Alabama’s love affair with gambling

“Never kept a dollar past sunset. Always burned a hole in my pants. Never pleased a school mamma. Never lost a second chance on love.”- Keith Richards

Alabama’s love affair with gambling leaves it cheating on its own state with mistresses in Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and in the case of really high rollers, places like Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas.

I have been to casinos in Mississippi and I’ve bought lottery tickets in Florida and Georgia. I bet almost all of you reading this have done one or the other of those things if not all, and perhaps more. Tell me then, those of you who would oppose gambling reform in Alabama, why?

Legalized gambling already exists in our state in the form of dog racing, Indian gaming establishments (are they really casionos?…haven’t beeen to one in Alabama) and lately these so-called bingo halls. I went into two different bingo halls near Birmingham this Fourth of July, to see what the fuss was about. They are full of electronic slot machines. I never heard anyone calling out numbers, and nobody shouted bingo!. The prizes where not pies and cakes or baskets of fruit. Cold hard cash is the reward. These “bingo halls” are also run by, or sponsored by, the Veterans of Foreign Wars…people who risked their lives so that the rest of us can say stupid things (freedom of speech) and do stupid things like gamble (privacy and independence) if we so chose.

I’m not going to get into all the legal or moral arguments about gambling. You dear readers probably have heard them all. What I want to do is provoke some responses from Alabama Democrats on the subject. I think everyone would agree that the taxation of gambling institutions in this state could be used for good things; Air-conditioned school buses with seatbelts perhaps.

The legal wrangling over the new form of gambling provides us with another chance to regulate and tax gambling so that it may do some good for a greater majority of our citizens, and not just the owners of the establishments (basically raking in free money) or the few lucky people who win jackpots.

I know gambling can be hurtful to people who become addicted. But there is no way, in my opinion, to stop the demand. Like any other vice, laws against it never keep people from it.

A joke:

A guy was at a casino and saw a sign that read “Gambling problem? Call 1-800…” The guy dialed his cell phone and said.. “Yeah, hello… Look I’ve got a Jack and a six and the dealer is showing a Queen…What should I do?”

Let’s have some well organized regulation and taxation, some clear, well-planned laws and an end to the silly moralistic arguments and legal mumbo jumbo.

By the way, what’s the early line on Alabama-Virginia Tech?

Hunter Ford

If we do a state lottery, it needs to be set up as some kind of independent trust with a board of trustees chosen by multiple sources, etc., to guarantee that it’s as clean as possible. The legislature and executive officers need to be as far removed from it, once it’s established, as possible.

But, all things considered, it would likely be better, as Glynn notes, than what we have now which is mostly illegal gambling that provides no benefits to education.

I covered the story after the first year of the Florida lottery. They brought in $1 billion for education. OK, so it wasn’t enough. But Alabama money is leaving the state now to Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. They have lotteries.

Beats the heck out of all these questionably legal computer poker machine outlets all over the state now. In Louisiana, they are everywhere, but legal and taxed.

For instance, when I lived in Illinois, one of the first states to adopt a lottery decades ago, I noticed a large number of people buying the “scratch-off” tickets and regular lottery tickets every time I went into a convenience store or liquor store. But Illinois was constantly in a state budget deficit crisis, and the schools were invariably on the losing end of budget cuts.

Mississippi is another story, or so I understand, with arguably improved educational funding due to legalized gambling. But Biloxi and the Gulf Coast get a lot of tourists while Cairo and East St Louis, Illinois, do not. And tourists who go to Chicago are not going there to gamble.

While I have nothing against legalized gambling – if people want to do that with their money, OK with me – what I question is what company or companies would run it, what kind of sweetheart, backroom deals would be cut, and how much we could expect state politicians to steal before the remainder actually got used for schools.

Given Alabama’s track record, I would not bet (pun intended) on excellent results.