Poinsett County geniuses. Buying those lottery tickets instead of feeding and clothing their children, so those Chenal Valley kids can get a scholarship. Is it the water? Inbreeding?

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Really Max? Really? This is the issue on which you want to question statistical analysis?

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Just in case: tongue in cheek.

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Maybe the poor's children were among the 26,000 Arkie kids who got scholarships from the lottery pool and perhaps, just maybe, those kids will be able to break the poverty cycle in due time. Maybe.

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I know they probably didn't teach this at the University of Marxism, of which you attended, but a tax is a government imposed obligation to pay a dollar amount. If its voluntary (buying lottery tickets) it can't be a tax.

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"retail outlets would only have to free up clerks to pay out winners and those are very few"

People are free to do what they like, buy a lottery ticket, throw money in a wishing well or "plant a seed" and send a televangelist VTN preacher $58 bucks a month.


Whatever makes you feel good, but reading actual quotes from lottery officials keeps my money in my pocket.

"Winners are very few"!

Reading releases of lottery officials is similar to listening to the prescription drug disclaimers.

WAtching TV over the weekend this is what I heard for precsription drugs.

To make eyelashes longer - can permantently change eyecolor, nausia, stroke, skin rash which can be fatal.

To fight depresion - call your doctor if you have thoughts of suicide! What? treat depression medicine causes urge to commit suicide. That usually sort of stops depresion.

Erectile dysfunction - decreased vision or hearing - I understand the hearing part but what the heck is decreased vision? And then the heartattack/stroke/nausia/dry mouth/ headache etc.

Now if I hadn't been able to "perform" and then I get an erection lasting over 4 hours I am going to be calling every girl I ever knew or hoped to know long before I go see my doctor, unless it's a she and hot.

That's like a casino saying if the slot machine just keeps on spitting out silver dollars for over four hours call the casino to make it stop! Once again I would probably jsut start calling every girl I ever knew before I called the casinno maintenance man.

In conclusion we are all free to spend our treasure any way we choose but thinking you have a chance to win powerball is as delusional as a widow woman in Bee Branch thinking that she is under threat of Islamo-terrorist attack. Same mind set/logic.

But don't let that stop you from buying tickets, i have a neice that just headed to AU Fay with a $5,000 winning lottory scholarship and she hasn't bought a ticket yet!

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I don't think the poor really needs the Lottery scholarships. In my experience, the poor usually qualify for some type of aid -- either through school or Pell grants.

It's the lower to middle class families that really need scholarship help. On paper they make too much to qualify for financial aid, but in reality their finances are stretched so thin that it is just about impossible to siphon off an extra 5 grand a semester for the kid to go to college.

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I am disappointed to learn that the average Pulaski County resident is almost 4.5 times as learned as the average Poinsett County resident, but expended only 23.2% less on stupid lottery tickets.

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"Poor" qualify for some aid, and not all tuition+expenses are covered --- every family with college students need $$ - except rich. Colleges started raising tuition as soon as lottery scholarship 5k was announced. Glad to have the funds cause it made the difference in mine being able to go even with govt loans. BTW Pell grant is not auto, even if you are poor.

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Bayou,

Tuition and fees would have been going up with or without the lottery money which went to students to help with expenses, not increased funding to the schools.

I attended the UA system in the 70's and 80's it went up all 4 years I was there and all but a few times since.

Notice the tuition and fees did not increase by $5,000.

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I mean to buy a Lottery ticket far more often than I actually do it. Seems like everyday is a blur of activity and most of the time I stick my hand in my pocket and find no folding money.

I have no idea where mag and I fit on the food chain. We take in about 51 thousand between us, gross. Until the little Princess went to Fayetteville last week, there were 4 of us living here. Our oldest daughter worked at an internship all summer for not much money, but the organization liked her work so much they've hired her on full time at about 10 bucks an hour, so I know that will help us now that she can afford to pay her own way in my situations.

Is 51 thousand for a family of 4 middle class? It feels pretty poor to me since almost all our money goes to the necessities. mag and I both smoke and we still have HBO, but I can't think of any other extras we're buying for ourselves. Our house is 103 and paid for, our cars are very old and paid for. mag buys her clothes at Wal-Mart and I buy mine once in a great while on eBay.

We haven't had a vacation since 2004. My wonderful big screen plasma TV came out of a dumpster. Our kids have always been very moderate in their desires for goodies. I can hand one 20 bucks and she can stretch it for what seems like forever.

For the most part I don't mind living this way...we're not big consumers, we don't dream of Europe in the fall. We aren't into sports and don't worry about the price of a football ticket in Fayetteville. I spend between 20 and 30 bucks on my Friday nights out, mag's only hobby is keeping up with Mad Men and buying jars to put her honey in twice a year. Except for the resumption of wild monkey sex, I'm not having big yearnings.

I know our kid wouldn't be at Fayetteville without that Lottery Scholarship. We spent the last of grandmother's inheritance sending the oldest girl to UAFS for 3 years. She'd still be going if she could just pass algebra. That cost us 2500 to 3000 per semester even with her living here at home. Fayetteville is twice that per semester since housing must be figured in. Oh, and both kids started out life with one of those go to college insurance policies, but one family crisis after another did those policies in. So our intentions were good, life just didn't cooperate.

So, I have to think mag and I appreciate our kid's Lottery Scholarship as much as parents poorer than we are. Not being able to send your honor graduate to college must feel the same in Amagon as it does in Fort Baptist.

Call the Lottery anything you want to, but if in coming years 10 or 15 thousand extra college graduates start rolling out of our institutions of higher learning, we'll one day live in a different kind of state. We'll quit being the butt of every joke. We'll start moving up out of 48th place. We might wind up being the new Connecticut of the South! Thank you Governor Beebe and Lt. Governor Halter and thanks to everyone who has bought a Lottery ticket, keep it coming!

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It seems almost that is something, anything, is allowed to exist, some people just can't fight off their own urges to get 'em some, so in order to keep from participating, they have to have the gumment make laws against it. Gay marriage, for example. What's the problem? If you don't want to marry somebody of the same sex, even if it is legal, you don't have to. Porn: if you don't like it, don't watch it. Marijuana: don't smoke it. Casino gaming: don't play. Lotto Tickets...?
I do a lot of things other people like to bitch about, but, as far as I can see, I'm not hurting anybody by doing them (not necessarily included in that list above). So, what the hell?

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If a lottery ticket is all someone can afford then what is a ticket to a Razorback game?

Both are entertainment. Seeing a Razorback game does exactly what for a person? Yet the college-degree crowd somehow feel it's a superior thing to do. Sure, there's a few bidness-entertainment things going on but just what does buying, attending and all the whoopla over seeing a college team do a 80 yr old ritual accomplish for anyone?

Smarter voters? Better workers? More genteel? Nay. When UA played UCA the only reason Hawgfans watched was to see what? A chance for the underdog to slay a giant. Didn't happen, hasn't happened and the times it does happen are "very few," like the lottery. But, fuball costs much more and fewer kids get a chance to attend college.

So say what you will, this society has as many ways to throw away and waste money as they they do to make it, likely more ways to waste it than to make it.

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My wife and I are not gamblers, and our two kids graduated from college years ago. As a result, I haven't really read much about the new lottery. Can anyone tell me if the actual financial need of a given scholarship applicant (or in the case of a rich kid, the lack of need) was factored into the decisions as to who got money?

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citizen1, thats like the Jeff Foxworthy joke -- If he ever has to go to the hospital cause he has an erection that lasts for over four hours, he's puttin' that hospital gown on so it opens in FRONT!

And decreased vision means you cant see as good or as fer as you used to could. For example, you may have trouble applying your horrendously expensive and IMHO terribly risky eyelash Miracle Gro if you have decreased vision.

DBI, my house would've been paid for the year my older son graduated high school but nooooooooo, my ex had to refinance it to pay off his damned suburban and my car. If you and Mag both smoke, you'll want to be certain you both have good burial policies. I watched my mother die of smoking and it wasn't fun.

ActMax gets so decompensated every time he thinks the real Max made a mistake or whatever, he must be one of those paid posters. How could I get paid for posting? Usually I just go my merry way, being a pain in the ass, for free. ActMax, don't take everything so literally. We have fun here. and Max, being a real writer, knows how to use irony and stuff like that, but it must be wasted on you.

Remember back in our day when WE made our OWN arrangements to go to college, and if mom and dad could help, they did??? There were no seminars for parents on improving our ACT scores? Nowadays it has sort of a Miss America feeling to it or something.

I can't really describe it, but parents have completely taken over and the kids are cheated out of that part of growing up, too. my kid had a presidential scholarship before I knew he'd made up his mind where he was going to school. he just wanted to be independent. And he is, and I'm proud of him in so many ways.

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Its possible Im wrong - but I thought the lottery scholarship was basically the same as the AR Academic Challenge scholarship, not based on financial need, GPA and ACT requirements pretty low, just rewritten and re-funded with all that lottery money. There was one year the state didnt have any money for the AR Academic Challenge -- it just didn't exist that year, I think for the class of '03 but am not sure b/c I dont have a kid in that class.

But no, I dont think it has anything to do with financial need. You still have to fill out that sacred FAFSA if you want so much as a paper clip, even if your kid doesnt apply for any scholarship money.

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Yes, DBI, as much as I appreciate your intelligence, as reflected in your blog posts, there must be something wrong in your thinking if you still smoke. That is the single worst thing you can do to yourself. Take it from someone who smoked for 25 years before quitting 35 years ago.

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". . . Call the Lottery anything you want to, but if in coming years 10 or 15 thousand extra college graduates start rolling out of our institutions of higher learning, we'll one day live in a different kind of state. We'll quit being the butt of every joke. We'll start moving up out of 48th place. . . ." dbi

Meaning no disrespect, dbi, but Florida has hag a lottery for twenty-four years with much higher purchases and Texas for eighteen years, how has those hoards of Florida and Texas college graduates changed them?

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