North Carolina Education Lottery

Old-timers at BlueNC know I have been doing battle with John Hood of the Art Pope Puppetshow, for almost two years. We have seen eye-to-eye on almost nothing, but when I read his column today about the North Carolina Lottery, I was inspired to action.

RALEIGH – While traveling back to Raleigh Saturday night from a family Halloween cook-out in Mint Hill, my kids and I stopped at a convenience store in the Montgomery County town of Troy for gas and soft drinks. At 10 p.m. on a Saturday night, there was a gaggle of bedraggled, middle-aged men standing at the counter buying and pathetically scratching North Carolina lottery tickets.

I was disgusted. And angry. Disgusted that North Carolina politicians had chosen to take advantage of these desperate and deluded lottery players, and thousands like them across the state, to finance more government spending, much of it benefiting higher-income households.

Angry that because the “Education Lottery” is a state enterprise, not just the creation of some amoral flim-flam man, I had to explain to my boys that what the men were doing was unwise and self-destructive but officially encouraged by North Carolina’s elected government leaders.

I agree with John Hood about the North Carolina Lottery.