Carl Paladino, the Buffalo developer who underwrote the lawsuit that prevented the Seneca Gaming Corporation (SGC) from putting a casino in Cheektowaga, and who subsequently sold SGC much of the property it hopes to use for the startup section of its proposed Buffalo casino, had a letter to the editor in the Buffalo News last week. He first called those questioning the wisdom of a tax-exempt casino in a residential neighborhood in downtown Buffalo “control freaks.” Then he proceeded to tell one lie after another. Paladino is the only important Buffalo businessman who has come out in favor of a casino, so he gets a lot of coverage in the Buffalo News.

The SGC hardly needs his help. Last month they swamped Buffalo TV and radio stations with an ad campaign that consisted of one lie or misrepresentation after another. The barrage of commercials called to mind Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels’ famous dictum: “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed…The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly…it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” (The Bush administration has also embraced this dictum: Some of those guys are still claiming there were WMD in Iraq and that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda!)

Here are nine of the lies and misrepresentations about the proposed Buffalo casino that have been told over and over and over, and the truths those lies and misrepresentations are designed to conceal.

Lie #1: “The Buffalo deal,” Paladino writes, “is a stand-alone casino—no competition with our taxpaying hospitality vendors.”

The truth: According to documents the SGC has filed with two federal agencies, Buffalo Creek will be a full-service operation designed to work in direct competition with Buffalo’s taxpaying vendors.

A few months back, the SGC announced the name of the architect it hoped would design its Buffalo Creek hotel and restaurant complex, which should indicate to any rational person that the SGC intends to have at its Buffalo Creek casino a hotel and restaurant complex. The SGC’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission repeatedly say that the Buffalo Creek operation would have a wide range of hotel and entertainment services in addition to the gambling operation.

More recently and perhaps even more to the point, the SGC’s trademark application for Buffalo Creek filed May 5 with the US Patent office and signed by SGC Vice President and General Counsel Barry Brandon says that the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino will have gift shops, movie theaters, restaurant and bar services, and convention services.

This trademark application is not a speculative or pie-in-the-sky document and the listed items are not boilerplate: They are specific to this casino in this city. Patent office regulations limit responses to things applicants specifically intend to do. Misrepresentation in such documents is treated as fraud—a felony.

So according to the SGC, the casino they hope to put in downtown Buffalo operation on land they got largely from Carl Paladino is designed to be in direct competition with every hotel and restaurant and theater in Buffalo.

Why would Carl Paladino dare to write a letter to the Buffalo News saying things public documents filed by the Seneca Gaming Corporation clearly contradict? Perhaps for the same reason Seneca gambling boss Barry Snyder’s public remarks about the plans for the Buffalo casino differ so radically from the same documents: A letter to the editor or comments to a reporter or at a press conference are just words; a trademark application and an SEC filing are sworn documents. Get caught lying to a reporter or in a letter to the Buffalo News and you shrug your shoulders and say, “Yeah, you got me. Whaddaya gonna do about it?” Get caught lying on an SEC or Patent Office filing and it’s perjury or fraud.

Which are you going to believe: The documents filed with two federal agencies by the SGC saying they’re planning on going into competition with all food, hotel and entertainment operations in town or the flip letter in the Buffalo News from an interested developer and investor, Carl Paladino, who has made a great deal of money from the SGC and who may very well hope to make a great deal more?

Lie #2: Slots in the casino, bingo in the church—same thing, says Paladino.

The truth: Bingo money helps the community; slot losses hurt the community.

Paladino also went after the community’s churches for their bingo. What kind of guy wants to attack the churches for their bingo games? “Those inspired to gamble are already gambling...in the churches,” he wrote. That’s like comparing a popgun to a .44 Magnum because both have triggers and make noise. Nobody blows the mortgage payment in church bingo, but people surely do at the slots. Nobody goes bankrupt at church bingo; plenty of people have gone bankrupt at Casino Niagara. Even the most vigorous church bingo player is limited by the betting limits and the short hours; at the Seneca gambling joints there are no betting limits and you can go impoverish your family 24/7.

Equally important: All the profit from church bingo goes right back to the community for parish services, but none of the money lost in a Buffalo casino will stay in the community. Church bingo is part of the community; casino gambling is a parasite feeding off the community.

Lie #3: The casino will provide 1,000 more jobs for Buffalo.

The truth: If a casino comes, there will be fewer, not more jobs.

SGC boss Barry Snyder frequently talks about the 1,000 “new jobs” his gambling joint will bring to Buffalo. Carl Paladino wrote in his letter, “What’s wrong with 1,000 quality jobs acquired with no government subsidy and no downside other than that which we already have?”

Horseshit. If Paladino ran his business with that kind of arithmetic he would have gone bust years ago, and the Buffalo News wouldn’t publish his letters and quote him all the time on how good the casino would be for the city.

Every job in an ordinary urban casino—not the kind that the SGC and Buffalo mayor Byron Brown plan for Buffalo, but one that pays taxes and spends the money necessary to obey state environmental and safety codes—displaces 1.5 to two jobs elsewhere in the city’s economy. Under the best of circumstances, a casino in downtown Buffalo employing 1,000 people will cost Buffalo 1,500 to 2,000 jobs outside the casino.

This is exacerbated for a casino on newly declared reservation land in the heart of a city. All other jobs in a city earn tax money for the city. Jobs in the casino do not. All other legitimate jobs in the city contribute to the city’s economy; jobs in the casino do not.

There will be additional jobs in the short term: the iron workers who are presently tearing down the H-O Oats grain elevators; the construction workers who build the casino, its hotel and shops and theaters; the dealers, croupiers and janitors. Then the balance will shift: In the long term there will be less construction in the city than there would have been otherwise and the casino jobs will more and more displace better jobs in the community. That is exactly what has happened everywhere else. It is what would happen here if the SGC and Carl Paladino have their way.

Paladino writes as if government subsidies came only as cash handouts. Not at all. They can be in good deals that some people get and other people do not, which Carl Paladino, a longtime friend of former Buffalo mayor Anthony Masiello, should understand very well. The SGC casino, running tax-exempt and outside most New York State environmental, safety liability and employee-protection laws, will have a crushing advantage over any kind of business with which it is in competition. (Artvoice will explore this particular aspect of the proposed Buffalo Creek casino in a forthcoming article by Professor Steven H. Siegel of Niagara University.)

Lie #4: The city’s share of the state’s share of the slot drop will put new money into Buffalo’s treasury.

The truth: The casino will suck 10 to 20 times more money out of Buffalo than the slot share returns.

“An extra $15 million a year,” Paladino writes, “will help the city relieve the tax burden on our citizens. It’s a no-brainer.”

It is indeed a no-brainer, but Paladino has the signs reversed and he’s working with imaginary numbers. He’s pulling that “$15 million a year” out of the air. No one has estimated Buffalos share of the slot drop at more than $7 or $8 million a year. That $7 or $8 million would come at the cost of all the city services that would have to be provided to the casino, all the tax revenues that would be lost because of the casino, all the business that would fold because of the casino, all the new construction that will not happen because of the casino and all the money that would be taken out of the city and county by of the casino. If the financial reports of the Seneca Niagara Casino are any guide—and they are—Buffalo’s $7 or $8 million will cost Buffalo and Erie County more than $100 million a year.

Lie #5: The casino will attract tourists.

The truth: Only if you consider visitors from Cheektowaga and West Seneca tourists.

“Visitors from wherever to our football, hockey and baseball games, theater or other activities,” writes Paladino, “will surely view the casino as an attraction, stay overnight in our hotels, patronize our restaurants and shop at Bass Pro.”

Nonsense. The SGC’s own filings with the SEC clearly state that the Buffalo Creek casino is designed to take money primarily from area residents. SGC plans a hotel for the few out-of-town visitors to make sure they do not go to hotels or restaurants in Buffalo.

So much for Carl Paladino’s letter to the Buffalo News. Here are four more of the Seneca Gaming Corporation big lies about the proposed Buffalo Creek Casino.

Lie # 6: Casinos like this are “gaming” establishments.

The truth: They are gambling joints.

They use the word “gaming” all the time, even in their corporate papers. But this is anything but a game. It is deadly serious. Calling this gambling joint a “gaming establishment” is like calling a whorehouse a “social and recreational club.” You can call it that, but it’s still a whorehouse. You can call these gambling joints “gaming establishments,” but they’re still gambling joints. In joints like this the only people who are certain of going home with money every night are the people running the place. That’s a business, not a game.

Lie #7: The casino is a development project.

The truth: The Buffalo Creek casino would be an anti-development project.

Development adds; this project subtracts. The huge amount of money a tax-exempt casino will suck out of the city, the large number of local establishments it will drive out of business and the large number of corporations that will find Buffalo a less attractive place to locate will result in less money available for schools, libraries and clinics, and fewer jobs overall. It will result in a reduced city and county tax base. The only things the Buffalo Creek casino will develop will be itself and perhaps a bar across the street for its employees, who are prohibited from drinking on casino premises, which is what has happened in Niagara Falls.

Lie #8: Opponents of the Buffalo Creek casino have to provide an alternative for those nine acres.

The truth: No, they don’t.

SGC spokespeople say that unless casino opponents come up with a better use of the land SGC bought from Carl Paladino and a few others the opponents have no right to oppose the casino. Nonsense. It is perfectly reasonable to oppose, and to do what you can to prevent, murder, arson, rape and robbery without simultaneously coming up with something else for the potential felon to do with his or her time and energy. Preventing a bad thing from taking place is always sufficient in itself.

Lie # 9: It is a done deal and therefore your voice doesn’t matter.

The truth: It’s a bad deal, but it surely is not a done deal.

The SGC wants you to think it is a done deal so you won’t fight to save Buffalo. Don’t fall for it.

Mayor Byron Brown said on WNED last Saturday morning, “I don’t think the casino is a done deal by any stretch of the imagination.” He’s right: Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council have the power to stop this disaster.

If they want to, that is. Brown has told people he was sitting on the fence, making up his mind, but when the Seneca Gaming Corporation began the second phase of its downtown destruction last week it was revealed that Brown, his director of development Richard Tobe and the rest of his staff have been quietly helping them along, giving them permits to block off city streets, providing easements, avoiding public hearings and refusing to insist on legally required environmental impact studies in which the public has an opportunity to provide input and hear the evidence.

If Mayor Brown and the Common Council stop doing everything the SGC asks them to do, if they start insisting (as has County Executive Joel Giambra) that everyone involved start obeying the law, if they stop doing things behind closed doors, then the SGC won’t get to build and run their casino. It is that simple.

The SGC and the cash cow in the heart of town

If you need an indicator how far and wide the SGC was spending its Niagara Falls casino profits to broadcast lies about the proposed Buffalo Creek casino, consider this: They even bought airtime on tiny WHLD, the new guys in town at the left of the dial who are ostensibly there to represent the community’s interests in a time of media conglomerates whose airtime is owned by big business.

And what did left-of-the-dial, highly principled WHLD do when the SGC money came through the door? Exactly what the SGC told it to do. When a friend asked Brian Brown-Cashdollar, the CEO of WHLD, how he could have aired commercials he knew were untrue pushing a product he knew would harm the city, Brown-Cashdollar said it cost him $90,000 a month to stay on the air, that’s how.

All that purchasing of Buffalo airtime, all that purchasing of favorable attention from Buffalo’s mayor and council-members, is being done with money that has been lost by gamblers at the Seneca Niagara Falls casino. What do you think will happen to Buffalo when the cash cow that can buy all the airtime in the world and just about every politician in sight is right in the heart of town?

Bruce Jackson is editor of the web journal BuffaloReport.com and director of the Center for Studies in American Culture at UB. He is vice president of the community action group, Citizens for a Better Buffalo (http://betterbuffalo.com).