Letters: Fix Harrisburg; Stop the Nittany Mall Casino

Do you think politicians should have their jobs for life? Probably not.

Nationwide, 15 states—both red and blue—have enacted term limits. The rationale: electing legislators strictly focused on serving the interests of their constituents during their limited time in office. Why not have term limits in Pennsylvania?

But that would require Pennsylvania politicians to vote themselves out of a job! Thanks to Pennsylvania’s “Rules of Procedure,” they don’t have to.

A bipartisan bill to bring term limits to Pennsylvania has been introduced in the past two legislative sessions (HB902 in 2019-2020 and HB735 in 2021-2022), but after being assigned to the House State Government Committee, the bill languished without ever getting a hearing or a vote.

Legislators have proposed numerous bills to solve problems, but, because of the “rules,” the committee chairs, elected by a tiny fraction of Pennsylvania voters, can block bills—even those with strong bipartisan support.

The “rules” are not law or in the state constitution.

On the first day of each session, a vote on the rules is pushed through – quickly. Rank and file legislators are given little time to read what’s proposed and are pressured to vote them into place. Even worse, they vote against amending the “rules” even before the “rules” are adopted.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Let your state senators and representatives know you want new rules that will allow bills with bipartisan support to be voted on.

For more information, go to www.fixharrisburg.com.

Bill van den Berg,
Howard

Casinos Are Playing with a Stacked Deck

The gambling industry and Pennsylvania’s state government work together in a predatory partnership. Casino operators pay the government a substantial licensing fee and an ongoing cut of their profits to be allowed to operate their casinos. In exchange, the state government grants each casino operator a regional monopoly on casino gambling.  Consumers have no choice regarding which casino they can visit near their home, and casino operators do not have to compete with each other to increase paybacks or improve customer service. The decisions about which casinos are allowed to operate are determined by the unelected commissioners of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, on which each commissioner is either a gubernatorial or a legislative appointee.

Moreover, the disparity in information and resources between casino operators and any individual casino patron gives the casinos all of the advantages. Casino games have always been purpose-built to cultivate addiction and to give the house a statistical advantage of winning, but the modern gambling industry now also harnesses the power of big data analytics to optimize the exploitation of its customers. While it is illegal for casino patrons to use technology to aid their gameplay in the casino, casino operators now identify and track each customer on camera for nearly the entire duration of their visit. 

Casino operators also track how long each customer spends playing each game and how much they win or lose to better understand each customer’s susceptibilities. Knowledge of each customer’s total winnings and losses would theoretically allow casino operators to cut off players who have lost more than they can afford, but this information is instead often used to target recovering gambling addicts with marketing promotions and “free bet bonuses” aimed at getting them back into the casino.

Most people can gamble in a casino without ruining their lives, but the 75% of people who gamble in casinos without any problems generate only 4% of the casinos’ revenues. The bulk of the casinos’ revenue is generated from problem gamblers and gambling addicts, which is why the gambling industry invests so many resources targeting and exploiting this portion of their market. Because of their efforts, as many as 10 million Americans live with a gambling addiction, including approximately 1 out of 20 college students. 

Gambling addiction has been called an “invisible addiction” because it does not have same physical side effects as substance abuse. However, its effects are more pernicious because of the debt that it generates. This debt is a primary reason why gambling addicts are more likely to die by suicide than nearly anyone else.

We cannot currently solve all of these problems everywhere, but we can at least protect our own community from the worst harms that would be caused by hosting a casino locally. Please e-mail the College Township Council at [email protected] and tell them to rescind their approval for the proposed casino at the Nittany Mall. Please also visit https://saynocasino.org/ for further information about our community’s fight to stop the development of the proposed casino.

Andrew Shaffer,
State College