1. Tales of Woe


Michigan City, IN – Not only do authorities contend Amy Cabanaw left her two children alone outside Blue Chip Casino, they also say she gambled away much of her parents’ life savings, about $60,000.

The 27-year-old Cabanaw was charged Thursday in LaPorte Superior Court 1 with three forgery counts.

 

For more than a year, the Michigan City woman allegedly made illegal withdrawals from her parents’ bank accounts by stealing personal checks and cashing them by forging her mother’s signature. She also did phone transfers of money from savings to checking, depleting, among other things, more than $20,000 her parents had inherited, according to police. Cabanaw also racked up cash advances on their credit cards to get money for gambling, according to courtroom testimony.

 

To cover up the scheme, Cabanaw grabbed her parents’ bank statements whenever they arrived in the mail, said police.

 

Her 56-year-old mother, Mary, unknowingly helped by never balancing her checkbook, "figuring there was enough in there to cover the bills," according to police reports.

According to police, the couple had no idea they were being drained until last week when an ex-boyfriend of Cabanaw’s informed her sister that she stole from him and her parents.

 

Looking dejected, Cabanaw, seated beside her mother in the courtroom, sought help for a gambling addiction.  "I spent all of her money on gambling and stupid stuff. I have two kids I got to raise and I don’t want them to grow up like me,"  she said.


Cabanaw has a felony child neglect charge still pending for allegedly leaving her children, ages 2 and 8 months, inside her car outside Blue Chip Casino in December. (Post-Tribune)

While poring over Governor’s casino bill a number jumped out at us -- 27 percent. That’s the rate at which the governor plans to tax casino profits.

We asked a Patrick operative why the administration settled on the 27 percent figure.

We were told, admonished really, that everyone knows that 27 percent is the optimum rate to guarantee the level of investment and number of jobs the governor wants to achieve.

Sounded reasonable to us. Until we did some checking.

Maine taxes its Hollywood Slots at 48 percent - and the casino owner is investing millions on an expansion. Rhode Island’s tax rate on casinos is more than 60 percent - and again its biggest casino, Twin Rivers, is undergoing a major expansion. Pennsylvania gets 55 percent of the casino profits for its state coffers and it hasn’t stopped casino investors from building more casinos.

So why is Massachusetts selling out for short money? The Patrick Administration is already under fire for being too cozy with the casino industry. His wife Diane is a partner in the firm Ropes & Gray, which represents major casino clients and is the only national law firm that’s a member of the American Gaming Association, the powerful lobbying arm of the casino industry. Maybe that explains why the governor is content to let the casino moguls take 73 percent of the profits from Massachusetts casinos to Las Vegas, or South Africa, or Singapore, or China, or wherever, leaving us with a meager 27 percent!

Connecticut, by the way, taxes its tribal casinos at 25 percent, but there is near unanimous agreement in the Legislature there that the government settled for too little. That’s the price of being first into the market. Even Las Vegas is now considering increasing its ridiculously low tax rate on casinos.

None of this explains why Patrick is endorsing this giveaway in our own state. Not only is the casino plan wrong for Massachusetts, it’s a bad deal to boot.