North Carolina GOP, Saving Poors One Lotto Ticket at a Time

Look, we give people welfare so they can put food on their family, this is a stone cold fact. Also, we allow people to declare bankruptcy to give them a temporary respite from being crushed under the bootheel of late-stage capitalism in post-regulation, free market America, also a stone cold fact. So letting Poors and bankruptcy-declared people buy lotto tickets, well, it goes against the spirit of the thing! And everyone knows that Poors and bankruptcy-declared people are much stupider than non-Poors who are not in bankruptcy, and should therefore be protected from the free market.

North Carolina lawmakers have drafted legislation that would... punish vendors for selling lottery tickets to someone who they know is on welfare or in bankruptcy, according to ABC 11 in Raleigh. The lawmakers behind it believe it's counterproductive for the government to accept money from welfare recipients who are struggling to get by.

"We're giving them welfare to help them live, and yet by selling them a ticket, we're taking away their money that is there to provide them the barest of necessities," state House Majority Leader Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam (R), who is helping draft the bill, told ABC 11. Stam added that the lottery "is essentially a scam," the news outlet reported. Stam also said that some of the North Carolina lottery advertising is "just fraudulent," according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

Let us note that people in bankruptcy are not automatically entitled to welfare. Let us also note the obvious difficulty with the language of the law -- how does a cashier at 7/11 know if someone is a Poor or has declared bankruptcy so he or she can refrain from selling a lotto ticket to them?

Also, maybe if Skip Stam is so concerned about the false claims made by the state lotto, maybe he could draft some sort of bill that would prevent these "downright fraudulent" claims in advertising? And maybe Skip Stam would like to explain how banning people from buying a product articulates with his stated platform of limited government and more individual freedom?

And (yes, there's more!) we hate to bring it up, but isn't Skip Stam getting taxpayer money too? Maybe he should be limited in the types of products he can buy?

 [HuffPo]