The old admonition, "When something seems too good to be true, it probably is," virtually screams from accounts of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to "privatize" the California Lottery. Actually, to give credit where it's due, it's a Goldman Sachs/Lehman Brothers proposal; the governor is the pitch-man. The details are subject to negotiation, but the deal works something like this: The state turns over the California Lottery and monopoly control over lottery gambling in California to a private consortium (led by Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, could it be?) for the next 40 years. In exchange, the consortium pays the state...