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Date: April 7, 2010
Subject: Stop Predatory Casinos! Promote Small Businesses & Green Jobs!
Important - Please forward broadly!
Stop Predatory Casino Bill - Take action for healthy communities today!
Dear friend,
We at MCHC have a proud, little history of being a mouse that roars, helping to stop bad legislation that otherwise seems destined to win the day amidst stunning silence. We also advance a proactive vision for the Commonwealth, where a secure green future, and healthy, resilient, relocalized communities and regions are the result of citizen empowerment and improved collaboration and coordination across the state.
But Beacon Hill is up to its typical games, and House Speaker DeLeo and Governor Patrick are poised to ram a shortsighted and predatory casino gambling bill through the Mass. legislature.
This bill cuts to the very core of what MCHC is all about, and takes the exact opposite approach. [See how below]
On the eve of this week's big political fundraisers, this latest move must be challenged. If DeLeo and Patrick
succeed, it will be a BIG win for casino lobbyists - and presumably for DeLeo and Patrick's campaign warchests. Most cynically of all, Speaker DeLeo has declared there will be no public hearings on his bill - shielding this latest boondoggle from desperately needed public scrutiny and debate.
TAKE ACTION TODAY!
- Sign a pledge to boycott predatory casinos and support local small businesses and green jobs instead.
- Call or write Governor Patrick, House Speaker DeLeo, and your state legislators, and tell them you're watching and that you demand to have a voice in this vital debate over our future. Click here to find out who your legislators are and click here for their contact info. Contact Governor Patrick here.
Thanks for standing up for YOUR community and OUR Commonwealth,
Eli Beckerman, Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities
617.821.1453 | eli@masschc.org
HOW THIS BILL UNDERMINES EVERYTHING MCHC STANDS FOR
Instead of seeing our communities and our Commonwealth as interconnected ecosystems, this bill puts temporary construction jobs and private profits ahead of the myriad inevitable consequences for our communities and Massachusetts and as a whole. Instead of a holistic approach that accounts for (or even attempts to study) the disastrous social, economic, and environmental impacts, this bill is doing the dirty work of connected developers and the gaming industry.
CASINO REALITIES
- We don't need here-today-gone-tomorrow construction jobs that leave us with permanent casino blight: failed small businesses, gambling addiction, bankruptcies, broken families, crime, sprawl, pollution, and climate change. Casinos kill 1.5 jobs for every 1 job they create. Coping with the problems caused by casino gambling costs taxpayers at least $3 dollars for every $1 dollar in tax revenue!
PROACTIVE, HOLISTIC APPROACH TO JOB CREATION
- We want good wage green jobs for the long haul - for construction workers, small businesses, clean manufacturing and healthy local food production. Green jobs lower energy and food costs for families and businesses. They will clean up the air, improve nutrition, reduce chronic disease, health costs, and the threat of climate change. The cross-cutting solutions of relocalized economies are a boon to every indicator of community health, and an answer to climate change, resource depletion, and the failing model of a predatory "casino economy."
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