[iowamark]

Tom Vilsack has made electronic slot machines available to Iowa retail stores where they are available to children. Both GOP candidates for governor, Jim Nussle and Bob Vander Plaats promise to outlaw the machines. This may be very difficult politically as the machines are so profitable.

[joesnuffy]

Making money from vice is not the GOP way...or at least it did not used to be...

imo

[Balding_Eagle]

Kum N Go convenience store chain

When I saw my first such named store driving through Iowa some years back, I couldn't believe my eyes.

[starbase]

Yes, they use these in Oregon too, where I recently lived. Working class people, and people having a hard time making ends meet, get their hopes up, chucking needed money down the slots of these things.

Mix in alcohol and hitting people where they're most vulnerable (hoping for easy money when they're drunk), and it's a dirty business.

Nobody needs these things around. If people absolutely insist there are casinos where they can go to throw their money away.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

There are few things that make me angrier than state-sponsored gambling. The lottery should never have been started. If private industry misled the public the way the state does in the promotion of the lottery, Tom Miller would be all over them.

I've asked the question of who cannot have some of these machines? How about my daughter's gift shop. If this is such a money maker, why can't anyone have one?

Someone suggested they put them in the rotunda of the Capitol. Gambling is out of control in Iowa. Not good.

[newgeezer]

Slot Machines in Iowa Convenience Stores ... Tom Vilsack has made electronic slot machines available to Iowa ... children

I'm neither a fan of Vil(e)sack nor a fan of gambling. For that matter, I'm no fan of Nussle's proposed ethanol-blended gasoline mandate, either.

But, to set the record straight, (1) these Touchplay machines are required (perhaps by law?) to be off-limits to children. If children are playing them, that's the fault of the proprietor, not the governor. Blaming Vil(e)sack for that is too much like blaming Smith & Wesson for kids having access to guns. (2) These are no more "slot machines" than are the pocket electronic "slot machines" sold by Radio Shack. Because, from what I've heard, the Touchplays dispense lottery tickets, not cash; thus, they're nothing more than the lottery's latest marketing gimmick.

[Keith in Iowa]

If Nussle really wanted to do something...

He'd take the amount of $$ donated by the Krause family - and give it to the Gambling Treatment program.

Those Touchplay things are really an easy way to tax the stupid.

[nonliberal]

Those who primarily gamble and play the lotto and touchplay machines are the poor and elderly. They get their money from the government (meaning ME!!). More than likely they pay no taxes on it.

A large part of a lotto ticket is taxes and the money from that and touchplay goes to funding things that would otherwise be funded by taxes.

Until someone can come up with a better way to get money out of the great unwashed, I am all for gambling and touchplay machines.