WAY BACK on Tuesday of this week, a state legislative oversight committee met to discuss the Arkansas Lottery and some bright new ideas its director has come up with for taking the suckers. Specifically, said director was proposing to start a new electronic game in Arkansas similar to keno, in which numbers are drawn several times an hour while ticket-holders stay glued to TV screens to see if they’ve won. The idea didn’t impress the legislators on the oversight committee; they voted to oppose such an expansion of the lottery.
At Tuesday’s meeting, a state rep from Jacksonville, an honorable named Mark Perry, wondered aloud why the oversight committee would vote to oppose such electronic games so soon.After all, the Lottery Commission hadn’t even approved keno games yet, so why go on record opposing them? Or as the Hon. Mark Perry put it:
“It is kind of pre-emptive because the commission hasn’t actually acted on it. I don’t know what kind of weight [Tuesday’s vote] bears.”
Not to worry, Rep. Perry! The answer to your question came exactly one (1) day after the oversight committee’s vote:
The lawmakers’ vote had no weight whatsoever.
Even as the ink dried on the front page story announcing the legislators’ opposition to introducing keno-style games in this state, the Arkansas Lottery Commission approved them on Wednesday. By an overwhelming vote. Who cares what lawmakers think? There is money to be made. Or taken.
Another representative of the people, this one a state senator named Robert Thompson, said the lottery in this state is pushing something new, something that the people might not have thought of when they voted to approve a lottery in 2008: “I am not sure if a monitor game, when you sit at a monitor and see whether you won or not, [was] what the people voted on.”
Ya think?
But who cares what a bunch of lawmakers, or even the people of Arkansas, as in The People Rule, think? There is money to be made. Or taken.
And in the years to come? What happens then, Senator Thompson wondered. Or as he put it: “Is the Lottery Commission going to come forward and say, ‘Okay, we got to do something new now. People are sick of the current monitor games.’ It almost seems to me like a race to the bottom where we have to constantly introduce new types of games to entice people to play.”
You got it, Senator Thompson! That’s exactly the point, and exactly how the scam works. (Who says lawmakers aren’t educable?) After the new wears off keno, and the state’s legalized numbers racket starts pulling in less money again, as it’s done the last couple of years, then the lottery’s director and its commission will have to come up with still another carnie hustle to entice the suckers. The commission that runs the lottery has always known this. It’s the legislators who may be catching on only now.
NOT THAT it matters, at least to the Lottery Commission, but here’s yet another lawmaker who offered an opinion at Tuesday’s meeting. Her name is Stephanie Flowers, she’s a state senator from Pine Bluff, and this is what she said:
“I am concerned about the poorest of Arkansans, particularly in my district, spending so much money on this lottery. Even though I appreciate the purpose of scholarships, I really don’t see where we are getting the benefit of the money that we are putting in.”
Oh, but it’s not for you to see, Senator Flowers. Any more than it is for the poor and gullible, even desperate, to realize they’re getting suckered. The point is there is money to be made, or rather taken, and the folks at Arkansas’ lottery have become experts at taking it, especially from those who can least afford to lose it.
As for all the other objections, who cares what mere lawmakers think? They’re only the elected representatives of We the People. And why let the people, or an oversight committee, or conscience, or anybody or anything else get in the way of taking the suckers?
Hurry, hurry, hurry. Step right up. Now featuring keno in your local bar! Come on down and spend the rent and grocery money! And tomorrow, we’ll think of some other new and shiny way to take the least of these for whatever money they’ve got. So hurry, hurry, hurry. Step right up.
Editorial, Pages 18 on 04/19/2014