Arkansas Lottery Watch
Interest in the Arkansas lottery proposal seems to be picking up at last. A couple of things that are floating around out there today:
The Arkansas Farm Bureau came out against the state lottery proposal yesterday (along with announcing their support for the measure to ban gay and unmarried couples from serving as foster parents, and some other stuff). (KTHV-Ch. 11)
The director of the Oklahoma lottery expresses concern that an Arkansas lottery, if the Natural State dedicates a greater percentage of revenues to prize pay-outs, could detract from his state’s lotto mojo. (AP)
Columnist John Brummett argues in favor of the Arkansas lottery, and introduces this novel argument: “It’s unclear why we would deny a poor man’s right to a lottery ticket while we bail out with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars a large financial corporation’s failed gambling on fancy lottery tickets called derivatives.” I’m pretty sure that this means that Brummett has no more of an idea of what a derivative is than I do.
Max Brantley said, “I long ago came to agree with Brummett that paternalism about how poor people spend their money isn’t sufficient reason to oppose a lottery.”
What Brantley and Brummett (sounds like the names of a cartoon duo) don’t get is that most of us don’t care what how poor people spend THEIR money, the problem we have is when they are spending OUR money that was given to them for food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare on lottery tickets.
If we had any legislators worth a shit, then one of them would make sure to prohibit anyone recieving public assistance from winning the lottery.
Alas, perhaps Dan Greenberg will file just such a bill only to watch is go crashing down in flames because none of his so-called Republican collegues will back him up.
“Since we’re already carrying out one really stupid policy (bailing out financial institutions), we should compound our error with another really stupid policy (extension of state-sponsored gambling).”