***"Politicians get rich off us.***"
Casino executives and groups donated more than $10 million to federal political candidates and parties in the 2004 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That's in addition to millions more contributed to state and local politicians who have gambling issues in front of them.

Did D'Agular sever all his relationships with Bah Mar or is there still some conflict of interest?

> "The less you play, the lower we pay."

Think you're saving money by playing the penny slots? Think again. Slots and video poker machines with lower denominations have lower payouts than their more expensive cousins. The reason? The house takes in a lot more money on higher-value machines and wants to drive customers to them, says Rick Santoro, senior vice president at Trump Hotel Casino Resort

**"The house always wins, and it's now winning more."
Maybe you've had a good night or two at the casino sometime in the past decade, but it's the house that has hit the jackpot. Visitors gambled and lost more than $27 billion at U.S. casinos in 2003, up from about $11 billion in 1993 — not that the casinos are passing much of that growth on to consumers. While the odds always favor the house, some casinos are changing the odds and payouts on table games to be even more in their favor.**

Take blackjack. Instead of the traditional 3-to-2 payout — which means a player betting $20 would get $30 — some casinos are now paying 6-to-5, effectively reducing the payout by 20%. And almost every casino now uses multiple decks, stacking as many as eight in a single sleeve, which makes it harder for gamblers to keep track of which cards have been played.

In perhaps the most significant shift, an increasing number of casinos don't allow the dealer to hold on "soft 17," the term for a 17-point hand that includes an ace. Continuing the hand improves the house's odds by about 0.2%. It doesn't sound like much, but on a table that sees $100,000 in wagers on a given day, that adds $200 to the house's take.

Casinos give their high rolling clients a $10, 000.00 (Ten Thousand Dollars) suite and a $2,000 hooker, or shall we say a" lady of the evening", no not a fighting Joe or a strumpet, unlimited drinks and a running account in their restaurants. So they virtually give away over $15,000.00 to one customer on a given night. And you gonna tell me they cannot afford to pay more taxes? What size was Sol Kerzners' yacht again, before he went and lost some of his money the money that caused him to lose Atlantis? And yes, there are foreign gambling addicts, who come to The Bahamas and lose everything, even the kitchen sink. Some have to be returned home at the government's (I mean taxpaying slaves') expense.

You mean ta tell me, dat dere is laws or regulatory bodies that operate in fairness to indigenous, hard working Bahamians? Either tax the casinos too, equally, or let my people go! ....wait for it....

***"Mr Dames said the Bahamas is faced with crime challenges because of decades of neglect in which Bahamians have abdicated their responsibility as adults and as parents. He said children were allowed to roam aimlessly without structure or direction causing social decay.
#The government, he said, is now faced with trying to build communities where young people can find wholesome and meaningful ways to live a law-abiding and peaceful existence."***
And now that he has been in office for over a year, isn't he starting to sing the same songs of his predecessors, "No reason to feel unsafe."
And isn't he starting to dissect the crime figures under a microscope, just as the former administration did, just to take advantage of the slightest decrease in crime, and to convince they public that they are, indeed safe. But yet bodies are constantly being scraped up, of the streets, out of cars, in the driveways of homes, and yes out of barber chairs. And as records will bare out, the most welcome and appreciated and longest sustained period of 37% decrease in murders can be wiped out in a few short weeks as the summer months approach. This is when the killings really heat up.
"

> The government, he said, is now faced
> with trying to build communities where
> young people can find wholesome and
> meaningful ways to live a law-abiding
> and peaceful existence."*

This right here is the key to putting an end or at least a permanent handle on crime. New Providence needs to be segmented into districts. At least four. And all the infrastructure to sustain everyday life should be put into those areas. Post offices, places to renew drivers licenses and passports, recreational centers for the youth, bill payment centers for various government fees and the creation of regular jobs in that area so the regular ordinary resident does not have to travel across the island to go to work. So you reestablish a community like an environment, where everyone knows everyone and strangers are easily identified. This can be even more enforced by giving license plates that identify the general area a person resides. So if the police spots a vehicle registered in the Eastern area of the island driving in the Southwest after hours, then they have reason to stop the vehicle. The need to have everyone in a wild frenzy all the other island every day, to work, to drop off or pick up children to and from school, to the hospital, the passport office, So in essence you spend most of your time in their area where you live. In other words, people from Fort Lauderdale do not usually go down to Miami every day. And when someone from south Andros goes up North, everyone knows he is not from North.

Foreigners come into your country and they rule over you. They rise higher and higher, while you slump lower and lower. They make you the tail and not the head. You are borrowers and not lenders. They will lend to you but you will not lend to them.

The fact is modern day slavery still exists and all who sit as prime ministers are chief house negroes and not de facto leaders. And even as a boy still in school listening to the budget, one would hear all the concessions and exemptions given to foreign owned businesses while taxes were continuously being heaped on Bahamians. And when Pindling told Bahamians to leave the farms and the fishing boats and the Family Islands and come to Nassau or go to Freeport and get jobs in the hotels, or the tourist industry, your new plantations. Whenever anything was mentioned about ownership everyone got offended. Slaves have jobs and they may buy their freedom but they don’t own nothing. And today it is difficult for Bahamians to become financially free because the cost of living is continuously increasing. And many companies have come to The Bahamas, made hundreds of millions and sold out or closed shop, leaving millions in unpaid taxes, utilities and employee benefits. Not only were Bahamians working basically for free but the sudden ‘crowding ‘ in Nassau and Freeport help to create a breakdown in traditional Bahamian society, population erosion on the Family Islands, the loss of farmers and fishermen that helped the country feed itself, a crime situation that is getting increasingly violent and increasingly out of control. And a National Debt that continues to snowball even on the hottest of Bahamian summer days. And since Bahamians alone are solely responsible for this debt it is the clearest declaration of ‘You are not free, We (creditors) own you. We owned your forefathers and you have slops yourselves, your children and your descendants for generations to come into financial slavery.’ So while millions come to The Bahamias to seek Paradise and financial prosperity, you catch eternal hell. Look at you: still building bricks of mortar and clay. Still nothing but a slave.

And yet another murder last night. The problem is the authorities became too comfortable when there was a 47% drop in theft rate. They believed they had accomplished their goal. But in a few short weeks the murder rate climbs up by 10 percent. And when you factor in the number of police involved shootings, the homicide rate is up in the record books. And in the recently released budget there is nothing to fund programs for young males who might be at risk of being murder victims. No programs to educate against joking gangs or getting involved in sale of illegal drugs. The police alone cannot fix the crime problem. And the country cannot continue to lose young men.

I would bet the government would not even consider putting similar taxes on the foreign owned casinos and their foreign patrons. The ultimate height of hypocrisy and blatant discrimination. Web shops created jobs that never previously existed, a tax revenue stream that never existed and an opportunity for Bahamians to legally operate an industry that never existed. And now the question of the year: ‘Would forcing the web shops to close down eliminate local gambling in the country of would it creat an underground, unlicensed, untaxed and unregulated numbers racket that would be even more lucrative for those risking the chance to participate? And (2). Are the laws banning Bahamians from gambling in local casinos discriminatory, specifically against Bahamians and particularly againstAck Bahamians, especially in light of the fact that so many Bahamians travel abroad to gamble or do online gambling by computers and smart phones. And does the government lose more in terms of revenue and the country in terms of capital by keeping this law in place and even compounding the matter by taxing the Bahamian Black) web shop operators, in some instances four hundred times what the foreign casinos operators are charged in terms of taxes?