No more Mega-Millions!?! @$$#%!

We’re coming up on the two-full-year mark of not having a budget proposal for Illinois state government, yet about the most outraged the public has become was that point in time in October of ’15 when state officials said the financial problems would cause payments to be delayed to Illinois Lottery game winners.
 

Soon to be no more?

The people who lamely played their numbers (or let the ‘quick pick’ option do it for them) learned that their “jackpot” wasn’t going to come anytime in the near future. They’d have to get in line and wait like everybody else who does business with the state.

THAT, I RECALL, ticked people off enough to file lawsuits demanding immediate payment of their newly-found fortunes. They weren’t going to wait one minute for the prize money they thought they were entitled to.

In short, it was this relatively trivial aspect of state government finances that caught the attention of the public and probably was the first bit of attention many people paid to the fact that we have our government in operating mode without any specific plan for how it is spending money.

The lottery can do that for you; it will capture the attention of the public, particularly those with no work ambition who seriously are banking their future on the off-chance of a game-winning prize.

Perhaps those kind of people who watch re-runs of the old “Roseanne” show and think that program’s final season (in which she wins $108 million in the Illinois Lottery and goes through many life-changing experiences) is their fantasy come true!

WHICH IS WHY it was significant last week when reports indicated the state’s financial problems are again impacting the lottery.

It’s the Mega-Millions and Powerball games – those multi-state initiatives that the Illinois Lottery cooperates with that, because so many people get involved, have the potential to create such large prizes so quickly.

They’re popular for those people who really want to dream about what they’d do with a couple hundred million dollars, but wouldn’t have a clue how to earn money legitimately.

It seems the inability of the state to promptly pay its bills is causing bureaucratic complications that will mean Illinois will no longer participate in those particular games. The Illinois Lottery will go back to just its standard weekly draws and its instant scratch-off games.

AFTER WINNING ALL those millions, how are we going to get people to want to play when the potential prize is an instant game $5?

It’s literally like that old World War I-era jingle, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm? After They’ve Seen Paree?” Or maybe we’ll be asked to believe that these new lottery prizes are something special – like Paris, Ill., the Edgar County town of some 6,100 people.

It was interesting to see the Capitol Fax newsletter out of Springfield the other day – as it published tidbits hinting it might actually be the state pulling out of the lottery games, rather than the state being dumped.

Although as WBBM-TV reported recently, the two games do kick back to the state a share of the proceeds from tickets sold here – totaling some $122 million. Not a petty sum.

BUT ALSO NOT something that helps the state much since, without a formal budget in place, we can’t spend the money on anything – except for those state programs that have federal court orders insisting they operate regardless of the state’s ineptitude.

I can’t help but wonder how the outrage will be expressed. Will we literally get people picketing for their right to play Powerball? Will the Mega Millions be the issue that causes the public to put pressure on the politicos to get off their derrieres and act?

 

Enough to make some of us honorary Hoosiers?

Will we experience a continued sense of apathy? Or will we see the rush of people across the state line to Indiana, seeking out every convenience store, gas station and cheap smokes shop with a “Hoosier Lottery” sign so they can buy their Powerball tickets there?

Will lottery tickets become like gasoline; something that people who live near the border make a special trip across State Line Road to purchase because the local option is just so ridiculous by comparison?

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Life’s losers didn’t win the Lottery after all? They have to wait for prizes

At a time when Illinois government is being run largely by court-order mandating that certain things be paid regardless of the lack of a balanced budget in place, it seems at least one entity is being left out in the cold because of the Illinois Constitution.

Illinois Lottery winners!

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Friday about how people who win the large prizes that are the whole purpose of the lottery games are merely being given written statements confirming that they are owed the money.

But not actually being given the money; until the day comes that Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, can learn to act like adults and put together the spending plan that will allow all of Illinois government to function normally.

Well, maybe not normally (because much of our state’s ‘normal’ is rather bizarre), but at least legally.

The Tribune, then WBBM-TV, found Illinois Lottery winners who are downright peeved at the fact that their ‘pot of gold’ at the end of the rainbow is on hold.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS picked up on those reports, and is now spreading the story across the nation – Illinois is the state that is killing people’s dreams while acting in a cold, callous manner.

The Tribune literally found one person who said that anybody who owed state government money wouldn’t be allowed to claim that their finances were too out-of-order as an excuse to get out of having to pay the money.

Which is true. Although not the best of points.

Because I’m going to have to concede that I’m not all too sympathetic to these people – who were winners of prizes of more than $25,000. It seems that anybody who won an amount less than that can still get their money.

DO WE REALLY want to take up the cause of those people who blow their bucks on large sums of lottery tickets, in hopes the prize will be worthwhile financially?

I want to scream at all of these people who are now complaining to “Get a Job!” and work for a living. Anybody who thinks that Lottery games is the key to their financial success deserves whatever abuse they wind up getting.

Besides, I happen to comprehend the reason why the Illinois Constitution requires that a budget be in place before funds can be spent. Do we really think it is appropriate that money can be spent, willy-nilly, without something in writing dictating how much can go toward any individual program.

My biggest fear these days is that when a budget for the Fiscal Year 2016 (which began July 1) does finally get done, so much money will already have been spent that everybody will not have enough to make it to June 30, 2016,

AFTER ALL, THIS was the year that there were either going to have to be billions in cuts or a significant increase in revenues for things to balance out.

The fact that somebody might have to wait on the prize they think they’re entitled to because they either scratched off the proper sequence of figures on a ticket (or got lucky enough to get the right numbers on a “quick pick”) doesn’t really bother me much.

It is one of the occupational hazards of doing business with state government – sometimes payments get delayed, although there is the guarantee that you will be paid in full eventually.

Unlike some private companies that can get out of paying their debts altogether.

MAYBE MY THOUGHTS are harshened because my father once owned his own construction company that got contracts for work on government-owned buildings.

Past political disputes and shortfalls by the state caused so many delays that it was a factor in him eventually having to shut down.

Excuse me for thinking that he, and others like him, are the real victims – not somebody who’s upset that their “Million Dollar Jackpot” hasn’t paid out yet.

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EXTRA: Which Jesus was bigger news

“Jesus” was definitely a name in the news on Tuesday, but I suspect most people were more interested in Davila than Garcia.

Garcia, of course, is the mayoral hopeful whom it seems has finished in second place in the municipal election. Because it appears Mayor Rahm Emanuel finished a few percentage points short of a majority, the two are now running against each other come April 7.

YET THE “JESUS” who was all over the television news throughout the day Tuesday was Jesus Davila.

The suburban Naperville resident was the big winner of a record-high prize ($265 million) in the Mega Millions Lottery game, and he chose to come forward and claim his prize on Tuesday.

Because he’s choosing to take his prize in one lump sum rather than distributed over the next couple of decades, he’s getting a smaller amount. Taxes also will be deducted.

But the 70-year-old man is still in line for a $127 million payout. Which I’m sure intrigues the general public more than the 34 percent of the vote that Garcia seems to have taken toward his mayoral aspirations.

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