What the hell.

If you have 11 million dollars, why the **** are you buying lottery tickets? Can you say GREED? I have no problem with people buying lottery tickets, but for pete's sake, IF YOU ALREADY HAVE 11 MILLION DOLLARS THEN WTF ARE YOU DOING BUYING LOTTO TICKETS?

The fact that this guy is a Republican just makes it OH SO MUCH BETTER. I don't care that he won, I care that he buys tickets in the first place.

And yes he has every right to do it. I just think it is extremely poor form.

And the BEST PART is that he MAILED IN $5 in LOSING TICKETS to try AGAIN! HOW CHEAP CAN YOU BE?



Oink Oink.

Ah, money makes the world go round thoses days, you know. Thought, that is as damn as well the form of greed.

Things are so, oh so costly thoses days. Hmmm.

how much he won?

Over his lifetime, $270,000 in lottery winnings.

Being rich does not exempt you from gambling. He likes to play small time gambling.

Agreed. It's come to the point where I miss the old school rich people who just bullied the little guy and claimed outrageous privelige.

The new rich people are crazy. They are money and power junkies. Kenneth Lay was worth millions of dollars but that wasn't enough, he had to bilk his employees out of their 401K's so he could squeeze out a few more mil.

How much is enough?

the real question is how much did he spend to get that 270k? probablly a lot more.

I would imagine you're right.

i think this is overlooking the real problem , that politicians are allowed to be so goddamned rich ; they have absolutly no conection to the people they are suposed to represent, it's like they live in an alternate universe ! (i'm assuming this guy is in politics fron the fancy wooden name placard he has there)

Well, yeah it's his right to play the lottery.... what puzzles me is the people who win the big money, and still play (sometimes winning again).

I'd worry a lot more about what he does in office than in his free time. At least he's playing the lottery and not kicking puppies.

That we know of...

I think the other way to look at it is that in order to participate in politics in this country, you *have* to be rich.

that makes the USA an Aristocracy

We do realize that lottery tickets are gambling, right? And that gambling is something some people do more for the thrill than the money?

In many regions, lottery tickets are the only legal form of gambling. It almost makes sense to me that busy professionals might buy tons of lottery tickets to blow off steam.

Heck, it's a legal enterprise and usually a lot of the lottery money goes to worthy causes.

What amuses me the most is the assumption at the beginning of this thread that a rich person should be barred from buying lottery tickets. That it would be much better for poor or middle class people to dump their hard earned money into lottery tickets that are almost certainly not going to win (that's the nature of lottery tickets, after all).

There was some republican politician a few years back that got exposed as a huge gambler. Not an illegal gambler, but someone who would plunk a lot of money down at a casino. This was apparently a scandal, and I still to this day can't understand why.

I so much prefer this method of enrichment than the actions of the government officials embroiled in the Abramoff scandals or the Duke Cunningham scandals - though one might be the extention of another ... I don't really know.

And even worse are the perfectly legal methods government officials are using to enrich themselves through the distribution of no-bid contracts to companies they own significant stock holdings.

Seriously, it's very telling when someone can dismiss the corruption and the exploitation of the laws and get mad when someone is buying lottery tickets.

Ok, I'm really not going to lie...

I'm very jealous of him.

Hi's money. Doubt he's using state funds.

...because you want 12 million dollars?

No, Ronson, I said it is his right to do what he wants, I just said it was poor form. Please read everything that I put there.



Many social conservatives frown on gambling.



Here we go, you just can't help yourself, you have to invoke the name of all your favorite scandals anytime the word "Republican" is mentioned. Give it a rest, we know you love Abramoff, we know you love the Duke.



SCANDALS! EEEEVIL! EVIL SCANDALLLSS!



Damn, I can't win for losing with you.

Actually, I do believe no-bid contracts were in Dante's 5th circle.

I'm with you VB, common sense and decency have given way to "is it legal?"

The law shouldn't need to be invoked to make people act respectful. If I say thank you to someone one more time, or hold a door for somebody and get no acknowldgement, I'm gonna plotz!!

And greed used to be morally reprehensible. But in the age of enron, greed is considered industrious and is rewarded.

Makes me wanna puke.

I don't understand why you think buying lottery tickets is indecent.

Jeez, obviously I think it's fine for ordinary folks to wish for the big payoff, but rich folks buying lottery tickets just seems a bit piggy to me. If you want to gamble then go to a casino, at least there is some sport in it. But buying lottery tickets when you are already wealthy is just plain greedy.

Maybe he wants his gambling losses to go to road construction projects instead of casinos.

heh! thats very sensible

what is it they call the lottery ? - a tax for the ignorant and greedy ?

I too can't understand why it's wrong for rich people to buy lottery tickets. Lottery tickets are cheap thrills and less effort than scratch cards. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you suddenly don't like cheap thrills.

As long as that was his ticket and he bought it honestly, I don't see why it was wrong or disrespectful of him to do so.

As a side note there are a lot of millionaires out there who became millionaires simply by living cheap. They'll save and scrimp and it's not until their death do people realize that the man who wouldn't buy a new pair of shoes until they're worn thin actually had millions of dollars.

It seems like a weird way to live in my opinion but hey, it's not my money so not my business. (Feel free to make it my business though by giving me some! <3)

I've always heard of the lottery as a tax on those who are bad at math.

Yeah, smart people love to say its a tax on the ignorant. I like to tell smart people that an ignorant person is winning millions of dollars each week.

Touche!

Its not always ignorant people that play,
if you have the cash to buy multiple tickets when gambling you can increase your odds of winning to a respectable amount. Even so it would still be a one in thousands chance.
Its more profitable to invest the cash, instead of trying to make a quick buck or multiply your money in a game of chance. The stock market is daunting but actually its quite easy to make a profit for example.

And takes a shitload more money. I buy a powerball ticket for a dollar every now and again, because who cares? Its a buck. I drop a buck here and there all the time. Buying more than one lottery ticket doesn't make any sense to me, though. One is fine. More than that, well, whatever. You can't really increase your chances meaningfully unless you buy a few million lottery tickets.

I think the original point of this thread is how attitudes towards greed seemed to have changed. Sensenbrenner's greed is just considered normal. If this had been decades earlier, even snobby rich folks would have considered playing the lottery distasteful. Mores and taboos play a part in guiding a civil society, and in today's world there seems to be no retribution for unbridled greed, unless someone is sloppy and gets caught breaking the law, and even then it's more of a legal issue than a moral one.

To be disgusted with this guy means to think what he does is petty and selfish.

Why not enjoy your 11 million dollars and leave the lottery for poor folks who really need the slim chance at winning the money?

Which makes Lottery tickets a very bad choice. Your odds of winning are dismal.
Even I do it when I'm feeling lucky, yet pocket change kept in a jar can really add up when you start cutting little expenses like lottery tickets. You could probably save cash by donating your ticket money to a charity instead and getting a tax credit.



Yes what he did was morally reprehensible, but so are a lot of things that are still legal. Some lotteries are fed by tax dollars, those people should have a right to win back their money despite their income. And if it is a great enough concern vote the jerk out of office so he can BE one of the poor without a job. Finally I'm against gambling on principle because I know how addictive it can be. More people gamble than have an aptitude for it and waste their money and sometimes ruin themselves doing it. Better to let people keep their ticket money and spend it on something that will actually benefit them.