Anna at Dakota Women takes me to task for this comment:
Surely video-lottery is one of the most regressive sources of public funding, preying upon the poor and middle class much more than upon the rich. The Christian Right spends a lot of resources trying, unsuccessfully, to get rid of it. The left ignores it. But then they get to spend the money.
Anna says:
But since video lottery proceeds go to the state, and "the right" has run state government for at least the past generation, I sincerely wonder what Ken means in the quote above.
Yeah, alright, I was being a bit snippy with that last line. State governments love video lottery money because almost no one complains about revenue taken from such sources, as opposed to honest taxation. Anna goes on:
First, the Christian right is by no means the most vocal opponent of video lottery in this state. I certainly don't remember any religious right-wing organizations actively opposing it in the last election, but of course they had super important issues like controlling women's personal medical decisions and passing judgment on people's intimate relationships to worry about. So video lottery was probably somewhat lower on their list, and I think this most recent effort to repeal video lottery got lost in all the other candidates and ballot issues we dealt with anyway.
To the contrary, repeal of video lottery has been on the ballot several times (unsuccessfully, though it would seem that both Anna and I voted for repeal), and I am certain that almost all the effort and treasure behind those ballot initiatives came from the same people who oppose abortion and gay marriage. Anna is right that a lot of the opposition came from mainstream churches, like the Methodist Church, and that the latter is, nationally, hardly a right wing organization. But grassroots Methodists in the Dakotas are a pretty conservative lot, if my experience of several years at the First Methodist Church of Aberdeen is any indication.
I am happy to see that Anna opposes video lottery for the same reasons I do. Once again, we argue about peripheral matters, but agree about the basic issue. I would be interested to learn that Democrats in general or left-minded activists in particular were a conspicuous part of the repeal efforts. I am guessing that such evidence is not to be found. I would be interested to see if repeal of state-sponsored gambling appears anywhere on the platform of any left-leaning organization in any state where the institution exists, as it does frequently (if not always in first place) on the agendas of religiously motivated organizations. I do not believe that the left, anywhere in America, is much interested in video lottery.
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