Jackson Jambalaya

Wasn't this long before casino gambling was legalized in Mississippi? Wonder what this writer would think about if he walked through a Vicksburg casino?

Sure it is. I think casino gambling should be legal as it is now, don't think video poker should be allowed as it was for years in Louisiana: in every convenience store and bust stop. System we have here works pretty good. Stick it in a few areas, make money off of it, but its not on every street corner either.

Having recently moved to Vicksburg from Maryland, I find NOT having the lottery to be unusual (you could buy Virginia lottery tickets in the Pentagon!!!)

...and the law about confiscating lottery winnings is as about as stupid as anything I've ever seen...

Although the fights in the Maryland House of Delegates over installing slot machines at racetracks is as entertaining as any antics found in their Mississippi counterparts....

Whatever your position on having a lottery please don't believe or buy-in for one nanosecond that a lottery will benefit education.

Because that is complete garbage.

The lottery-for-education experiment has already been a bonafide and thoroughly documented disaster in nearly every state where voters drank that progressive kook-aid.

The Clarion-Ledger plumbs new depths. The state has done it right by having casinos in tourist areas (Greenville being the sad exception)and discouraging slot parlors. Most patrons still come from out of state, so we're not just recycling local dollars. Lotteries are like giant squids sucking blood from the poor. I'm with Hob: why is this coming up again, and with the criminal emphasis on the one big winner out of thousands and thousands of losers? Pettus is amoral, as is anyone who would allow such a cynical article to appear at all in any publication.

If we are going to push for an Arizona style immigration law, I think it's only fair to push
for a Nevada style entertainment law.

For example: lets explore the economic development potential of a " Bunny Ranch " in Pelahatchie, Como ,
& Hurley.

I disagree with a state lottery. A lottery is really a tax on the stupid.

Why not, instead, incentivize savings? Introduce "prize linked savings" (PLS) programs. Allow financial institutions to allow for a lottery of sorts based upon the citizens' savings. It was introduced in South Africa with great success and Michigan has allowed it as well. It gives people an incentive to save and in so doing allows them to gain a lottery style of winnings.

Once a lottery is introduced, you will never get a PLS as the state will prohibit it.

Burke, Pettus is "amoral" for suggesting that Mississippi be dragged out of the cave kicking and screaming and join the rest of the nation by having a lottery? Are 43 other states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands also amoral because they have lotteries?

While your concern for the poor is awfully sweet, it is also paternalistic and downright un-American. If a poor person wants to spend his money on a lottery ticket, it is none of your damn business. Despite popular belief in this State, you are not your brothers keeper.

If you really want to protect the poor from scams where they give up money, yet have no chance whatsoever of receiving anything in return, then ban churches from passing the plate during worship services.

To the first anonymous poster; It would have made him sad to walk through a Vicksburg casino as he hoped thatMississipians would never allow that in our great state.

Can't imagine the logic in suggesting one form of 'gaming' should be allowed but not others. It's hard to imagine that our 'founders' (the Miss. Legislature of 20 odd years ago) really intended gargantuan casinos to overtake the coast or the river towns when they approved 'Riverboat Gaming'. I had envisione paddlewheelers with caliopes and gentlemen in bowties dining on ribeyes and maybe playing a little poker. Stupid me.

Casinos popularized pawn shops in many towns and ruined Vicksburg, running a number of fine restaurants out of business and turning the quaint town into a dead-see of odd car tags.

Neither can I get a grip on those who suggest 'those most unable to afford it will be spending their money on a lottery' if Mississippi has one. Hell, look at the dregs sitting on slot machine stools, staring blankly at the turning wheels, hacking and smoking and reeking of poverty and a six hour stank.

We legalized liquor and 'those least able to afford it' are frequenting 'package stores' and leaving with brown sacks. We popularized drive thru chicken and nail salons and 'those least able to afford it' are ringing those cash registers day and night.

Give the people what they want and 'set them free' and quit with the damned judgement.

I wonder if the media will ever do the stories on the down and out after the lottery hits big-probably not-only those who hit it big. I group lotteries, horse/dog tracks, casino gambling all into one category called legalized gambling. I say that those who vote for it are well within their right. I also say that those who vote for it should be tracked by their social security number so when they taxes are continually raised to take care of the poor and ignorant souls who lost their last dime gambling those who voted for gambling can cover the tax increase. Before anyone rejects this idea, do you remember what the bought and paid for legislators told us about casino gambling? Go do your research. They told us that it would solve all of our education funding problems. Where are you CL, WLBT and other media? Did you forget that lie? I am reminded every year when the fools we elected debate fully funding our education needs.

Mr. Don Berry's letter of 1985 is describing the legal casinos in NOT the lottery. The casinos in Mississippi are the "heartless out of staters" that have come to Mississippi to pray on the poor with all of the hype of "FREE FOOD, FREE WHISKEY, PRETTY LADIES SERVING THEM, FREE AUTOMOBILES GIVEN AWAY, FREE MONEY TO GAMBLE WITH WHEN YOU SIGN UP WITH THEM, PICTURES OF WINNERS HOLDING THEIR CHECKS, FREE ROOMS TO BE CAPTURED IN THEIR HOTELS, and on and on. They do everything under the sun to entice the poor to come into their beautiful sir conditioned Disney World for adults to keep them in the HOUSE until they have taken ALL of their money. NOW on the other hand will be the lottery. A rich or poor person will spent one dollar to purchase a ticket (with Mississippi receiving 25 cents)and THERE IS NO PRESSURE FROM THE GAS STATION TO ENTICE YOU TO BUY MORE TICKETS. The gas station wants you to buy gas and groceries (this is where they make the most money, not from a one dollar lottery ticket).

I just can't let go the fact that 7:28 pm suggests that we consider savings programs initiated in Michigan and South Africa as models for our state.

Who do we send on exploratory missions to study these systems? How do we confiscate from a working Paul what it takes to fund a non-working Peter's savings account? What will Peter do with that $300 in savings he's accumulated after 20 years?

How does Paul keep Peter from tapping the fund to buy wine? How do we keep Paul from crossing the bridge to Delta, Louisiana? Does the state then mandate Christian counseling to convince Peter to kick in an extra dollar per week to his South African savings program?

How do we make sure SNAP cards are not being traded for lottery tickets? Please rethink that crazy suggestion. South Africa indeed.

I'm standing with CURT CROWLEY since I've seen and heard everything he says for six generations. Love the kicking and screaming coming out of the cave and if anyone still needs to see the cave come by my County up in the Hills where there is a church on every corner with pills that can only be washed down with water, everything alcoholic can only be bought and drank at the Country Club if one has the cash for membership.

Would be a voluntary tax. However, the cost would fall mostly upon the ignorant and lower economic class who who are already struggling, but who continue to grasp at straws.

A lottery is a voluntary tax. The groups that are spending money trying to stop it should spend that money convincing people who can't afford it not to play.

@7.34 pm
"then ban churches from passing the plate during worship services." Its called tithing. And its voluntary. If you don't like it, don't do it.

Hey, Curt! What did you do after Hurricane Katrina? Did you serve 2.5 million meals to hurricane victims, free of charge? Baptists did.

12:04, you are correct. Tithing is voluntary, as people can choose to either do it or not do it.

Just like the lottery.

Thanks for proving my point.

William Perkins, Who said anything about Baptists?

In response to your question, what I was doing immediately after Katrina was listening to your boy Fraudwell say the hurricane was God's punishment for not following the gospel according to Fraudwell (and getting amen'd all the way by your other SkyDaddy ambassador Howling Mad Robertson).

Where is the speaker of the house and the gaming chair on the lotto issue. The chair is from the coast don't know where he stands...I would guess the speaker is aganist?

Hey Curt! You answered my question. Thanks.

So...why aren't preachers preaching against usury amd thus opposed to pay day loan companies and every other business that exists to prey on the poor? Usury is specifically addressed in the Bible.

Why don't Christians object to preachers who prey on the sick and the poor and bereft by making promises of cures and miracles in exchange for faith and money?

At least, with the lottery the odds of a " winning" aren't buried in fine print or non-existent.

Individual freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes and to be stupid.

Freedom allows the individual to decide how to spend money. If they want to spend it on hope, then let them.

I like that a lottery is at least honest about one's chances of having that hope realized.

And, I'm really , really sick of the " puffed up" who ignore those words in the Bible and all the other verses on humility and minding one's own sins rather than sitting in judgment on others.