MORE GOVERNMENT INCOMPETENCE IN SOUTH CAROLINA
“It’s a great day in South Carolina …” for more government incompetence.
Less than a week after an unprecedented security breach at the S.C. Department of Revenue (SCDOR), the S.C. “Education” Lottery announced that it is missing an undisclosed amount of money due to an “accounting discrepancy.” The agency has asked the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to investigate the missing funds – and has fired an employee as a result of the breach.
Implemented a decade ago, the “Education” Lottery was sold to voters as a new funding mechanism for our state’s failing public schools – although the money it generates has instead been routed to a host of other boondoggles. The Lottery’s director – the formerly rat-tailed Paula Harper Bethea – has also been linked to some pretty shady slush fund activity in her dual role as head of this agency and the “economic development” grant agency she oversees.
Is this sort of sketchy government-funded crony capitalism what voters were promised when they supported the lottery in 2000? Of course not .. although let’s face it: Our worst-in-the-nation K-12 public education system is hardly hurting for cash.
This website opposes the very existence of the lottery – not to mention the extent to which our state’s leaders will go to protect government’s monopoly on gambling in this state.
Like our failed K-12 education system, this gambling monopoly is killing jobs and suppressing income growth in the Palmetto State – and will continue to do so until market-based forces are permitted to take root in our state.
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24 comments
Agree with you on this one. The lottery is nothing but a massive transfer of money from people who can ill afford to lose it to colleges and universities who have increased their tuitions to account for the additional funds. Oh, and of course the state which has reduced their funding of higher education accordingly.
So we have poor people subsidizing college tuition for the upper and middle classes.
But for me, the biggest reason I oppose the lottery is that the state should not be in the business of promoting the idea that you can “get rich” through anything other than hard work.
Nicely stated. It is an abomination on the state and its people, particularly its primary patrons.
Very well stated.
Exactly!
I know this will be an unpopular view but separating stupid people from their money is a good thing. Most of the lottery money “transferred” to universities serves its purpose quite well.
Yes college costs to much – but reducing the amount of money Lester has to spend on “40’s” or “smokes” and allowing Lester’s daughter to make something of herself with that money is a good thing in my opinion.
its called a game of chance and if folks decide to take a chance then so be it. Anyone with a grain of sense knows hitting the big one is about as much chance as Will’s tell all Nacy Drew Novel coming out by 3025. Lot’s of uneducated folks will vote this Tue so should we breakout the lit test of an era gone by as well. Let folks drug,drink,gamble,sex themselves to death. Life is all about choices and the conquencies associated with those choices. BTW Hard work is for non trust-fund kids
“Accounting discrepancy”. Seriously?
I am shocked by this news. Shocked, I tell you.
LMAO!
Seriously, I couldn’t dream up a novel that had the sole purpose of demonstrating the evils of gov’t in general that would be as bad as the reality here.
Not as bad, as accurate.
Have a Great Day!! :)
Frank Pytel
Crooner has it exactly right.
It is a tax on people who are bad at math in favor of those who are good at math.
There is, however, a point when it makes mathematical sense to spend money on the lottery. Very basically where (% chance of winning) x (net expected payout) > $1. Though I think you’d have to throw some portfolio allocation theory in there because you wouldn’t just spend 100% of your money on it beyond that point.
Me, I wait until it gets pretty darn high about once a year and then buy one ticket just in case God decides it time for me to be a benevolent multi-millionaire instead of a benevolent negative-net-worth-onaire. If not though, it’s totally cool. I still have more than I deserve.
love it ECon 101 very well said
I have always been against this state owned and operated criminal operation set upon the citizens. If the citizens want gambling then set it up like the State of Nevada. Hell we had to change the State Constitution to make this sham legal.
Oh baby…..as soon as the Feds take down the Governor, the Speaker, everyone who lives in Lexington and Horry….they will be ALL over this!
Well, since the Fed / Sled team are openly stating that they have better things to do than go after bookies it looks like its time to get the band back together – see you boys next fall.
This money didn’t get lost the same way NIMRATA lost the “temples” money did it?
Crooks. Sure hope the Feds get involved before SLED get’s the white outand corrects the math.
“So we have poor people subsidizing college tuition for the upper and middle classes.”
Bullshit. Plenty of “poor” people attend community college with the help of Lottery funds to improve their skills and learn trades so they can participate in the workforce.
I attend school WITH them (I’m on the G.I. Bill and some Lottery funding) and without the Lottery many of them wouldn’t be able to attend college. They frequently come straight off their third shift job to attend class then sleep later in the day. While it’s fashionable to talk shit (often deserved) about the poor, I’ve seen plenty of them who are dedicated students and eager to earn a better living.
Find whoever ripped off the funds and send them to prison, but the Lottery is a spectacular deal for taxpayers (I’m one) and the public (because it trains people for the modern workforce).
Industries DEMANDS trained workers and they hold all the cards, so if States want to COMPETE for business they need to shit a trained workforce ASAP like it or not.
“I know this will be an unpopular view but separating stupid people from their money is a good thing. Most of the lottery money “transferred” to universities serves its purpose quite well.
Yes college costs to much – but reducing the amount of money Lester has to spend on “40?s” or “smokes” and allowing Lester’s daughter to make something of herself with that money is a good thing in my opinion.”
Roger that! I’ve seen it and it works. College creates workers and taxpayers. With all the complaining about the leeches we should encourage people to train and retrain for available jobs.
http://stateyourpeace.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/when-the-govs-away-the-criminals-will-play/
Put the lottery under the Treasurer’s office. Lottery has been shady for years just the insiders are cool with it and aint talking.
To date, I have never found out where all the money actually goes.
Kind of vague, a little here, a little there, but never a full acounting of every dollar to the public.
And what about free tech college tuition we were promised?
That never happened.
If they ever let us know, I would bet many fat cats have taken hundreds of millions from the lottery, and put it in their pockets.
But they will never tell us.
Then there are the commercials, some show people winning and saving their house, then others say don’t play the lottery if you need the money because if you do, you have a gambling disorder.
Hypocrites.
FITS said,”The agency has asked the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to investigate the missing funds” Whoa! Wasn’t SLED supposed to have agents who were assigned specifically to the Lottery to prevent this sort of oversite? What were those agents doing while this was going on? Not a damn thing
Allow me to enlighten you, they were sitting on their asses. Go to the Harbison forest or Broad River or the criminal justice academy on any WORK day of the week and you will find them jogging and working out on WORK time. You will find their bosses either with them or sitting and finding new and unique ways to spend government $$$ while the rest of us are told to tighten our belts. How about getting SUVs as police cars? Of course just for the “friends of the chiefs”. The is right Chiefs plural – why would any agency need TWO agnecy heads? More $$ for salaries of course and get this, the State POLICE feel unsafe so they are spending our hard earned tax dollars to put in a FENCE – not just a run of the mill chain link and razor wire, like all the other state agencies on Broad River, an fancy iron fence, Oh, and they will be getting all new uniforms and gear because, the old stuff, was from the waste of the previous Chief, and we need to look different – more like the highway patrol, where everyone smiled in their faces and laughed behind their backs.
We have never been so glad to see two people leave the patrol -EVER!
Go ahead and let the State pOlice try and figure this out. You would have better luck getting Barney Fife on the job, a job they should have been doing in the first place. Maybe things will actually change now that Jake The Benefactor Knotts is no longer in the catbird seat – watch for many people leaving office behind his departure!