Herewith is my reaction to Progress for Maine’s “pie in the sky” flyer now making the rounds.
Wow. There is enough hot air in the Progress for Maine flyer I just received with its mail-in support card for voting “yes” on Question 1 to lift a hundred balloons from Railroad Park daily.
The spokeswoman of that lobbyist group states a York County casino would add $42 million a year to Maine’s treasury for use in a variety of services, such as funds for the elderly, schools and veterans’ programs, plus create thousands of jobs.
Sugar-coating issues is what lobbyist groups do best, especially when backed by an out-of-state casino entrepreneur who has, yet again, swayed the Maine legislative panel to word the referendum granting him sole building rights — this time for one in York County.
That entrepreneur, through the Legislature and voter gullibility, gained sole right to turn Bangor raceway into the Hollywood Casino and immediately sold that right to another party in 2003 for $51 million.
There’s an old adage raising its head here: fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us.
What is most troubling about Question 1, however (and to my 2 percent Mohawk DNA), is the Legislature’s denying other firms in the casino industry an equal opportunity to build a third casino in Maine; and, especially, its having rejected all previous attemps by descendents of the First Nation people to develop a casino on tribal lands in eastern Maine.
I will vote “no” on Question One.
John Davis, Paris
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