In 2004, Warren Buffett drew a line in the sand. Facing a ballot referendum on whether to allow establishment of casinos in his home state Nebraska, the highly regarded business leader publicly spoke out against casinos and helped to handily defeat the casino initiative. Mr. Buffett sat down with Tom Grey, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling (NCSALG), to describe his opposition to casinos. The following article is drawn from excerpts of a transcript of this conversation, reprinted here with permission of NCALG. Say No To Casinos will be running excerpts from this interview over the next several weeks. You can check out the video of this interview on the internet at http://www.ncalg.org/resources.htm.

TG:      You know I think it’s interesting when you talk about it out of the pain that’s felt, because government has promoted this as a painless revenue stream. Only the willing are doing it, and it seems to me that it’s somewhat untruthful at its best, and at its worst, it’s very cynical to do that. Another promise that’s made is that it’s economic development.

WB:     Well, there’s nothing getting developed. It’s a transfer of money. Basically, if you take the losses of everybody that participates in gambling, and it’s not gaming, it’s gambling, if you take the losses, it will end up going three places. It will end up going to the state as taxes to some degree, and that’s not development. It will end up paying part of the operating expenses of the operations, but anyplace that you spend the money will go to the operating expenses of that establishment. And, it will go to the owners. I get some kick out of this “Keep the money in Nebraska” name attached by people who want to bring casinos here because there are two propositions out there, and the greatest amount of funds for each one of them promoting them is coming from  institutions in Nevada. If I’ve ever go out to Nevada, and start running campaigns that say “Let’s keep the money in Nevada,” and put a lot of money into it, believe me, Nevadans should look at me twice. That’s not what I’m all about.

TG:      No you mentioned if we follow the money and do the math, you mean the players are losers?

WB:     Yeah, well, just assume that Nebraska had this, and our Nebraskan citizens overall lost $100 million. Well, I think in one of the propositions, there’s 35% of the first $15 million, and 20% of the next money goes to the state, so some of the money will go to the state, and that’s just like a tax. Basically, that comes right out of the citizenry, and that doesn’t do any development at all. Some of the money will go for operations, and the rest of the money will go for profits, and the sponsors of both of these are out of state corporations, so you’re not talking about development for Nebraska when you talk about transferring money to Nevada and the state.