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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Moose and mobsters

Members of the Indiana Beverage Association, conducting meetings statewide to put pressure on the General Assembly to legalize video gambling, tell a compelling story about struggling Moose lodges and VFWs that might have to close or stop all their charitable good deeds if they can't county on the gambling revenue. But this paints a very different picture:

ANDERSON -- Authorities raided the home of a former state Teamsters boss, seizing more than $1 million found stashed in a fake wall, and closed down more than 20 bars and other business believed part of a multi-county video gambling operation.

Indiana Excise Police and Madison County officers arrested John Neal during a traffic stop near his Daleville-area home Monday on felony charges of professional gambling, promoting professional gambling, money laundering and corrupt business influence.

[. . .]

More than 28 people besides Neal had been booked into the Madison County Jail in connection with the case, most facing charges of professional gambling and money laundering. Many are part-owners or employees of the bars under investigation.

[. . .]

"He may be the most prolific organized crime figure in the history of our state," Cummings said. "Through at least two arrests and a prison sentence, his criminal enterprise stayed open and never missed a beat."

I wrote in an editorial just Monday that the state "long ago gave up the high ground on gambling, losing any moral authority to make pronouncements on the evils of that particular vice. It's called the state lottery, which had sales of $739 million last year and has collected $2.7 billion since it began in 1989. The state's efforts to curb other forms of gambling make it look little better than a bunch of gangsters trying to muscle other mobs out of its territory." Looks that reference to "other mobs" was inadvertently accurate.

One of the more interesting quotes in the editorial, addressing the idea that it seems futile to try to keep one form of gambling illegal when so much of it is already legal, was from State Rep. James Buck of Kokomo, who believes: "Just because you've sunk yourself to your waist doesn't mean you need to sink to your nose.” These arrests rather make his point, don't they?

But they also reinforce the Prohibition analogy. Big criminal enterprises are possible only when there is a huge demand for something that is illegal.

Comments

tim zank
Wed, 09/20/2006 - 4:51am

Pretty simple. If cherry masters had been legal, this would never have occurred. The prohibition analogy is pretty hard to refute.

alex
Wed, 09/20/2006 - 5:38am

The same analogy also applies to ganja and poonanny. Why don't you editorialize in favor of those as well? They may not have any defenders in the legislature but they're even more popular with the public than video poker.

tim zank
Wed, 09/20/2006 - 9:33am

I'd much rather legalize and tax those as well, but that wasn't the question.

alex
Wed, 09/20/2006 - 5:57pm

Who said anything about a question? Legalizing and taxing them is the answer! Hey, we're only up to our ankles if we're only taxing rolling papers and lap dances.

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