An Internet search for "online gambling" netted 9 million hits Wednesday, but Texas House members nixed hopes that one of those might lead to the Texas Lottery.
Lawmakers, seeking ways to help fund the state budget, rejected a measure, 89-52, that would have raised as much as $275 million more a year by allowing the lottery to debut on the Internet.
Passions rose in an unpredictably bipartisan fashion as lawmakers debated the virtues and vices of expanding gambling to pay for better education, health care and other programs that aid the youngest and most needy.
"Let's not allow the children to drown while we be holier than thou and say to them, 'Drown. We will save you in the afterlife,' " said Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, angered by lawmakers who said his gambling idea would hurt the poorest Texans most.
Turner's failed measure, prompting hours of the first gambling debate on the House floor this session, was among 46 ideas offered to reconcile the state's next two-year budget.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, said the budget plan tentatively adopted without the gambling proposal will add $1 billion more toward the budget.
"Thank you for helping me celebrate Christmas today and helping me decorate my Christmas tree," said Pitts of the budget baubles added to the bill, just before his plan tentatively passed 107-37.
One adopted measure would add 40 cents per pack, in addition to a $1 per pack tax already approved, for those cigarette manufacturers who never settled with the state in an earlier tobacco lawsuit.
Turner's Internet gambling idea prompted unusual alliances in a chamber often divided along partisan lines.
Turner's proposal would have allowed online transactions using a debit card, an ATM card or through an account set up by the Texas Lottery Commission.
"We're now going to have unregulated gambling. There is no way to know who it is (online,)" said Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land, adding it could be a 10-year-old child with a parent's debit card.
Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, and Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, worried that online gambling could worsen the plight of low-income Texans and their children.
Money these families need to pay for groceries, the light bill or the rent could be wasted on the lottery instead, the two agreed.
they are always going to reject anything worthwhile........
"it could be a 10 year old with a parents debit card" says one lawmaker. its worries like this that get good things like this defeated.....
Absolutely correct Lottomike. It used to be that it was the parents' responsibility to keep certain things out of the hands of their kids. Now the STATE somehow thinks they are the parents. (I was going to add that that concept is at the heart of liberalism, but I won't do that.)
Message from me to the state government: I personally could care less if some parent out there wants to be clueless enough to not only let their 10 year old get access to the Internet, much less get access to their credit card. Let the parent deal (or not deal) with that, and stop using that kind of excuse to limit my freedoms.
"Money these families need to pay for groceries, the light bill or the rent could be wasted on the lottery instead, the two agreed."
If their budgets are that tight, the odds are very good that they won't have a computer, internet access or a credit card. Besides, what's going to keep all those nasty poor people from walking down to their local 7-11 and spending that money on lottery tickets in spite of the lawmakers' opinions? What's going to keep that ten-year-old from glomming onto Mommy's ATM card and jumping headlong into a $300 online Texas Hold 'Em tournament?
We jumped the track a few miles ago, I'm afraid. Our legislators are straying farther and farther from their roles as representatives of our collective voice, and are exerting more and more control over the choices available to us. If a special interest group or a political lobby doesn't like something, the blanket solution is to pass a law against it. This by no means lessens the frequency of the imagined offense, but simply makes the act itself illegal, which will cause one of two possible results: either the state coffers fill up more quickly, or the state prisons fill up more quickly, and they don't care which way it goes, since they can capitalize politically on either outcome.
I'm sure another state will pick up the ball. Several years ago, the Delaware Lottery had a game which allowed players to bet on NFL football games, called the Delaware Sports Lottery. The NFL lost a lawsuit they filed to ban this type of betting, but the game was discontinued anyway after just a few weeks. Several years later, Oregon's lottery did the same thing and made it work. As far as I know, you can still bet on your favorite professional sports teams via lottery terminal in Oregon. Buying tickets online is the next logical, and inevitable, step for the lottery industry.
For all their vision and perceived superior breeding, our modern lawmakers are notoriously short-sighted. They're so worried about regulating and taxing internet commerce that they're stunting its growth while doing everything possible to contain it, lest someone make a dollar and spend it without benefit of being told how it needs to be spent.
Ethics is the big issue in Indiana right now. Governor Daniels has vowed to "get tough" on ethics in government. Yet, he just accepted a brand new class A motor home from a local RV manufacturer, and the soybean industry is supplying its fuel. Daniels assures us that this is not a conflict of interest since, without the RV, our governor would have to drive his own car (well, it didn't make sense when I read it in the newspaper, either). Our legislators approved the new ethics bill which provides very stiff penalties, including jail time, for employees caught breaking the law or violating the code of ethics, but these penalties do not apply to elected officials, directors or executives.
Basically, what this means is that our county and state employees, and the general constituency as well, are being held to a higher standard than our elected officials, so what's wrong with this picture?
I can't help noticing that our modern lawmakers' attitudes are beginning to echo those of Roman senators during the final years of that empire. Is America immune to collapse at the hands of her caretakers?
Time will tell...
i agree,these lawmakers have power and can unleash it when they think its convenient to them........
They should had put it to a citizens vote.
i agree,citizens vote would've been great.
Had that bill gone to referendum, I'm sure the citizenry would have given their overwhelming approval; a very risky endeavor for the sponsor's career.
However, that would have required Texas lawmakers to relinquish some control over their constituencies, and would have allowed the people to think for themselves and come to a decision on their own. We can't have that.
Forty years ago, referendums were popular vehicles for elected officials to gain support on controversial issues. Today, they are very rare. Maybe that's because we have more controversy these days than we had back then. I'm more inclined to believe our elected officials are drunk with power, and will do anything necessary to keep their herds intact.
I've said this before, and it bears repeating here:
Recall elections are not exclusive to California. The time has come to show these idiots that we want representatives who are going to represent our interests rather than their own. Elective office has become a lottery drawing in itself, where the rewards can far surpass those of any PowerBall or MegaMillions jackpot.
"...that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln - November 19, 1863
they don't like to relinquish control,your right about that.
i say what the majority wants...it should get.
LOTTOMIKE:
Of course you're correct; in a true democracy, the majority rules. Period. Case in point: Kennesaw, Georgia 1982, when the following law was passed by referendum:
Sec. 34-1 Heads of households to maintain firearms.
(a) In order to provide for the emergency management of the City, and further in order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing in the City limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition therefore.
(b) Exempt from the effect of this section are those heads of households who suffer a physical or mental disability, which would prohibit them from using such a firearm. Further exempt from the effect of this section are those heads of households who are paupers or who conscientiously oppose maintaining firearms as a result of beliefs or religious doctrine, or persons convicted of a felony.
This caused a national firestorm, as it was only a year distant from the attempted assassination of President Reagan. The Brady Bill was being pushed through Congress at the time, so this radical gun law was a real fly in the federal ointment. Even some Kennesaw residents vehemently opposed this legislation, but the majority rules, so it was passed and enacted.
What does this have to do with the lottery? Well, nothing, except that it serves to illustrate that popular opinion, even when it's not very popular, can and should prevail without regard to the opinions of our lawmakers. Essentially, our elected officials, like conscientious journalists, relinquish any rights to their own opinions (on legislative issues) when they take the job, save for their personal choices in general elections. As it stands, they continually make it their duty to protect us from ourselves by superimposing their own opinions and personal choices over those of the general constituency.
I'd like to share some definitions from Webter's New World Dictionary, just for the sake of comparison:
i agree with you on that......but unfortunately like you said these politicians can make their own rules.......