Arkansas Blog

>Will it be possible to get around the new constitutional amendment's prohibition on profits, including for operators of the games?<

In Arkansas, dealing with numbers, it's possible to get by with anything as PSC has demonstrated year after year.

Bingo operators only need to pay themselves super high salaries, and then management bonuses for anything that remains.
Of course the "cost" of supplies can always be adjusted.

Even if he did submit to an interview Huckabee wouldn't say anything insightful.

The interviews most inquiring readers would like to see next to the fiction on the editorial page is with those local, state and federal officials who have taken a pass on the prosecution of Huckabee for his crimes. There must be a reporter somewhere with the nerve to ask why this sort of misconduct is tolerated.

Let Huck coast around from talk show to talk show, doing softball with Russert, cause the presshands that lull you into fame can also bitchslap you into scandals, real fast.

We made bingo legal to keep seniors active? Gee, I thought "active' meant walking around the block a time or two.
Come on, bingo was passed to sate those ole gamblin' urges. Any time you have folks paying a buck a card to play for donated dustcatchers and white elephants they neither need nor like, and in a venue they wouldn't be caught dead in the rest of the week, it ain't about charity fundraising. At least not in front of the bingo cards.
Still, I suppose it beats hittin' the bars on the weekend. And after a night of bingo you probably can't, unless you run by the ole "check casher" the next morning.
OK, call me sanctimonious, but the losing streaks never made up for the rush of an occasional win -- at bingo, at the horse races, or at a casino. But some folks never figure out that the only way to win is to run the game -- and that ain't gamblin'.

Just make the sale of bingo cards subject to state & local sales taxes and require the charitable organizations to have a sales tax permit. Let them sell the cards for whatever they want $1, $5, $20, $50 as long as they collect and remit the sales tax to DF&A every month like any other non-exempt business. Then audit the hell out of them! If folks want to spend their grocery money on bingo cards, at least the state won't be losing any revenue, and they'll be able to prosecute the crooked operators for tax evasion if they skim off the top or fail to remit.

Word is Sen. Steve Faris is carrying water for some serious players with mob ties. His bingo deregulation bill deserves close scrutiny.