PolicyGuy
This blog is semi-retired, but I'm adding always adding new items to the portfolio page.

Monday, April 25, 2005


Go Ahead. Hit the Blackjack Table. It's for the Children.
After having climbed out of fiscal holes by making modest budget cuts or using budgetary gimmicks, some states may double down on the idea of expanding gambling. Its attraction: more money, of course, especially for K-12 education. Kansas is one state where the idea has attracted some attention. State-owned casinos are not out of the question, having been endorsed by Governor Sebelius.

It's one thing to argue that free adults ought to be able to spend some money in a casino, even if a small percentage of people will spend the children's milk money in doing so. It's far worse, though, to stake government programs, even politically popular ones such as education, on government-owned casinos. Far better to acquire discipline in spending and the ability to drop some good (and not so good) line items in favor of the highest priority ones.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'’s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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