Isn’t it wonderful how our legislators won’t let private individuals set up, say, a for-profit poker hall but will get behind all sorts of proposals to authorize games of chance that put money in their pockets.

I don’t really have a problem with the lottery.  I don’t play it myself because, well, I don’t have much extra money to spend and I’d rather use it to buy a movie ticket or something, but it seems to me that if it’s ok to allow state-sponsored gambling it should be ok to allow private gambling establishments as well.

By the way, according to the article North Dakotan’s spent $27 million on lottery tickets here in the state and another $3.2 million on scratch-off tickets in Minnesota.  That comes out to about $63 for every man and woman over the age of 18 in the state.

That’s a pretty significant amount.  The state is making some big-time dollars on this stuff.  It’d just be nice if they let private enterprise in on some of it.