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Video Keno Slot Machines?
DO WE WANT TO SEE NEBRASKA BECOME A MINI LAS VEGAS ??

#421 would allow UNLIMITED slot machines in over 600 Keno locations throughout Nebraska

Vote “NO” on Initiative #421

1. Slot machines are addicting - just like meth and cocaine.

• 60% of gambling machine revenues come from addicts (8), who bring to our communities:
• Abuse: Two years after slot machines were introduced in Deadwood, So. Dakota, reports of child abuse rose 42%, reports of domestic violence and assaults increased by 80% (2).
• Bankruptcy: After slots were introduced in Iowa bankruptcy filings jumped 34% in one year (3). Retail sales suffer and many families join the welfare roles in states with slots.
• Crime: In a survey of 400 Gambler’s Anonymous members, 57% admitted stealing to finance their gambling addiction, averaging $135,000 per individual (4).  Council Bluffs had the highest crime rate in Iowa three years after slots were allowed. (5)  A University of Illinois study found “12.4% of the crime observed in casino counties would not be there if casinos were absent.” (6)
• Embezzlements: $120,000 from the Douglas County Treasurer Chief Deputy, almost $500,000 from the Omaha Archdiocese in two separate cases, nearly $100,000 taken from a client by a Council Bluffs attorney, $13,000 stolen by a Geneva hospital CFO, $231,000 by the Iowa Easter Seals CEO…all caused by gambling addiction (7).
• Homelessness:  Gambling-related homelessness at Omaha’s Open Door Mission jumped from 11% in 1995 to 35% in 2003, according to Director Candice Gregory

2. Who do you trust?
*   Not the Keno operators who take huge profits from our families and leave us the crumbs and social costs.

• If someone took $40 from you and returned $15, would you consider yourself $15 richer?
• Keno operators advertise that millions of dollars have been returned to the communities but they don’t tell you about the nearly half a billion dollars they kept for themselves.

*   Yes, prominent Nebraskans who care about our state and urge you to vote “NO” on #421, such as:

• Senator Chuck Hagel, Senator Ben Nelson, Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, Congressman Lee Terry, Congressman Tom and Nancy Osborne, Governor Dave Heineman, Attorney General Jon Bruning, Warren Buffet, Hal Daub, Pete Ricketts, Archbishop Elden Curtiss, every major religious denomination in the state, and many other concerned citizens.  These people care deeply about Nebraska.
• Internationally known Warren Buffett says, “Some of the money will go to the state. It comes right out of the citizenry and it doesn’t do any development at all…net, it’s a big loser for the communities. (9)”

3. Let’s learn from our neighbors.

• After slots were legalized, Iowa gambling addicts tripled to 110,000, a 5.4% addiction rate (10). Based on that number, slot machines would bring the misery of addiction to 65,000 of our fellow Nebraskans.
• Problem gamblers affect 7-17 innocent family members, friends, employers, etc which translates to 1.1 million people being adversely affected by video keno slots in Nebraska (11).
• Council Bluffs has raised taxes 4 times since the slots arrived (12).
• National studies show that for every $1 gained in gambling revenue it costs $3 in social costs (13).
• Legalizing even one slot machine allows Nebraska’s four Indian tribes to open untaxable Nevada-style casinos with virtually no state regulatory oversight (14).
• South Carolina, Iowa, and Louisiana have each thrown out neighborhood slots
• South Dakota has fewer jobs, loses $100 million in economic activity, and suffers 4,000 more crimes each year because of neighborhood slots (15).  They’ve learned their lesson - repeal of slots is on the fall ballot.                                                   

4. Follow the Money: Communities lose, keno slot owners win big.

• Every $1 million lost into keno slots is $1 million not spent at main street businesses: retail sales growth has flattened in midsize Iowa cities that allow slot machines (16)
• Slots provide over 95% of Iowa casino revenue.
• Every $270,000 from keno slots for “community betterment” will be dwarfed by an expected $510,000 in social costs (for crime, bad checks, embezzlement, etc.) (17)
• Local keno parlors bear the operating costs, the state gets 9% for regulating, and a handful of keno owners—the law’s authors—will keep $390,000 per $1 million  as their own private, addiction-driven cash-cow built into Nebraska law

 “There are no measurable societal benefits to neighborhood slots.  States…should cease and roll back existing operations,” concludes a 1999 report toCongress and the President. (18)

1.   Like slot machines, keno slots would operate by punching a button (“quick pick”); the display could show anything from spinning reels to a poker hand or wheel of fortune, if keno numbers are “displayed” somewhere on the screen (say, in a small square in the corner, as tribes have done with bingo cards to call slot machines “bingo”); bets could be up to several dollars per play; and, most crucially, the speed of gambling would be up to the gambler: the electronic keno proposal eliminates the current required five minute break between keno games.
2.   Drake Law Review, Vol. 43, 1994; 
3.   Des Moines Register, March 2, 2002.
4.   Testimony of University of Illinois Professor Henry Lesieur, cited in the “National Gambling Impact Study Commission Report,” June 18, 1999, p. 7-13.
5.   Omaha World Herald, December 8, 1999. 
6.   Earl Grinols, PhD, “Casino Gambling Causes Crime,” Policy Forum of the U Ill Institute of Government and Public Affairs, Vol 13 #2, 2000.
7.   Various Omaha World Herald articles available on request. 
8.   Robert Williams, PhD, CPsych, and Robert Wood, PhD, University of Lethbridge, “The Demographic Sources of Ontario Gaming Revenue,” (p. 42), prepared for the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, 6/23/04.
9.   Video with Warren Buffett and Tom Grey, 2004. 
10. Rachel Volberg, Gemini Research for the Iowa Department of Human Services, 1995. 
11. "Statement of John Warren Kindt," Congressional Hearing, House Committee on Small Business, September 21, 1994.
12. Omaha World Herald 3/12/02, 4/12/06. 
13. John W. Kindt, Ph.D., Congressional Gambling hearing 1994, & Earl Grinols, Ph.D., “Gambling in America”, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
14. Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988.
15. Deloitte & Touche, “Economic and Fiscal Impacts of the SD Gaming Industry,” for the SD Legislative Research Council, 12/8/98.
16. Loretta Fairchild, PhD, “Impact of Casinos on Retail Sales in Mid-Size Iowa Cities,” presentation, Omaha Federal Reserve Bank, 10/28/05.
17. Earl Grinols, PhD, “Evaluating the Social Contributions of Industries with Externalities,” Managerial and Decision Economics, Vol 22, 2001.
18. National Gambling Impacts Study Commission Report, June 1999.

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                                                        “Nebraska’s grass-roots anti-gambling voice since 1995”