RISING LOSS LIMIT NO BOON FOR EDUCATION

My how times have changed. I was taught by my parents that gambling to earn a living or for recreation was economically irresponsible. The best way to prosperity was a good job, sound planning, investment and hard work. Is that the message our children are getting from public schools which are now bragging about large infusions of gambling losses to fund public schools?

Education and gambling's top lobbyist, Jim Moody, has a new scheme to help our kids: "Let people lose more money gambling so our schools can reap larger revenues for our kids." In a new report, Moody says removing the $500 loss limit on gambling would net the state more than $40 million in new money for education. That's in addition to the record $56 million being received with the $500 limit.

The gaming and education lobbyists want people to gamble away more of their social security checks, pay checks, and welfare checks. The losses mean more money for government programs and more profits for casinos.

Why stop at gambling if its sole worthwhile goal is to help our schools and our kids. How about government-licenses bordellos where dollars for every sexual favor go to our elementary and high schools. Or a "Help Our Schools Crack House" in every neighborhood.

Our government leader shave found taxpayers hostile to more taxes for our non-competitive public schools, Many local employers say students they interview lack a work ethic, attention to detail, promptness and basic job skills. Public schools are not adequately preparing students to compete in the modern business world.

Even so, new revenue sources are still needed to fund these burgeoning educational bureaucracies. Their ends justify any means.

Gaming is not a family activity. It's adults only. You get no value in exchange for the money you gamble. It is likely the money you temporarily win is the same money you put into the slots and card tables.

Voters, who approved gaming, have also accepted gambling's inevitable companions: prostitution, suicide, drug sales, gambling addiction and rising crime rates. Attendance at Gamble Anonymous meetings in the St. Louis area are up sharply in six years. In a recent editorial Paul Harvey noted that in Kansas City where four pawn shops existed before casinos, there are now more than 30. Studies say gambling hits hardest at the incomes of the poorest.

What the criminal element did privately with bribes to government officials for decades, government now does openly for the "good of our children" with payoffs to our education industry.

Times may change, but I will continue teaching my kids and grandchildren that gambling is a fool's paradise which has both social and economic consequences for them, their family and society.

Mel Hancock, R-Springfield, is the congressman for whom Missouri's spending-limit constitutional amendment is named.