lottery

The TV commercial for the Ric Flair Scratch-Off from the North Carolina Education Lottery…

I’m sorely tempted to insert a “Space Mountain” joke in here somewhere 😛

EDIT 3:18 a.m. EST 09/23/2009: I am just now discovering that this game is not called “Ric Flair Scratch-Off” as I had originally thought. Instead it is officially known as… Wooooooo!

As if this state didn’t have enough people imitating Ric Flair, heh-heh…

That’s it. I’m definitely going to buy at least one of these tickets. Not to scratch off, just to keep and hold onto because, well… a Ric Flair-themed state lottery scratch-off game called “Wooooooo!” is just too clever to pass up on owning one.

This will be the hottest-selling scratch-off game since the lottery started up here almost four years ago, I would wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie on it. Maybe we’ll see the entire Four Horsemen ...

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Bev Perdue – who for as long as she is Governor of North Carolina will be referred to on this blog as “WORST GOVERNOR EVER!” – is returning $38 million to the school construction proceeds from the North Carolina Education Lottery, which she raided back in February

(However there’s still $50 million from the lottery’s reserve funds that Perdue isn’t paying back yet).

Does Bev Perdue have any clue at all about the mess she has caused for this state’s public schools? Probably not. Here in Rockingham County plans to build four much-needed new schools were thrown into turmoil because the construction funds earmarked from the lottery were swiped by Perdue so that she could play games with the state’s budget problems. Many other school systems across North Carolina were also hit by Perdue’s monetary mayhem.

I would imagine that in the greater scheme of things, Perdue’s unwise fiscal ...

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That “North Carolina Education Lottery” that we’ve had for going on three years now? The one that was supposed to do nothing but supplement, you know, education in North Carolina?

Well, our newly-minted governor Bev Perdue has raided the lottery’s reserve fund of $50 million. And then she took another $38 million that was marked for new schools construction, and applied it to the state’s budget shortfall.

And now because of her fiscal shenanigans, Rockingham County won’t be getting those four new schools that it direly needs.

I have spoken to quite a few people in this county over the past few days who are, to put it mildly, extremely honked-off that this has happened.

The members of the Board of Education aren’t taking this quietly either. According to the above-linked article Tim Scales has remarked “You don’t want to know what I’ve got to say about it.” Reida ...

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Yes, today marks the one-year anniversary since state-sponsored gambling finally came to the Tarheel State. We have indeed come a long way from the days when you could go to jail here for buying a copy of Penthouse Magazine.

In all seriousness though, I don’t know if the lottery has had much of an impact… at least yet… on state education. If North Carolina was smart we would manage the lottery proceeds like how Georgia does theres, what with their Hope Scholarship and all. That, and bolster our teachers’ pay a lot more than they’re getting now (and they more than deserve it)....

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