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 Bring on Video Poker
by Tom Campbell
May 1, 2009
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you have to know that our nation is in the throes of a depression and that North Carolina is suffering as much or more than any other state, what with having to reduce our state employees’ pay by a staggering one-half of one percent and giving them ten more hours of vacation.
While contemplating affairs of state and inhaling large doses of pollen it suddenly dawned on me that I can solve our state’s revenue problems, address the video poker issue and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It’s all perfectly legal; in fact it is based on a court ruling from none other than North Carolina’s Judge Plenipotentiary, Howdy Manning. You have to love a judge named Howdy, but I would suggest that you not snicker in his presence because Judge Manning can and will zap you when he’s wearing black.
Manning ruled recently that North Carolina’s law banning video poker machines is unconstitutional. Since we allow Harrah’s Casino on the Cherokee reservation to operate video gambling we must allow video poker anywhere. Nobody has cohonies enough to pull the plug on Harrah’s operation, so it looks like we’re back in the video poker business.
This time, however, let’s do it right. No more limiting the payoffs to a stupid ten dollar merchandise prize and no more paying off the local Sheriff to turn his head the other way so that bigger prizes can be awarded. We’re going for the big time, baby.
Who is best at running gambling operations? Organized crime, of course. So let’s remove any worries about whether or not they will be involved in video poker by inviting every organized crime family in our country to submit a proposal to operate video poker games in our state. We will have video poker on every self-service checkout at Target, every convenience store that has more than one pump and every urinal and ATM machine. You can bet the farm our partners in crime (literally) will make sure that every quarter from every machine is accounted for. In exchange we get twenty percent off the top. Call it a protection charge. We will make sure no squeaky clean operator gets itchy and tries to open up a video poker machine at the beach bingo parlor.
You might be wondering what the state should do with all the cash that will soon be flowing our way. Let’s earmark all our gambling earnings for transportation. We’ve done this before and are quite successful at diverting those funds for whatever other projects our politicians might desire in any given year.
Our state’s revenue problems will be over inside six months. Governor Perdue can go on vacation. Has she ever been to Southport before? Our legislature can go back to business as usual, making decisions behind closed doors. And the media can once again obsess over the local planning commission meeting secretly.
Let anyone opposed to this approach show where he or she plans to raise so much money in such a short time. Bring on video poker.
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