Ohio gambling: All bets are off - except the lottery

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland’s vow this week to squash any attempts at expanded gambling in the state – including a new electonic horse-race betting scheme at the tracks – is welcome news to Ohioans concerned about the corrosive creep of glitzy “gaming opportunities.” In particular, he called for a stop to cash payouts from gambling machines, whether they’re deemed to be games of skill or chance. Strickland and Attorney General Marc "Match 'Um Up" Dann, who ironically was working with a distributor until recently to certify a certain spinning-fruit machine somehow deemed to be "51 percent skill," cited some solid reasons for the proposed bans:

• Voters have rejected proposals to expand gambling, and the state shouldn’t allow operators to “circumvent the will of the voters.”
  
• Distinguishing between illegal games of chance and heretofore legal games of skill is too difficult, particularly when operators deliberately try to blur the line – a “cat-and-mouse” game, as Dann put it.
  
• Firms trying to get game machines certified by the state haven’t been dealing, so to speak, in good faith, Dann said.

No argument on those points. But still, I’d hold the applause after reading the other rationale Strickland floated, almost as an aside: The new machines are starting to eat into state lottery profits. Bingo! So to speak. It doesn’t take too much of a cynic to see the real, not-so-noble motivation here – protecting state government from those who would muscle in and threaten its monopoly on the misery market. Ohio is protecting its turf through the statutory equivalent of breaking a few kneecaps -- and rescuing us from the likes of "Tic-Tac-Fruit."

If Strickland were really that serious about following the voters’ will and promoting Ohioans’ well-being, he’d push to end the lottery altogether. After all, it never delivered as promised (listen to the school-funding debate lately?), and it amounts to a regressive tax that takes a disproportionate toll on lower-income Ohioans, sucking money out of their neighborhoods. It relies on a very predictable yet perverse psychology: When money is tight, a person is more likely to drop a few bucks on the Lotto in hopes that a big score will solve his problems. But when your wallet is fatter, there’s much less motivation – or desperation – to stand in line at the corner store to play the numbers in the faint hope of a windfall.

And so the state persists in the sorry business of making suckers out of what are very often its poorest citizens. Now that’s immoral. Is it too much to ask that government come by its revenue honestly and honorably?