The North Carolina General Assembly will address several issues regarding gambling in the state in the coming months including a bill ratifying an agreement with the Cherokee Tribe to bring casino-style gambling to the Western North Carolina and a proposal to deal with statewide video poker and “sweepstakes” machines. But voters across the state oppose both unregulated sweepstakes parlors and casino gambling.

What is wrong with this picture? 

You go to the grocery or convenience store and you see a line of people queued up buying lottery tickets.  Many look like it might be their last ten bucks and money they should have spent on groceries.

Then you go home to watch the local news and you hear about another cut in our state’s education budget.  Teachers are laid off.  Class sizes growing.  Roofs leaking.  Not enough computers or textbooks.  Reduction in teachers’ benefits.  Hardly enough gasoline to run the school buses.

Then the TV moderator does the “Legislative Update” and reports our “leaders” in Raleigh bowing at the “Altar of No Taxation,” kissing the ring of their misguided speaker, then scurrying to the Legislative Cafeteria to stuff themselves on North Carolina seed corn.

A temporary break in programming brings another in a series of cheesy ads for the N.C. Education Lottery. Some clown on screen urges us to “Spend your last $5 and win $10 Million.  Why not be rich, drive a new car, and live in luxury?”

After the commercial break, back to the news.  The moderator spotlights one of our newly-elected politicians spouting off effusively and endlessly about “jobs, jobs, jobs!”

Give me a break!  Do these guys think we are stupid?  Do they not see the connection here?  Can they not see that by continuing to cut the education budget and refusing to raise taxes that they are forcing the poor lottery ticket buyers to educate our children?  These politicos don’t have the courage to accept this fact and create a system where all our citizens pay their fair share to teach our children.  They camouflage this sham in a disgusting euphemism, the “Education Lottery.”  Taking the last dollar of the poor to support a school system that frequently discriminates against them.  Undereducated students can neither get or hold a job, job, job!

Are we gambling away the future of our state?

Granted, the Democrats, in their questionable wisdom, devised this slot machine approach to fiscal responsibility.  It’s the Republicans, who argued so vehemently against it originally on moral grounds, who now refuse to abolish it.

Who needs leaders like these?