Page 597 – Family Council

Shanghai’s Food Shortage

May 25, 2022John StonestreetChinaChina

A recent viral video shows thousands of people in Shanghai screaming in unison into the night to protest the Chinese government’s brutal “zero-COVID” policy.

Entire high-rises of people are confined to their rooms, locked in with green fencing that appeared overnight. Children, including babies, are separated from their parents in massive government quarantine centers, some of which lack basic medical equipment or even beds. Other videos show hundreds of pets being collected and euthanized as supposed carriers of the disease.

In the meantime, many of the city’s 25 million people find themselves on the brink of starvation, with government food deliveries unable to keep up with demand.

If we’re looking for a culprit, it’s not just the lockdown. It’s not even COVID-19. It’s the ideology of China’s ruling elites, which rejects the sacred value of the individual in the name of the “common good.” Human dignity is a deeply Christian idea, one that China’s communist leaders have been at war with for decades.

We must pray that the voices of Shanghai’s suffering people will wake them up to what is true and good.

Arkansas Lottery Still Banking On Expensive Scratch-Off Tickets

May 24, 2022Jerry CoxArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

Over the years we have written time and again about expensive scratch-off tickets at the Arkansas Lottery — tickets that sell for $10 or $20 apiece instead of $1 or $2.

Scratch-off lottery tickets are controversial, because they are associated with problem gambling and gambling addiction.

In the past, researchers have compared scratch-off tickets to “paper slot machines.”

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

High-dollar scratch-off tickets are even more controversial, because the combination of long odds and big jackpots may encourage people to buy them out of desperation.

For example, in November of 2021 the Arkansas Lottery rolled out its “$1,000,000 Riches” scratch-off ticket.

The ticket sells for $20. The odds of winning the top prize of $1 million are approximately 1 in 800,000.

Scratch-off tickets like this one offer big payouts to people who may be living on very little money.

That means they are likely to entice people to play the lottery out of desperation in hopes of “hitting it big.”

Statistically speaking, a person who spends $20 on one of these scratch-off tickets has a two-thirds chance of losing.

Right now the Arkansas Lottery sells several varieties of scratch-off tickets for $10 and $20 each.

The vast majority of the money the Arkansas Lottery makes from scratch-off tickets pays for prizes for a handful of lottery players. Very little goes to Arkansas’ students.

As long as the Arkansas Lottery continues to operate this way, it will keep preying on the poor and desperate, and the Lottery’s scholarship funding will remain low.