Arkansas Blog

Interesting slippery slope argument on the state lottery...I'll have to say, though, that I would personally enjoy casinos/hotels in a resort town like Hot Springs or Eureka Springs. I could care less about a state lottery. Real gambling? That's another story!

Our Oz moment has arrived. The revelations of the last 7 years have come so hard and fast it's a wonder our heads haven't exploded. What we've learned...no wait....what has been displayed to us, which most of us haven't learned, is that the whole damn thing is a fake. It's all a bad joke, we've been played for fools.....we are fools!

I was born naive. I've had to fight it all my life. I'm built to believe what I'm told and for 35 or 40 years I rolled with it without too much personal damage. But at some point it became impossible to continue living naively. About the time I turned around and noticed I didn't actually believe a damn thing about the Bible or religion, I also started picking up on the fact that EVERYTHING is about money and even those people thought to be far above the need or desire for money were as bloodthirsty for the stuff as a new cell phone salesman on his first day on the job.

In the last 7 years we've learned that only millionaires go to the White House or Congress. In Win Rockefeller's time, millionaires could be trusted in public service because they already had theirs and they were kind enough to work for others much much less fortunate. Well....forget all that. Win was the last of his kind. Now when a millionaire lands in our politics, they're just finding the starting place to get their first billion.

Of course lotteries are corrupt. But so is our White House, our Congress, our religious organizations, the Red Cross, our doctors, lawyers..............you name it! Dentists don't fix teeth anymore, they improve your smile and charge you triple in the process. Remember heart worms....every dog was gonna have em.....nothing more than a marketing technique designed to maximize the profits of veterinarians. Let's take a vote on how many women on this blog have had unusual cells turn up during a routine pap smear. After a thousand bucks or so.....everything is just dandy again betwixt your legs. All's well.....never mind.......just follow the payment plan.

Our mission, should we accept it....is to forget about living in an honest country where everything is on the up and up. We now have to figure out how to navigate thru life knowing everything is a scam. Will a scam lottery wind up putting extra bucks in our corrupt school system? That's the only question we should be answering. If the answer is yes....and the janitor at the mall does indeed have a micro-slim chance of becoming a lottery millionaire.......let's go for it! If those chosen to run our lottery are too corrupt to even give token adherence to the game being played......then let's reject the whole notion.

From here on out that's how we're forced to play the game. The question is not Is it corrupt....we already know that it is. So the question is.....is it too corrupt to do any of us any good? Welcome to the lousy 21st Century! USSR=USSA Open your eyes....we are a corrupt people governed by corruption experts. The only comfort we'll get in the future will be small things that tell us that Mike Beebe is less corrupt than Mike Huckabee. Blanche Lincoln is less of a Bush-bot than Mark Pryor.

To naturally naive people like myself, all of this comes as a terrible shock. Unless the shock kills you, you'll have to pick yourself up and learn how to live in the world as it is....not as you wish it would be. You have to live your life with the people you get.....not the people you wish you'd get.

I'm at the other end of the spectrum from GnuBlue. I've played lotteries in other states and would probably play one here -- at bit -- but spare me the casinos. I went along with friends to a boat in Lake Charles, got a couple of rolls of nickels and played a slot machine. Even won a few bucks. Twenty minutes later I was wandering around the place hoping everyone would soon become as bored as I was so we could leave. No such luck. (Note here that I am a person who is rarely bored.)
I spent what seemed like days exploring the boat, inside and out. And the blasted thing was tied up. Only the next day did I find that it also toured the lake at times. I wuz cheated.
Next time these friends suggested an outing -- a three day cruise from New Orleans -- and I found that the "fun" part of the trip was the opportunity to gamble day and night, I passed.
They don't understand me and I don't understand them.
Still, if you can afford to lose the money, have fun. And if you can't, don't tell me how much fun you had at the boats over the weekend before asking me for grocery money.

Gambling in any form has always been designed with the shiny pony up front and the real money is made behind the scenes.. I mean how much will it really cost for a few bean counters, computer network monitor/specialists, and a presentable twangy number caller.

Nothing about the AR Lotto system and its finances should be private.. The entire handling of every dollar should be updated and available on the internet instantly. We should know without needing to ask what companies get paid (and precisely how much) for handling the operations. We should know how much schools are receiving. We should know how much is being paid out to players. Bidding for maintaining the lotto system should be very competitive and up for a bid frequently and all bids should be available on the net for public scrutiny.

If the gimmicks reach the point of looking like keno or other games beyond actual lotto and scratch off tickets then AR needs to join four of our neighbors, MS, MO, OK, LA, and allow real casino gaming.

"and lottery tables where you rolled six-sided cubes with numbers on each side to determine the winning lottery numbers?"'

wouldn't work for obvious reasons.

Ah, screw it.
I'm tired of arguing this point. Arkansas will never have a Lotto, or casino gambling because on one side you have the morality police and on the other side you have a bunch of practical nuts that don't see the sense of it so they don't want to do it, and they don't think other people should be allowed to do it either because it's not good for them and they're not smart enough to make that decision on their own. I say we just get rid of all vices here and make Arkansas the only "pure" state in the union. Outlaw cigarettes and alcohol and riding your motorcycle without a helmet. No fast food. Outlaw anything that might cause your mother to say "You could put your eye out doing that". Make it a criminal offense to have sex with somebody you're not married to - and make sure we have an amendment that defines that union as between a man and a woman. Then, so our fellow Arkies aren't tempted by all the fun people are having everywhere else, let's not let anybody travel outside the borders to witness that debauchery.....which will mean we have to dump the internet too. And TV. And out-of-state newspapers. And we better censor the ones we have here to keep somebody from bringing up taboo subjects.
Face it. We're halfway there. And just look how swell we're doing with it. Last time I checked, we were the richest state, with the highest standard of living, between Missouri & Louisiana and between Oklahoma & Tennessee. Nobody else even comes close.
Follow the simple plan for success outlined above and soon we could have all the puritans in the country fighting to come here and raise their children in this wholesome atmosphere. We'll have our own political color designation, because red just won't say it. Maybe deep maroon, bordering on black.
They used to teach us in Arkansas History class that we were the only state in the US that, left to its own devices, could survive. Hell. Let's just find out.

Max, I agree that the State should not be engaged in gambling and that lotteries a particularly poor investment but with Arkansas being surrounded by lottery states, it makes sense to me to go with the flow. I also agreed with our usury law but one small state cannot impose its will on others and the lottery is another example just like the usury law is.

"...Gtech and Scientific Games made more than $1.2 million in campaign contributions to state governors, legislators and political parties from 1999 to 2006." NYT ($171,400 per year)

Now on to the BIG lottery, the lotto of Survival:

"The US arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its traditional allies in the Republican party.

Employees of the top five US arms manufacturers - Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon - gave Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to the Republicans. (this is just in the primary)

Mrs Clinton's closest competitor in raising cash from the arms industry is the former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who raised just $32,000. (keep in mind this is only the Primary spending..and the spending that can be discovered)

"Arms industry profits are so heavily dependent on government contracts that companies in this field want to be sure they do not have hostile relations with the White House," added Mr Edsall.

The industry's strong support for Mrs Clinton indicates that she is their firm favourite to win the Democratic nomination in the spring and the presidential election in November 2008. In the last presidential race, George Bush raised more than $800,000.." Common Dreams Oct 19

(and how's about those Survival Lotto payoffs with Bush!!!)

Doigotta, I am in your corner. Slots, etc., are boring as hell and I too have been bored out of my gourd just waiting for a ride back to my room. But I like horse racing. But others find that boring. To each his own. If I can legally play the ponies, then other citizens should be able legally play the machines. Live and let live. We are not long for this old planet anyway. The issue is just not that important.

Well, Doigotta, aren't we the boring ones? I'm with you -- I don't care one bit if other people gamble, but I've never understood its allure. I don't really see much difference in that and going out into the street and just throwing down all your money. In fact, maybe that would be better because there's at least some small chance that someone who needed it would find it and use it.

There are several issues relating to a state lottery which do concern me, however. It's probably a given that education won't get as much money as the pie-in-the-sky promises being made. There is possibly a Coors beer factor here. Those of us who are truly old can remember when Coors beer was not available in Arkansas. That made it the most delicious beer ever brewed, and every so often we just had to go to Oklahoma to buy some. Then it became available for purchase in Arkansas, and suddenly it tasted like watery swill. Having lottery tickets available locally will probably take a lot of the fun out of buying one. However, to be fair, in the state in which we previously lived, although education did not get nearly the amount promised, it still got a tidy sum that it was not getting before, so we could probably live with that.

Also, does Halter's proposal make absolutely sure the proceeds do not go into the general fund where the idiots in the legislature can divert it to some pet project like building roads in Bigelow which could be deemed "educational" in nature because they would be traveled by school buses or cars being driven by students at Lu Hardin U.?

Is the lottery going to be held to the same standards as charitable organizations so that the majority of the proceeds actually go toward education and not toward administrative costs or to pay outlandishly large salaries to people running the lottery?

And like Eureka asks, is absolutely everything about this lottery going to be available online for public scrutiny, including salaries and benefits of employees? This is the only way we have even a slight hope of everything being above board in the operation of the lottery. And how about a section prohibiting anybody even remotely connected to the lottery from accepting even the smallest gift from anybody lobbying for or acting in behalf of anyone trying to make money "helping" us run our lottery.

And finally as Max mentioned on Arkansas Week, will the previously mentioned idiots in the legislature take the attitude that education now has the lottery, so they can severely cut back on the already inadequate amounts of tax money they officially allocate to it?

All things considered, I'll probably vote for the lottery. The fact that Halter is not one of the cool kids in the state Democratic Party makes me more likely to trust him, not less. But if he starts showing those Al Bundy "I played high school football" commercials again, all bets are off.

". . . one side you have the morality police and on the other side you have a bunch of practical nuts that don't see the sense of it so they don't want to do it, and they don't think other people should be allowed to do it either because it's not good for them and they're not smart enough to make that decision on their own . . .": RickBaber

Rick,

I am one person, one vote and have the freedom to try to convince others. I don't oppose the lottery on religious grounds, I don't think that people are not smart enough to make that decision on their own, they will when they vote.

I oppose the lottery because I think it would be bad for the State of Arkansas where I live and I don't believe the rationales that are being promulgated to justify the establishment of a lottery.

I don't believe in the pragmatic "give-up" cynical rationale of DBI or your "everyone else is doing it" line.

I will be voting against the lottery because it will not bring the benefits being promised, will sap a great deal effort from our state government to manage when they have trouble managing now, will invite a increased lobbying and monied interest pressure on our legislature, among other negatives.

As I have said on several occasions, Arkansas and Utah the last two states who will have the lottery.

Doc,
To each his own, I suppose. But I doubt if you will be voting on the lottery issue at all. In all liklihood, special interests - most notably the gambling concerns in other states that like sucking revenue from Arkansas - will assure the issue never gets to a vote of the people. Like I said, I'm tired of being on the losing end of these things. Maybe I should just shuttup and cash in my chips (pun intended) and, after 52 years here, move to a state that is more liberal. I think there are about 48 others from which to choose. Arkansas and Utah are just too ... nice for rowdy bastards like me.

Vegan
After you digest my above comments on the Hillary Lottery, here's some provisions from Halter's proposed Ark Lottery:

Text of revised lottery proposal
(b) Lottery proceeds shall be used solely to pay the operating expenses of lotteries, including all prizes, and to fund or provide for scholarships and grants to citizens of this State enrolled in public and private non-profit two-year and four-year colleges and universities located within the State that are certified according to criteria established by the General Assembly. The General Assembly shall establish criteria to determine who is eligible to receive the scholarships and grants pursuant to this Amendment.

(c) Lottery proceeds shall not be subject to appropriation by the General Assembly and are specifically declared to be cash funds held in trust separate and apart from the State treasury to be managed and maintained by the General Assembly or an agency or department of the State as determined by the General Assembly.

(d) Lottery proceeds remaining after payment of operating expenses and prizes shall supplement, not supplant, non-lottery educational resources.

click bluename

Thanks, eLwood, but I'll not be digesting your comments about Hillary. The only way I will not be voting for her is if Pete Stark gets in the race.

Genuine thanks for the lottery link. "Supplement, not supplant" is pretty plain language and probably as well as it could be drafted, but I'm not sure it would be possible to enforce this provision. So much is, as always, left up to the legislature to do the right thing; and we all know how that usually turns out. But I probably will still vote for it under the theory that at least some money will make it down to the scholarship recipients.

A lottery in Arkansas will be a windfall for the media. Millions of dollars each week to be spent on advertising in the papers, billboards, radio & TV to convince poor Arkies to spend their rent and grocery money on lottery tickets. "You can't win if you don't play!" etc. etc. Look forward to an onslaught of PSA's to come on how great it will be for the state.

You know after reading Mystery Shopper and Doc's comments I have to ask you what benefit does Arkansas have from toeing the line of the "Moral Majority"? In fact, how has most "conservative" states benefitted when its the more "liberal" states who are more productive and have better standard of living?