I’m a Card Room owner, one of many from the Bay Area and up and down the state who have joined forces to fund a campaign to fight the proposed Nevada-style casino at Point Molate in Richmond.

Yes, I’m motivated by self-interest. My wife and I bought our small business five years ago, the culmination of a dream come true, and we run it with our two sons. We have nine card tables, where players play against each other. We do not bank any games. We charge a flat fee to play.

But the backdoor introduction of a Nevada-style and -size casino with thousands of slot machines and banked table games, where the house plays against everyone and makes a percentage of the bets, is completely different and a threat to our livelihood.

It also happens to be a very bad deal for Richmond.

According to the National Gambling Impact Study, casinos of the type proposed, with thousands of slot machines that cater to local residents, increase drug-abuse, alcoholism, loan-sharking and domestic violence in the community.

Gambling profits sucked through the slots flow to out-of-town casino owners. Meanwhile, money that would have been spent at existing local restaurants and businesses instead leaves Richmond.

Why can I say this? Because it’s been the experience elsewhere in the country where casinos have set up shop.

Secondly, as an economic development strategy, turning over 400 acres of public land on San Francisco Bay to casino developers for far less than the property’s real value borders on foolhardy.

Yes, the project would create construction jobs. But so would any development, and those jobs, most going to people who live outside Richmond, come to an end after the last nail is driven.

What’s more, since the casino is predicated on Pt. Molate being declared Indian land for a tribe from Mendocino County, the labor, workplace and environmental standards and forms of justice for costumers and workers we take for granted as California residents no longer apply.

Oh, and promises of local hiring? They are not legally enforceable. Richmond has been waiting on this developer more than five years, with no date for groundbreaking and financing plan.

Can Richmond do better? Wasn’t Richmond the hope of a nation as it turned out Liberty ships that protected Britain and helped liberate Europe? Isn’t Richmond home to new clean tech solar manufacturer Sun Power?

Of course it can.