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NEWS ITEM: "The Las Vegas-based outfit that wants to bring video slot machines to Salem's Rockingham Park has created a dream team of lobbyists, strategists and public relations folks to make their case, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their message out."
The New Hampshire Senate has decided that by placing 13,000 slot machines in three race tracks and by skimming 49% off the top of the take, $205,000,000 of the State's budget shortfall will go away. It's an insider's game of course, with the usual cabal of silk-suited lobbyists greasing their way around the State House, successfully pushing the Senate to a 16-8 vote in favor of the slots scheme.
But now the NH House - traditionally more anti-gambling than the Senate - must be "convinced" to go along.
Let's get real here: New Hampshire enjoys a long and proud tradition of paying its bills by taxing its sinners. The State makes big money on its lottery, its liquor stores, its cigarette tax, it's additional alcohol taxes on beer and wine sold by private stores, it meals & lodging tax (a big part of which includes alcohol sold at lunch and dinner). So it seems just a wee bit theatrical and disingenuous when Members of the NH House get in a tizzy fit about a few thousand slot machines.
Meanwhile, income from 13,000 slots won't really pay all the bills, provide all the services. So, my idea...instead of limping in with this modest slots proposal is to do it right. Let's go all the way...let's immediately legalize - AND TAX - the following:
1. Slot machines (a maximum of 131,580 individual machines)...with machines located in every town hall and city hall in the State. These buildings are already closely monitored by the police so it would be safe. One machine for every 10 NH residents.
2. An electronic Sports Book, including gambling on all professional, college, high school and middle school varsity games and - seasonal - on grammar school field day events. All sports books to be located in SAU administrative offices.
3. Poker Parlors that would actually be located in people's PARLORS! Anyone with an old-fashion home that included a parlor with transparent plastic still covering all of the couches could host these games of skill.
4. Internet Gambling, to be hosted by - get this absolutely brilliant idea - to be hosted by our state's daily newspapers on their internet sites (thereby saving all daily papers from extinction).
5. Medical Marijuana Stores, to be run exclusively by Doctors who are General Practitioners or pediatricians (this plan would close the pay gap between family doctors and the more highly-paid specialists).
6. A No Helmet Tax. It's New Hampshire. Motorcyclists should never be forced to wear a helmet. But they should be taxed for being so hopelessly dim-witted... a $125 annual tax for these mouth-breathing morons.
7. Seat-Belt Exclusion Tax. We should be free to refuse to buckle up for safety. But a modest tax, maybe $25, would help defer the costs of extra body bags.
8. Granite State Death Penalty Reduction Club. If convicted and sentenced to death by a New Hampshire jury, a death row inmate could pay - I don't know - maybe $100,000 to have his sentence commuted to life without parole or for an additional $10,000, he could spin the GIANT WHEEL OF LIFE for the chance to win the possibility of parole in 20 years. There's network tv possibilities here.
9. A Bankruptcy Tax: As we all know, the Governor and others are licking their chops over a real estate refinancing tax. So what if it hurts people who are trying to reduce their housing expenses and retain their homes... Too damned bad for them! So, OK, how about going a step further and taxing Granite-State residents who are forced into bankruptcy because they lose their job or - sans health insurance - they become terminally ill.
Are we clever or are we clever?
Because in New Hampshire we will never need to impose a broad-based tax of any kind, because we will keep inventing new taxes that punish specific lifestyles.
And we will keep placing the majority of the financial burden on the working poor, the lower middle class, senior citizen homeowners and...and everyone else...except, of course, the rich, the well-to-do. It's the New Hampshire Way.
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