"Mike Peters of Dixfield is not only smart, he's honorable.

Both of those qualities led Peters, a member of the Maine Gambling Control Board, to quit that board recently. In his resignation letter to Gov. John Baldacci, Peters said further expansion of gambling could inflict "grave harm" on the people of Maine.

"If we do not act to reduce the shameful profits being made by gambling operators and the coalition of beneficiaries that support them, our state and our people will soon be overrun with the few getting rich at the expense of the many," Peters wrote.

Three cheers for Peters, who's clearly brave enough to say the emperor has no clothes. As the state faces two proposals to expand gambling to both the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy reservations, Peters has spoken what so few have been willing to say: That by allowing Hollywood Slots to locate a slot machine facility in Bangor, it's become incredibly difficult for state legislators or voters to stand on any sort of moral platform and refuse the Native Americans' proposed gambling operations. Anything less looks an awful lot like discrimination."

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CALLING A SPADE A SPADE (The Central Maine Morning Sentinel 4/21)