Gambling + Big Government = good X 2
As readers of this post know, I like gambling ("gaming") and I like Big Goverment that doesn't violate the Neo-Con precept of the Law of Unintended Consequences as the original plan did.
We did a Think Tank pr0gram in Kansas City MO (with Matha Bayles as on-site producer and scout. What smart people we have had on TT over the years !) African-American young women, and some white women, in get-better programs told us --- on camera --- about other women that bore extra children to get more food stamps .
A black ex-con said he thought "Rush Limbaugh made sense ( ! ) "
So much money goes to bookies and runners, that most states now have some form of legalized gambling.
That's fine with me. But where's the Big Government lable?
It's there (and helpful) for nutrition. I eat and eat, and my GIs "fat-burning soup" soup sheds pounds.
But such lables are absent, I believe, from gambling.
Blacks, Latinos, Jews, Italians play the numbers through "runners."
Little old ladies in Vegas, Atlantic City and the Redneck Riviera mindlessly pump silver dollars into the slots where the house handle is huge.
But there are bets on the crap table that are 50-50 --- but you have to pay to get there. In all, it's 52-48 in the house's favor.
The idea, as I have felt it over the years, is to play for enough so that it hurts if you lose, and you are very happy if you win.
But don't bet your wife, your life or the ranch.
I really caught the bug in Vegas in 1952.
I was covering the police beat for The Las Vegas Review-Journal. My salary was $29 per week, I think.
I would pay $7 for a week's rent in a seedy motel and buy two $5 meal tickets in a crumby diner.
I had $15 every week to gamble. At Benny Binyon's a shooter could bet dimes. I saw a sexy secretary from LA hit twelve passes and win $1.20. Rollers around the table collected many hundreds of dollars.
I finally stopped gambling at some big pot-limit table-stakes games. A good player should fold 90% of his hands --- and shut up. The latter was very hard for me. Very.
But the poor gamers, in particular, should know the true odds and stop wasting their money on games of chance, that are loaded.
Big government, federal, state or local, should post the true odds.
Ben
We did a Think Tank pr0gram in Kansas City MO (with Matha Bayles as on-site producer and scout. What smart people we have had on TT over the years !) African-American young women, and some white women, in get-better programs told us --- on camera --- about other women that bore extra children to get more food stamps .
A black ex-con said he thought "Rush Limbaugh made sense ( ! ) "
So much money goes to bookies and runners, that most states now have some form of legalized gambling.
That's fine with me. But where's the Big Government lable?
It's there (and helpful) for nutrition. I eat and eat, and my GIs "fat-burning soup" soup sheds pounds.
But such lables are absent, I believe, from gambling.
Blacks, Latinos, Jews, Italians play the numbers through "runners."
Little old ladies in Vegas, Atlantic City and the Redneck Riviera mindlessly pump silver dollars into the slots where the house handle is huge.
But there are bets on the crap table that are 50-50 --- but you have to pay to get there. In all, it's 52-48 in the house's favor.
The idea, as I have felt it over the years, is to play for enough so that it hurts if you lose, and you are very happy if you win.
But don't bet your wife, your life or the ranch.
I really caught the bug in Vegas in 1952.
I was covering the police beat for The Las Vegas Review-Journal. My salary was $29 per week, I think.
I would pay $7 for a week's rent in a seedy motel and buy two $5 meal tickets in a crumby diner.
I had $15 every week to gamble. At Benny Binyon's a shooter could bet dimes. I saw a sexy secretary from LA hit twelve passes and win $1.20. Rollers around the table collected many hundreds of dollars.
I finally stopped gambling at some big pot-limit table-stakes games. A good player should fold 90% of his hands --- and shut up. The latter was very hard for me. Very.
But the poor gamers, in particular, should know the true odds and stop wasting their money on games of chance, that are loaded.
Big government, federal, state or local, should post the true odds.
Ben
posted by Ben Wattenberg at 7:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home