{"id":360,"date":"2013-04-10T18:27:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T18:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/10\/will-this-gambling-fantasy-ever-go-away"},"modified":"2013-04-10T18:27:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T18:27:00","slug":"will-this-gambling-fantasy-ever-go-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=360","title":{"rendered":"Will this gambling fantasy ever go away?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The Texas Legislature is driving me nuts with its never-ending proposals to bring casino gambling to Texas.<\/p>\n<p>The 181-member legislative body is at it again for the 27th consecutive session, according to the Texas Tribune.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2013\/04\/09\/agenda-texas-another-run-casino-gambling\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2013\/04\/09\/agenda-texas-another-run-casino-gambling\/\">http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2013\/04\/09\/agenda-texas-another-run-casino-gambling\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, said this the other day: \u201cAccording to a study released this month, Texans spend nearly $3 billion annually at gaming facilities in Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico, helping to pay for their roads, their schools and their hospitals, and it\u2019s time that do something about that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s the \u201csomething\u201d Carona has in mind? It\u2019s to save suckers a trip across our state\u2019s borders for them to waste their money. <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m running out of ways to object to the notion of casino gambling. The state says it can use the revenue developed by casinos. But as Texas learned with its lottery, the revenue isn\u2019t always reliable. The state should plan its biennial budget based on what it hopes to get from people willing to squander their savings on the chance of hitting the jackpot. Texans were enamored of the lottery when it came into being in 1991; then they realized their chances of winning were as remote as being kidnapped by Martians. The revenue stream has ebbed and flowed during the past two-plus decades.<\/p>\n<p>The same can be said of gambling \u2013 which proponents of the activity euphemistically refer to as \u201cgaming.\u201d No. It\u2019s a <em>gamble<\/em> and people who can least afford to take that risk almost always lose.<\/p>\n<p>I wish the Legislature would stop playing footsy with gambling interests. There can be better ways to generate income for state government than relying on the temptations that prey on many Texans\u2019 desire to seek instant wealth.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Texas Legislature is driving me nuts with its never-ending proposals to bring casino gambling to Texas. The 181-member legislative body is at it again for the 27th consecutive session, according to the Texas Tribune. http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2013\/04\/09\/agenda-texas-another-run-casino-gambling\/ State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, said this the other day: \u201cAccording to a study released this month, Texans spend &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=360\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Will this gambling fantasy ever go away?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}