NC Lottery

If you've been reading here for any length of time, you know my position on state-sponsored gambling, or the lottery. As it was sold to the suckers public, it was, and still remains, called the "North Carolina Education Lottery." They are very careful to insert that word "education" so you will feel good and think you're helping people. So, how did the lottery do when it was audited by an independent auditing firm?

The state law that (questionably) passed the legislature specifically says that 35% of all revenues are to be transferred to education. For the fiscal year ending June 30th, only 27% ($63.5 million) was transferred. Another part of the law states that the lottery must transfer $1 million per year to health and human services to treatment of addicted gamblers. Since the lottery was running for 1/4 of the year, you might expect somewhere between $250,000 and $1 million to have been transferred. Instead, only $2,274 was transferred. Yes, that's two THOUSAND instead of two-hundred and fifty thousand.

So, lottery officials are blatantly and clearly breaking the law. What will happen to them? Well, let's see, the person responsible for enforcing the law is a Democrat who actually appointed Democrats to the lottery commission. What do you think will happen?

Posted by: Ogre at 04:04 PM

Comments

1 The only thing "educational" about the lottery is when people finally learn that if they don't play, they can't lose :-)

Posted by: Harvey at December 22, 2006 04:31 PM (L7a63)

2 Yeah, but they don't want people to learn that...

Posted by: Ogre at December 23, 2006 06:39 PM (5n/mm)

3 I agree with you entirely. Generally speaking, lotteries are a boondoggle and operate as a form of taxation on the poor. Monitoring is weak because the money is contributed voluntarily, and that encourages corruption. It's just not good policy.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape at December 25, 2006 02:26 AM (0EFhq)

4 And here in NC, it's been completely corrupt from it's very inception.

Posted by: Ogre at December 25, 2006 02:39 AM (5n/mm)






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