The Man of Virtues Has a Vice

[Gauracandra]

I've always liked Bill Bennett, but from the articles I've read lately it does appear he has a gambling habit (if not problem). He claims he hasn't lost much if any money, that the casinos track his losses but not his gains. I find this a bit hard to believe.

 

The Man of Virtues Has a Vice

Conservative activist Bill Bennett has wagered millions in Las Vegas and

Atlantic City casinos during the past decade

 

May 2 — In his best-selling anthology, “The Book of Virtues,” William J.

Bennett writes: “We should know that too much of anything, even a good

thing, may prove to be our undoing … [We] need to set definite boundaries

on our appetites.”

 

DOES BENNETT? The popular author, lecturer and Republican Party activist

speaks out, often indignantly, about almost every moral issue except

one—gambling. It’s not hard to see why. According to casino documents,

Bennett is a “preferred customer” in at least four venues in Atlantic City

and Las Vegas, betting millions of dollars over the last decade. His games

of choice: video poker and slot machines, some at $500 a pull. With a

revolving line of credit of at least $200,000 at each casino, Bennett,

former drug czar and secretary of Education under Presidents Reagan and

Bush, doesn’t have to bring money when he shows up at a casino.

 

More than 40 pages of internal casino documents provided to The

Washington Monthly and NEWSWEEK paint a picture of a gambler given the

high-roller treatment, including limos and tens of thousands of dollars in

complimentary hotel rooms and other amenities. In one two-month period,

the documents show him wiring more than $1.4 million to cover losses at

one casino. In one 18-month stretch, Bennett visited a number of casinos

for two or three days at a time. And Bennett must have worried about news

of his habit leaking out. His customer profile at one casino lists an

address that corresponds to Empower.org, the Web site of Empower America,

the group Bennett cochairs. But typed across the form are the words: NO

CONTACT AT RES OR BIZ!!!

 

Some of Bennett’s losses have been substantial. According to one

casino source, on July 12 of last year, Bennett lost $340,000 at Caesar’s

Boardwalk Regency in Atlantic City, and on April 5 and 6 of 2003 he lost

more than $500,000 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Some casino estimates put

his total losses over the past decade at more than $8 million. “There’s a

term in the trade for his kind of gambler,” says a casino source who has

witnessed Bennett at the high-limit slots in the wee hours. “We call them

losers.”

 

Reached by NEWSWEEK, Bennett acknowledged he gambles but not that

he has ended up behind. “Over 10 years, I’d say I’ve come out pretty close

to even,” Bennett says, though he wouldn’t discuss any specific figures.

“You can roll up and down a lot in one day, as we have on many occasions,”

Bennett explains. “You may cycle several hundred thousand dollars in an

evening and net out only a few thousand.”

 

But during the 18-month period, the documents show, there were

only a few occasions when Bennett turned in chips—worth about $30,000 or

$40,000—at the end of an evening. Most of the time, he drew down his line

of credit, often substantially. A casino source, hearing of Bennett’s

claim to breaking even on slots over 10 years, just laughed.

 

“I play fairly high stakes. I adhere to the law. I don’t play the ‘milk

money.’ I don’t put my family at risk, and I don’t owe anyone anything,”

Bennett says. The documents do not contradict those points.

 

Bennett, who earns more than $50,000 per speaking engagement and

made several hundred thousand dollars in publishing advances for the more

recent of his 11 books, says “I’ve made a lot of money and I’ve won a lot

of money. When I win, I usually give at least a chunk of it away [to

charity]. I report everything to the IRS.”

 

“You don’t see what I walk away with,” Bennett says. “They [the

casinos] don’t want you to see it.”

 

Bennett says he plays slot machines and video poker for privacy.

“I’ve been a machine person,” he says. “When I go to the tables, people

talk—and they want to talk about politics. I don’t want that. I do this

for three hours to relax.”

 

He has made no secret of his gambling, Bennett adds. He says he

was in Las Vegas in April for dinner with the former governor of Nevada

and gambled while he was there. “I’ve gambled all my life, and it’s never

been a moral issue with me. I liked church bingo when I was growing up.

I’ve been a poker player.” He says that after a recent speech in

Rochester, he was asked whether he would run for president in 2008 and

answered that he might enter the World Series of Poker instead.

 

Bennett has long been known to be part of a small-stakes poker game

in Washington with Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Associate Justice

Antonin Scalia and lawyer Robert Bork. But his high-stakes gaming comes as

a surprise to many friends. “We knew he went out there [to Las Vegas]

sometimes, but at that level? Wow!” says one longtime associate.

 

Bennett and his organization, Empower America, oppose the extension

of casino gambling in the states. In a recent editorial, his Empower

America cochair, Jack Kemp, inveighed against lawmakers who “pollute our

society with a slot machine on every corner.” The group recently published

an “Index of Leading Cultural Indicators” that reports 5.5 million

American adults as “problem” or “pathological” gamblers. Bennett says he

has his gambling under control.

 

When reminded of studies that link heavy gambling to divorce,

bankruptcy, domestic abuse and other family problems he has widely

decried, Bennett compared the situation to alcohol. “I view it as

drinking,” Bennett says. “If you can’t handle it, don’t do it.”

[theist]

Morality is good but it will never be enough. Without strong attachment to the Supreme Lord some weakness is sure to overtake even the best of us.

 

Bennet is a decent guy intelligent guy. This will be a hard lesson for him.

[Streetstraw]

According to Veda & Varnasram-dharma, such people may gamble.

It seems embarassing to see/admit:

one of our favorite devotees, Yudhisthir Maharaj gambled away everything.

It seems totally outrageous, yet nonetheless so.