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Gambling to achieve success?
by our readers
Mar 08, 2010 | 951 views | 4 4 comments | 4 4 recommendations | email to a friend | print
What will gambling revenues achieve in Alabama? The bureaucracy will grow and likewise the cost of payrolls and retirement benefits. That growth will occur and will be financially provided for prior to any aid to “help the children.” All of our previous educational tax increases have increased the number of non-teaching positions and built picturesque office and school buildings. Money does not and will not appreciably influence increased learning.

Please take a financial look at our neighbors.

Florida. The lottery was its silver bullet for educational advancements in learning. It has increased the number and size of lottery/scratch-offs, established taxes on prepared foods/foods with added sugars and raised property taxes to “help the children.”

Georgia. It has not only duplicated Florida, it has entered into a nationwide lottery. Unlike Florida, it has raised all sales taxes to “help the children.”

Mississippi. The casinos were its silver bullet. Excluding the lottery, it has duplicated Georgia in taxation.

Louisiana. Its silver bullet was casinos and the lottery to “help the children.” Sales taxes and property taxes have increased there, also.

If to justify gambling is to enhance education or to “help the children,” that justification is a sham.

Are our children’s educational achievements very much different from our neighbors? According to national surveys, most of our children are not unlike our neighbors’ children. But, even that, that is not saying much.

Arthur K. Smith

Mobile
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comments (4)
« tugboat2@inbox.com wrote on Monday, Mar 08 at 08:37 PM »
Sometimes you talk like a nut, sometimes you don't.

Are you related to DD?
« tugboat2@inbox.com wrote on Monday, Mar 08 at 06:40 PM »
Fobed or Bobed what's the difference?
« dtrMunford@gmail.com wrote on Monday, Mar 08 at 06:14 PM »
One thing can be said for Bob Riley:

HE MAKES FOB JAMES LOOK GOOD......
« netter1203@msn.com wrote on Monday, Mar 08 at 04:33 PM »
I lived in FL for two years and the lottery has done NOTHING to help the public schools there. There are either a public or private school on every corner and only the private schools are the better ones...They don't get lottery money in case you are wondering. Also I had a public school teacher living in the apartment above me and her classrooms where overcrowded and she only knew her students by numbers. She had over 500 students come in and out of her classroom daily. This was in Clearwater, FL around 1992. (Clearwater is the upscale part of FL in case you don't know.) Sounds like a state lottery is the answer doesn't it? I have a cousin that lives in South FL and she tells me all the time of how bad the schools are there....Sounds like lottery is the answer doesn't it? I heard the same stories from Georgia teachers that crossed over the state line after their Alabama Retirement check kickes in. But GA was a little better off than we were before the lottery and it hasn't improved much. The FL Lottery Commissioner was making around a million dollars a year when I left FL in 1993 the salary now is probably a million and a half to two million. I am tired of people using gambling and lottery as the answer. If that be the case, why is Birmingham broke? They have the dog tracks? Why is Atlantic City so nasty? They have Casinos. Why are the areas around all Casinos so nasty, but yet the Casions are all bright light and shinny and clean? Why is our schools broke after they legalized alcohol and our elected officials told us that was the answer? Has people stopped drinking? If they have I can't tell it. I see it every where now. Stop buying into the lies PEOPLE lottery and gambling is NOT the answers. It only makes things worse. You bought into the get rich quick schemes and you want us to help support your addictions.
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