In 2009, the State of Arkansas began a lottery on the ground that the lottery would provide scholarships for aspiring higher education bound young people. It began with much fanfare after a lot of dissension over the salaries of the lottery director and his underlings. The sale of the tickets has been good and there have been a few big winners; not to mention a whole bunch of losers, which is always the norm for lootteries. Of course the losers are never mentioned; only the winners. To mention the losers would destroy the false illusion of instance riches.

Arkansas’s loottery promised big rewards and the people voted it into existence; and when the first economic report saw the light of day after the loottery began, it showed that the spending on the loottery might be diminishing the tax coffers of the state. The decline in state sales tax collections was greater than the tax poobahs of the state could attribute to the general economic slow down of the economy. There seemed to be a correlation that as the loottery ticket sales increased, the tax collections decreased. In fact, some of the “oh so wise” poobahs have suggested that a sales tax should levied on loottery ticket sales.

The idea of riches being just a ticket purchase away for those who participate in such schemes, is reminiscent of the Hopey Dopey idea of hope and change put forth by the nut job (a.k.a. Barack Hussein Obama) who suggested that if he was elected that hope and change would be as sure as the sun rising each morning. What he really was promoting was a Hopey Dopey Loottery. “Step right up and vote for your ticket to paradise and you will be taken you right into eternity.” Absolutely it will: right into an eternity of debt that is going to kill the republic. And yet the dopes continue to look to the hopey dopey change.

Promise change and the people who are expecting to hit it big at another’s expense will fall for it every time. Just as the players of the loottery in Arkansas are providing the means for someone else’s kid to go to college, many of those who voted for the nut job are watching their means diminish as the national loottery run by the federal government politicians continue to grab onto savings, companies, and other holdings that don’t belong to them. It is all predicated on the idea that government can provide a better life than each individual can do for himself or herself. That is not only the promise of the Arkansas loottery for those looking to become rich, and for those who expect to receive a scholarship, but also for those who expect the nut job to hand over riches to them at the expense of those who must sacrifice their earnings to the all powerful state. The only difference between the Arkansas loottery and the federal hopey dopey change loottery is that those who play the loottery do it as personal choice, and those who contribute to the latter are compelled with threat of force and terrible consequences if they don’t.

You may wonder why the name loottery. Isn’t that exactly what the game in Arkansas and the scam the federal government is running amounts to when analyzed for the nature of the schemes? Both are looting the people of their means without a scintilla of shame.

© 04-10-2011 DEC