Newsweek reports that holier-than-thou Republican activist and drug-czar Bill Bennett spends and loses millions in gambling.
More than 40 pages of internal casino documents provided to The Washington Monthly and NEWSWEEK paint a picture of a gambler given the high-roller treatment, including limos and tens of thousands of dollars in complimentary hotel rooms and other amenities. In one two-month period, the documents show him wiring more than $1.4 million to cover losses at one casino. In one 18-month stretch, Bennett visited a number of casinos for two or three days at a time. And Bennett must have worried about news of his habit leaking out. His customer profile at one casino lists an address that corresponds to Empower.org, the Web site of Empower America, the group Bennett cochairs. But typed across the form are the words: NO CONTACT AT RES OR BIZ!!!
Some of Bennett’s losses have been substantial. According to one casino source, on July 12 of last year, Bennett lost $340,000 at Caesars in Atlantic City, and on April 5 and 6 of 2003 he lost more than $500,000 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Some casino estimates put his total losses over the past decade at more than $8 million. “There’s a term in the trade for his kind of gambler,” says a casino source who has witnessed Bennett at the high-limit slots in the wee hours. “We call them losers.”
… Bennett and his organization, Empower America, oppose the extension of casino gambling in the states. In a recent editorial, his Empower America cochair, Jack Kemp, inveighed against lawmakers who “pollute our society with a slot machine on every corner.” The group recently published an “Index of Leading Cultural Indicators” that reports 5.5 million American adults as “problem” or “pathological” gamblers. Bennett says he has his gambling under control.
When reminded of studies that link heavy gambling to divorce, bankruptcy, domestic abuse and other family problems he has widely decried, Bennett compared the situation to alcohol. “I view it as drinking,” Bennett says. “If you can’t handle it, don’t do it.”
Perhaps he’s just doing it to get those cushy free hotel suites and limos to the airport. Or perhaps he’s like many other moral crusaders – hypocritical. I certainly don’t think that the fact that he gambles is enough to convict him of this. It’s the fact that he makes noises about “polluting society” with gambling. His protestation that he has it “under control” smacks too much of an addict… who, in his world view, is immoral. [Thanks, BoingBoing]
