NIL

Posted on June 18, 2025 by bpriddy

We don’t use the word “nil” very much in this country. And when somebody does—as in the score of a soccer game, one-nil—it is considered something of an affectation. On this side of the Atlantic we use “nothing.” Every now and then somebody says “zero” instead of “nil.”

I started writing this entry yesterday, just after breakfast. I’m glad I had already eaten because I saw Eli Hoff’s story in the Post-Dispatch that said my university had spent almost $32 million last year to buy athletes and I lost my appetite.

—-for collegiate sports.

Mizzou is spending a quarter of a billion dollars to put more seats into a facility that might fill them seven out of the next 365 days. And then it’s spending more than half of the Name-Image-Likeness money on the players who will perform on the field below regardless of whether they win.

Name Image Likeness came about because of a court decision that said universities have to compensate the athletes whose names, images, and likenesses appear on shirts, mock jerseys, programs, TV promotions for the athletic department, and so forth.

So schools bid for the thoroughbred players who, once signed, have no particular loyalty to the school and can bolt for a higher-paying job at another university as soon as the season is over. And the fan base, which is paying twice as much for season football tickets this year plus a healthy “gift” (in politics the phrase is “lug.”) that entitles them to park somewhere in Boone County, watches a team to whom institutional loyalty is minimized thanks to the transfer portal and education is secondary rather than post-secondary.

The phrase “student-athlete” is so Twentieth Century. The “athlete-student” is the name of the game these days, especially in the high-profile sports of football and basketball. If you’re a future Wimbledon winner, you might get a few financial crumbs to play tennis for some university, but don’t expect to be paid to appear in some goofy television commercial for a company that kicks in big bucks to buy the best football and basketball players.

But being paid some pretty good money to be a college athlete isn’t a bad deal. Some jocks will have some financial security before they enter the real world where most of them will not become professional-professional athletes, rather than professional amateurs. And a few, such as WNBA star Caitlin Clark, might have to take a salary reduction to turn pro.

The NCAA says that these paid athletes are still amateurs as far as it is concerned.

Three concluding points:

I’m proud of the degree I have from the University of Missouri and I do make modest membership contributions to the alumni association. But I’ll never buy a ticket for a university sporting event because the financial tail has outgrown the dog on many of our college campuses.

I admire the athletes who DON’T have one eye on the ball and the other on the transfer portal. But the portal game is a mercenary one and I won’t support it.

The NCAA might say these folks are amateurs, but the NCAA does not run the State of Missouri and the state is missing a good bet by not extending its Athletes and Entertainers Tax program to levy an income tax on visiting NIL-paid athletes who play here. The professional-professional athletes pay that tax. The million-dollar quarterback from Alabama or Georgie or Ohio State, etcetera, should contribute, too.

Now, there is a qualification to this spleen-letting this morning and it is this: NIL is a very complicated issue that the fan in the stands or in the fan in the recliner might not completely grasp and the reflexed knee in this entry might be missing some important points that render these thoughts in-valid. That’s why we have the reaction box at the end of these entries—so the host can be set straight on things. So have at it. Reasonable discussion is always welcome (but stay within Captain Woodrow Call’s guidelines that we established a long time ago.

(As we were wrapping up this entry, we came across a 2024 article in Harvard Law Today that has an interview discussing the history and the significance of legal actions that have brought us to this point. https://hls.harvard.edu/today/peter-carfagna-on-the-state-of-the-ncaa-nil-and-amateurism/).

Notes from a Quiet Hill

Posted on June 11, 2025 by bpriddy

—-stuff we can’t resist commenting on but don’t want to spend time writing more about.

As we were about to file this piece last night, the New York Times reported that this country’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptists, had overwhelmingly voted to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn its ruling approving same-sex marriage.

I am a Protestant. And as is the case with the Southern Baptists, I consider myself a Christian. But I struggle to understand how those who also call themselves Christians can then dictate who other people can love, how they can love, and whether some are not permitted to love at all.

After all, love is at the core of Christianity.

Protestants and Catholics alike like to quote First Corinthians 13:13: “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (New Living Translation,)

We are free to practice our religion however we wish in this country, even if it seems inconsistent with the great Love chapter of the Inspired Word. I think my faith (which is different from religion)

Okay—-now that the heavy stuff is out of the way:

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If I was a reporter covering the White House, there are two words that I would say almost all the time when I’m talking to today’s President or other politicians, but especially the President whose statements are from here to Mars away from the truth:

“Prove It.”

He wouldn’t. But he’d call me “nasty” for suggesting something he has no interest in doing.

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Wonder what’s going to happen to the Tesla that President Trump bought from Elon Musk while they were still best buds.

Tell ya what I’m gonna do. If there are any who view these entries who has the fevered ear of our president, tell him that I’ll give him $2,500 for it. I’ll even fly to Washington on my own dime and drive it back to Missouri, stopping for a relaxing recharge every 375 miles or so. I would like for him to sign it somewhere that won’t get lost in a rainstorm and to have it fully charged when I pick it up.

That’s my top offer. I could lower the price it if the President thinks my offer is too high for showing his new disdain for Elon. And I won’t object if he’d just give it to me.

If any of you have any connections that can accomplish this deal, let them know of this kind offer.

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We like Andy Borowitz, a satiric columnist and a serious observer of things. He recently reported, tongue in cheek, that the President of Mexico—exercising the beyond-boundaries prerogatives our President thinks the world should honor—has exercised her own beyond-boundaries prerogative. She has renamed our Liberty Bell.

TACO Bell.

As in, “Trump Always Chickens Out” after his big tariff announcements.

Mr. Trump is real touchy on a lot of things and this one really is sand in his underwear. All the more reason to say it. But I won’t remind him of that when I pick up the Tesla

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Missouri has an artists and athletes tax that requires the state income tax be deducted from payments made for concerts and professional sports event participants.. When the Cubs play in St. Louis, the players’ daily pay during the series is subject to the income tax.

I suggested to the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this year that we need to similarly tax highly-paid college athletes for their Name, Image, and Likeness incomes. They’re not amateurs anymore, nor are they student-athletes. We have athlete-students with the emphasis on the first word. You can’t have million-dollar amateurs.

Plus, the experience would be a good introduction to the real world of income taxes for these players.

The Ones Most Interested

Posted on December 5, 2024 by bpriddy

—and the places most damaged.

We’ve had three weeks or so to digest the results of the November 5 election. We are going to offer some insights in the next few entries.

One of the amendments we voted this month proposed something that we’ve seen before—a statewide vote to force a city or an area to allow something the people there did not want.

That was Amendment 5, which would have forced the people living and working at the Lake of the Ozarks to accept a commercial casino in their midst. Two areas of Missouri were involved: the area where a casino is proposed and an area fearful that it would be the next place forced to accept one.

We’re talking about the Lake of the Ozarks and Branson.

It might be instructive to see their thoughts about the sports wagering amendment and the casino-placement amendment. We looked at the votes in five lake counties and in five Branson-area counties.

Both groups wanted nothing to do with either proposal, sports wagering or a casino.

The five lake counties were 57% against sports wagering, Amendment 2, that barely passed statewide with only 50.074% of the votes (as of last night), a margin so small a recount can be justified if the losers want to pay for it. The five Branson-area counties opposed it to the tune of 60%.

Amendment 5 was the issue that was most stark in its possibilities for these two areas and the message sent by these ten counties was more than no. It pretty much amounted to a “Hell, No.” Camden County rejected the proposal 10,621-14,375. Taney County swamped it 9,875-16,071. Sixty percent of the voters in the five lake counties rejected the casino. In the Branson area, the rejection was even greater, 61.4%.

End result: People in those ten counties don’t like sports wagering but their people can do it if they want, but they’re sure don’t want them ever to do it in a local casino.

Both of these counties have promoted their areas as family-friendly tourism destinations. Branson was worried that a Lake of the Ozarks casino would be the precedent-setter for a casino campaign in Branson. Amendment 5 would have forced one area to accept something the voters clearly did not want, and exposed the other area to a similarly unwelcome intrusion later.

Branson had a taste of this issue twenty years ago when voters defeated a proposal to put a casino next to the White River at Rockaway Beach.

How about counties that have casinos? Amendment 3 failed in three of them—Cape Girardeau (46.4%), Lewis (Mark Twain Casino in LaGrange—46/7%), and Cooper (Boonville 48.5%).

This time, the casino industry spent ten-million dollars on a petition effort and an election campaign for Amendment 5. Their efforts netted them less than 48% of the statewide vote.

In St. Charles County, the home of Missouri’s most lucrative casino, Amendment 3 got only 53.4%.

The spending on the Lake of the Ozarks proposal was pocket change compared to the huge amount invested in the sports wagering amendment. It took $41 million from the two biggest internet bookies to overcome the $14 million dollar opposition campaign financed by another bookie. The victory margin was only (as of last night) 4,360 votes out of almost three million votes cast. The certified final results will be posted after the Missouri Board of Canvassers meets on December 10. Presidential electors meet a week later. Congress is to certify the federal results on January 6.

The casinos will get their money back pretty fast. The host cities of the casinos will lose millions because of the support their voters game to Amendment Two.

How much will they lose? There are two factors. The state tax rate on gambling (table games and slot machines is 21%. Host cities get ten percent of that amount. In the last fiscal year, ten percent of the state gaming taxes collected provided $39,711,780 to the host cities.

But sports wagering will provide ZERO money from the state gaming tax, which will be only ten percent to begin with. The State Auditor estimates casino revenues in the first five years will be $1,044,684,612. The states ten percent will amount to $104,467,878, all of it earmarked for higher and lower education. None of it goes to the home cities. None.

If Amendment 2 followed current law, the casinos’ own home dock cities would split an additional $10,446,788.

But it’s worse than that. If the tax rate on sports wagering were the same as it is on other forms of gambling—and the industry has never given a consistent answer why is should not be—the home dock cities would have split an additional $21,938,377 in those first five years.

The casino industry will recover more than one-half of the money it spent on the campaign by giving their own host cities the shaft. Permanently.

I can show you the math; the casinos wouldn’t.

The manifest shortcomings in taxes can only be remedied by adoption of another amendment. A campaign that focuses on those shortcomings and either corrects or overturns Amendment 2 might be considered, given the paper-thin margin of victory for sports wagering. It would be interesting to know the reactions of city councils in the thirteen host cities if they are ever shown these numbers. I doubt the industry, its leaders, or its supporting organizations have ever given these figures to the cities

The casino industry has never been put on the defensive at the Capitol or at the ballot box.

And maybe it should be, as we will discuss in our next commentary because what could be coming will be only worse.

Winning for Missouri: More Like the Mugging of Missouri

Posted on October 30, 2024 by bpriddy

One last shot at Amendment 2 before next Tuesday’s vote on it. And a warning that this amendment might have far-reaching results that have gone unnoticed.

Unfortunately, these considerations are being offered to late to be circulated enough to make a difference. But let’s put the issues on the record. Or at least, this person’s perspective. Disagreements are welcome in the box at the end of this entry. We’ll talk about the casino industry’s efforts and we’ll discuss some sports teams questionable claims late in this post.

A key part of the proposed amendment is the sports wagering tax rate—10% —a back door tax cut of about 25% for all forms of gambling.

And here we must note that later we will discuss a clause in the proposed amendment that can lead to later mischief that will further disadvantage the state and its people.

The industry-supported legislation has never defined sports wagering as a special category.is listed as just another kind of game of skill. In the lengthy list of those allowable games, it has been inserted after “Double down stud” or “any video representation of such games.”

It is that last clause that nobody has talked about. But it’s important for future developments in the casino industry. Here’s why.

People are not going to casinos as they once did. The generation that has spent hours at the slot machines and the tables is dying off. Admissions are almost half what they were a dozen years ago or so. As this trend continues, the casino industry must find ways to get customers to play these games. If they won’t go to the casinos, the casinos must—in effect—take the games to the consumers. This amendment is a template for later proposals to expand remote wagering to other forms of gambling.

This amendment legalizes remote betting in our casinos for the first time. Some of our casinos already have tested a version of remote gaming within the casinos, calling it “hybrid gaming.” In those casinos, customers who can’t find room at their favorite gaming table have gone to a nearby computer terminal, have set up their account, and have placed bets at the table as if they were there.

The tests haven’t generated much revenue. But the system has been tested. No matter what the industry calls it, whether it’s fifty feet from the table or fifty miles from the sportsbook, it’s remote wagering. Don’t be surprised if casinos become more involved with it. And that phrase is going into the constitution if voters approve Amendment Two.

We are not sure if that phrase in the amendment will mean casinos can offer remote betting on table games and slot machines without more legislative action. But it would not be in the proposal if the industry did not have a reason for it being there.

The Casino industry cleverly set the parameters for the discussion of sports wagering early:

—We can’t do sports wagering at 21% (the rate the state established more than three decades ago for table games and slot machines (incidentally, about 85% of casino revenues come from the slots).

—Sports wagering is different from other forms of gambling and needs special treatment.

Neither statement is true.

The industry has consistently claimed sports wagering is unique and requires its own special betting area and its own special tax rate, the latter reason justified differently year-to-year in bills introduced in the legislature. The first bills proposed a tax rate of 6.25% (the lowest in the nation), 6.75% (the present low), 8%, and 10%. The industry has seemed to have trouble sticking to its story when advocating a tax rate of less than 21%.

A couple of years ago the Senate tried to make the rate 12% and there was talk that the casinos would compromise on 15% because it was the average of the states around us. We’ll get to that in a little bit.

The truth is that sports wagering is just another item on the gambling menu and its presence on that list supports that point. But the casinos have tried to get the legislature to believe it is special. And they want voters in a few days to believe it, too, so they can get a cut in overall tax rates (by our calculation) of about 25%.

The industry has never produced any independent studies in any legislative hearing we have attended, to justify the claim that sports wagering is a fragile flower needing lots of TLC, including the low tax. None of the pro-amendment advertising has offered any justification for it either. And the voters, who understandably don’t closely follow the policy-making, or lack of it, by the legislature are left to make decisions based on thirty-second television commercials of questionable verity.

One industry argument has been that casinos will spend a lot of money establishing a unique area where the sports wagering can take place, an argument that falls apart because all forms of gambling have THEIR unique betting areas. It’s why you can’t roll dice at a blackjack table. You can’t play poker at the roulette wheel table. You can’t play craps at the poker table and you can’t bet on where the ball will land on the big wheel at the Texas Hold ‘Em table.

There is nothing inherently unique in sports betting, regardless of industry claims. It operates the same way as other forms of wagering. The consumer has money; the casinos have a system that will take all of it through time. The player at the poker table places a bet. So does a bettor in the sports betting area. The casino processes the bets, paying the winners and keeping the losers’ money. At the end of the day, the casino proceeds go into the same bank account with the proceeds from table games and slot machines.

Every year, the industry seems to have changed its justification for a sweetheart tax rate, raising a simple question that should been asked but never was: “How can the industry’s claims be trusted if it cannot stick to its own story?

In 2019, the industry demanded a 6.75% rate because “that’s what they charge in Las Vegas.” A quick review of the Nevada gaming laws showed something the industry avoided telling our lawmakers: that 6.75% ALL forms of gambling in Nevada. The industry also neglected to tell the legislators that the Nevada gaming law allows no deductions and no carryovers of casino losses from one month to the next, as is proposed in Amendment 2. It was pointed out that the Nevada template would mean that Missouri would have two choices: either lower its present tax rate to 6.75 so all forms of gambling would be treated uniformly or to charge sports wagering a 21% tax.

Here are other reasons offered for a low tax rate:

—The casinos need to keep the extra money to properly promote and advertise this unique form of gambling. A representative of Penn National Gaming told a House committee in 2022 that a higher tax would hinder Missouri’s ability to compete with illegal gaming sites. He said, “When you are able to spend more in marketing, you are able to drive more in volume and revenues.”

The position of the industry that money should be taken away from the education fund and from home dock cities to subsidize promotions and advertising was questionable when the industry was generating revenues of about $1.7 billion at the time. Wouldn’t you think the industry should pay for its own promotions and advertising?

A critic argued that there is no reason the state should subsidize advertising for an industry of that size by reducing funding for the school systems and home dock cities (ten percent of the gaming tax goes to the thirteen host cities of Missouri’s casinos). Additionally, major betting companies already were advertising on professional sports broadcasts and have stepped up their advertising since.

The proposal for using money traditionally earmarked for the education fund to publicize and promote sports wagering included no accountability language that would have required casinos to show the money actually had been used as proposed instead of just pocketed.

They also claimed the money not given the state in taxes was needed to convince Missourians to quit using illegal betting sites. We’ll touch on that a little bit later.

—The casinos originally claimed the house advantage in sports wagering is “only” four percent (in 2023 the industry testified it was five percent). But a study done for the UNLV Center for Gaming Research indicates that four percent is higher than most popular table games, sometimes double or more, and the industry has never asked for a favorable tax rate for table games.

In truth, the house advantage for sports wagering is more than four or even five percent, as the casino industry has claimed in some later legislative committee hearings. The website legalsportsreport.com charts statistics month-by-month in every state from the first month sports wagers were made in that state. As of last Sunday night, the webpage calculated $408-Billion dollars had been wagered in states allowing casino gambling on sports. The casino advantage worked out to 8.6%, more than double what the industry told legislators, and adding up to $35.1 Billion dollars.

Delaware, which has the highest tax on casino revenues, had the highest house advantage—25.1 to 46.5. Delaware taxes casinos at a 50% and we’ve not heard any organized opposition to it.

Another excuse has been that Missouri needs a low tax rate to compete with surrounding states. Kansas is at 10. Iowa’s rate on casino earnings is 6.75, and according to an industry spokesperson. Missouri needs to have a low tax to keep Missourians from going to another state to place their sports bets.

The industry has presented no independent studies indicating casino customers care about the amount of taxes the casinos pay. In reality, the so-called competition rests on a simple question: Does Missouri have legal sports wagering? If Missouri legalizes it, Missourians presumably will place bets here because they don’t have go to some other state.

The industry also claimed it needs to have a much lower tax so it can pay for building sportsbook facilities within the casinos. If ninety percent or more of sports wagering will be done remotely, there’s not much reason for an elaborate sportsbook. And, besides, building a sports betting facility in a casino should be considered a normal business expense with its own tax implications at the end of the business year.

This amendment has been called a “compromise between the stakeholders”—the six professional sports teams, the casino industry, and the remote betting industry” by St. Louis Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III.

But there are far more stakeholders than that. None of their representatives were invited to work on this “compromise.” Where were representatives of public education, host cities, veterans, the Access Missouri Scholarship Program, the National Guard program that provides veterans’ funeral escorts, people who develop gambling problems (we have seen several studies indicating those problems will triple with sports wagering), or even the Missouri Gaming Commission?

Here’s an answer: They were not invited because they were not considered participants in drafting gambling policy. Instead, they are industry targets whose only usefulness is based on how much money the industry can take from them or keep from programs benefitting them.

There’s one more stakeholder. The legislature, hired by the citizens to protect their interests. But the legislature has been MIA in protecting its constituents. The “compromise” is not a compromise at all. It was, instead, an agreement to have the legislature give each of the stakeholders what they want. When the legislature fumbled several chances to satisfy the teams and the casinos, Amendment 2 was created.

It’s important as we reach the conclusion of these discussions to ask, “How did we reach this point?”

One reason this issue is on the ballot is that the legislature refused to resolve a competing issue—the legality of the gambling machines in many of our convenience stores, Video Lottery Terminals.

Supporters of video lottery terminals, while professing that they are legal, want the legislature to make them legal. The casinos see them as competing for their slot machine revenues and have not allowed an up-or-down vote on the VLT bills. Supporters of the VLTs have filibustered the sports wagering legislation, demanding VLT legalization legislation be part of any sports wagering measure. The stalemate, especially in the Senate, has been a key factor in the pretty disgraceful deadlocks there that have resulted in historically-low levels of bill passage during the last three sessions.

The legislature lacked the courage in the face of extensive and aggressive lobbying by the casino industry to establish policies protecting the state’s interests and year after year considered the industry proposals without question. Only once that I recall did I hear a legislative committee member seriously press the chief industry lobbyist on some of these issues—Senator Denny Hoskins who was the leader in the unsuccessful efforts to legalize VLTs—was told he was out of time before he had finished his questioning. The replies he had received were vague at best.

A couple of years ago, I talked to the sponsor of a bill raising the tax rate to ten percent. A year earlier he had sponsored the industry’s bill that set the rate at eight percent. “What’s magical about ten percent?” I asked. “Last year it was only eight.”

He responded, “I figured that if ten was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for me.”

I was stunned for a second or two, and when I recovered my composure, I asked, “Jesus had twelve disciples not ten. Can I get you up to 12?”

All I got in response was a smirk.

I found his responses to my questions arrogant, disrespectful, and dismissive. While I would not use the same phrases to characterize those who have advocated for this legislation, I think it is accurate to say there has been a certain confidence on their part that no outside opinions would be tolerated in the annual legalization efforts.

The legislature’s refusal to challenge industry-backed bills year after year is an indication of who has been in charge of things in the Capitol on this issue. Its inability to deliver what the industry—and in the last few years, the pro sports teams—wanted means the issue is likely to be put into the Missouri Constitution next week and the legislature will not be able to change things to protect the interests of the people of Missouri very easily.

I expect the mugging of Missouri and its people to succeed next Tuesday. And we can thank a few generations of the people we think represent us at the Capitol for aiding and abetting it through their inaction.

“Winning for Education” Turns Casino Host Cities Into Bigger Losers

Posted on October 21, 2024 by bpriddy

So this is what they get for three decades of being the hosts of Missouri’s casinos—a financial knife in the ribs.

For three decades, ten percent of the casino gambling taxes have gone to the home dock cities and half of the admission fees, too, to pay for the police and fire protection, the infrastructure the cities provide so people can go to and from their casinos, use their bathrooms, and drink city water instead of some of the river water under the ‘excursion boat” where they gamble.

The cities have used some of that money for other improvements—parks, for example.

But not with Amendment 2, the sports wagering proposal on the November ballot.

They’re cut out of it. Completely.

None of the sports gambling taxes will go to the home dock cities.

There will still be an admission fee charged for those who go into the casinos to place their sports bets. But Winning for Missouri, the committee that is, shall we say, gloriously overstating the public benefits of sports wagering, has an economic study saying that, eventually, more than 98% of the bets will be placed online. There will be no admission fee paid by the casinos for almost all of the sports bets. And there is no fee in lieu of the admission fee. They’re going to keep it all.

None of the sports gaming revenue will go to the cities, as it does for present casino table games and slot machines. Admission fees going to host cities will be minimal.

Once again, everybody loses except the casinos and the sports teams—including the host cities (the formal name is Home Dock Cities, harkening back to the days when the industry convinced voters there would be real boats traveling on our big rivers, before they became boats in moats—which is a good thing; we might tell that story in a later entry).

The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick for all of these three decades. For more than a decade, fewer and fewer people have been going to the casinos. At their peak, casinos counted about 54-million admissions. In the last fiscal year, the admissions continued their decline toward 27 million.

Adding insult to injury is the industry’s refusal to let the legislature increase the admission fees so those home communities admission payments could keep up with inflation. The equivalent of two-dollar admission fee established in 1993 was $4.31 when we checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator Saturday night.

Yes, we mean “let the legislature increase the admission fees.” Your faithful correspondent has suggested increases to legislators for six years. One of the more frequent responses is, “The casino industry would never buy that.”

The suspicion in the hallways for some time that the industry is, in one way or another, buying something. It has several political action committees with bottomless checking accounts. And legislators have to run for re-election for an unfortunately limited number of times.

The influence of the casinos is so ingrained in the legislative process that their representatives don’t even try to justify their statutory or constitutional demands. They just make brief statements about how great sports wagering will be and then sit down.

Not making any accusations, mind you. We’re just sayin,’ as the colloquial phrase goes.

Anyway—the $4.31 equivalency means the state is getting two 1993 dollars while the casinos keep $2.31 of 2024 money.

The casinos are making more off the admission fee than the state and the home dock cities are making. But the situation is even worse than what we’ve just shown.

Inflation has reduced the purchasing power of those two dollars to about 95 cents. So, while the home dock cities and the gaming commission are starving for funding with two dollars that are worth 95 cents in contemporary money, the casinos are making $2.31, and the gap between what the casinos keep and what the state and the home dock cities receive widens each year.

Our extensive research and hours with the calculator indicate the home dock cities and the State of Missouri, since the first casinos opened in 1994, have lost almost $1.9 billion ($1,880,392,926) in outright cash payments and in purchasing power combined because the casinos have pressured the legislature into making no change.

Extensive research has calculated how much each of our thirteen cities has lost in the last eight years or so. The individual tables are available but we don’t want to spend the space here to print them. Perhaps that can be done at another time.

Has anyone told our thirteen cities they’re being taken for a ride by their “excursion gambling boats?” The cities are part of the Home Dock Cities Association that one might think would be working to keep the losses from continuing and increasing. But we have seen representatives for the association spouting the casino line every time they’ve testified before legislative committees. It’s okay with the association, apparently, that the people they represent keep losing funding and will see no improvement from sports wagering.

The association says it favors the casino position because casinos are economic drivers for the region. Really? Can they show any studies that prove it? They haven’t, and the industry’s own statistics reported to the Missouri Gaming Commission show a different story.

We started compiling comprehensive statistics three years ago with a five-year lookback and we have updated figures from the Gaming Commission’s annual and monthly reports. In the now-eight years of statistics, these are the combined losses in cash admissions payments and lost value of those payments for each of our casinos:

Ameristar St. Charles $46,399,739
River City, Lemay $43,956,210
Hollywood, Maryland Heights $42,069,051
Horseshoe (form Lumiere Place), St. Louis $31,287,455
Ameristar Kansas City $36,290,466
Harrah’s NKC $29,250,328
Argosy Riverside $27,274,214
Bally’s KC $21,852,498
IOC Boonville $13,568,851
Century Cape Girardeau $12,712,770
Century Caruthersville $7,200,880
Jo Frontier $8,357,439
Mark Twain, LaGrange $5,718,114

Amendment 2 will only increase those numbers.

Sports wagering backers say sports wagering will generate hundreds of millions of dollars that will make a big difference for the pay of our classroom teacher.

That isn’t true. As mentioned earlier, if voters approved Amendment 2, only a few million will be added to the $10-Billion dollar annual budgets of the elementary and secondary schools and the additional multi-million dollar budgets of our colleges and universities.

The industry has testified that increasing the admission fee to benefit our veterans would be a hardship on the industry, especially the smaller casinos. Bunk. It wasn’t but a few years ago when they paid $100 million a year, or more, for a decade and were not whining about the payments being an economic threat.

The industry has offered no statistical evidence to support its contentions. It has shown no independent studies proving any of the claims made in their advertising leading up to the vote in a few days on Amendment 2.

The industry can’t or won’t supply that information to support its promises and claims. But everything written in his series of posts is backed up by lengthy research.

Not only have the casinos fought efforts to maintain the value of the admission fee for their host cities, they have laid off about 5,500 of their employees since the number peaked at 11,658 in 2008. In the most recent fiscal year, the total was down to 6,079.

Will sports wagering bring back those jobs? Not with 98% of wagers made remotely. We can see a few more people serving drinks in the modest, at best, sportsbooks that will be created in our casinos to handle the few walk-ins. There might be a few runners taking bets to the I-T people—who might represent the biggest employee boost. But the jobs needle won’t move very much.

Let’s look at how much of an economic driver the casinos have caused in our five non-metropolitan areas, where one might suspect significant economic impact would produce community growth. Here are the population numbers for those communities, the census of 1990 first and the 2020 census next:

LaGrange 1,990-825

Caruthersville 7,389-5,562

Cape Girardeau 34,435-39,540

Boonville 7,095-7,969

St. Joseph 71,852-72,473

Five thousand jobs are gone. Limited population growth in some places or losses in others do not indicate casinos are causing their host cities to flourish. Admission Fees are dropping by the thousands, cutting funding for their host cities in half.

We mentioned in an earlier the industry’s claim that casinos “give back generously. Here’s the truth:

Casino “donations” or “contributions” to local causes are pennies on the dollar. Charitable giving during the last six fiscal years has averaged 0.000391% of their adjusted gross revenues. Their adjusted gross receipts have totaled almost $10.5 Billion in those years and their total charitable giving has been just $4.1 million. That’s less than pocket change. And most of those who read these entries give far more than four-ten thousandth of our personal revenues to charities each year.

Again, we have charted the “giving generously” figures for each casino for the last six fiscal years. But we don’t have room for the charts in this post. They are available, though.

A few years ago, casinos started reporting how much their customers left behind for charitable donations. We have spotted six times when the customers provided more than the casinos did.

And that’s just fine with the industry, which fights every effort to restore funding to the towns that welcomed the casinos as great economic boosts for the area. Maybe for a while they were— thirty years ago. But now?

The casinos also do not mention fees in Amendment 2, and for millions of reasons. The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick every year and it’s been getting worse for a long time. It is going to get even worse for host cities if sports wagering is approved next month.

I often wonder if the thirteen host cities ever get reports from their association or consider Missouri Gaming Commission annual reports that track how their fee income has fallen off a cliff and sports wagering will not save it.

Do not look for sports wagering to lead to reopened closed restaurants in our casinos. Not if only two percent of the sports bettors walk through the turnstiles. At one time, local restaurants feared the casinos would take away their business. Today there’s far less competition from the casinos for the restaurant business in many of our towns.

One final thing before we go today:

The sports wagering proposal the casinos want to adopt in this election could be the prototype for expanded remote wagering in all other forms of gambling. As walk-in traffic continues to dwindle, the casinos will be looking for more remote attachments to existing games. Some casinos already have stuck their toes in those waters in recent years with hybrid table games—blackjack and other games in which people who can’t find room at the gaming table go to a computer nearby to place their bets. The tests have not generated many dollars, relatively, but tests have been run. Don’t be surprised if the casinos come back to our lawmakers and ask for remote slot machines and table games—again paying much less tax than those games pay now. It’s a characteristic of business that stacks the cards only for itself.

(We stayed at a casino hotel a few weeks ago and went to the breakfast bar where we placed an order and were given a tag for our table. A few minutes later, a robot playing a catchy tune, came around the corner, and came down the aisle to my table, my order on its tray. I took off the plate and the robot went back to the kitchen, trailing its little melody behind it. One nice thing, I suppose, is that I wasn’t given a choice of 15, 18, or 25 percent for a tip. I found myself wondering how soon there would be robots, not people, dealing the cards or spinning the wheel.)

There go more jobs.

Add the casino host cities to the list of those whose situations will get worse if Amendment 2 is approved with its sweetheart tax rate, its deductions and carryovers, and its reliance on customers who carry casinos in their pockets.

This kind of thing should be handled by our elected representatives and senators, not written by two industries who place profit over any services to the people of the state. But we have this proposal because our elected senators and representatives didn’t do their job. Voters are well-advised to give them another chance by defeating a proposal that enriches the casinos and the pro sports teams and impoverishes our educators, our veterans, and the casinos’ own host cities.

Vote for Amendment 2 if you want. But don’t do it if you think it will benefit anybody but the casinos and the sports teams, no matter what they tell you on the television or with misinformation you will find in your mailbox.

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“Winning For Education Makes Veterans Bigger Losers

Posted on October 16, 2024 by bpriddy

It’s about the time of year for the casino industry to put out its annual news release that the industry will “honor” veterans on Veterans Day, November 11, in “special ways.” Veterans can get free or discounted meals (some specify the meals are from a limited menu) that day. They also can get a card for some free play, or spin a wheel for a chance at a free play card, or get complimentary tickets to a casino entertainment venue—stuff like that.

Of course, the casinos hope the veterans will drop a few dollars at the tables or the slot machines while they are there.

The truth is the casinos care about our veterans only in terms of how much they can take from their pockets and with sports wagering, their regard for veterans sinks to a new low.

“We give back generously,” says the industry’s Missouri web page. Rubbish.

If you are a veteran, know a veteran, and/or are part of a veterans group, you need to read what we are going to tell you today about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2, and circulate it. It makes our veterans even bigger losers than they have been. The casino industry behind this proposition could have written it to solve a major financial problem affecting our veterans. It did not do it.

Should veterans vote for it? It’s up to them. But they should understand that the proposal does more TO veterans than it will do for veterans.

Basic fact: Missouri has seven veterans nursing homes that provide 1238 long-term skilled nursing beds. They are in Cameron, Mexico, St. James, Warrensburg, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, and St. James.

Their major source of funding is from the casino $2 admission fee. Funds raised from that fee go to the Missouri Gaming Commission, which uses some of that money to pay for regulation of the casino industry. Nine million dollars a year are earmarked for the Access Missouri College Scholarship program and the National Guard Trust Fund that provides money for military rites at veterans’ funerals. A tiny amount goes to deal with problem gambling, if the Mental Health Department asks for it from the commissoion. After those deductions are taken, the remainder goes to the Veterans Commission Capital Improvements Trust Fund—which provides money for the seen nursing homes.

Admissions fees at our casinos that go to the veterans homes have been declining from $30.5 million in fiscal year 2012-2013 to just $11.2 million ten years later, a decline of 63%.

A report given to the Veterans Commission in July showed one-third of the nursing home beds were empty. It also showed the average daily cost of providing care had risen from $265 in 2018 to $469 in 2024, a 77% increase—and the purchasing power of each dollar was about 48 cents. .

Veterans Commission representative Aimee Packard told me last week, “Thankfully, the Governor and General Assembly have provided additional state funding to help ensure we are able to continue to care for Missouri’s Veteran heroes.”

Understand something else. These figures represent raw dollars. Because the 1993 law that established the two-dollar admission fee had no escalator clause in it, the admission fee has never been increased to account for inflation. The purchasing power of a 1993 dollar was only 47.5 cents in the most recent fiscal year, meaning the veterans homes are getting far less cash than they did a decade ago while the purchasing power of the buys a lot less at a time when the costs of care are substantially higher.

In other words, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated, as of Monday, the contemporary equivalent of two 1993 dollars is $4.42. The casinos are paying the state two 1993 dollars with purchasing power of only 92 cents while they keep $2.42 in contemporary money. They are making more money on the admission fees than the state is making.

How’s that for supporting our veterans—which the industry has many times patted itself on the back for doing?

What does this mean for sports wagering and veterans?

Simply this: Amendment 2 does nothing to stop this admission fee shortfall. Why?

Industry forecasts dating to 2019 were that 90% of all sports wagers would be done remotely within ten years after the wagering is legalized, meaning there will be no admissions for 90% of all sports wagers.

Will the 10% of bettors who walk through the turnstiles to bet on sports be enough to offset the ongoing 2-3% in overall annual admissions? If it does, the amount of money generated for veterans will be minimal.

And the casinos will pocket all of the revenue from remote sports betting without “contributing” (as they like to phrase it) a dime to the veterans nursing home fund.

Here’s the truth. The casinos like to brag that they have “contributed” or “donated” (by now) $400 million to veterans nursing homes.

You know what donations and contributions are, don’t you? That’s the money you voluntarily drop into the red kettle at Christmas, the pledge you make to Alzheimer’s Walks and Cancer runs, the envelope you drop in the tray at worship services, the check you write to the United Way.

In 2012, when Governor Nixon asked the legislature to increase the admission fees by one dollar, the casino industry sent letters to Missouri newspapers saying (in excerpts): “As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than their fair share for military veterans…. No single industry in Missouri provides that kind of financial support to veterans programs…. We honor and support our military veterans and will continue to do so, and we ask legislators to find an equitable source of funding for veterans homes.”

No single industry provides that kind of support to veterans? If the veterans homes had to rely on “that kind of support,” there would be a lot of boarded-up windows and “no trespassing” signs in a neglected yard.

“As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than their fair share for military veterans?” Doing their “fair share” for veterans. Their fair share has withered in the last decade. The casinos have an interesting definition of “fair share,” don’t they.

With friends such as this, who needs enemies?

Let us be abundantly clear: The casino industry has provided money to the gaming commission and its worthy causes that include veterans only because state law FORCES the industry to make those payments. If this industry was such a great supporter of veterans and their nursing homes, wouldn’t you think it would have voluntarily maintained funding for those it might give a free or reduced-cost meal to on Veterans Day?

The casinos and their sports teams enablers could have written their proposed amendment to establish some kind of remote wagering fee that would stop the financial bleeding for the gaming commission and the veterans nursing homes.

But, no. They didn’t. The casino industry wants to pocket every dime it can, veterans be damned.

So much for giving back generously.

The Veterans Commission Nursing Home program is able to operate only because the legislature for several years has taken money away from other programs to keep the nursing homes open, even at a reduced level.

Before you vote to legalize sports wagering in Missouri, think what you are doing TO our veterans, not for them.

Ask yourself: to whom do we owe a greater allegiance: casinos and millionaires playing sports—or our veterans. And our schools.

If a ten percent tax on sports wagering proposed in the sweetheart deal that is called Amendment 2 will generate $100 million dollars for schools in the next five years, that means the casinos are going to have revenues of more than One BILLION dollars.

A few table scraps will fall to the floor for veterans.

Who needs money more—casinos or veterans and schools? Amendment 2 might produce a drop in education’s bucket. But the veterans bucket will be increasingly dry.

Maybe it would be better for the people you elect to have the courage to represent their constituents on gambling issues. But it’s going to take more political courage than I have seen for several years to do it.

Think about it. Feel free to circulate these postings to your teachers, teacher groups, and veterans and their groups.

Vote how you want. But understand who will be paying for you to have a chance to lose money betting on a sporting event. Our schools and our veterans, that’s who.

There’s a third group that will get the shaft if Amendment 2 passes: the casinos’ own host cities. The casinos don’t give a damn about them, either. That’s next.

One last thing today: We have a comment box at the bottom of each of these entries. Several months ago, a person with the industry was heard in a crowded restaurant where were having dinner with friends say to them—in a voice loud enough to be heard by many of the other diners, “Don’t listen to him; he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

We invite the casino industry to use that box below to prove it.

“Winning for Education” Makes Losers of Teachers, Veterans

Posted on October 14, 2024 by bpriddy

If you are a teacher, know a teacher, and/or are part of a teacher’s organization, you need to read what we are going to tell you about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2, which is deceptive and hardly moves the financial needle for teacher’s salaries.

If you are a veteran, know a veteran, and/or are part of a veterans group, you need to read what we are going to tell you on Wednesday about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2. It makes veterans even bigger losers than they have been.

Today we’re going to talk about the casino industry’s manipulation of voters with its campaign that will not deliver, by far, the great benefits to public education system the casino industry wants voters to think it will.

We are going to throw a lot of numbers your way today. The numbers are based on the casino industry’s own statistics as reported annually to the Missouri Gaming Commission and a couple of other sources.

They again suggest the casino industry is not shooting straight with us. But that’s not unusual.

We do not mind if you favor sports wagering. But if you vote for it on the basis of the advertising by “Winning for Education,” the front organization for the casinos and their sports team bedmates, you need to know what you are doing TO our teachers, not for our teachers.

First: some basic information. Missouri’s thirteen casinos generate revenue for state programs and services from two sources: a 21% tax on casino adjusted gross revenues (what’s left after all successful bettors are paid off) and admission fees ($2 per admission; we won’t distract you with the process of determining admissions; that’s for our next post about making veterans bigger losers than they have been for more than a decade).

Missouri had 521 school districts in fiscal year 2023. We will use that number in our calculations. It had 88,669 classroom teachers and 18,097 administrators and supervisors (including people such as guidance counselors, school nurses, and librarians), in 2,355 buildings. The enrollment for the 2022-23 school year was 861,494.

The legislature approved a budget for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education of $10,394,092,704 for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Gaming consultant Chris Krafcik estimates total state revenue from the 10% tax on sports wagering will produce $4.7 million in the first year and $38.7 million in the fifth year of sports betting.

If we divide those figures by 521, the number of school districts, we find that sports wagering will produce an average of only $9,021 per district in the first year. In year five, the number rises to $74,280 per district.

If we divide those numbers by 88,669 (the number of classroom teachers listed above) we find the average teacher could get a raise of $53.00 in the first year and a raise of $436 in the fifth year. Not even close to keep up with the cost of living.

If we spread those amounts among teachers AND administrators, all 106,756 of them, the average wage increase in the first year is $44 and in year five, it is $369.

That’s less than a tank of gas in the first year and not many groceries in the fifth one.

If, after looking at these numbers, that you still believe the industry commercials saying sports wagering will make any significant difference in the Missouri teacher salaries, I will sell you the Gateway Arch. The attractive teachers in the commercials who talk of sports wagering generating more than $100 million dollars in five years are blowing smoke. While the statement might be true in terms of raising that amount of money, the suggestion that it will produce anything meaningful for teachers is cattle byproduct.

Let’s assume the elementary and secondary education budget does not increase in the next five years. Simple division indicates $38.7 million for education in the fifth year of sports wagering would add .00037% to that budget. Four ten-thousandths of one percent, to round things up.

It’s even worse. These numbers only involve elementary and secondary education. The proposed amendment says funds will go to higher education, too.

Missouri has SIXTY-SEVEN institutions that are accredited as degree-granting post-secondary education institutions. There are thirteen public universities. There are 39 private universities (which are not excluded. The language of the amendment says only “higher education.”), and thirteen community colleges. There also are some schools from other states that offer programs or degrees in Missouri. The amendment contains no language limiting the funding to public post-secondary schools, not does it address in any way those out-of=state institutions with degree programs here.

We haven’t come up with how many faculty, staff, and administrative employees those higher education institutions would add to the pie.

But the school won’t get all of that money to begin with, assuming there is money from casino taxes.

Money for education will not be used for education until amounts are taken out for:

—Regulation. The Missouri Gaming Commission can have some of that money if the various licensing fees casinos will pay do not fully pay the costs of regulation, and

—“the greater of 10% of such annual tax revenues or $5,000,000 to the Compulsive Gamblers Fund.”

Those paltry raises we’ve calculated for our elementary and secondary school folks might wind up being measured in pennies, or pocket change.

And that doesn’t even calculate how much MORE education would get if sports wagering would be taxed at the same rate as other forms of Missouri gambling, 21%. But Amendment 2 sets a rate at less than half of that and then has provisions that can significantly lower taxable revenue or even make it a deficit, meaning there will be some months when the casinos put NO money into the education fund.

The amendment also allows casinos to carry over the loss to the next month’s calculations, lowering tax revenue for that month too—or increasing the possibility that a casino can calculate another zero-revenue/zero tax month.

In the 2023 legislative session, a Senate bill proposed boosting the minimum teacher’s salary from $25,000 to $38,000 and increasing the salary for a teacher with a master’s degree and at least ten years of experience from $33,000 to $46,000. The bill never came to a vote because of internal dissension within the Senate, thanks to the Freedom Caucus.

The National Education Association April 24, 2023 released a report showing Missouri ranks 50^th in starting teacher pay with an average of $34,502 with only 43 districts paying started new teachers $40,000 or more. The report calculated a minimum living wage was $46,944.

A World Population Review study of 2024 salaries lists Missouri as one of seven states starting teachers at less than $50,000 with only Montana paying less. The overall Missouri average teacher salary in this study is $53,999, ranking Missouri 46^th ahead of Mississippi, South Dakota, Florida, and West Virginia.

Yeah, sports wagering will solve a lot of problems with our teacher salaries and other education system problems.. Suuuure it will.

Don’t bet on sports wagering because it will do wonderful things for our schools. It won’t. Amendment 2 just makes the drop in the bucket even smaller, thanks to the sweetheart tax rate and the deductions that now will allow a reduction of taxable revenue.

We aren’t sure why any dubious proposition that appears on our ballots thinks it can succeed by telling you it will do great things for education. They don’t. And this one surely won’t.

Governor Joe Teasdale once told me, “I’ll never lie to you but there will be times when I won’t tell you the truth.” I interpreted the second half of that sentence to contradict the first. But that’s the kind of disinformation campaign being waged by the casino industry and its bedmates, our major league sports teams.

But what do you expect from an industry that is built on the concept that you will be a loser more often than you will be a winner?

Give your local education leaders these numbers and see how many of your teachers would make commercials endorsing this proposal.

Amendment 2 will be a loser for our schools. You can bet on it.

The Mugging of Missouri—Preview (and a correction**)

Posted on September 23, 2024 by bpriddy

The Missouri Gaming Commission has released its report for Fiscal Year 2023-2024. Your careful observer will be spending a few days updating his statistical tables while at the same time researching material for a speech at the Missouri River Regional Library on October 8^th that will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the document that created this nation (no, it wasn’t the Declaration of Independence but I will be referring to two words in the Declaration as well as some words spoken in Washington four score and seven years later).

But when we return to the topic, we will show you why Amendment 2 not only represents a mugging of our public education system, but how it also deepens the decades of the casino industry’s mugging of our veterans nursing home program and their own host cities.

***We have corrected a paragraph in our previous post on Amendment 2 in which we addressed Highway Patrol security at casinos and said the casinos do not reimburse the gaming commission for those expenses. We have corrected that paragraph to read:

The Highway Patrol provides security officers at our casinos. In the original version of this post, we reported the casinos do not reimburse the state for the costs of that security. We were incorrect. The annual report for FY2023-24, which became available to us after the original publication of this review, shows the casinos reimbursed the gaming commission $15.4 million for enforcement, a category that not only includes watching out for unlawful activity on the gaming floor but also includes investigations of those seeking various licenses connected to casino gambling.

We will continue to review our posts on this subject. It is not our intent to mislead our readers as we cast a critical eye at the claims of the industry and its allied professional sports teams.

Feel free to circulate these observations to friends, education groups, local newspapers, veterans groups, and your state legislators and/or candidates. And don’t be afraid to react in the box at the end of our entries. We enjoy hearing from our participants in these public dialogues.

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Winning for Education is a Loser for Education—(updated to include corrected information regarding enforcement of gaming laws)

Posted on September 16, 2024 by bpriddy

—and for everybody but our casinos and our pro sports teams.

After watching an wholesome young woman, who describes herself in a commercial as a mother and a former teacher, tell me that approval of Amendment 2 in November (Sports Wagering) will mean millions of dollars for our public schools, I stopped by the State Auditor’s office to get some information that would tell me if the commercial is true.

I wanted the truth because my experience is that the casino industry and the sports teams pushing to legalize sports wagering have not been shooting straight for years with the legislature and now they are not shooting straight with us, the voters.

When a court ruling recently allowed the amendment to be on the November ballot, spokesman Jack Cardetti with Winning for Education, the misleadingly named organization campaigning for voter approval, proclaimed the decision a “big victory” that will “provide tens of millions in permanent, dedicated funding each year for our public schools.” And he sounded the long-spoken mantra of the movement that approval would end Missourians going to other states for sports betting “which deprives our Missouri public schools of much-needed funding. A vote for Amendment 2 will bring those dollars back to Missouri classrooms.”

The fiscal note, as the document is called, tells a far different story about Amendment 2, the way it is written and the situations it creates. And it suggests the claim that approval would provide “tens of millions in permanent dedicated funding” for education is much less than fully true.

Your faithful observer has opposed the sports wagering bills in the legislature for several years, not because he opposes casinos (that issue was settled in 1992) or sports wagering. I have no use for them, but I have friends who lose as much money in an evening at a casino as I will spend treating Nancy to dinner and a movie or something like that. I leave the moral judgments on these issues to others. I am opposed, however, to casino and sports teams masquerading their multi-million dollar money-grabs as great benefits to the state, particularly to education which the fiscal note states clearly is not the case.

Those two industries will write as many checks as they need to, to sell the idea that sports wagering will make the state financially better off. Far from it, as I hope you will learn today as we review the fiscal note for Amendment 2.

Let us start with something not in the fiscal note. Casinos will pay a 10% tax on revenues from sports wagering if Amendment 2 passes. Revenues from the two forms of gambling we have now—slots and table games—are taxed at 21%. The amendment, therefore, proposes an AVERAGE tax rate for all forms of gambling of 15.5%.

That’s right. Vote for Amendment 2 and you are voting to give the $1.9 Billion casino industry that plans to grow by hundreds of millions more an overall 25% tax cut. We will return to this issue later.

The Auditor, in assembling the fiscal note, asked a long list of state agencies to determine if the proposal has a monetary impact on them, positive or negative. Most say it won’t affect them but the Department of Revenue, which collects taxes from you, me, sports teams, and casinos, concludes after a lengthy division-by-division assessment:

“The Department of Revenue assumes this IP will not generate any revenue to the state.”

(“IP” refers to the initiative petition.) Then, the fiscal note details why it won’t.

Although the teams and the casinos will claim great financial benefits for the state, the department points out that Amendment 2 does not give the Revenue Department any power to COLLECT any taxes or fees. While the Gaming Commission is authorized to issue licenses for mobile betting companies, it is not authorized to COLLECT any of those fees. “It appears these retail license fees will not generate any revenue to the state, the Commission, or to the Compulsive Gaming Prevention Fund,” says the assessment of licensing fees, a phrasing used two other times on two other issues.

While the proposed amendment sets a ten percent tax on sports wagering revenues, says the fiscal note, it does not require casinos to pay it. “Without the identification of an agency to collect the tax, no tax can be collected,” says the study.

The department estimates initial costs of additional staff will be more than $1.6 million with ongoing costs of more than $1.2 million, with those moneys paid out of the state gaming fund, again, lowering the amount available to education. However, as noted by the Revenue Department, there is no power for the department to collect those funds from the casinos.

The Missouri Gaming Commission, which told me earlier this year was short 23 people already and is stretched thin just keeping up with contemporary responsibilities, estimates it will need to hire fifteen new people just to regulate sports wagering. The total cost of their salaries, benefits, and expenses is put at almost four million dollars a year and increasing in future years with salary and benefits increases.

Now, let’s do some simple math. The gaming commission estimates it will collect $11.75 million in licensing fees in the first year. Licenses last five years so there would be little or no revenue for the next three years until renewals would produce a new revenue stream. After the commission takes out its costs, the amendment requires ten percent of the revenues or five-million dollars a year go into the Compulsive Gambling Prevention Fund.

Here’s some more simple math: The Gaming Commission estimates casino taxable revenues, before any deductions, could total $1,044,684,610.20 in the first five years. That’s Billion.

At ten percent, the state could receive $104,468,461.02 during that time. If that amount were taxed at the same rate Missouri taxes slot machine and table game revenues (21%), the state would realize $219,383,768.14 before casino deductions allowed in the amendment.

So Cardetti is correct. Education will get tens of millions of dollars—-$104.5 million in the first five years. But our schools would receive $219.3 million if sports wagering was taxed at the same rate charged slot machines and table games. To bring this down to a more easily-grasped situation: If someone were to offer to give you $10,500 if you gave them $21,900, would you take that deal? Supporters of Amendment 2 hope you will.

There is no reason Missourians should accept a ten percent tax on sports wagering. Fourteen states have gaming taxes of more than the proposed ten percent including neighboring states of Illinois (20-40), Arkansas (13-20), and Nebraska (20). Three states tax sports wagering at 50-51% (Delaware, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island). Pickswise.com says the national average is 19%.

While the commission calculates the $104.5 million in taxes that the state might get in the next five years “may be sufficient to cover the Missouri Gaming commission costs to license and regulate sports wagering,” there is a major caveat. The calculations “are uncertain based on the inclusion of a deduction for ‘any federal tax’ with no corresponding definition or explanation as to what that would include.” Such a deduction, and others allowed in the proposal, can significantly cut revenues to the state.

Long story short: “There is concern that the licensing fees will not cover the expenses of the Missouri Gaming Commission…during the years in which licensing fees and renewals are not collected (i.e. years two, three, and four,” says the Revenue Department. On top of that is the failure of the proposal to state where those fees would be deposited. Also not clear is how that money will be disbursed if and when it is collected and deposited.

The Commission now has no limits on fines for sports wagering operators for violations of the laws and rules. The proposed amendment limits those penalties. Bad idea, says the commission. Casinos, of course, think it’s just swell.

And getting back to that $104.5 million for education. The proposition says tax revenue will go to elementary and secondary education only after the Commission takes out its “reasonable expenses” plus another five-million dollars for the gambler’s fund. In years when little or no renewal or licensing fees are collected, the MGC will have to dip into the tax funds that would otherwise go to the schools to pay its bills and to put that five-million dollars aside for the problem gamblers fund—which the gaming commission would oversee, although it thinks the Department of Mental Health would do a better job. So, in years two, three, and four, the tens of millions for education will be reduced by some, or several, tens.

Now, here is the capper.

All of these calculations of state revenues are completely uncertain—

—because this proposition, for the first time, allows casinos to deduct a lot of money from the revenues that are taxed. So in addition to a sports wagering tax rate that is less than half the rate on other forms of gambling and creates a 25% cut in the overall gambling tax rate, the casinos want voters to approve a system that lessens the amount that can be taxed and, in fact, will allow casinos to pay NO tax, perhaps for months at a time.

If you want to know what that could mean, says the Gaming Commission, look at Kansas.

In February 2023, Kansans wagered more than $194 million in sports bets. The state, however, received $1,134 in state tax revenue due to language permitting operators to deduct free play or promotional credits before assessing their state taxes. Some operators had not paid any state taxes through the first quarter of 2023 due to the deductions they were permitted to claim.

February, folks. That’s Super Bowl month when a lot of Missourians (according to the casino industry) went to Kansas to bet. And the state of Kansas—with provisions similar to those the casinos want to enact in Missouri—was paid only $1,134 dollars in taxes on $194 million in bets.

It could happen here because the proposed amendment allows a casino whose accountants calculate losses for one month to carry over the loss to the next month’s calculations, leading the Commission to conclude, “The totality of the deductions…will result in sports wagering licensees showing negative adjusted gross revenues and therefore paying no sports wagering tax…The carryover provisions…would further impact the ability of the Commission to meet its reasonable expenses and further impact or eliminate contributions to the Compulsive Gambling Fund and education in the state of Missouri.”

Read that again—Provisions of this proposed amendment might NOT put millions into our education system at all. Instead, they could “impact or eliminate” contributions to our schools.

So—the basic question for the people of Missouri is this: Who is being honest with you? Is it the Department of Revenue and the Missouri Gaming Commission, or is it an industry that flourishes because its games are guaranteed to take all of your money sooner or later?

And the casinos want to keep it all. The records show that the gaming industry will not leave a penny behind in Missouri that the people and the state do not force it by law—not written by the gaming industry—to leave.

The proposition that the attractive mother and former school teacher wants you to think will be wonderful for our schools is a shell game without a pea.

And believe it or not, this is only part of the story. There is more. And it’s equally bad, if not worse—especially if you are a veteran and if your city has a casino in it.

We’ll get to that later.

If you want to read the entire fiscal note, ask the State Auditor’s office to send you fiscal note 24-160.

Some of you might be much more sophisticated mathematicians than I am. Please let me know if there are unwarranted or even plain erroneous assumptions in any of the statistics quoted here. I would note, however, that they are based on the State Auditor’s fiscal note for Amendment 2. If necessary, corrections will be made in this entry and a future entry will ask readers to go back and note the corrections.

Fact Checking The Debate

Posted on September 13, 2024 by bpriddy

We don’t usually post something on Friday but the timing of the debate and its evaluation of it fits the weeks schedule, so we return to CNN and its fact-checker Daniel Dale and his staff. When first published on the CNN Politics web page, it carried the message that it would take 38 minutes to read. We publish it to be consistent with previous fact-checking postings.

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Former President Donald Trump delivered more than 30 false claims during Tuesday’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, CNN’s preliminary count found – as he did during his June debate against President Joe Biden.

Trump again delivered a staggering quantity and variety of false claims, some of which were egregious lies about topics including abortion, immigration and the economy.

Harris was far more accurate than Trump; CNN’s preliminary count found just one false claim from the vice president, though she also added some claims that were misleading or lacking in key context.

Here is a fact check of some of the remarks made by each candidate.

Harris on Trump’s tariff plan

Former Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday night’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s policies would result in a “Trump sales tax” that would raise prices for middle class families by about $4,000 a year.

Facts First: The claim is reasonable enough, but it’s worth explaining that Harris is referring to Trump’s proposal to implement new tariffs if he returns to the White House.

Trump has called for adding a tariff of 10% to 20% on all imports from all countries, as well as another tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports.

Together, a 20% across-the-board tariff with a 60% tariff on Chinese-made goods would amount to about a $3,900 annual tax increase for a middle-income family, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund a liberal think tank.

If the 20% tariff was just 10%, as Trump sometimes suggests, the total impact for middle-class families could be $2,500 a year, according to CAP.

Separate studies estimate that the impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs would also raise prices for families, but by a lower amount. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated the new duties would cost the average middle-class household about $1,700 annually. And the Tax Policy Center said the impact could be $1,350 a year for middle-income households.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Trump on inflation during his presidency

Former President Donald Trump claimed in Tuesday’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that there was virtually no inflation during his administration.

“I had no inflation, virtually no inflation,” Trump said.

Facts First: This is false. Cumulative inflation over the course of Trump’s presidency was about 7.8%.

Inflation was low at the end of Trump’s term, having plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic. The year-over-year inflation rate was about 1.4% in January 2021, the month Trump left office.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby

Trump claims migrants are arriving to US from prisons and mental institutions

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated a claim that migrants are arriving to the US after fleeing prisons and mental institutions.

“We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump claimed. Trump makes this claim often, and he’s often alleged that jails and mental institutions are being emptied out deliberately to somehow dump people upon the U.S.Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim.

Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told CNN last year they had not heard of anything that would corroborate Trump’s story, as did three experts at organizations favorable toward immigration. CNN’s own search did not produce any evidence. The website FactCheck.org also found nothing.

Trump has sometimes tried to support his claim by making another claim that the global prison population is down. But that’s wrong, too. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.

In response to CNN’s 2023 inquiry, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung cited one source for Trump’s claim about prisons being emptied for migration purposes – a 2022 article from right-wing website Breitbart News about a supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol agents that Venezuela had done this. But that vague and unverified claim about Venezuela’s actions has never been corroborated.

And a second article that Cheung cited at the time, about Mexico’s president having freed 2,685 prisoners, was not about migration at all; that article simply explained that the president had freed them “as part of an effort to free those who have not committed serious crimes or were being held unjustly.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer

Trump on the number of undocumented immigrants under Biden

Former President Donald Trump claimed during Tuesday night’s debate that “21 million people” are crossing the border monthly into the United States under President Joe Biden.

Facts First: This number is false. The total number of “encounters” at the northern and southern borders from February 2021 through July 2024, at both legal ports of entry and in between those ports, was roughly 10 million, far less than Trump’s “21 million” figure.

An “encounter” does not mean a person was let into the country; some people encountered are promptly sent away. Even if you added the estimated number of “gotaways” (people who evaded the Border Patrol to enter illegally), which House Republicans have said is more than 1.7 million during the Biden-Harris administration, “the totals would still be vastly smaller than 15, 16 or 18 million,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute think tank, said in an email in June, when Trump made similar claims.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Harris on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling

Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday night’s debate that the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Trump would “essentially be immune from any misconduct” undertaken by him while in the White House.

“Let’s talk about extreme and understand the context in which this election in 2024 is taking place. The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again,” she said.

Facts First: This needs context. In their decision in July in the historic case, the six conservative justices granted Trump some presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, but not blanket immunity, as the former president had sought in his federal election subversion case. The court said Trump could not be criminally pursued over “official acts,” but that he could face prosecution over alleged criminal actions involving “unofficial acts” taken while in office.

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the conservative majority.

From CNN’s Devan Cole

Trump repeats false claim about migrants eating people’s pets

Former President Donald Trump repeated a false claim at Tuesday’s debate that has been promoted by numerous prominent Republicans in the past week, including Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance. Trump claimed that Haitian migrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, are stealing people’s pet dogs and cats and eating them.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Facts First: This is false. The City of Springfield and the local police have said they have seen no evidence for the claim – which appeared to originate from a Facebook post in which someone purporting to be a local resident passed along what they said was a story about their neighbor’s daughter’s friend.

In a statement to CNN on Monday, a spokesperson for the City of Springfield said “there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

The Springfield News-Sun reported that “the Springfield Police Division said Monday morning they have received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten.”

Vance acknowledged on social media on Tuesday that it is “possible” that the “rumors” he has heard from local residents “will turn out to be false,” though he also encouraged people to “keep the cat memes flowing.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Michael Williams

Trump on who pays for tariffs

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday the United States took in billions of dollars from China as a result of his tariffs.

Facts First: Trump’s claim about how tariffs work is false. A US tariff is paid by importing businesses in the United States – not other countries – when a foreign-made good arrives at the American border.

Here’s how tariffs work: When the United States puts a tariff on an imported good, the cost of the tariff usually comes directly out of the bank account of an American importer.

Study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission, have found that Americans have borne almost the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products.

It’s true that the US Treasury has collected more than $242 billion from the tariffs Trump imposed on imported solar panels, steel and aluminum, and Chinese-made goods – but those duties were paid by US importers, not the country of China.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Harris on her stance on fracking

During Tuesday night’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “I made it that very clear in 2020 – I will not ban fracking,” though she had said, while running in the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

Facts First: This is misleading. Harris did not make her position on fracking clear during her only debate in 2020, the general election’s vice presidential debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence; Harris never explicitly stated a personal position on fracking during that debate.

Rather, she said that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, would not ban fracking if he was elected president. Harris said in the 2020 vice presidential debate: “Joe Biden will not end fracking”; “I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”

It made sense that Harris was addressing Biden’s plans at the time given that the president sets administration policy. But contrary to her claim on Tuesday, neither of these 2020 debate comments made clear that she personally held a different view on the subject than she had the year prior.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Ella Nilsen

Trump falsely claims US experienced highest inflation ever under Biden

Former President Donald Trump said the US experienced “the highest inflation” ever under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Facts First: Trump’s claim that inflation was at its highest under the Biden-Harris administration is false. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, hit 9.1% in June 2022. That wasn’t the highest ever recorded. Rather, it was the highest inflation rate in nearly forty years. For instance, in 1980, inflation hit nearly 15%, according to CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some of the earliest inflation data the BLS maintains indicates that inflation was even higher in 1917, when it was trending at nearly 18%.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Trump on Harris’ previous run for president

Former President Donald Trump claimed that when Vice President Kamala Harris previously ran for the presidency, during the 2020 election cycle, she was the very first candidate to drop out of a crowded Democratic primary.

“When she ran, she was the first one to leave because she failed,” Trump claimed, referring to Harris’ 2020 bid, while arguing that Harris didn’t receive any votes this primary cycle because President Joe Biden was still at top of the ticket during the primaries.

Facts First: This is false. Harris was far from the first candidate to drop out of that Democratic primary when she exited the race in early December 2019

Harris was preceded by the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City and sitting or former members of the House of Representatives and Senate, plus some others.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

 Trump on Harris’ border role

Former President Donald Trump claimed at Tuesday’s debate that Vice President Kamala Harris has been the Biden administration’s “border czar.”

“Remember that she was a border czar,” Trump said. “She doesn’t want to be called the border czar because she’s embarrassed by the border.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim about Harris’ border role is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.

Some Republicans have scoffed at assertions that Harris was never the “border czar,” noting on social media that news articles sometimes described Harris as such. But those articles were wrong. Various news outlets, including CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House emphasized that Harris had not been put in charge of border security as a whole, as “border czar” strongly suggests, and had instead been handed a diplomatic task related to Central American countries.

A White House “fact sheet” in July 2021 said: “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order that called for the development of a Root Causes Strategy. Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”

Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic effort” to address factors causing migration in the three “Northern Triangle” countries. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day). Biden listed factors in these countries he thought had led to migration and said that “if you deal with the problems in-country, it benefits everyone.” And Harris’ comments that day were focused squarely on “root causes.”

Republicans can fairly say that even “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby

Trump claims legal scholars wanted states, not the federal government, to decide how to regulate abortion

Former President Donald Trump repeated a version of one of his frequent claims Tuesday night that legal scholars wanted Roe v. Wade overturned so individual states could instead decide how to regulate abortion.

“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote, and that’s what happened,” Trump said. “It’s the vote of the people, now it’s not tied up in the federal government.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Many legal scholars wanted the right to have an abortion preserved in federal law, as several told CNN when Trump made a similar claim in April.

Some legal scholars who support abortion rights had wanted Roe written in a different way, including even the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but that isn’t the same as saying that “every legal scholar” believed Roe should be overturned and sent to the states.

“Any claim that all legal scholars wanted Roe overturned is mind-numbingly false,” Rutgers Law School professor Kimberly Mutcherson, a legal scholar who supported the preservation of Roe, said in April.

“Donald Trump’s claim is flatly incorrect,” another legal scholar who did not want Roe overturned, Maya Manian, an American University law professor and faculty director of the university’s Health Law and Policy Program, said in April.

Trump’s claim is “obviously not” true, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who is an expert on the history of the US abortion debate. Ziegler, who also did not want Roe overturned, said in an April interview: “Most legal scholars probably track most Americans, who didn’t want to overturn Roe … It wasn’t as if legal scholars were somehow outliers.”.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jen Christensen

Trump blames Rep. Nancy Pelosi for poor security at the Capitol on Jan. 6

Former President Donald Trump claimed during the debate on Tuesday that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, was responsible for inadequate security at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“Nancy Pelosi was responsible. She didn’t do her job,” he said.

Facts First: This claim is false. The speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. Capitol security is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, a body that includes the sergeants at arms of the House and the Senate. Pelosi’s office has explicitly said she was not presented with an offer of 10,000 National Guardsmen as Trump has claimed, telling CNN last year that claims to the contrary are “lies.” And even if Pelosi had been told of an offer of National Guard troops, she would not have had the power to turn it down. The speaker of the House has no authority to prevent the deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard, which reports to the president (whose authority was delegated, under a decades-old executive order, to the Secretary of the Army).

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump claims Harris met with Putin days before Russian invasion

Former President Donald Trump claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris met with Russian President Vladimir Putin days before Russia invaded Ukraine and failed to deter him from the invasion.

“They sent her to negotiate peace before this war started,” Trump said, referring to Harris. “Three days later, he went in, and he started the war because everything they said was weak and stupid.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Harris was not sent to negotiate peace, and she has never met with Putin. In reality, she met with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, at the Munich Security Conference in the days before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin was not at the conference.

“Frankly speaking, I cannot recall a single contact between President Putin and Mrs. Harris,” a Kremlin spokesperson said in July, according to a state-owned Russian news agency.

The Biden administration was still trying to deter an invasion of Ukraine at the time of Harris’ 2022 trip to the conference in Germany, but top administration officials, including President Joe Biden himself, made clear that they believed Putin was already moving toward invading. As Harris was on her way to Germany, Biden told reporters that he thought a Russian attack “will happen in the next several days.”

CNN reported on the day the Munich conference began that a senior administration official said Harris had three key objectives: “Focus on the ‘fast-changing’ situation on the ground, maintain full alignment with partners and send a clear message to Russia that the US prefers diplomacy but is ready in case of Russian aggression.”

The Munich conference was held from February 18 to February 20, 2022; Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer

Trump repeats familiar claim about military equipment left in Afghanistan during withdrawal

In Tuesday night’s debate, former President Donald Trump repeated a familiar claim, which he has made in speech after speech, that the US left $85 billion worth of military equipment to the Taliban when President Joe Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.

“We wouldn’t have left $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure – it’s closer to $83 billion – for the total amount of money Congress appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A fraction of this funding was for equipment.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Harris claims Trump left with worst unemployment since Great Depression

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday claimed that former President Donald Trump left office “with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression.”

Facts First: Harris’ claim is false.

In January 2021, when Trump left office, the official unemployment rate was 6.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.8% in April 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down global economies, including that of the US. That was the highest rate since 1939, according to BLS historical records.

Nearly 22 million jobs were lost under Trump in March and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. But by the time Trump left office, the unemployment rate had gone down.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump’s claim about jobs created under Biden administration

Former President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that 818,000 of the jobs created under the Biden-Harris administration from April 2023 to March 2024 were a “fraud.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false and needs additional context.

Trump was referring to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recently released preliminary estimate for its annual benchmark revision that suggested there were 818,000 fewer jobs for the year ended in March 2024 than were initially reported.

Economic data is often revised, especially as more comprehensive information becomes available, to provide a clearer, more accurate picture of the dynamics at play.

Every year – including the four years when Trump was president – the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts a thorough review of the survey-based employment estimates from the monthly jobs report and reconciles those estimates with fuller employment counts measured by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program.

This annual process, called a benchmarking, provides a near-complete employment count, because the BLS can correct for sampling and modeling errors from the surveys and re-anchor those estimates to unemployment insurance tax records. The revision process is two-fold: A preliminary estimate is released in mid-August, and the final revision is issued in February, alongside the January jobs report.

While the recently announced preliminary revision (which amounts to 0.5% of total employment) was the largest downward revision since 2009 (which was -902,000, or -0.7%), there have been other large revisions made in recent years – notably a downward revision of 514,000 jobs (-0.3%) for the year ended in March 2019, during the Trump administration.

The preliminary revision was larger than typical, but economists and even a Trump-appointed BLS commissioner have publicly stated that there is nothing nefarious at play. Revisions of this size typically happen at turning points in the economy, when the BLS’ methodology is less reliable, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Additionally, the pandemic had a seismic effect on the economy as well as the gold standard methods used to measure it, so this large revision is likely a reflection of that. Specifically, the BLS’ model for capturing business “births and deaths” is likely overstating new firm formation while underestimating deaths, Oxford Economics’ Chief US Economist Ryan Sweet told CNN.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump claims Biden took money from China, Ukraine

Former President Donald Trump claimed that President Joe Biden has taken money from China and Ukraine, including $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow.

Facts First: There is no public evidence that Joe Biden received money from any foreign entities while in office or as a private citizen. While investigations by House Republicans have found that Biden family members who have been involved in business, including his son Hunter Biden and brother James Biden (“and their related companies”), have received over $18 million from foreign entities, they have found no proof to date that the president himself received any foreign money.

Roughly a year after launching their impeachment inquiry into Biden and more than three years into Biden’s presidency, the closest House Republicans have gotten to connecting the president to money earned by his family members is in finding that the president received personal checks from his brother while he was a private citizen after his vice presidency. Republicans have questioned the legitimacy of these transactions and used them to suggest that Joe Biden did benefit from his brother’s relationships with foreign entities. But banking records provide substantial evidence that Joe Biden had made loans to his brother and then was paid back without interest, as House Democrats have said.

Biden said at a presidential debate against Trump in 2020: “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”

The Washington Post dove into the allegations in 2022 that Hunter Biden received money from the wife of the Moscow mayor. But there’s no evidence that Joe Biden had any involvement regardless.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jeremy Herb

Trump falsely claims Biden orchestrated criminal cases against him

Former President Donald Trump repeated a claim he has made on numerous occasions during his campaign – that the Biden administration orchestrated a criminal election subversion case that was brought against him by a local district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, a criminal fraud case that was brought against him by a local district attorney in Manhattan, and a civil fraud case that was brought against him by the attorney general of New York state.

Facts First: This is false. There is no evidence that Biden or his administration were behind any of these cases. None of these officials reports to the president or even to the federal government.

Attorney General Merrick Garland testified to Congress in early June about the Manhattan case in which Trump was found guilty: “The Manhattan district attorney has jurisdiction over cases involving New York state law, completely independent of the Justice Department, which has jurisdiction over cases involving federal law. We do not control the Manhattan district attorney. The Manhattan district attorney does not report to us. The Manhattan district attorney makes its own decisions about cases that he wants to bring under his state law.”

As he did in his conversation with Musk, Trump has repeatedly invoked a lawyer on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, while making such claims; Colangelo left the Justice Department in 2022 to join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg. But there is no evidence that Biden had anything to do with Colangelo’s employment decision. Colangelo and Bragg were colleagues in the New York attorney general’s office before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney in 2021.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Harris overstates the effect of the $50,000 start-up deduction she proposed

Vice President Kamala Harris implied Tuesday that all prospective start-up business owners will be able to take advantage of the $50,000 tax deduction she’s proposing for new small businesses, saying that it will help them “pursue their ambitions.”

“I have a plan to give startup businesses $50,000 tax deduction to pursue their ambitions, their innovation, their ideas, their hard work,” Harris said.

Facts First: Harris’ point about new business owners being able to benefit from the deduction she’s proposed lacks context.

“Businesses that fail before they begin to turn a profit won’t be able to utilize the deduction, because to take a deduction you have to have taxable income to deduct against,” Erica York, a senior economist at the right-leaning Tax Foundation, told CNN.

In other words, the tax deduction may not ultimately help businesses owners get off the ground and running initially. However, it may help lower their tax burden over time, but only if they turn a profit.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Trump claims Biden job growth was all ‘bounce-back jobs’

Former President Donald Trump said of the Biden-Harris administration, “the only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs” that “bounced back and it went to their benefit,” but “I was the one that created them.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims that the job growth during the Biden-Harris administration presidency has been all “bounce-back” gains where people went back to their old jobs is not fully correct.

More than 21 million jobs were lost under Trump in March and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. Following substantial relief and recovery measures, the US started regaining jobs immediately, adding more than 12 million jobs from May 2020 through December 2020, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The recovery continued after Biden took office, with the US reaching and surpassing its pre-pandemic (February 2020) employment totals in June 2022.

The job gains didn’t stop there. Since June 2022 and through August 2024, the US has added nearly 6.4 million more jobs in what’s become the fifth-longest period of employment expansion on record. In total under the Biden-Harris administration, around 16 million jobs have been added.

But it’s not entirely fair nor accurate to say the jobs gained were all “bounce-back” or were people simply returning to their former positions.

The pandemic drastically reshaped the employment landscape. For one, a significant portion of the labor force did not return due to early retirements, deaths, long Covid or caregiving responsibilities.

Additionally, because of shifts in consumer spending patterns as well as health-and-safety implications, public-facing industries could not fully reopen or restaff immediately. Some of those workers found jobs in other industries or used the opportunity to start their own businesses.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump falsely says he rebuilt the US military

Former President Donald Trump repeated Tuesday past claims that he “rebuilt our entire military.”

“We’re going to end up in a third world war, and it will be a war like no other. Because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry. I rebuilt our entire military. She gave a lot of it away to the Taliban. She gave it to Afghanistan,” he said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim to have rebuilt the entire military is false. “This claim is not even close to being true. The military has tens of thousands of pieces of equipment, and the vast majority of it predates the Trump administration,” Todd Harrison, an expert on the defense budget and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told CNN in November.

Harrison said in a November email: “Moreover, the process of acquiring new equipment for the military is slow and takes many years. It’s not remotely possible to replace even half of the military’s inventory of equipment in one presidential term. I just ran the numbers for military aircraft, and about 88% of the aircraft in the U.S. military inventory today (including Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft) were built before Trump took office. In terms of fighters in particular, we still have F-16s and F- 15s in the Air Force that are over 40 years old.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on US and European aid to Ukraine

Former President Donald Trump complained that the US had given $250 billion to $275 billion in aid to Ukraine while European countries had given just $100 billion to $150 billion even though they are located closer to Ukraine.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. In total, European countries have contributed significantly more aid to Ukraine than the US has during and just before the Russian invasion began in early 2022, according to data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany.

The Kiel Institute, which closely tracks aid to Ukraine, found that, from late January 2022 (just before Russia’s invasion in February 2022) through June 2024, the European Union and individual European countries had committed a total of about $207 billion to Ukraine, in military, financial and humanitarian assistance, compared to about $109 billion (€98.4 billion) committed by the US. Europe also exceeded the US in aid that had actually been “allocated” to Ukraine – defined by the institute as aid either delivered or specified for delivery – at about $122 billion (€110.21 billion) for Europe compared to about $83 billion (€75.1 billion) for the US.

In addition, Europe had committed more total military aid to Ukraine, at about $88 billion (79.57 billion euro) to about $72 billion (64.87 billion euro) for the US. The US narrowly led on military aid that had actually been allocated, at about $56.91 billion for the US (51.58 billion euro) to about $56.84 billion for Europe (51.52 billion euro), but that was nowhere near the lopsided margin Trump suggested.

It’s important to note that it’s possible to come up with different totals using different methodology. And the Kiel Institute found that Ukraine itself was getting only about half of the money in a 2024 US bill that had widely been described as a $61 billion aid bill for Ukraine; the institute said the rest of the funds were mostly going to the Defense Department.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on crime statistics

Former President Donald Trump claimed during the debate on Tuesday that “crime in this country is through the roof.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that crime rates are up is false. And while it is true that the FBI’s most recent data did not include some large cities, crime counts still show a downward trend as both violent crime and property crime dropped significantly in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024.

There are limitations to the FBI-published data from local law enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted data and the submitted data usually has some errors – so these statistics may not precisely capture the size of the recent declines in crime.

The preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% decline in murder and a roughly 6% decline in overall violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime levels below where they were in Trump’s last calendar year in office in 2020. The preliminary FBI data for the first quarter of 2024 showed an even steeper drop from the same quarter in 2023 – a roughly 26% decline in murder and roughly 15% decline in overall violent crime.

Crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, said in an email to CNN last week: There is ample evidence that crime is falling in 2024 and murder specifically fell at the fastest – or one of the fastest – paces ever recorded in 2023 and again in 2024.”

Asher continued: “The evidence comes from a variety of sources including the FBI’s quarterly data, the CDC, the Gun Violence Archive, and our newly launched Real-Time Crime Index. We show a 5 percent decline in violent crime – including a 16 percent decline in murder – and a 9 percent decline in property crime through June 2024 in over 300 cities with available data so far this year. Data from these various sources suggest the US murder rate was down significantly in 2023 relative to 2020/2021 highs but still slightly above 2019’s level.”

After Trump claimed in June that “crime is so much up,” Anna Harvey, a political science professor and director of the Public Safety Lab at New York University, noted to CNN that the claim is contradicted both by the data from the FBI and from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents 70 large US police forces. She said: “It would be more accurate to say that crime is so much down.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump falsely claims Central Park Five pleaded guilty

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the Central Park Five pleaded guilty to crimes, and that the five teenagers “badly hurt a person, killed a person” in the 1989 attack.

Facts First: These claims are false. The Central Park Five did not plead guilty, they were convicted by a jury at trial (that conviction has since been vacated). Also, the five teenagers were accused of raping a jogger – not of murder.

Five teenagers who were accused of raping a jogger in 1989 were pressured into giving false confessions. They were exonerated in 2002 when DNA evidence linked another person to the crime. The teenagers sued the city, and the case was settled in 2014.

A sixth teenager charged in the attack did plead guilty to robbery charges. His conviction was also overturned because there was no physical evidence connecting him to either the rape or the robbery, and because people who blamed the sixth teen later recanted.

From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

Trump on ending the Nord Stream pipeline

Former President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that he “ended” the Nord Stream pipeline.

“I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Biden put it back on day one,” Trump said. “But he ended the XL pipeline – the XL pipeline in our country, he ended that. But he let the Russians build a pipeline going all over Europe and heading into Germany; the biggest pipeline in the world.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. He did not “end” Nord Stream.

While he did sign a bill that included sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already around 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.

The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine in early 2022. The pipeline was damaged later that year in what has been described as a likely act of sabotage.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump falsely claims some states allow abortion after birth

Former President Donald Trump claimed that some states allow people to execute babies, in addition to allowing abortion in the ninth month, and he singled out the governors including Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz for his stance on the issue.

On Walz, Trump said, “He also says execution after birth – it’s execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born – is OK. And that’s not OK with me.”

“They have abortion in the ninth month. They even have – and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia not the current governor he’s doing an excellent job. But the governor before, he said, ‘The baby will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby,’ in other words, ‘We’ll execute the baby,’” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim about infanticide is false. No state allows for the execution of a baby after it is born.

That’s called infanticide, which is illegal in every state.

“Every state explicitly criminalizes infanticide,” Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said in June.

“There is no basis for this claim,” Kimberly Mutcherson, a professor at Rutgers Law School, also said at the time.

There are some cases in which parents choose palliative care, a kind of care that can provide relief for the symptoms and stress of a deadly illness or condition that gives the baby just minutes, hours or days to live. That is not the same as executing a baby.

Trump also misspoke. It was not the governor of West Virginia, it was the former Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam who made a controversial remark in 2019 that many Republicans said sounded like he supported infanticide. Northam, who is a pediatric neurologist, said his words were being misinterpreted. In any case, infanticide was not legal when Northam was governor of Virginia nor was it ever legal in West Virginia either.

As for abortions in the ninth month, Minnesota is one of a handful of states that allow abortion at any stage of a pregnancy, but it doesn’t mean that doctors perform them. Nationally, just 0.9% of abortions in 2021 – the latest year the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has data – happened at 21 weeks or later. Many abortions at this point in the pregnancy are necessary due to serious health risks or lethal fetal anomalies. More than 93 percent of abortions were conducted before the 14th week of pregnancy, according to the CDC. In Minnesota, according to state data for 2022, of the 12,175 abortions in the state, only two happened between the 25 and 30th week of pregnancy. None happened after the 30^th week of pregnancy that year.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jen Christensen

Trump on NATO funding

Former President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that the US was “paying almost all of NATO” for years, until he “got them to pay up” by threatening not to follow through on the alliance’s collective defense clause.

“For years, we were paying almost all of NATO,” he said. “We were being ripped off by European nations, both on trade and on NATO. I got them to pay up by saying one of the statements you made before, ‘if you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you.’ Otherwise we would have never gotten it.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that the US was “paying almost all of NATO” needs context. Official NATO figures show that in 2016, the last year before Trump took office, US defense spending made up about 71% of total defense spending by NATO members – a large majority, but not “almost all.” And Trump’s claim is even more inaccurate if he was talking about the direct contributions to NATO that cover NATO’s organizational expenses and are set based on each country’s national income; the US was responsible for about 22% of those contributions in 2016.

The US share of total NATO military spending fell to about 65% in 2023. And the US is now responsible for about 16% of direct contributions to NATO, the same as Germany. Erwan Lagadec, an expert on NATO as a research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and director of its Transatlantic Program, said the US share was reduced from 22% “to placate Trump” and is a “sweetheart deal” given that the US makes up more than half of the alliance’s total GDP.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump claims Harris wants to get rid of private health insurance

In Tuesday night’s debate, former President Donald Trump once again claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris wants to get rid of private health insurance.

“But she won’t improve private insurance for people, private medical insurance,” Trump said. “That’s another thing she doesn’t want to give. People are paying privately for insurance that have worked hard and made money and they wanna have private – she wants everybody to be on government insurance where you wait six months for an operation that you need immediately.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is outdated. While Harris did say in her first presidential campaign in 2019 that she wanted to eliminate private health insurance, the plan she rolled out later that year included a role for private insurers, and as vice president, she has supported bolstering the Affordable Care Act. Coverage on the Obamacare exchanges are offered by private insurers.

At a CNN town hall in January 2019, Harris, who was then a California senator vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that she would eliminate private health insurance as a necessary part of implementing Medicare for All, a government-run health insurance proposal promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Harris was a co-sponsor of Sanders’ bill, which called for essentially getting rid of the private insurance market.

A furor erupted, and her national press secretary and an adviser quickly walked back her comment, saying she was open to multiple paths to Medicare for All. And private insurers were included in the plan she rolled out in July 2019.

“We will allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans as a part of this system that adhere to strict Medicare requirements on costs and benefits,” Harris wrote in a Medium post about her plan. “Medicare will set the rules of the road for these plans, including price and quality, and private insurance companies will play by those rules, not the other way around.”

Since she was named President Joe Biden’s vice president, she has supported his efforts to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, which has led to a record number of people signing up for 2024 coverage from private insurers on the individual market.

Harris’ campaign has confirmed that the vice president no longer supports a single-payer health care system.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Harris on manufacturing jobs

Vice President Kamala Harris claimed Tuesday that the economy has added over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs during the Biden-Harris administration.

Facts First: Harris was rounding up and was referring to labor market data available through July 2024, which showed the US economy added 765,000 manufacturing jobs from the first full month of the Biden-Harris administration, February 2021. Though it’s worth noting that the growth almost entirely occurred in 2021 and 2022 (with 746,000 manufacturing jobs added starting in February 2021) before a relatively flat 2023 and through the first seven months of 2024.

In August, the US economy lost an estimated 24,000 manufacturing jobs, bringing that tally down to 739,000, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ preliminary employment data released Friday.

The gain during the Biden-Harris era is, however, over 800,000 using non-seasonally-adjusted figures that are also published by the federal government – in fact, the non-seasonally adjusted gain is 874,000 through August – so there is at least a defensible basis for Harris’ claim. However, seasonally adjusted data smooths out volatility and is traditionally used to observe trends.

An estimated 172,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during former President Donald Trump’s administration, however, most of those losses occurred following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. From February 2017, the first full month that Trump was in office, through February 2020, the US economy added 414,000 manufacturing jobs, BLS data shows.

Presidential terms don’t start and end in a vacuum, and economic cycles can carry over regardless of party. Additionally, the ups and downs of the labor market and the broader economy are influenced by factors beyond a single president, although specific economic policies can influence economic and job growth.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Alicia Wallace

Trump claims he saved Obamacare

Former President Donald Trump claimed in Tuesday night’s debate that he saved Obamacare, his predecessor’s landmark health reform law that Trump repeatedly vowed to repeal and replace.

“I had a choice to make: Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, or do I let it rot? And I saved it,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is misleading. The only reason Obamacare wasn’t repealed was because congressional Republicans could not amass enough votes to kill the law in 2017. During Trump’s administration, he and his officials took many steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act, though they did continue to operate the Obamacare exchanges.

Within hours of taking the oath of office, Trump signed an executive order aimed at rolling back Obamacare – stating that the administration’s official policy was “to seek the prompt repeal” of the Affordable Care Act.

Although Congress failed to repeal it, Trump did manage to undermine the law, which led to a decline in enrollment. He cut the open enrollment period in half, to only six weeks. He also slashed funding for advertising and for navigators, who are critical to helping people sign up. At the same time, he increased the visibility of insurance agents who can also sell non-Obamacare plans.

Trump signed an executive order in October 2017 making it easier for Americans to access alternative policies that have lower premiums than Affordable Care Act plans – but in exchange for fewer protections and benefits. And he ended subsidy payments to health insurers to reduce eligible enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs.

Plus, his administration refused to defend several central provisions of the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican-led states, arguing that key parts of Obamacare should be invalidated. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the challenge and left the law in place.

Enrollment declined until the final year of his term, which was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Harris on US military members on active duty in combat zones

Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday, “As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”

Facts First: This claim is misleading. While US service members are not engaged in major wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, US service members have come under fire in the Middle East repeatedly over the last year and increasingly been in harm’s way since Hamas’ attacks on Israel last October.

There are currently roughly 2,500 US troops in Iraq, who have come under repeated fire since Hamas’ attacks on Israel on October 7. Also since October, more US troops have deployed to the Middle East, including on Navy ships to the Gulf of Oman and Red Sea. CNN cited two US officials in reporting Tuesday that the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was last operating near the Gulf of Oman, and the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group is expected to leave the region this week after last operating in the same area.

Additionally, in the last several months, US service members have taken fire in the Middle East and been injured or killed. Last month, eight US service members were treated for traumatic brain injuries and smoke inhalation after a drone struck Rumalyn Landing Zone in Syria. In January, three US soldiers were killed, and dozens more were injured, in an attack on a small outpost in Jordan called Tower 22. The same month, two US Navy SEALs died after going missing one night at sea while trying to seize lethal aid being transported from Iran to Yemen.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Harris on manufacturing jobs

Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday’s debate: “Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs.”

Facts First: This needs context.

It’s true that the US lost 178,000 manufacturing jobs during Trump’s presidency – but the loss overwhelmingly occurred because of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. From the beginning of Trump’s presidency in January 2017 through February 2020, before the pandemic crash, there was a gain of 414,000 manufacturing jobs.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Harris on trade deficits

Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday’s debate: “Let’s be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we’ve ever seen in the history of America.”

Facts First: This needs context.

It’s true that there were high trade deficits during the Trump administration. The seasonally adjusted 2020 goods trade deficit, about $901.5 billion, was the highest on record at the time.

However, Harris did not acknowledge that trade deficits have been even higher during the Biden-Harris administration. The seasonally adjusted goods trade deficit exceeded $1 trillion in each of 2021, 2022 and 2023.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

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