Insight on the News: Don't bet on gambling to stop states' funding woes

A principal occupation of state governments these days, a casual passerby might suppose, is gambling -- sponsoring and regulating it, and raking in the bucks from those of us sappy enough to ante up despite the worst odds in the COSMOS.

In frenzied search for money to fund new programs, expand established ones and enlarge the ever-swelling bureaucracies, state governments (which is to say, unhappily, professional politicians) are brutally cynical.

They know the lotteries and associated games are rigged heavily against the bettor. They know, too, that exuberant betting often is done by the economically least secure, for whom the fantasy of a big payoff seems to compensate for daily heavy lifting. The hypocrisy is that these usually are the same liberal pols who whinny at any government policy that they vaguely feel will crunch lower-rung individuals.

It was probably inevitable that modern government would immerse itself in gambling. We have a history. For instance, supplies for the Continental army at one point were raised by lottery. There is, moreover, this sentiment: During debate in the New York Legislature on off-track betting, one advocate urged that "if you don't let people bet on horses, they'll bet on elephants' " He was pretty much correct.

There are two general arguments that can be rolled out against institutionalizing that itch of human nature. The first is moral -- that gambling is a vice of spirit that often exists with more egregious behaviors. The second is practicality -- there ain't no winners, only those who temporarily are not losers, so inexorable is probability.

Each contention has merit. Having, however, made a bet or two (and being convinced that it took a transcendent imagination to conceive the art of poker), I think there are, of course, worse moral sumps than making a wager from time to time.

It does not follow, though, that if many people are not averse to a spin of the wheel, government should become the agent of their frailty, or, if you prefer, inclination. That's the fuddy-duddy argument, to be sure, but the states are now so deeply into gaming that it's perhaps worth resurrecting.

At the most recent glance, 35 states and the District of Columbia are acting as croupiers -- operating or authorizing lotteries, casinos and variations on the theme. Thirty years ago, three states had lotteries. Today, for partial examples, there are riverboat casinos on the Mississippi in Illinois and Iowa and wall-to-wall slot machines (as one reporter put it) in legendary mining towns in the Rockies; a major casino is planned in New Orleans, and Chicago lusts for a similar extravaganza.

In 1982, Americans legally bet $178.4 billion. Last year the handle was $304.1 billion. Revenue for participating states is estimated at $20 billion. That's not loose change, unless you're in Congress.

There are those who assert that the $20 billion doesn't go to organized crime and isn't squeezed from citizens in the form of new taxes. It can also be argued that neither is that $20 billion going into savings and retirement accounts nor being philanthropically devoted.

But it is the fervor of the go-for-broke states that is worrisome. It suggests a lack of discipline in governance -- a peculiar form of corruption.

To govern is to choose -- but that's the last thing career politicians want to do in these grabby years. To choose involves saying no" to voters, some of whom may have the faculty of memory. Thus the gimmick of a lottery or a casino is a way to avoid choosing some spending programs over others.

Take Maryland: The governor of the Free State would fund ponds in every precinct if frogs could vote. Between the recession and the guv's passion for concocting fresh social-spending schemes while stuffing more tax money into those (more or less), functioning -- creating new battalions of bureaucrats with unfunded pensions -- Maryland is now down to turnips.

"Diamond Jim" Schaefer has pared the edifice of state socialism to avoid severe surgery in that which he largely hath wrought. The ovine legislators do as they're bid.

A solution? Why, more gambling, gang! In addition to the daily game, the weekly lotto and the "instant" payoff tickets, off-track betting is being contemplated. Another gimmick new to Maryland is keno, a game in which a sequence of numbers is drawn every five minutes so that an impatient wagerer can be instantly gratified, over and over.

There was recently, too, a lavishly promoted "El Gordo." Five million tickets were to be sold at $5 a pop, with a $10 million jackpot and a number of $1 million payoffs, contingent on tickets sold. Revenue in the $8-10 million range was eagerly anticipated. But only slightly more than 2 million tickets were sold. After expenses, the state made a meager $73,626.

The governor now says "enough" -- Maryland won't wade further into the bet-a-bunch swamp. But political assertions are by their nature provisional, aren't they?

At any rate, given the velocity of government gambling, we're likely a long way from being as up-to-date as Kansas City -- and haven't yet gone as far as we can go.