Family Research Council email: Avast, Pirates on Dry Land

[tanyev]

Yes, that was the actual title. Looks like the fundies are starting to realize that the Republican party cares a lot more about money than the phony religious lip-service they are constantly spouting.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R) signed into law yesterday legislation that allows Mississippi's floating casinos to build up to 800 feet inland for the first time. The state legalized casinos in 1990 but restricted them to the waters of the Mississippi River or the Gulf of Mexico. Governor Barbour campaigned in 2003 on preventing the expansion of gambling, but now he is throwing away that campaign promise on the false hopes that the gambling industry will provide more jobs and less crime. Billions of dollars are lost in casinos every year and it is society that suffers, while gambling interests who continue to profit. Many stories of homelessness, alcoholism, divorce and bankruptcy have their roots in gambling, but Governor Barbour's main concern is that the casinos are "a great taxpayer." Alongside the Mississippi Governor, Congress also seems uninterested in how gambling can cause longer-term damage than any hurricane. Currently the House Ways and Means Committee is crafting the Katrina tax package and is not planning to exclude casinos. Historically, federal redevelopment tax breaks have excluded industries like golf courses, country clubs, massage parlors and racetracks or gambling facilities. Please contact the committee and express your conviction that multi-million dollar casinos should be excluded from tax breaks meant to provide relief to victims of the hurricanes.

[trotsky]

1. Republicans just want to have their cake and eat it too.

They hate taxes, especially for their rich friends, but are unable to cut gov't services enough to make up for the shortfall. So they fall in love with gambling revenues, because A) it's not a tax, and B) the poor "voluntarily" pay most of it.

Democrats should be exploiting this wedge, hammering it in harder, between people opposed to gambling and the corrupt Republican party.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. But their man Ralph Reed got gambling passed through the Congress

Ralph Reed with Jack Abramoff was part of the scam to defraud Indian casinos of lobbying money by playing both sides by lobbying both side of the issue. Reed actually worked to loosen the laws on gambling.

[tanyev]

6. Yes, and I was just reading that they used Dobson's credulous fools

as pawns in their little game. I wish that would become more widely known.

Reed then turned to Dobson to marshal his vast network of evangelicals, Abramoff's e-mails show.

Abramoff wrote to Scanlon in a Feb. 20, 2002, e-mail that Dobson would make radio ads against gambling. Reed "may finally have scored for us! Dobson goes up on the radio on this next week!" He suggested giving Reed $60,000 for the ads to run in Louisiana and Texas. "We'll then play it in the WH and Interior," he told Scanlon.

The prospect that Dobson would become involved had an immediate impact at Interior. His regular radio show had a huge audience, and his Colorado-based Focus on the Family actively campaigned against gambling as a social evil.

"Doug came to me and said, 'Dobson's going to shut down our phone system. He's going to go on the air and tell everyone who listens to Focus on the Family to call Interior to oppose the Jena compact,' " said a former senior Interior official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30274-2005Mar...

[LizMoonstar]

3. damn them. no pirates in that story!

i was misled!

[tanyev]

5. I know. I was hoping they were going to announce

they were dumping God in favor of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Arrrrr!

[Ilsa]

4. Rethugs would pimp their own daughters

if they weren't pregnant making RW babies all the time.

Okay, okay, just indulge my hyperbole for a moment. But you get the idea. Nothing is really sacred to them.

[tanyev]

7. Kick.