[buffyt]

These words stick out when I read the article. We have been saying similar things ever since Texas got a lottery. I see poor looking people buying large numbers of lottery tickets. People who can least afford them.

"The private wagering business is forced to give back approximately 90 percent of all money, State lotteries, by contrast, give back only 50 percent.

In effect, state lotteries function as a kind of stupidity tax. .....self-evidently bankrupt principle that it is the state's business to try to profit from the exploitation of human weakness.

State-run lotteries feature the worst of all worlds. ....they allow the strong to prey upon the weak, by allowing the state's tax burden to be shifted toward the poor

...state lotteries have nothing to do with any moral principle, and everything to do with the political principle that the easiest way to raise taxes is always to create a new, preferably indirect, tax on the poor."

[SamAdams76]

Once the state gets into the lottery business, it continues to expand year after year. I remember when the Massachusetts Lottery first started up in the early 1970s. At the time, the state promised that it would only be one drawing a week. Of course, this turned into two drawings a week. Then three. Then there was a weekly "Megabucks" drawing and the "Daily Number." Then came Keno. First, it was only supposed to be in bars. Then it slowly made its way into restaurants and convenience stores and even gas stations.

Then the biggest plague of all. Scratch tickets. Behind the counter at virtually every convenience store in this state are rolls and rolls of brightly colored "scratch tickets". You got your $1 games and your $2 games and your $5 games. Now they even have $10 games. So now you have these desperate people getting a gallon of milk at the 7-11 and asking to get their chance in scratch tickets.

It got so bad (the scratching of tickets) that many stores have large signs saying NO SCRATCHING OF TICKETS ON COUNTER because there was so much scratch ticket residue on the counters and floors that had to be constantly swept up. So now the people get their tickets and they can be seen in their cars furiously scratching the tickets on the dashboards and then dashing back into the store to cash in their "free ticket" and $5 prices (cashed in as more tickets). Once the tickets run out (as they always do), they speed away from the parking lot in disgust. The wastebaskets outside all the stores around here are literally crammed with losing scratch tickets.

Massachusetts also promised that a state lottery would "lessen the tax burden" for everybody and provide more money to the schools. Well the state has yet to lower their tax rates despite more than 30 years of raking in billions upon billions of dollars of cash money through the Lottery.