News flash - The Oklahoma “Lottery for Education” is an unreliable source of funding for education.

Duh.

The state lottery will generate less money for education than it did this year. Its governing board thinks the answer is to give a lower percentage to education and generate bigger payouts.

In 2011, state education - that’s common education, higher education and anything else that passes for “education” - will get $64 million from the lottery. That’s about $2 million less than what is estimated from 2011 and more than $4 million less than 2009. In four years, the lottery has produced $288 million for education.

Wait a second. Didn’t former State Sen. Brad Henry promise $500 million in revenue for education before he became governor? I think that’s correct. As governor, Henry predicted revenues of $300 million a year. That was one of the strong selling points for passage of a lottery.

If you add those figures up, it means that lottery players - mostly Oklahomans - have ponied up more than $800 million to get less than $300 million for education.

Gee, if that $800 million had been invested in Oklahoma businesses, I wonder if they could have produced more than $300 million in benefit to the state’s economy in four years?

Gambling produces nothing. It just shifts money from one group (the stupid) to another group (the greedy).

Lottery gurus are blaming the national recession for the downturn. And Arkansas is bringing on board a state lottery that is expected to drain about $10 million to $12 million from Oklahoma’s gross receipts.

Lottery officials are worried that Arkansas will give away bigger prizes and we’ll all drive to Siloam Springs to bet the rent money on the Arkansas lottery. Before Brad Henry brought us the lottery, Oklahomans bought tickets in Kansas and Texas.

Thank goodness we have state legislators who - unlike Henry - think that the lottery is a voluntary tax on poor people. You don’t see a lot of stores in Utica Square selling lotto tickets.

Right now, education gets 35 percent of lottery revenues. Lottery gurus want to reduce that, beef up the payouts and take in a higher gross.

Part of the problem is the lottery must compete with more than 100 Indian casinos in Oklahoma plus some parimutuel horse racing (not to mention illegal gambling on sports - but that’s another column).

When they say lottery proceeds go to education, people think it filters down to their local elementary, middle or high schools. Some does but some doesn’t. It goes to higher education and other questionable education efforts.

You don’t win the lottery. Oh, somebody does but it won’t be you. They like to entice people with billboards that boast of $100 million multiple state prizes but most people who play the lottery seldom win anything and when they do, it’s probably not as much as they have already spent.

It’s gambling. The house (state) is set up to win.

And study after study shows, you really don’t want to win a million dollar lottery. It wrecks your life.

Old friends, previously unknown relatives and people ready to sue rich people come out of the woodwork. They want to be your best buddy, your new investment partner or the latest object of your philanthropy.

They can bug you to death.

A lottery winner in England recently blew through more than $3 million in less than a couple of years. A lot of it went up her boyfriend’s nose with his cocaine habit.

That doesn’t count how much the government will take in taxes on a windfall lottery prize.

Oklahoma is rated the third highest gambling state (behind Nevada and New Jersey) in the country. We are also the Buckle of the Bible Belt.

How did we let this happen?

In any case, the gamblers who run the lottery now want to go back on their word and give a lower percentage to educate our school kids.

What are the odds that their new scheme will work? Probably about 1 in 500 million.

• The after-dinner speaker just didn’t have a Stop button. He burbled on and on and on, oblivious to his increasingly restless audience.

Finally one of the more drunken diners hurled an empty wine bottle at him. It missed, and hit the chairman instead.

As the chairman slid slowly to the floor clutching his head, he was heard to murmur, “Hit me again, I can still hear him.”

• “How long have you been driving without a tail light?” asked the policeman after pulling over a motorist.

The driver jumped out, ran to the rear of his car and gave a long, painful groan.

He seemed so upset that the cop was moved to ease up on him a bit.

“Come on, now,” he said, “you don’t have to take it so hard. It isn’t that serious.”

“It isn’t?” cried the motorist.

“Then you know what happened to my boat and trailer?”

• A Spanish teacher was explaining to her new class that in Spanish, unlike in the English language, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. House, for instance, is feminine - la casa. Pencil, however, is masculine - el lapiz.

A student asked, “What gender is computer?

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher set up a challenge and split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation. The men’s group decided that ‘computer’ should definitely be of the feminine gender (la computadora), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your money on accessories for it.

The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (el computador), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to plug them in and switch them on.

2. They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves.

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that had you waited a little longer, you could have got a better model.

The women won.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 and is filed under Columns.