Why Do I Buy Lotto Tickets?

I noticed that the Illinois State Lottery now has a game that claims to benefit fallen police officer’s families.

Other causes funded by lottery donations--touted on their web site---include the Special Olympics, HIV, AIDS, breast cancer, and MS. In the last ten years, literally millions of dollars has been funneled from our state lottery to various causes.

I know I’m gonna sound like a curmudgeon…

How about funding a bankrupt state government?

All of these are great causes. No one can deny that every spare penny should go to the eradication of MS…but that’s the point. There are not many pennies left in Springfield. I’m old enough to remember the sales pitch for the start of the lottery back in the day. It was going to be used for education. How could we be against it? We were helping the children.

Bull hockey.

The money raised by the lottery went into the state budget and the money that was being used to fund education came out. It was a shell game. And all it did was increase the amount of money the state could waste on politics and patronage.

I truly hope that the money raised by a recent state law authorizing a new lottery scratch off game to help out the kids of fallen police officers, gets where it is intended to go.

But, excuse me for not  believing  it. Not with this state government’s track record with the lottery.  

Having said that, I want to admit something. I often buy lotto tickets for the Saturday drawing when I buy gas.

Some would think that odd, considering what I have just said.

Let me clarify. I don’t do it for the school kids or fallen police officers or people with MS. I do it for the right reason.

I do it to get rich.