In 1991 the people of Texas voted to amend the Texas Constitution and allow a state lottery to be instituted. Most of us thought, because we had been led to believe so by the prevaricating Democrat governor, Ann Richards, that the money made from the lottery would go to educate the children of Texas. Only afterwards did she disabuse us of that notion and let it be known that the lottery profits would go into the general fund and be spent for any purpose whatsoever. Laughably, in a moment of Clintonesque honesty, she said she hadn't actually lied to us, she had just not corrected it when she realized this was the prevailing belief. So, having given the rabble their comeuppance, she made sure the money from the lottery remained in the general fund. That is until she, and her Democrat cohort, lost the election and the Republicans gained control of Texas in 1996. In 1997 the money from the lottery was dedicated to the state education fund, the way we thought it was supposed to be originally, and has remained that way ever since.
In 2011, the lottery provided approximately $989 million of the $69.9 billion spent for education in Texas. While nearly $1 billion is nothing to sneeze at, it is still much less than 2% of the total education budget. On Wednesday, for at least a little while, a majority of the state House of Representatives believed there was a better way.
Some people are of the opinion that state-sponsored gambling can change a society's culture. Their rationale goes like this; when the state, which most people subconsciously think of as the arbiter of smart, puts its imprimatur on a practice, that practice automatically becomes either much more, or completely, acceptable depending on past resistance to it. With gambling, and especially with high payers like a lottery, a great number of people gradually can succumb to the subconscious perception that making a small wager and waiting for the big score is preferable to working hard, planning, and saving for the future. As this perception grows, more and more individuals become less and less sophisticated about the odds of winning the lottery, not because they are stupid, but because as a legal, accepted practice they do not look at it as closely as they otherwise would. It's conventional wisdom. And since a government sponsored lottery is specifically designed to extract money from the public, this expectation just doesn't pan out for the participants. The overall effect is to drain industriousness, foresight and ambition from a population.
With this in mind, it may be reasonable to conclude that societies make a Faustian bargain when they seek to fund their governments with gambling profits. For those of us who realize that government-sponsored gambling exacts a cultural and moral toll, the profit from a lottery is not worth the price a society eventually has to pay for it.
I don't know if this is the reason most of the members of the state House of Representatives from Tarrant County voted the way they did but I do want to thank them. The members of the Tarrant House delegation, who voted (twice) against the lottery and for personal responsibility were; Jonathan Stickland, Matt Krause, Giovanni Capriglione, Stephanie Klick, Craig Goldman, and Bill Zedler, all Republicans.
Democrat Lon Burnam and Republican Diane Patrick voted against it the first time, then voted for it the second time. So much for the courage of their convictions.
Republican Charlie Geren voted, like a Democrat, for the lottery then did not vote the second time.
The rest of the Tarrant County delegation, Nicole Collier and Chris Turner voted for the lottery both times, they are Democrats.
