My vote

It took three tries, but I finally got the voting machine to register my vote for Barack Obama the other day. The first two times I tried it highlighted McCain/Palin instead, almost like in this Simpson’s episode:



Fortunately, I got it changed and was very careful where I touched the screen from that point on. But it was disturbing to think that if I had not paid careful attention I could very easily have cast a vote for McSame.
I also cast votes for Rick Noriega for U.S. Senate; Ciro Rodriguez for U.S. Congress; and all the Democrats running for the Texas Supreme Court. I also voted against State Rep. Frank Corte Jr.; for Chip Haas for county commissioner and for extending city term limits to eight years.

I did vote in all the judicial races although I resent having to do so. I believe judges should be appointed because the electorate simply doesn’t have the time or interest to stay informed on the issues in those races and make intelligent choices.

Now I just have to wait two weeks to find out the results.

Expensive clothing, haircuts and hypocricy

I wonder how many of my rightwing friends have contributed to the Republican National Committee this year?
I wonder how they feel about it now knowing that the RNC paid $150,000 to put Sarah Palin in high-fashion clothing for the campaign?
As Atrios points out, this is just rich with hypocricy. The same rightwingers who were outraged when John Edwards campaign reportedly paid $400 for a fancy hair stylist are now faced with a Republican running mate who goes on shopping sprees at Nieman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue all on their tab.

The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

Is this sexist or what? Do you think the Obama campaign had to spend $150,000 accessorizing Joe Biden? Did they even so much as buy him a new suit?

Remember, this is the party that is supposedly going to bring back fiscal responsibility to Washington! The Express-News said so in their endorsement! Nevermind that they ran up the federal debt $4.5 trillion while they had complete control of every branch of government, Republicans are the ones you can trust with your money. Just look how well their policies are playing out on Wall Street!

The race is tightening!!!!

Baloney. This is a common news meme during the final leg of a long campaign season and the Republicans are going to pick it up and run with it as hard as they can. They are desperate for any thread of hope to dangle in front of their supporters to keep them from sulking at home on election day.
There are something like eight different daily tracking polls out now and they fluctuate continuously. So you can always pick up one of the polls on any day and claim that “the race is tightening”. And then the next day when the same poll shows Obama pulling away again you just ignore it and grab a different poll that is fluctuating the direction you want.

More Tina, less Sarah

After watching Saturday Night Live the other night I can honestly say that I much prefer watching Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin to watching the real thing. Tina actually makes her Palin character empathetic. The real Sarah Palin comes across as cold and calculating and even less human than the parody character.

Another awful Express-News endorsement

First they endorsed George W. Bush in 2000. Then they endorsed him again in 2004. Now the San Antonio Express-News is endorsing John McCain.
Clearly the editorial board at the E-N has not learned its lesson. After eight years of what has been without a doubt the worst presidential administration in modern times, the E-N is endorsing someone who was in lockstep with Bush 90 percent of the time and promises to carry on the same economic and international policies.
The E-N says McCain would bring fiscal responsibility to the White House (I could swear they said the same thing about Bush in 2000) and point to his demagoguery on “wasteful earmarks” which make up less than 1 percent of the federal budget. But they ignore the fact that McCain is right with Bush on the two biggest contributors to the ballooning deficits of the past eight years — (1) Bush’s fiscally irresponsible tax giveaway to the rich - which almost overnight wiped out a $236 billion surplus and put us back on the road to record annual deficits all without delivering on the promised boost to the economy; and (2) the $10 billion per month that we continue to flush away on the quagmire in Iraq which has gone on longer than our total involvement in World War II. McCain wants to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent and has no plans to extract the U.S. military from the Iraq debacle.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, has promised to pull us out of Iraq and has a plan to reverse Bush’s disasterous tax cut policies, raising taxes on the wealthy back to the level they were under that oppressive socialist Ronald Reagan.
The E-N also goes on to praise McCain as the only candidate “willing to speak the unpopular truth” about entitlement spending. And what truth is that? That it would be insane for us to privatize Social Security and invest it all in the stock market like Bush and McCain wanted to do?
Under President Bush and the Republicans, the federal debt has increase by $4.5 trillion. That is more than was accumulated under Carter ($337 billion) Reagan ($1.6 trillion) Bush Sr. ($1.6 trillion) and Clinton ($1.5 trillion) combined. I can assure you that was not a result of runaway spending on “earmarks”.
As bad as George W. Bush has been, McCain has the potential to be much worse. He is a 72-year-old with serious medical problems who tapped as his running mate someone who is supremely unqualified to take over as president.
He is admittedly clueless when it comes to economic issues and takes his advice from people like Phil Gramm, one of the architects of the deregulation fiasco that led to the current collapse of our financial system. His campaign is filled with lobbyists who had a direct role in undermining the regulatory framework of our financial markets.
The fact that you can point to a couple of areas like immigration policy and global warming where he has bucked his parties wrong-headed views does not excuse the fact that he would continue leading us down the same path in every other instance.
The fact that the Express-News would make such an awful endorsement has caused me to lose all respect for the paper and its current leaders.

E-N endoresment speculation

The Express-News editorial board has so far stuck with its rule of endorsing Republicans and incumbents almost exclusively. If you are an incumbent Republican, you are guaranteed an endorsement from the E-N. If you are a Democratic incumbent, you have about a 50-50 chance. And if you are a Democrat challenging a Republican, forgetaboutit.
The other day, the E-N endorsed all the incumbent Congressmen from San Antonio except for Democrat Ciro Rodriguez, which is the only race that is being seriously contested. Today they endorsed Republican John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate over challenger Rick Noriega.
The only question now is how they will come down Sunday when they are do to make their presidential endorsement. Will they continue their Republican tilt and endorse John McCain? Or have they been endorsing all Republicans up until now in an effort to innoculate themselves from criticism that they are too liberal if they endorse Barack Obama?
As lousy as their endorsements have been so far, I think there is still a chance that they could endorse Obama for the simple reason that they can see the writing on the wall and will want to present themselves as having been on the winning side. That is pretty much why the wingnutty editorial board at the Washington Post just endorsed Obama.
Nevertheless, I will still be somewhat surprised if it does go that way. I fully expect they will continue their hard-right tilt led by the Cheneyesque Neo-con Jonathan Gurwitz who calls all the shots there these days.

McCain wins one

Watching excerpts of John McCain and Barack Obama’s remarks at the 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner last night made me realize how quickly McCain will be able to rebound from what will undoubtedly be a trouncing in this election. He’s a funny guy. And he can be very charming when he is being self-effacing.
McCain clearly gave the better performance at the dinner. Whether it was due to having a better speechwriter or a more practiced and comicly-timed delivery I’m not sure, but if we were voting on an after-dinner speaker rather than a president, Obama might be in trouble right now. McCain’s years of being on the lecture circuit at just these kinds of events, plus his numerous appearances on the David Letterman and Jay Leno show’s clearly showed last night.
His best line of the night was probably when he deadpanned that despite being amongst a group of Manhattan Democrats he felt that there were some out there who were pulling for him. He then paused a moment to allow some light applause before looking over into the audience with a big smile and saying “Hillary! I’m so glad to see you here tonight!”
I also liked when he kidded himself about calling Obama “That One” during one of the debates, saying that it was just a pet name that he has for him and noted that Obama has a pet name for him too — George Bush.
Obama wasn’t bad, but it was hard to match McCain who seemed to turn on a dime from being a grouchy, angry old man to a debonair and witty dinner host.

Speaking their language

What struck me about last night’s debate was not that McCain was throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Obama, but that he seemed to be going to great lengths to appeal to his right-wing fundamentalist base by touching on many of their pet issues as he could and using buzz words that only really mean anything to that small demographic group.
It was a given that McCain was going to raise the non-issues about William Ayers and ACORN (though interestingly nothing about Rev. Jeremiah Wright), and Obama was ready with his responses which effectively neutralized those attacks. But McCain went further by raising Obama’s vote in the Illinois Senate against the so-called Born Alive Infant Protection Act which is really only familiar to people on the far fringes of the anti-abortion movement. Why McCain thinks he needs to appeal to people like TTFKAM is beyond me.
Nevertheless, Obama’s answer was definitive, noting that state law already protected the life of a baby born alive (not to mention the Hippocratic Oath) and that the act was simply an attempt to chip away at abortion rights and was unConstitutional in its present form.
McCain then decided to throw himself under a bus by mocking concerns about a woman’s health in respect to abortions. His complaint that the definition of “health” is stretched too far is a common tactic of the far right, but it is not commonly discussed in polite society so he came across sounding crass and cold. Obama, on the other hand, made it clear that he wants to seek a middle ground that will help reduce the number of abortions without taking away a woman’s choice in the matter.
Ultimately, I thought it was clear that Obama won the debate as the polls later confirmed.


On a side note, I was disappointed to see that infant mortality rates in the U.S. are still high.

Infant deaths in the United States declined 2 percent in 2006, government researchers reported Wednesday, but the rate still remains well above that of most other industrialized countries and is one of many indicators suggesting that Americans pay more but get less from their health care system.
Infant mortality has long been considered one of the most important indicators of the health of a nation and the quality of its medical system. In 1960, the United States ranked 12th lowest in the world, but by 2004, the latest year for which comparisons were issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that ranking had dropped to 29th lowest.

It is interesting to note that the U.S. is even behind Cuba in this all-important measure of our nation’s health.

Their vilest hour: The GOP's Ayers attack

There’s a great column in the Wall Street Journal today by Thomas Frank defending William Ayers.
Not his actions when he was a radical in the 1960s, but his life since then in which he has been a model citizen and respected university professor in Chicago.

I am a friend of Mr. Ayers. In fact, I met him in the same way Mr. Obama says he did: 10 years ago, Mr. Ayers was a guy in my neighborhood in Chicago who knew something about fundraising. I knew nothing about it, I needed to learn, and a friend referred me to Bill.

Bill's got lots of friends, and that's because he is today a dedicated servant of those less fortunate than himself; because he is unfailingly generous to people who ask for his help; and because he is kind and affable and even humble. Moral qualities which, by the way, were celebrated boisterously on day one of the GOP convention in September.

Mr. Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where his work is esteemed by colleagues of different political viewpoints. Herbert Walberg, an advocate of school vouchers who is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, told me he remembers Mr. Ayers as "a responsible colleague, in the professional sense of the word." Bill Schubert, who served as the chairman of UIC's Department of Curriculum and Instruction for many years, thinks so highly of Mr. Ayers that, in response to the current allegations, he compiled a lengthy résumé of the man's books, journal articles, guest lectures and keynote speeches. Mr. Ayers has been involved with countless foundation efforts and has received various awards. He volunteers for everything. He may once have been wanted by the FBI, but in the intervening years the man has become such a good citizen he ought to be an honorary Eagle Scout.

Rightwingers insist that Ayers is “unrepentent” which is disingenuous. Mr. Ayers has in fact repudiated the violent actions of the Weathermen (which, by the way, did not harm anyone except for some of their own members who were killed when a bomb accidently went off).
What he has not repudiated is his opposition to the Vietnam war. When rightwingers say Ayers is unrepentent, this is what they really mean. The only way he could truly reform himself in their eyes would be to come out and say that he was wrong to oppose the Vietnam War. And then vote Republican.
Short of that, the rightwingers are extremely unforgiving and will hold a grudge to the bitter end.

Frank goes on to express his disgust over the Republican campaign to try and vilify Ayers today in an attempt to drag Obama down.

...in its haste to convict a man merely for associating with Mr. Ayers, the GOP is effectively proposing to make the upcoming election into the largest mass trial in history, with all those professors and all those do-gooders on the hook for someone else's deeds four decades ago.
The McCain campaign has made much of its leader's honor and bravery, but now it has chosen to mount its greatest attack against a man who poses no conceivable threat to the country, who has nothing to do with this year's issues, and who cannot or will not defend himself. Apparently this makes him an irresistible target.
There are a lot of things to call this tactic, but "country first" isn't one of them. The nation wants its hope and confidence restored, and Republican leaders have chosen instead to wave the bloody shirt. This is their vilest hour.

I’m not sure what rightwingers expected Obama to do back when he was first introduced to Ayers, who at the time was an established and highly respected academic and social activist.
Refuse to shake his hand? Spit in his eye?
Is that what John McCain would have done?

But the point is that Repubicans don’t want anyone to think that deeply about this issue. All they want is some excuse, no matter how contrived, to associate Obama with a “terrorist” and make people question his patriotism or what have you.

Who's “paling around” with terrorists?

You’ve got to be kidding me. This is insane.

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.
The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

So, McCain’s choice to head his transition team is a guy who used to lobby on behalf of Saddam Hussein.

And McCain is trying to make a big deal out of Barack Obama serving on the same board with William Ayers once?!?!?!

William Ayers was a radical anti-war activist in the late-60s whose group set off some bombs but never hurt anyone other than the time a bomb accidently went off and killed some of their own members. I’m not sure how or why Ayers escaped punishment for his activites back then, but he eventually went on to become a respected professor in the Chicago area where he once served on a board with Barack Obama as part of a school reform initiative sponsored by Republican philanthropist Walter Annenberg.
And Ayers once hosted a fundraising “coffee” for Obama during one of his state Senate campaigns.
That is the full extent of their relationship. And of course Ayers has no connection whatsoever with Obama today or with his presidential campaign.

But here we have John McCain who taps as the leader of his transition team a guy who used to be a lobbyist for Saddam Hussein! Talk about ‘paling around with terrorists’! Sheesh!
This is not some guy that McCain had a fleeting and tenuous relationship with in the distant past. He is set to be a leader in a McCain administration. The people who head the transition team for the president-elect invariably wind up with key positions in the administration.
Key positions! A lobbyist for Saddam Hussein!!!
Have I stressed this point enough?

Needless to say, I don’t want to hear another word from Republicans about William Ayers.

Express-News thumbs nose at Ciro

The Express-News editorial board outdid itself today with a glowing endorsement of Republican Lyle Larson for the 22nd District Congressional seat held by Democrat Ciro Rodriguez.
Nevermind that Democrats are in the majority and are on the verge of substantially increasing there majority next term and for the forseeable future. Nevermind that Ciro sits on the coveted House Appropriations Committee which is vitally important for San Antonio and all of its military bases.
No, the E-N thinks we need to pitch our veteran congressman out on his rear and replace him with a freshman Republican who will be stuck in the minority with no power and no influence for who knows how long.
In the editorial, they don’t say one word that is critical of Ciro and give no explanation for why they want to turn him out of office. It is just all glowing praise of Larson and how wonderful and independent he is. Bullshit! He will be just like John Cornyn and vote with the rightwing of his party on each and every issue.
What’s more is he is parroting John McCain’s moronic stance against “earmarks” without considering that those so-called earmarks are what is funding many of the big military projects here that are propping our local economy up - the same projects which the Express-News is always touting and raving about.
I am completely disgusted with the local paper and its rightwing neocon editorial board. They endorsed Bush twice and have been consistent cheerleaders for the quagmire in Iraq. Now I am just waiting for their John McCain endorsement next weekend. It should be good for a few laughs.

GOP - Party of fiscal irresponsibility

This was a great post over at Daily Kos....

The national debt when Jimmy Carter arrived at the White House:

$660 billion.

Added during Carter's four years: $337 billion.

Added during Ronald Reagan's eight years: $1.6 trillion.

Added during George H. W. Bush's four years: $1.6 trillion.

Added during Bill Clinton's eight years: $1.5 trillion.

Added during George W. Bush's seven years, nine months: $4.5 trillion.

Portion of the $9.5 trillion added to the national debt during the past 31 years and seven months that came during Republican presidencies: $7.7 trillion.

Percentage of that $7.7 trillion added during George W. Bush's two terms: 58%.

Good Lord! When you look at the numbers like that it is just astonishing. Ronald Reagan set us on this mega-debt rollercoaster and Bush Sr. went along for the ride. Bill Clinton was just managing to put the brakes on when Bush Jr. got in there, threw the breaks away and sent us over a cliff.

The Shrill One wins a Nobel prize

I was thrilled this morning to see that one of my favorite columnists - Paul Krugman - won the Nobel prize in economics this year.
This starts to make up for the Nobel committee’s snubbing of John Kenneth Galbraith while giving its top prize to Milton Friedman many years ago.

Throw the bum out!

What a moroon!

West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, according to current and former members of his staff who have been briefed on the settlement, which involved Mahoney and his campaign committee.
Pic: Congressman Tim Mahoney and his alleged former mistress, Patricia Allen
The affair between Congressman Tim Mahoney and Patricia Allen began, according to current and former staffers, in 2006 when Mahoney was campaigning for Congress against Foley, promising "a world that is safer, more moral."
Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, the staffers said.

The guy has an affair while winning a congressional seat he would not have won otherwise except for the fact that the incumbent (Mark Foley) was involved in a sex scandal. Idiot!!
I don’t care if it means giving the seat back to the Republicans, I don’t want an idiot like Mahoney in Congress. representing my party. He should resign his seat immediately.

Impeach Sarah Palin!

The Troopergate report is absolutely scathing in its assessment of Gov. Palin's chronic abuse of power during her brief tenure as Alaska's governor.
When somebody is as demonstratable vindictive as that with that kind of power, the last thing you want to do is hand them even more power.
The citizens of Alaska who thought they were cleaning our their corrupt government by electing Sarah and Todd Palin were sadly mistaken.

Another term limits rant

San Antonio has the most godawful, stupidest term limits restrictions of any major city in the nation. The four-years-and-you’re-out rule keeps San Antonio’s city government permanently handicapped with inexperienced leaders focused on short-term goals.
There is not another entity of any kind in the nation that would tolerate such a ridiculous restriction.
Who would invest their money in a company that pitched out all of its top executives every four years and started fresh with green-behind-the-ears newbies?
What if the San Antonio Spurs tossed out all their veteran players every four years and started over with a team of rookies? How many NBA titles do you think they would win?
The people who are trying to keep this term-limit stranglehold on our city government are either grossly ignorant as to the impact their stubborness is having on the city or they just flat-out hate muncipal government and want to see it constantly fail.
We have got to loosen this noose around our city government’s neck if we want our city to continue to be healthy and vibrant going into the future.
If you live in San Antonio and you care about our city, please go out and vote Nov. 4 for the very reasonable compromise extending term limits to eight years.

Filibuster-proof Senate

The Democrats appear to have an outside shot at a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate next session by winning enough races to bring their total to 60.
Right now the Senate is split 49-49 with two Independents who caucus with the Democrats — the Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and the Neo-Con Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
It is unclear whether Lieberman will continue to caucus with the Democrats next year in light of his support for John McCain this election season, going so far as to speak at the Republican National Convention last month. A lot of Democrats want to kick Lieberman out of the caucus and strip him of his chairmanship.
Since the Republicans are not likely to win this election, the next best thing that could happen for Lieberman is if the Democrats come within one vote of that magic 60-vote number. Then they would have to continue holding their noses and allowing him to chair a committee so that he would stay in the caucus.

Here is how the Senate races are shaping up so far:
There are no Democrats in danger of losing their seats. Even Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, once considered to be the weakest link, is running well ahead of her Republican opponent.
Republicans, on the other hand, are in a world of hurt. Two formerly Republican seats are already considered to be locked up by Democrats - Mark Warner in Virginia and Tom Udall in New Mexico.
Two more are considered highly likely to flip to the Democrats — Mark Udall in Colorado and Jean Shaheen in New Hampshire.
Then there are four more races that are very close but have recently been trending in favor of the Democrats:
Kay Hagan in North Carolina threatening to topple Elizabeth Dole;
Mark Begich in Alaska facing the scandal-plagued Ted Stevens;
Jeff Merkley of Oregon has moderate Republican Gordon Smith on the run;
and Al Franken of Minnesota has taken a slim lead over Norm Coleman.

If the Democrats win all these contests it would be considered a fantastic triumph for the party. But it would still leave them one short of the 60-vote supermajority even counting the two independents.

So now we turn to four long-shot races that look like they could flip if there is a tidal wave of support for Democrats on election day. Those include Ronnie Musgrove in Mississippi; Bruce Lunsford in Kentucky; Jim Martin in Georgia and Rick Noriega in Texas.
If the Democrats pick up one of those, they have 60wL (with Lieberman). If they win two of the four they have 60 and they can ditch Lieberman.

Realistically, I am not getting my hopes up that high. But the fact that this scenario is even possible now is quite remarkable.

Virginia is turning blue

The latest polls show Obama up by double digits in Virginia!
To understand the significance of this you have to be versed in some of the number-crunching statistics of electoral politics.
So far in this campaign Republicans have failed to make any headway in the so-called Kerry states, or those states won by John Kerry in 2004. In addition, Obama seems to have a lock on Iowa and New Mexico which both went narrowly for Bush in 04.
Assuming that does not change, Obama can win by picking up any one of the following states - Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Missouri or Indiana. He is currently leading in all of those states with the exception of Indiana where McCain still has a narrow lead but was never before considered to be a swing state in the first place.
To repeat, anyone of those states can push Obama over the top. If all or even most of them go for Obama, we are talking landslide of historic proportions not seen by a Democrat since LBJ.
And did I mention that I am not even counting New Hampshire, Colorado or Nevada in the Obama column, even though he is leading in those states as well? My current dream number for an Obama landslide is 364. He only needs 270 to win.
When people look at an electoral map of the U.S., it always looks more red than blue. But that is misleading because the map emphasizes land mass which does not matter rather than people. For example, the New England block which Democrats have a lock on - Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut - has as many electoral votes as Texas. If you throw in some of the other reliably Democratic states just below that region - Delaware, Maryland, D.C., New Jersey - you have a block of electoral votes the same size as California. And when you add in the big population states like California, New York and Illinois which are currently gimmees for Democrats and throw in the reliably Democratic Midwest states like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, then it comes down to who can win Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.
Fun stuff!

Gun nuts for McCain!

Here is some shocking news. The National Gun Nuts Association (NGNA) has endorsed John McCain for president.
I never would have seen THAT coming!
Legitimate gun owners, of course, have nothing to fear from Democrats or a Barack Obama administration. It is just the complete whack jobs like Wayne LaPierre, president of the NGNA, who advocate for unrestricted, total deregulation of the gun industry (we saw how well that worked out for the financial industry) who have something to worry about. If your dream is to one day walk into my kid’s elementary school carrying a military assault rifle, or board a commercial airliner with a plastic gun and a round of armor piercing cop-killer bullets in your belt, then you are probably going to be out of luck under an Obama administration because he will support COMMON SENSE gun laws that won’t restrict in any way the activities of legitimate hunters or the ability of people to protect themselves in their homes.
It is a real shame. There used to be a respected gun owners group called the National Rifle Association or NRA, but it no longer exists today having been overrun by crazy people like Wayne LaPierre. I think they may even still use that name, but don’t be fooled. It is not the same organization that it was.

What’s Left? Part III

This column was published on Aug. 3, 1995

Promotions unnecessarily lure players to state ‘lootery’

I soured on the lottery about four years ago. That was back before Texas took the plunge. I was living in Connecticut at the time, a different world for a South Texas native, working for a chain of newspapers along the coast.
One day as I was standing in line at a small grocery market, I noticed an elderly woman ahead of me with a meager offering of groceries. I assumed from her pauper-like appearance that she was of less than substantial means. As the cashier rang her up, she glanced into her purse and suddenly looked up startled. Stopping the cashier, she picked up a package of meat and asked to take it back so she could buy her daily allotment of lottery tickets.
I couldn’t believe it! This woman was taking food off of her table so she could purchase some worthless lottery tickets. I was beside myself with outrage and disgust, so I decided to look into the matter more thoroughly.
As it turns out, Connecticut was making a killing on lottery tickets that year, raking in an estimated $525 million. That’s a lot of money to squeeze out of a little bitty state like Connecticut. Texas lottery officials are boasting about bringing in $927 million in lottery revenues last year and that from a state with a population four and a half times the size of Connecticut.
Mind you, this was going on in the midst of a really bad recession in the Northeast. Despite having approximately 40 percent of this mountain cash flowing directly into the state treasury, Connecticut was still struggling to make ends meet and was faced with the biggest budget deficit in its history. Obviously the lottery, which had been around for 18 years there, was not the cure all for the state’s fiscal woes.
Could it be, I wondered, that the lottery was more of a drain on the state’s economy than a benefit? People were struggling with massive layoffs, unemployment, low wages and high cost of living; and yet they were spending more on lottery tickets than ever before.
Where does all of this money come from anyway? Well, it’s not appearing out of thin air. In many cases, like the example above, it’s coming straight off the tables of people who can’t afford it. It is also the discretionary income of thousands of working class and middle income people who might have found better and more productive things to do with it. The lottery does not create wealth, it just soaks up whatever is already out there and redistributes about half to a very small group of people.
The money spent on lottery tickets might otherwise have gone towards a night out at the movies, a meal at a nice restaurant, some new clothes, a family vacation, savings for a child’s education and so on. In other words, it is money that could have been reinvested in the community to support local businesses or put into savings which helps banks make loans to new businesses and to people buying new homes.
Instead it is money that is being frittered away on one of the oldest con games known to man. Any professional gambler could tell you that the lottery has the worst odds of any form of gambling ever devised. Your odds of being killed in an automobile accident tomorrow are much better than your chances of winning the big Lotto jackpot. Think about it.
But it is not my place to tell people how to spend their money. And I know that some people would even argue that playing the lottery is worth losing their money on because of the enjoyment they get from those few moments of anticipation as they scratch their numbers or listen to the winning numbers on the nightly news. It reminds me of the time when I was a youth buying packages of baseball cards at the concession stand during Little League games. You could never tell if that next pack of cards might be the one containing the Johnny Bench or Pete Rose cards that I so highly valued.
So my gripe is not with the people that play the lottery. My frustration is with the state government which has decided to tap into people’s weaknesses for this type of entertainment to make some easy money for the state coffers. Silly me, I was naive enough to think that the government was supposed to protect people from being taken advantage of like this. Instead, the government is spending millions of dollars a year ($34 million this past year) on advertising and promotion to entice people to gamble their hard-earned money away.
Oh sure, it raises money for the government, some of which can be used for good things like education. (The ‘profits’ are added to the general fund and not applied to any particular budget item). But if the lottery is to serve as a new form of taxation, we should judge it accordingly and recognize that it is extremely regressive and inefficient. It is regressive because the people who play most frequently tend to be poor and less educated. It is inefficient because less than 40 percent of every dollar collected makes it into the state treasury, unlike most other taxes where it costs less than 2 percent to collect and administer and 98 percent ends up in the treasury.
So here in a nutshell is what I would like to see done. Let the government continue to run a lottery for those people who choose to play, but eliminate all advertising and promotion so as not to entice people into playing who otherwise would not. If that means that ticket sales decline, then all the better. Taxes that are needed should be collected in a fair and efficient manner, otherwise leave people alone to pursue more productive interests with their income.