LOST $3 in a Super Bowl pool at the office. Very annoying, so much so
that it was tempting to sic the cops on the organizer. That`ll teach
him to run a betting operation, especially one that keeps me from
winning.
But whoever came up with the cliché about revenge was right. It is not
a dish best served hot, or even lukewarm. Turns out that the office
pool was not illegal. "A pool is fine," said Charles J. Hynes, the
Brooklyn district attorney. "There`s no vigorish involved."
For the uninitiated, vigorish is the built-in edge on the odds created
by a bookmaker to assure himself a profit. Since the office pool`s
organizer did not take a cut of the action, no law was broken.
Oh well. Can`t blame a fellow for trying. And it gets so complicated
trying to figure out why some forms of gambling are illegal and others
are perfectly fine.
Mr. Hynes strove to explain the distinctions as he teamed on Sunday
with his Staten Island counterpart, Daniel M. Donovan Jr. Together,
they announced the arrests of 12 New York men accused of unlawfully
taking bets on sporting events.
You`ve seen variations of this story many times. Mr. Hynes`s
announcements of gambling raids are as much a Super Bowl Sunday
tradition as hyper halftime shows and silly dances after touchdowns.
The district attorneys noted that the arrested men included "Asian
suspects" and "more traditional organized crime suspects." What, you
may ask, are "more traditional organized crime suspects"? The answer
was left to the imagination. But if you go to Mulberry Street, you will
find quite a few restaurants serving "more traditional" food.
Some might applaud this ethnic diversity as one more marvelous example
of New York, the gorgeous mosaic. Not the district attorneys. They
mentioned ethnicity to show the mob`s many tentacles.
If he had his druthers, Mr. Hynes said, government would legalize
sports betting and reap billions for itself. Instead, he said, the
gambling is "a cash cow for organized crime." That`s terrible. Think of
all this money pouring into the pockets of unsavory types who use it to
finance drug dealing, hijacking, racketeering and inventing those
catchy nicknames that newspapers like to wrap in parentheses.
But you have to wonder sometimes how frightened we should be. The mob
has fallen far from its glory days of Mustache Petes and their
rat-a-tat-tat successors.
Recent news reports say that the last Mafia don in New York, Joseph C.
Massino, has thrown omertà overboard and is spilling his guts to the
feds. (Apologies for the B-movie lingo; we get carried away.) If
Francis Ford Coppola had to deal with this kind of material, he might
be known today only as a California winemaker who makes occasional
movies.
As for the gambling money`s destination, the Suffolk County authorities
announced their own raid the other day. A share of the sports-betting
profits, they said, went to open a rice-pudding shop on Spring Street
in Manhattan. Rice pudding. Is nothing too ruthless for some people?
THE thing is, though, that people are being arrested for exactly what
the state itself has long been doing: taking bets. Only government
calls it the lottery, or off-track betting, or authorized casinos run
by Indians.
State-sponsored gambling is particularly adept at prying money loose
from poor people. Check out the line for lottery tickets at the grocery
store. See many men and women dressed in Armani, do you? Few officials
are more partial to this soak-the-poor technique than Gov. George E.
Pataki, who would like to fill the state with video lottery terminals,
souped-up slot machines that detractors refer to as video crack.
Like organized crime, government funnels its gambling income into
operations that many find unacceptable. Ostensibly, the money goes for
education. But that claim has been dismissed as "just a myth" by the
former state comptroller H. Carl McCall. The money ends up being tossed
into the treasury along with other revenue. You could just as easily
say that it pays for welfare checks or the Sing Sing exercise yard or
other pursuits that might lack universal appeal.
Of course, comparisons between the government and the mob stretch only
so far. Don`t underestimate organized crime, Mr. Hynes cautioned, or
gambling`s role in keeping it going.
He may be right. For all we know, some mobster at this very moment is
turning to a henchman and saying: "Leave the gun. Take the rice
pudding."
