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?

  -30-

Powerball prize just a myth? At least it seems like a great big one to me!

As I write this, I’m preparing to pick up my parents from the airport (Midway) as they return from a weekend trip to the casinos of Las Vegas, Nev.

My loser ticket. I don't feel need for another

At that time, I’ll be able to tell them they lost again – at Powerball. Although I’m sure they already realize they’re not big winners, they didn’t win that drawing last week.

THE ONE THAT could have paid out about $800 million!

Which results in the prize rolling over, and some estimates saying it could be a $1.4 billion prize to a single winner when the next drawing is held.

Now my interest in this is literally that I’m holding a Powerball ticket from the Saturday drawing that nobody won. In my case, I bought five chances (a $10 bet) and only came up with one matching number.

I bought the ticket for my father, who literally called me from Las Vegas on Saturday to ask me to make the purchase.

MAYBE HE THOUGHT he’d have something big to come home to if his losing streak in Nevada continued throughout the weekend. It seems I placed a crummy bet.

Which is why I have to admit all the enthusiasm and ecstasy that some people feel about gambling is totally lost on me. I don’t get why people are so eager to dump a few bucks of their hard-earned money on tickets.

As I see it, the $800 million promise of last weekend was a myth. Whereas the $10 bill I had in my wallet was real, and all I have to show for it now is a slip of paper laced with some sort of chemical that if I tried to eat my losses, I’d get a rancid taste in my mouth.

Then again, it’s not just lottery tickets that lose me. The whole casino experience leaves me dry – even though the last time I set foot in one, I actually walked out with about $50 more than I walked in there with.

MY THANKS TO the people of the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Ind., for that little financial boost. Although I also have embedded in my mind the sight of a woman who tried three different credit cards in a cash machine and wound up having all of them rejected – because she had bet so much and lost.

Thank goodness for the activist-types who often get derided for ruining people’s fun for saving that woman from losing even more cash that day.

In my own case, part of my lack of enthusiasm for gambling is that I’m cheap. You have to be willing to bet big, and often, in order to boost your chances of winning a significant prize – and I’m just not willing to do that.

Realize that I’m fully aware of the fact that my step-mother (if she ever reads this) will regard such thoughts as heresy. For all I know, I may get disowned from the family. Or at least uninvited to the next family get-together.

AFTER ALL, THE reason she and my father were in Las Vegas this past weekend was a birthday celebration. I won’t find out until Tuesday whether she really had a Happy Birthday!, but I suspect somehow she did.

She really does find a joy in the casino experience that is just lost on me. Or on the gambling experience in general. Somehow, seeing “dream books” piled up by the Illinois Lottery ticket machine at the convenience store in suburban Hazel Crest where I bought last week’s Powerball ticket just seemed sad.

Which is why I won’t be among those getting all giddy at the thought of a Wednesday prize that could make me a billionaire!?! Because all I’d get was another loser because I didn’t buy a dream book to tell me what number I should play because I dreamed of my brother, Chris, and I sitting in the stands at a ballgame.

Maybe if I had, my father would have some winnings to come home to.

  -30-