Day: September 25, 2024

You Wanna Bet?

The Lotto was big here in Mississippi until they legalized sports betting…..the casinos starting raking in big bucks and then they legalized electronic sports betting and the flood gates were opened wide.

There is a wealth of sites and apps that allow you to throw your money away….FanDuel, Draft king, et, etc….all this easy access will come back and bite you in the ass.

This is heading for a crisis…..for a ‘fool and his money are soon parted’…..

America is a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires trapped by the billionaire class. We wax poetic about democracy and meritocracy inside of a top-down controlled world, telling ourselves a fantasy about what this country is while ignoring what it proves itself to be–all as myriad crises fester far from the consequences faced by the capitalist class. Perhaps that’s why sports are so popular. They are the lone part of America that is actually centered around meritocratic ideals (just so long as you don’t kneel before the national anthem).

And make no mistake, legalized sports gambling is one of those many crises plaguing this country. Charles Fain Lehman covered a litany of new studies in an excellent article for The Atlantic today, and they all indicate that the legalization of sports gambling has largely been a disaster.

There are some predictable outcomes, like Northwestern University’s study which found that legal sports gambling depletes household savings by $2 for every $1 gambled, and economists at UCLA found that legalization increases the risk a household goes bankrupt by 25 to 30 percent.

But there are even darker consequences that come with a wave of highly addictive betting apps that sports leagues have made inseparable with their product, like how Oregon economists found that legal sports betting leads to about a nine percent increase in intimate-partner violence. Men’s Health conducted a poll of men in 2023 where 58 percent of respondents said sports betting has affected their mental health, 43 percent say it has affected their physical health, and 18 percent say it is “destroying [their] life.”

https://www.splinter.com/the-sports-gambling-crisis-is-america-in-a-nutshell

These sites are geared to people chasing scared money….those trying to make rent….those trying to feed the kids….scared money.

These sites and apps will do whatever it takes to hook you and keep you coming back for one more chance.

Do not be fooled by these sites….there is nothing easy about gambling….

Could it be time to ban on-line betting?

Back in 2018, the Supreme Court allowed states to legalize sports gambling. “Six years into the experiment, the evidence is convincing: Legalizing sports gambling was a huge mistake,” writes Charles Fain Lehman in the Atlantic. It may be harmless fun for a lot of people, but far too many can’t control the impulse, and the ubiquitous ads on TV and online aren’t helping. In his essay, Lehman cites studies suggesting that the proliferation of gambling is taking a heavy toll, and usually on families that can least afford it. “Specifically, for every $1 spent on betting, households put $2 less into investment accounts,” he writes, adding that households with gamblers are more likely to see credit cards maxed out, checking accounts overdrawn, and even bankruptcy.

“More harrowing” is a University of Oregon study estimating that intimate-partner violence rises 9% in states where gambling is legal, he writes. At this point, 38 states allow gambling, with little to show for it given that tax revenue “has been anemic”—less than alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana, writes Lehman. And that’s even as Goldman Sachs says Americans now bet $1 billion a month, up 20-fold since it was legalized. It’s time to ban gambling anew, argues Lehman. “If the states are ‘laboratories of democracy,’ then the results of their experiment with sports gambling are in, and they are uniformly negative,” he writes. “Better to end the study now than prolong the suffering.”

(Read his full essay, which includes more details on the studies cited.)

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Will Georgia Be Ground Zero?

Many people are saying that Trump will unleash his minions to bring chaos to the 2024 election if he does not win….

A sizable minority of Americans said they would try to invalidate the presidential election results depending on which candidate wins, according to a new poll. In the latest World Justice Project survey, 14% of Republicans said they would “take action to overturn the 2024 election based solely on who is declared the winner.” Eleven percent of Democrats said they would do the same.

The survey — which is completed annually — also found widespread distrust in elections and the courts that arbitrate them. “Today, trust in many U.S. institutions, government accountability, and overall rule of law is considerably lower than it was ahead of the 2020 election,” Elizabeth Andersen, the executive director of the World Justice Project — which works to advance the rule of law around the globe — said in a statement.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article292616804.html#storylink=cpy

….and it is shaping up that Georgia may be the ground zero that they are looking for.

There have been several reports of the antics by Trump loyalists in the background in Georgia.

A network of county election officials in Georgia is strategizing behind the scenes to help Donald Trump in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

The Guardian, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, obtained emails through a public records request from a group calling itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition, which includes election officials from at least five counties in the state. The emails show favoritism by the group toward Trump, as well as efforts by the group to show fraud in the 2024 elections, despite no vote yet having been cast.

Emails were sent between the officials, as well as election deniers in Georgia and around the country. These included groups like the Tea Party Patriots, or TPP, and the Election Integrity Network, or EIN, a group founded by former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell. Members include Michael Heekin, a Republican member of the Fulton County board of elections, and his colleague Julie Adams, Debbie Fisher of Cobb County, Nancy Jester of DeKalb County, and Roy McClain of Spalding County. All of them have a history of refusing to certify election results, and Adams works directly for the TPP and EIN.

In the emails, members discuss how to combat scrutiny, in one case regarding a letter from a Democratic attorney warning officials against refusing to certify election results. Adams sent a different email under her Tea Party Patriots address with a meeting agenda including an item about a “New York Times reporter traveling to several counties in Georgia.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/186116/emails-georgia-election-officials-trump-chaos

The chaos has already started with early voting….in Georgia….

Georgia is one of the battleground states seen as crucial to deciding the next president, but don’t be surprised if the state can’t report results on election night. The state board of elections on Friday voted 3-2 to require all counties to hand-count ballots to verify the machine count, reports USA Today. As the Washington Post notes, that has the potential to delay results for days or weeks because only the smallest counties will be able to get the count done by the next day, as mandated. “Military ballots have already been issued,” complained Ethan Compton, elections supervisor in the state’s Irwin County. “The election has begun. This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections.”

Voting rights advocates were similarly irked, saying the late change has the potential to not only delay the count but “lay the groundwork for spurious challenges,” per Reuters. The board is controlled by three members approved by Donald Trump, who has previously praised them as “pit bulls,” notes USA Today. One of them, Janelle King, has said her mission is “to ensure that every vote is counted accurately and every election is conducted correctly going forward.” NPR has called the state a “must-win” for both Trump and Kamala Harris.

For a more detailed analysis then this article would help….

https://www.commondreams.org/news/georgia-hand-count

If you recall Georgia was a Trump favorite to find and disqualify a number of ballots making him the winner….so I would expect nothing less than a similar attempt in 2024.

Great stuff, huh?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”