling 50 percent of the vote in the state today. But the small county mentality dominates the corridors of power in the Legislative Building. The most powerful men in the State House come from small-town, mostly rural districts carrying with them the desires of their predominately unsophisticated constituents.
Baptists and Marxists
I once opined in a TV appearance that Baptists and Marxists have much in common. They both want to control the lives of other people. Obviously, I am using the term Baptist and Marxist loosely here. The point is that extreme fundamentalist religious folks and extreme left-of-center types are committed to imposing their views on others. Not 30 years ago, students at the leading Baptist-founded University in the state were not allowed to dance, play cards or for sure drink alcohol. On the secular side, the left fringe of the Democrat party is zealously committed to societal control, whether the economy (a la the demand economies of the Cold War era), transportation via mass transit with a desire to eliminate the automobile, central bureaucratic systems to control education, increasing state-sponsored welfare and health systems—just about anything that diminishes the rights of the individual and glorifies collective solutions.
These two forces have coalesced into an intractable obstacle to common sense, as Governor Mike Easley has discovered in his efforts to establish a state lottery. Just like the liquor-by-the-drink controversy, he can’t get elected officials to vote to allow the people of the state to vote on whether or not they want a lottery. The Baptist/Marxist axis thinks they know what is better for others. They don’t trust their own neighbors to do the right thing so they condescendingly curtail their freedom to decide for themselves on critical issues—for their own good you know. Our legislators do not serve the people; they prevent the people from being able to say what they really want. While we all know that direct democracy leads to tyranny, is it not tyranny for petty despots from one-horse burgs and sanctimonious do-gooders to get in the way of the will of the people?
Set My People Free
The Governor’s lottery efforts need to be heeded more closely. North Carolina has become the “hole in the doughnut,” as he puts it. Now all the states bordering on ours have lotteries, resulting in a big sucking hole inhaling nearly a billion dollars of Tar Heel cash each year. It is therefore preposterous that the moral martinets in Raleigh have refused to give the citizens the right merely to vote on the issue. This intransigence is the more ridiculous in the midst of state budget deficits, a tough economy exacerbated in the state by the scorched earth attack on tobacco, and the collapse of our once world-famous textile industry. And add to this the general problem faced by all states of trickle down welfare and health costs, the spiraling expense of public education on all levels and a collapsing infrastructure requiring massive road and bridge work and
The irony is that lotteries are the lowest forms of gambling. At least in poker, blackjack, horse racing and sports betting the player can research his subject and make a somewhat informed decision how to place his money. With lotteries it’s pure chance and it does prey on the less educated and poor. But then again, buying a lottery ticket does provide the less fortunate with a shot at the big-time. Reading about $40 million salaries on Wall Street brings out the socialist in all of us. A lottery ticket at least offers promise to those clinging to the lowest rung on the economic ladder that they perhaps can enjoy the American Dream, even if it is a ridiculous long shot. For all we know lotteries have prevented a revolution by the poor who, like all of us, are disgusted with those that give capitalism a bad name with their greed.
Let’s get real
I say let’s do it right and establish casinos, sports betting and, most importantly, horse racing in North Carolina. In the age of the Internet, jet junkets to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and the Bahamas, day trips to adjoining state lotteries and Indian reservation gambling halls, Tar Heels are gambling billions anyway legally and lots more illegally right here at home. Why not make money from this reality and legalize gambling in the state? Think of the revenues and think of the economic accelerator effect from tourism and new jobs.
And what are the negatives? The old canard was that organized crime would infiltrate the state. That’s not necessarily the case anymore. Las Vegas now bills itself as a “family” destination” with plenty to do for the kids. Formerly Mafia-controlled casinos are now operated by public companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Another objection is, “I don’t want to drive through the state and see casinos everywhere.” That’s easily fixed by establishing gaming zones set apart from towns and neighborhoods. The example is already in place: offshore and riverboat casinos abound alongside Primitive Baptists and Church of God snake handlers in Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana and all over the heartland. Perhaps the windowless mega-square-foot abandoned textile mills dotting the state can be converted to casinos. Impoverished eastern North Carolina counties can flourish with riverboat gambling.
Another negative is the issue of creating gambling addicts. That’s a superficial objection at best. Anyone with a “problem” in this state can lose the farm online, down the road a bit and, most commonly, by illegal gambling in private games (often fixed) or through a bookie for sports betting. If addiction is the problem, then why don’t we outlaw alcohol again? Here we have observable harm to society, including death from drunk driving, domestic violence, workplace problems and, most damaging, proven health risks from cirrhosis of the liver, brain cell loss and a myriad of alcohol-related health problems. The state even sells the alcohol to its citizens. And yes, a percentage becomes addicts. But not all drinkers are alcoholics as not all gamblers are addicts. And gambling abuse is usually only harmful to the gambler. Alcohol abuse is a danger to society at large.
Banning legalized gambling just doesn’t add up. The benefits far outweigh the negatives and the revenues are staggering. And it’s fun. Studies show that senior citizens are delighted with legal casinos. For one thing they are secure. Operators make sure of that. For another, seniors can go to one place, enjoy meals, go to shows, shop and, most importantly, be around younger people in an exciting atmosphere. What’s your choice, stay cooped up in a retirement home (no matter how ritzy) and see old people like yourself every minute—with the big event of the week a trip in the van to the mall—or heading for the excitement and activity and interaction at a casino? With Boomers on the verge of senior status, the casino business can be big business for the state.
Another aspect is the re-establishment of horse racing in the state. Southern Pines in the Sandhills was at one time home to a nationally recognized horse breeding, training and racing region. This industry adds class and beauty and a sense of occasion to our otherwise only adequate rituals around here. Football and basketball games are fine, but few can attend and it hardly matches the pageantry of a Kentucky Derby, the thrill of a good race and the availability of the sport of kings in our own backyard.
Set our people free.
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
The recent death of the legendary Willie York did not go unnoticed in the media. The case can be made that no individual made more of an impact on the City of Raleigh than the creative, energetic and sometimes cantankerous builder-developer. He was a force of nature not soon forgotten.
•••
Another great man passed away recently, Noel Yancey, who ended his distinguished stint with the Associated Press in Raleigh in 1978 after 39 years of good old-fashioned reporting. He strode into my office after his retirement at the birth of the weekly Spectator and announced he wanted to write for me, as we shared the same disdain for the daily newspaper. Since Spectator was a magazine, not a newspaper, how to use his skills was solved by creating “As I Recall It,” a column in which the seasoned and wily reporter remembered the important events he covered during his long career. He was an immediate hit with readers. Just as the region began its fast-track growth in the 1980s, he knitted together the past with first-hand accounts that served to enlighten newcomers and old-time residents alike. Noel Yancey kept the past alive, enriching the future and crafting a body of work unprecedented in the state’s history.
•••
Our friends the French, who still think their culture should dominate the world, are launching “CNN a la francaise,” a world-wide satellite station as an alternative to, according to the Wall Street Journal, “the Anglo-Saxon view of the world.” Problems abound, from public and private ownership issues to the stubborn insistence that the broadcasts will be in French, now only spoken by 4 percent of the world’s population, mostly in Africa—hardly a target audience for the purpose of “influencing world events and serving as a force in global diplomacy and counterweight to the US.” The Journal reports that the effort, long on the drawing board, is moving forward to counteract the bad publicity suffered by France’s anti-war stance leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.
•••
Speaking of language, India is attracting outsourced American tech jobs because they speak English, a language spoken by over one-half of the world’s population. Unlike being part of the Old French Empire, former subjects of the British Raj continue to reap dividends.