THE SCOOP: Helping education one ticket at a time
Since I’m a firm supporter of education, I’ve been doing my best to buy as many lottery tickets as possible. I know what you’re probably thinking: What a guy!
I’m still buying tickets despite the fact my grand illusions of the state lottery have begun to crumble. And when I say my illusions are crumbling, you can read between the lines and determine that means I’m not winning.
To date, I’ve spent $17 on lottery tickets and have won a total of one free ticket. Since I didn’t win anything with my free ticket, you could say I’ve won absolutely nothing.
This makes little sense to me since the odds printed on the back of the lottery ticket clearly state my chances of winning are roughly 1 in 5. But I’ve always been one to defy the odds.
It’s not surprising more and more people are finding the lottery is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow everyone was thinking. All those dreams of getting rich quick have been replaced by the reality that most of us will never strike it rich playing the lottery. Sure we might get lucky and win $2, maybe even $24, but that’s hardly going to make a difference in anyone’s life.
Randy Marsh at Randy’s Raceway Market is one person who has seen through the glossy image the lottery conveys. Dollar signs and bags of money may be printed on lottery tickets, but those symbols are more indicative of the money going into the bank accounts of lottery executives than money going into the pockets of lottery players.
Raceway Market was the No. 1 lottery ticket retailer in Warren County, yet Randy told state lottery officials to come get their machines out of his store. Randy quickly grew tired of the lottery hassle, and with watching people cash their paychecks and then spend a large portion on lottery tickets. Randy admitted he began having moral issues with the lottery.
But let’s not forget the people spending half their paychecks on lottery tickets are helping education.
One of the bright sides to the lottery is Tennesseans are no longer helping the people of Kentucky and Georgia balance their state budgets. Those states have already noticed a perceptible drop in their lottery sales since Tennesseans are no longer crossing the border to help educate their children, I mean play their lotteries.
Kentucky officials realize they must take quick action. And by quick action I mean they want to push gambling down our throats even further. That’s why they are considering loosening their gambling laws, in part to compensate for a loss in revenue from their lottery.
Kentucky lawmakers want to strategically place casinos along the state’s border to entice folks to come back to the Bluegrass State. Since Kentucky lottery tickets are no longer such a hot commodity, the next logical step is to encourage people to throw their money away on a roulette table or in a slot machine.
All of this is just a sneaky way to get tax dollars without using the two words everyone hates – tax increase. So instead of slightly higher taxes to fund educational scholarships, we have the lottery and everyone is glowing with happiness.
Warren County government needs to take a long look at enacting some of these games of chance. After all, they are so much fun.
For example, we don’t need to have a standard sales tax rate of 9.75 percent because that’s boring. We should scratch off a card after our groceries have been rung up and that will tell us if we have to pay 6 percent sales tax, or 13 percent. Think of the excitement.
Best of all, if we’re looking for justification, we can just earmark the extra money for education. That’s a catch-all excuse for any moral dilemma out there.
(James Clark is editor of the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)