Gambling et al

I still think that a plan to boost revenues to cities and towns by way of casino gambling is dumb. It is dumb on a few levels:

• I think that it's a cowardly and cynical way for government to raise revenue by calling it 'fun'.
  It's one thing to tax cigarettes, booze, dining out, or other forms of entertainment. We are not, in those instances, promoting those activities as good for our educational system. We're taxing those activities because we can.
  In the case of the Lottery and, I believe, casino gambling, we are encouraging those activities because we want the money.
  
• It doesn't work.
  With more states adding more casinos, we've reached the point where we're all just chasing the same dollars.
  

The details of both arguments I'll leave for another time.
I arrived at my opinions based on my own observations, irrespective of the Telegram and Gazette's editorial policy. (Jeff, whom I respect greatly, and I differ on this one.)
That said, I don't have strong objections to people having fun in the way that they want to.
For example, one of my ideas of fun is to find old newspapers in my attic and see what they said about life then and how it might apply to life now.

In March of 1980, the Telegram offered this editorial on beano.
(At one time, games named Bingo were outlawed in Massachusetts. Social groups used the name Beano instead. Bingo was re-legalized in 1971, with the state getting a piece of the action, but beano was still commonly used for several years. Beano, the game, to my knowledge, had no relationship to this product, although these basement social halls did get a bit odoriferous after a night of play.)

The salient point, I think, is that the game of raising money takes the focus of the real mission of the institution, be it a church, Legion, or social club.

From the front page ads on the paper of the same day,

The issues, raised by religious leaders, however, are not exclusively religious or moral issues. The issues focus on how an organization works to build and sustain itself through its own contributions.