My turn: Keep big government out of small-stakes gambling



Who is being protected?

If the Portales Country Club was operating a casino, I could understand. We don’t want to compete with tribes that we finagled the desert from, while removing temptation from dry-riverboat low-rollers who have demonstrated compulsive risk-taking by living in such a dicey, long-shot area as The Gulch.

When did the law become obsessed with how adults spend their money?

My Green Tea Party proposes a law allowing small-stakes gambling, perhaps $100 per person, at private clubs — monitored by buying state-regulated chips from the clubs.

That should prevent most boneshakers from losing their full-monty, and the winners could pump their mini-jackpots into lottery-scholarship scratch-offs when they stop for late-night Allsup’s burrito-gas-fill-ups on their windy way home.

Adults could purchase $25-per-year gambling licenses to replace the fines currently generated by these Gooberville busts-of-the-bored.

The license exam would include questions about which hands trump which, such as whether straights beat queens, and a bonus essay on how to conceal cash while flushing-out wild cards surreptitiously videotaping from the peanut gallery when the chips are down.