What is wrong with this picture? I’ll explain it to you. This is what I saw at a supermarket in my area just last night. I was so stunned I had to take a picture.

The shorter of the 2 people standing at the Georgia State Lottery game machine is the mother and the taller person wearing a sports jersey is her daughter. (I’m assuming the mother daughter relationship given other interaction I noticed between them when we passed in another part of the market earlier.) It was visibly obvious that the daughter WELL UNDER AGE 18. Together they are both playing the State run lottery machine. They were taking turns making picks. The State of GA has outlawed private businesses from running gaming machines that pay out money and even banned the machines that did not pay money. The state banned any video game that was a form of “match game”. But the Great State of Georgia in all it’s government hypocrisy is A-OK with a state run lottery and state run lottery machines. With the private machines there were always efforts made to keep kids off the machines. But with the state run machine, we see mother and daughter both happily playing together.

Personally, I feel if a state is going to allow gambling then the state should not be the entity controlling the gambling. It makes all taxpayers a party to endorsing the sin, because tax dollars are used to get the state run gambling started. And I don’t care about the “it goes to education” talk. Raise the money via other means. Don’t make me party to state run games that prey on the desperate and stupid.

I’ve watched several people in my family be duped by these government sponsored forms of gambling. It’s bad enough when a private party does it, but to see members of my family running around daily throwing away money on a statistically false hope that is run by the government seems criminal to me. If a private party were to run any such games it would be a crime. Companies that setup investment schemes where most everyone loses are shut down. But the state enjoys making money off false hope! People like Neal Boortz are right to call this a stupid tax.

Our state government has given its self a monopoly on a very profitable and dirty business.

So now the state of GA is running gambling games that attract entire families to play, children included. I know the family that prays together stays together, but what about the family that gambles together?

I just think this whole mess is sick!