The state of Ohio where I reside, a few years ago made it illegal for persons to smoke in public, even in the state's thousands of bars. But walk into most any of those same bars and one will immediately notice a sixty inch or larger flat screen television promoting the practice of gambling through the state-sponsored Keno cabal. One can sit at the bar, drink and gamble, but do not dare smoke a cigarette or cigar.
I have often wondered how the state of Ohio determined that smoking in bars was more detrimental to society than encouraging folks to spend hundreds of dollars engaged in the act of gambling, which use to be illegal for the bars themselves to promote through tip boards, poker, and other such games of chance. And while smoking has health risks for about a third of those who partake of that habit, the gambling addiction ruins millions more lives through bankruptcy, loss of property, and criminal activity in support of the habit.
State-sponsored gambling is exemplary of government's ability to engage in activities that would send the average person to prison. Other examples are monetizing debt (The Federal Reserve's purchase of treasury bonds with dollars created out of thin air), Ponzi scheme (social security), and violations of the RICO act (pretty much anything the Obama administration has implemented over the last five years). I could not, for instance, require bond holders of a private corporation's debt to sell that debt for five cents on the dollar, then give the equity represented by that debt to my friends free of charge. I would go to prison. But that is exactly what the Obama administration did with General Motors bonds, and this thievery was hailed by those on the Left as a crowning achievement, right up there with killing Osama Bin Laden.
Today's government, and the ruling class that populates it, have given themselves immunity from the very law that they are charged with upholding. But this is not what was intended by the Founding Fathers. In fact, James Madison, father of the constitution, in Federalist Papers #57 made the following statement in reference to Congress, "...they can make no law which will not have its full operation on them and their friends, as well as on the great mass of society." How far from that guiding principle upon which our great nation was founded we have strayed, from the federal level all the way down to the cities in which we reside.
The same thing happens in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg banned the smoking of tobacco cigarettes in all public places. Earlier this month the city council passed a law to ban e-cigarettes in public places with will go into affect in March 2014. Yet a huge casino has opened in Queens so New Yorkers dont have to go all the way up to Foxwoods or down to Atlantic City. Which begs the question. You ban smoking to protect people's health yet you propagate drinking and gambling. Oh by the way the huge tax on tobacco cigarettes was supposed to help fund New York Cities public schools. With all the billions they've taken in NYC public schools are the worst in the country.....
ReplyDeleteNanci, Thanks for the comment and insight. I have always thought that government at any level promoting things such as gambling is questionable at best, It is nice to know there are others who see this hypocrisy as well.
ReplyDelete