Back in 1995, Barrow worked for the Aquinnah of Gay Head, who were chasing a casino on the South Coast. In 1999, it was a developer eyeing a casino in Salisbury. Now, he’s freelancing in New Hampshire. And all the while, he’s pushing data that, surprise of surprises, purports to make the case for legalizing casinos.

The governor’s office tells Jay that Barrow wasn’t the only guy they leaned on while not convincing the legislature, at all, to greenlight a trio of resort casinos in the state. There were “numerous sources, studies and analysis” used.

OK then. Let’s go to the tape.

Two years ago now, my Dig colleague Julia Reischel and I took a closer look at those numerous sources, studies and analyses. What we found was that many, if not most, of those sources told the governor’s staff that legalized gambling was not the magic budget-slaying bullet he was making it out to be. There was one loud, dissenting voice. It was Clyde Barrow’s.

And Barrow didn’t just tell the governor that casinos would make it rain gold-plated unicorns and stuff. He went to the trouble of drafting a blueprint for legalizing casinos – one that Deval Patrick promptly cribbed from and took public.

But, for a better summary of what the Chamber’s much-discussed report actually says, you’d have better luck looking to Dan Kennedy – “Casino Supporters Support Casinos.”

I understand that some of the issues we’re dealing with here are tricky. And I’m a reporter, so math does scare me, too. But you can’t write off the costs just because the Globe editorial board does.

If you chase down half the “opponents say” caveats in today’s front page story, you’ll find a much different scenario at play than all the governor’s promises being fulfilled. You’re left with, as I termed it earlier today, a cost-benefit analysis without the costs. A benefit analysis.

And that doesn’t do much good when the argument against Deval Patrick’s casino plan hinges on the fact that the costs aren’t immediately obvious, but they’re very real, and they erode the benefits remarkably quickly.

First off: Rate of return. For every dollar residents pump into the Lottery, towns immediately get $0.24 back in local aid. Of every dollar residents would drop into a casino, they’d recoup $0.03 or $0.04. So casinos aren’t just inefficient as a means of delivering local aid (or property tax relief and transportation funding) – they’re, at best, eight times less efficient than the Lottery. And if you want to make up that difference, you’d better open up those wallets wide.

Dan Bosley, who co-chairs the committee examining Patrick’s casino bill, sent a letter to his colleagues this afternoon in which he called the Chamber’s study “flawed” for relying on research from the casino industry and Clyde Barrow. “While I question their conclusions,” Bosley wrote, “there has never been a question over the creation of a revenue stream from casinos. If you build them, people will spend money. However, there is a vast difference between revenue and economic development and the administration fails to realize this.”

What the administration has never admitted, and what the Chamber report and the stories regarding it ignore, is the fact that the money going into casinos is not new to the economy. It’s transferred from within the economy – as if in a shell game, if you will. The greater the share of money coming from areas close to the casino, the greater the shift away from local businesses and towards the casino will be. That’s why Patrick favors destination casinos over slots – to minimize economic cannibalization.

The number in the Chamber report that should terrify casino proponents – a number that’s been ignored in the press so far – is the study’s contention that, of the $2 billion – $2.3 billion in annual gross gaming revenue that three local casinos would generate, only $500 million to $550 million would be coming from out of state.

So, if three-quarters of casino revenue would be coming from in-state, and, as the Boston Federal Reserve has said, up to three-quarters of money spent in a casino is already spent inside the economy … uh, that’s not good.

Hey, guess what, everybody? Governor Deval Patrick wants to build three casinos in Massachusetts. He’s been saying that they’ll bring 30,000 jobs in tow. Turns out, they won’t. Shocking, we know. But it’s this revelation that gripped Beacon Hill this week. All other concerns were crowded out.

Most close observers (depending on whom you read) have known for several months now that the governor’s casino research is compromised and his economic assumptions shaky. And now that the town’s paper of record has spoken on the subject, the fan is really covered in it.

The administration has even stopped citing its 30,000 jobs figure, and taken to speaking of “tens of thousands” of jobs instead.

That’s a significant fact, because it marks the first time in this whole gambling debate that reporting has been able to knock the administration off its talking points. A similarly damning Mass Taxpayers Foundation report was reportedly met with anger, profanity and the like behind closed doors, but the pessimistic data laid out therein hasn’t stopped the administration from using gambling revenues as a panacea for everything from property taxes to transportation funding to addiction treatment to Tim Cahill’s sick man. But now, with a high stakes legislative hearing on the horizon, Patrick has been shoved off his mark. The Globe having done its damage, Dan Bosley’s recent statement to us that, “The governor’s going to come down and say, ‘We’re going to have 30,000 jobs,’ and I’ll say, ‘No, you’re not,’” suddenly takes on a whole new layer of meaning.

The governor initially responded to the Globe report by trying to argue, “There are going to be all kinds of claims about whether it’s 30,000 construction jobs or 20,000 construction jobs or 5,000 construction jobs. I can tell you that whatever that number is, it beats the opposition, which is at zero.” Yes. Exactly. And given the choice between being punched or kicked in the face, being punched beats the opposition. Fantastic.

As if all this weren’t enough, Patrick insisted on pressing his case, rather than laying low for a little while, by sending a sharply worded pro-gambling letter to each of the state’s legislators. Getting mad and hitting “reply to all” – that’s the way to stay out of the papers, and to keep your critics off your back. Sure it is.

So, with Patrick locked in a spiraling back and forth with House casino critics, this letter was then followed up with what initially appeared to be a third grader’s book report, but was later revealed to be a brochure from the governor and his economic development secretary, Dan O’Connell.

Loaded with incongruous clip art, impressive leaps of logic, half-truths and downright sloppy research, the brochure is one of the most dubious – not to mention unintentionally hilarious – public documents to see the light of day in quite some time. Print this thing out, take it on your lunch break, and try to read it without having milk squirt out your nose. We dare you. And forget about all this transparent desperation opening up the governor to attacks from the speaker. If whatever you’re doing allows the state GOP – the political equivalent of the ’62 Mets – to land potshots on you about slick “phony economics,” things are not going well.

The administration pamphlet’s argument that the legislature must act now (punctuated by a comically large clock, natch) because of the inevitability of a Mashpee Wampanoag casino in Middleborough is especially, uh, interesting, given that, in the days before the pamphlet’s distribution, O’Connell had a rather eventful meeting with the Mashpee. They told him that they would not be abandoning federal channels to a casino for the state’s proposed casino licensing auction. Tribe spokesman Scott Ferson has previously said the tribe will not bid on one of Patrick’s casino licenses.

What does this mean? Rather than hamstringing the Mashpee, rapid legislative approval of Patrick’s casino bill would actually ease the tribe’s path to a federal, tax-free casino, because the legalization of Class III gambling would give the tribe the sovereign right to run all sorts of Vegas-style games. As things stand now, the Mashpee are in the position of threatening to round up $1 billion in financing for a bingo slots complex with a highly uncertain future: It might very well revert to a normal bingo hall if the feds follow through on recent threats to make bingo slots illegal. Nothing like negotiating from a position of strength.

As if all that’s not enough, on Thursday, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce unveiled a casino report that, by in large, confirmed the governor’s arguments on the revenue side, but that categorically declined to quantify any negative economic impacts from expanded gambling. What we’re left with is a cost-benefit analysis with no costs. Which is totally useful.

It’s also notable that the report’s authors do rely on research from less-than-uninterested sources, including Harrah’s and Clyde Barrow, but if those sources are good enough for the governor, they’re certainly good enough for the Chamber. Expect both sides to hug the report and claim victory.

Ugh. That’s enough for now. Other stuff happened this week on the Hill, too – Senate President Therese Murray unveiled a sweeping health care reform-reform proposal, the T put its budget on its credit card, and the highway department ran over a scrum of weeping veterans. None of those things have anything to do with craps, so this week, they don’t matter much. Maybe next week. Maybe.

Wire services contributed to this report.

Patrick’s people see no problem with the timeline at work here, nor with the credentials of the firm looking over the gov’s numbers; Sue Tucker begs to disagree.

But for my money, all you need to know about Spectrum is that Clyde Barrow likes their resume – they’re “one of the most notable private sector gaming analysts in the Northeast,” the guy who virtually made the Patrick administration’s pro-gaming case for them tells the Herald.

Something tells me Dan Bosley won’t be happy with these guys.

UPDATE: From Bosley: “I don’t know how anyone could call [theirs] an unbiased viewpoint. I don’t think they’ve ever done a report that says you shouldn’t do gambling. But we’ll take a look at it.”