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Originally Posted by munster705
Hi Guys
I live in Massachusetts about 10 minutes from Wonderland and I have been to Raynham many a time. I voted to shut down these dumps. There is nothing more disgusting than walking through Wonderland on any random night and seeing questionable (at best) people wearing the same clothes for days on end, not showered, gamble there last nickels away. And for what? These dogs are mistreated and dying for what? Yeah I know 320 people will be out of work. They have over a year to find new minimum wage jobs since they will not be closed until 2009. The dog owners have over a year to ship down to Florida or wherever they want to go. This is coming from a horse racing fan my whole life.
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I've been to Wonderland in the past and it's a dump, but Raynham is not. It's no local treasure by any stretch, but equating it to Wonderland is not fair to the people who work hard to run Raynham.
Now, you say you are a "horse racing fan my whole life", which is exactly why you should have voted NO, because it could be horse racing that's next on the animal rights agenda. This ballot question was not whether or not to shut down a few "dumps" (your wording). Nor was it about the greyhound dogs.
I have no love for greyhound racing. I, like you, love horse racing, and have been a fan for years.
You have to look at it from the point of view of "what if this happened to me?"...what if, instead of the animal rights people going after dog racing, went after horse racing? How would you feel, as a life long fan, if people merely voted to end horse racing based on the fact that Suffolk Downs was a dump, or Plainridge Racecourse was a dump? Or voted to end horse racing based on inaccurate information and false statements? Or just decided to over look the lost jobs because the people losing them would have time to find other "minimum wage jobs" (your words again, not mine)? If that was me, as a horse player and fan, I'd be pretty pissed. If I lost something I love and enjoy based on baseless statements, again I would be pissed. Finally, if someone decided to end the industry I worked in, and I lost my job, when doing nothing wrong, a job that maybe I held part time to make extra money to buy Christmas gifts, or to squirrel away money for a child to go to college, or to get money to offset costs of health care because I'm retired....I would be pretty pissed off.
As mentioned, I don't care much for dog racing. Without voter intervention, it is on a serious decline anyways. But I love horse racing, and I would HATE to see the bag job that occurred in Massachusetts with the dog racing industry happen to a horse racing industry somewhere in this country. That's exactly what it was, a bag job. A well funded out of state campaign of mostly falsehoods and sensational claims that could never be proven. A campaign flying in the face of readily available information to contrary. The issue wasn't whether the places were dumps, whether the jobs lost were "only" minimum wage ones, or for the safety of the breed in question. It has everything to do with the fact that there are groups out there who don't like animals racing in sport. They are, for the most part, well funded and groups that when they get an inch, they look to take a mile.
Well, they got their inch yesterday. The question isn't if they will go for their mile, only when.