Stop Predatory Gambling

An Inconvenient Truth About Lottery Funding

by spgadmin

Today’s Denver Post has an interview with Lise Aangeenbrug, Executive Director of Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO). GOCO receives 50% of the proceeds from the Colorado Lottery and invests it in open space, parks and wildlife habitats. The Lottery is its only source of funding. Here’s a very interesting exchange from the interview:

Reporter: What’s your favorite virtue?

Aangeenbrug: Integrity.

Reporter:  What fault are you least tolerant of?

Aangeenbrug: Lying

There are hundreds of well-intentioned people like Ms. Aangeenbrug who use the profits from predatory gambling to address other important public priorities but possess little understanding about the predatory gambling trade’s business model and how it violates America’s core democratic principle of equal citizenship. If they did, people like Ms. Aangeenbrug would be standing right alongside us.  

Because the way we raise money to protect the environment says as much about our principles and values as the way we spend it.  If logging companies donated a large amount of their profits from clear cutting timber forests to pay for health care for those without health insurance, would environmentalists like Ms. Aangeenbrug support it?  

State-sponsored predatory gambling is the total opposite of her favorite virtue and its marketing is based upon the fault she is least tolerant of.