Billion-Dollar Bingo

When I was a spindly, five-foot, tree-climbing lad, I deduced that if I could tie four strings from the waist of a plastic army man to the four corners of a handkerchief, toss them out of a tree, and watch them descend slowly like a real parachuting soldier, I certainly could do something similar to myself. So I gathered the material: a bed sheet and four lengths of rope.

I'm here today, because my mother stopped me.

She interfered in my behalf on other occasions as well, including the time I planned to run a numbers racket. I didn't know that's what it was called or that it was illegal, it just made sense. And it seemed so simple. Why wasn't everyone doing it? That should have been my first clue.

As Catholics we were exposed to bingo. Our parish church, like just about every enterprising Catholic parish in those days, staged evening bingos, raffles, and festivals littered with carny-like games of chance.

Even though I did not do well in math as a grade-school student, it wasn't difficult to understand that the parish made out well in these enterprises. Especially raffles. When I asked myself, how can the parish afford to give away a new car? the numbers gave me the answer.

No surprise then that I would deduce with my soldier-parachute logic, that I could run a raffle in my neighborhood among my friends.

I'm here today, because my mother stopped me.

Okay, I don't suppose I would have been destroyed or even arrested for running numbers at my age, had I been caught. And it doesn't matter. But the lesson does.

My mother explained that raffles and lotteries are illegal, because they take money from a lot of people and give it to a few people without providing any other benefit. In short, many lose, a few win. And that's not nice.

On the other hand, a church bingo supports the generally beneficial work of the church. Fund-raisers for non-profits support good work that would not otherwise get done. When run by a state and the proceeds funneled into schools or infrastructure, a lottery amounts to a kind of fun-to-pay tax.

Capitalism rewards profit. It's counter-capitalistic to give money to a church, a public school, a teacher, a police department, a homeless shelter, a food bank, or any other non-profit entity. Unless you brag about it on your corporate website. While non-profit enterprises benefit us and even make more comfortable the environment in which we practice capitalism, they cost without generating profit.

Like Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, capitalism gives us an awe-inspiring show, but it demands blood and to be fed more and more and more. We need some sort of force motivated by something other than profit, not only to build roads and feed the poor, but to regulate the most un-beneficial kinds of capitalistic enterprises such as private lotteries.

And yet that's exactly what free-market extremists have allowed to happen. While you and I worked and built our economy in return for modest rewards, others sat on the sidelines and gorged themselves on profits earned by simply betting on how we would do. They ran raffles on the profits they hauled in by the truckload. And that's not nice.

Had Doris Lloyd been in charge, she would have rapped the knuckles of Wall Street speculators and hedge fund gamblers with her wooden cooking spoon. Rapped them darn hard for playing billion-dollar-bingo with the life blood of our economy. Unfortunately she died in 1990, just as the greedy spirit of de-regulation was getting up to speed.

We're in the mess we are today, because my mother's wisdom could not stop the madness.

Labels: Audrey, bingo, capitalism, Doris Lloyd, hedge funds, Little Shop of Horrors, Wall Street

Shame on you, Massachusetts!

When the USA Titanic, steered by indomitable Capt. Dubya, finally hit the iceberg around the end of 2008, the first to reach the lifeboats, as expected, were the mean and greedy. Now as we watch our big-bellied bankers and fat-bottomed hedge-fund gamblers row to safety, their minions in the Republican party get the dirty job of laying back and whacking down the rest of us with their thick oars as we paddle desperately toward anything that floats.

Then just when it seems the water can't get any colder, the once trusty people of Massachusetts vote for the promise of no health care reform. "Sorry, we need your life jackets, too." What happened to Teddy's constituents? Aren't these the same people who were taught as children that we're all in this together? Have they really bit the bait of the big lie?

How many of them, I wonder count themselves among our nations foaming-at-the-mouth tea-baggers? Many of these mental midgets will willingly fork out $550 dollars to hear their esteemed Sarah Palin speak at their convention next month in Music City. That's more than half-a-grand to hear the woman to whom McCain's handlers had to explain why Korea comes in North and South flavors. Maybe because she can't see either Korea from Wasilla.

I wonder how many tea-baggers understand the Korean division. I mean, if you don't buy global warming or evolution and swallow only what your hate-radio jock blathers, all you need to know is that the North is evil, like Sadam, socialism, welfare moms. And I guess if you think your Hummer H3 is a great set of wheels, then Sarah Palin is a great speaker.

Labels: Massachusetts, Mc Cain, Palin, Tea Party, tea-baggers