Dallas NAACP Wants Texas Lottery Shut Down: Lotteries Hurt Poor Minorities?
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2012/06/29 07:56:59
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Texas Lottery Commission says that people most likely to play Pick 3 make less than $20,000 a year. The NAACP in Dallas says that the lottery therefor targets, exploits and hurts people below the poverty line the most.
“They have this delusion that they’re going to win,” said Dr. Juanita Wallace, the president of the Dallas NAACP. “I want them to shut it down... Our people are spending their little money, their life savings away in hopes of winning.”
The Texas Lottery Commission's study also finds that people without jobs buy scratch-off tickets more than employed and retired people. Poor minorities in Texas spend thee times more on tickets than the average lottery player.
Proponents of the state lottery argue that the lottery gives poor people a chance. They have the choice to play and can't win without playing. Outlawing the lottery would also deprive the poor of the public benefits paid for by the government's lottery income.
Dallas' CBSLOCAL.com reports:
“They have this delusion that they’re going to win,” said Dr. Juanita Wallace, the president of the Dallas NAACP. “I want them to shut it down... Our people are spending their little money, their life savings away in hopes of winning.”
The Texas Lottery Commission's study also finds that people without jobs buy scratch-off tickets more than employed and retired people. Poor minorities in Texas spend thee times more on tickets than the average lottery player.
Proponents of the state lottery argue that the lottery gives poor people a chance. They have the choice to play and can't win without playing. Outlawing the lottery would also deprive the poor of the public benefits paid for by the government's lottery income.
Dallas' CBSLOCAL.com reports:
The Dallas chapter of the NAACP wants to stop seeing low income Texans pumping money into the state lottery by putting it out of business News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of DFW
Read More: http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/06/27/naacp-dallas-wa...
Top Opinion
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The Newc 2012/06/30 17:24:40You can't win (or lose) if you don't play!
+7I'm from Northern Indiana on the shores of Lake Michigan, home to several huge floating casinos. You should see the boats when the poor and under-priveleged get "paid" and dump every dollar buying lobster dinners and playing the slots and then run to welfare office in tears the next morning crying because they are broke and can't pay the rent or feed the children ... the poor starving children. Kinda brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it?
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Not until I win my Millions; LOL!!!
I live in Texas and this is just CRAZY!!!
Oops. I meant to say, "Damn that Texas Lottery Commission, persecuting poor minorities like that!"
I thing that the idea that minorities are the only ones among the poor who do not have the judgement to decide for themselves if they can afford a ticket and decide that spending half of their check on lottery tickets is not good financial strategy.
Only the white poor has enough sense to say, "enough is enough"?
What a bunch of racist bull crap.
But it is a "free will" thing and we cannot treat certain groups of people as if they are further down the evolutionary chain then we are.
We should have come a long way from people like Margaret Sanger.
If I remember correctly the NACCP argued against testing for drugs for welfare recipients now wouldn't that protect the poor from self destruction more than a lotto ticket?
At least with a lotto ticket you could win but with drugs it's a guaranteed lose every time.
lotteries and casinos have become so widespread, there are tremendous profits to be had by getting these foolish people to place their money against odds so great that they could just as well bury it in the ground and hope for a "money tree" to grow. Hundreds of Billions of Dollars each year are taken from the food budgets of families with children and elderly citizens by lotteries and casinos, and we even allow the owning corporations to sell their stock on our exchanges, at multiples of up to 20 times the amounts they can fleece from these poor ignorant people.
We need to have a second cocktail and seriously ask ourselves who we are and why more than half the world think we have become crazed and corrupted lunatics interested most in entertainment, sex, money, and the most destructive of human motivations. Could they be nearly right?
The ability to choose wisely between alternatives is not part of the DNA of humans but is a learned habit. Sadly, too many never learn and they are the prey of those who would take advantage of them so easily. If you think for a moment that money is not "taken from" those who aren't' so very bright, you lack an understanding of one of the largest components of our economy, the advertising and marketing industry, which account for about 15-20% of the total GDP of our consumer society.
Some people enjoy a beer and choose to spend their money on it. Some people like to play the lottery because it's fun. Some people like to smoke... some people like to sky dive... some people like to eat fast food... what gives anyone the right to tell these people what to do?
The proposal NAACP made was not to control the stupid choices that you might make, but to control the activities of those who take advantage of your stupidity by convincing you that playing the lottery is "fun" and not just a senseless rip off of your money. Were the little slips of paper not available you would have to make other choices, perhaps to buy a newspaper or a book.
Smoking is perhaps the most stupid choice a human can make short of playing Russian Roulette or jumping off a bridge. Were there no cigarettes available at the local market, 400,000 persons would not die this year from smoking related diseases here in the U.S., at a cost of several hundred billion dollars and pain, suffering, grief and damages beyond measure. The destruction could be prevented without telling any smoker what to do.
would you really support an action such as removing all cigarettes from local stores to prevent smokers from buying cigarettes?
become dependants on those who live.
It is no more "right" for a corporation to sell these poisons than it is "right" for a corporation to send out murderers in the night to strangle these smokers and choke them to death on their own blood clots as they gasp for breath.
Either way, the cigarette is the means of inflicting death. It is estimated that of all persons living on the planet today (just under 8 Billion), more than one quarter will die from smoking related diseases. Can you begin to grasp the magnitude of the costs of this absurdity - the lost productivity, the medical costs of hopeless treatments, the children who will never be educated because their parents died prematurely, the burden to taxpayers of those left behind, on and on??? What "right" does a corporation have to cause the death of these people?
Now what about fast food places, are you for shutting all of them down as well so fat people can stop eating unhealthy and therefore prevent many people dying from fat related deaths? What about automobiles, a lot of people die in automobile accidents. Oh wait... are you for taking alcohol off the market as well?
pack around pistols hoping to shoot someone.
Ever since the cave dwellers sat around a fire roasting a lizard, humans have agreed to defend themselves against those who would harm their tribe. Unfortunately, we now have those "corporate persons" who have more power and bigger spears than the tribesmen known as "We the people". So, these new aggressors pillage, plunder and harm as they choose, including advertising and promoting the premature death, pain and suffering beyond description, of a hundred million humans each year across the world, and only for the profits that can be had from this carnage and waste.
It is impossible to protect people from their own stupidity. But, we can
try to educate them so as to allow them to make better choices of what to put into their bodies, whether food or just ...
pack around pistols hoping to shoot someone.
Ever since the cave dwellers sat around a fire roasting a lizard, humans have agreed to defend themselves against those who would harm their tribe. Unfortunately, we now have those "corporate persons" who have more power and bigger spears than the tribesmen known as "We the people". So, these new aggressors pillage, plunder and harm as they choose, including advertising and promoting the premature death, pain and suffering beyond description, of a hundred million humans each year across the world, and only for the profits that can be had from this carnage and waste.
It is impossible to protect people from their own stupidity. But, we can
try to educate them so as to allow them to make better choices of what to put into their bodies, whether food or just a known poison such as cigarettes or hydrogenated animal fats. And, we could prevent the advertising and sale of poisons and harmful products were it not for the power and influence of those who profit so greatly from the death and destruction of their products.