Porners are boring this week so here are a few Libertarian rants

eel free to disagree with me. If I don’t get some useable copy from my readers soon (and I know there are a lot of you) I am going to start running press releases from Daniel Metcalf and Adella O’Neil. And you will deserve them!

A tax on the mathematically challenged.

That’s what lotteries are. Lets take the “Big Game” as an example, the one that got up to 325 million this week. The odds of winning that are 1 in about 76 million. That’s right, now think about that, the big game starts out paying out 4 million if you choose the annuity (which I will come back to) or 2 million if you choose to take the cash. Now IF you choose the annuity what you get is 5% per year for 20 years, in other words what you won was NOT 4 million dollars but 5% INTEREST on 4 million dollars. If you choose the cash option you get it all at once but not the full 4 million, only 2 million. BUT remember in either case they actually CLEARED 72 – 74 million dollars, OK add a few million for the advertising budget and a few more for the other payouts lets say 50 Million in all, that’s STILL a net profit of about 20 Million Dollars TWICE A WEEK ( The Big Game is Every Tues and Friday) Ok thats a pretty good deal huh? So why don’t you and I go into the lottery business, hell we are a private enterprise we can do way better, offer bigger payouts…nope, thats called “the numbers racket” It’s illegal in every state, you see it seems that only the government is allowed to operate money making scams. You know that 3 number lottery they run every day? you pick 3 numbers from one to 10 and if you get all 3 you win 500 bucks? The actual odds are 1 in 1000 (0-0-0 to 9-9-9) so the state nets 50 cents for every dollar you bet thats a 50% edge for the state. Even the worst bets in Vegas give the house only about a 5% edge. Think about this the next time you buy a lottery ticket.

A Federal judge has told Fulton County, Georgia that it must do something – fast – to relieve overcrowding in it’s jail.

I don’t know just how many people there are in this jail right now being held for a non-violent drug crime If there are any, turn them out. They have violated no person’s rights to life, liberty or property. What they have done shouldn’t be illegal in the first place.