Page 786 – Family Council

Arkansas Lottery Rolls Out More Scratch-Off Games

Dec 7, 2020Jerry CoxArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

Last week the Arkansas Lottery rolled out four new lines of scratch-off tickets selling for anywhere from $1 to $10 each.

We have written time and again about how scratch-off tickets prey on the poor and desperate.

A 2015 study in Canada found a link between problem gambling and instant lottery tickets, writing,

It is possible that problem gamblers are more attracted to instant win tickets than lottery tickets because instant win tickets provide immediate feedback. Some authors have even described instant win tickets as “paper slot machines” (Griffiths, 2002). Therefore, instant win tickets might be considered a more exciting form of lottery gambling, which may help explain why it attracts a different type of gambler than [ordinary] lottery tickets do.

A 2018 study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions also found a link between how often a person played scratch-off tickets and the severity of a person’s gambling problem.

Despite all of this, the Arkansas Lottery continues to roll out new scratch-off tickets every month and budgets nearly 71% of its revenue for prizes in an ongoing effort to prop up lottery ticket sales.

Trust the Experts? Harvard Says Men Can Have Babies

Dec 7, 2020John StonestreetTransgenderLGBT, Transgender

Recently, Harvard Medical School hosted a panel discussion on Maternal Health. The topic was why women of color are statistically three times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than white moms.

Throughout this event, talking about pregnancy and childbirth, every one of the panelists refused to use the word “woman.” On Twitter, the event was described as confronting problems faced by “pregnant and birthing people.” After wide backlash, they tweeted again: “Our panelists used this language because not all who give birth identify as women.”

The real tragedy here is that healthcare disparity for moms of color is a real problem. But if medical health experts refuse to acknowledge that the term woman refers to something that exists in reality, and that medical science itself depends on these biological realities, how can we expect them to solve an issue as complicated as ethnic health disparities?

Arkansas Lottery Spends Another $13,000 on Mileage Reimbursements for Employees

Dec 4, 2020Jerry CoxArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

Since the beginning of November, the Arkansas Lottery has reported another $13,000 in mileage reimbursements for its employees, and $68,198.73 since since the fiscal year started on July 1, according to information on the state’s transparency website.

State employees receive 42 cents for every mile they travel on state business in their personal vehicles; some employees at the Arkansas Lottery average hundreds of dollars every month in reimbursement for their mileage.

Altogether, the Arkansas Lottery has paid its employees for nearly 32,500 miles of travel every single month, on average, since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2021.

As we have written many times, the Arkansas Lottery probably could save a lot of money by using state vehicles for travel instead of paying employees to drive their personal vehicles — or by finding ways to reduce travel in general.

Photo Credit: Airtuna08 at English Wikipedia [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]