Editorial Opinions
For better or
worse, we’re
free to buy
lottery tickets
The lottery has proven to be popular in North Carolina.
Last month, the N.C. Education
Lottery made its second transfer of
lottery revenues to the state for the
fiscal year, transferring $117.4 million. That brings the total amount
earned for education and the state
since the games of chance began
here nearly seven years ago to
$2.69 billion.
That’s a figure that would thrill
anyone if it appeared on a winning
scratch-off ticket.
Before the lottery was approved
here, opinion was divided on its
Randall
Reflects . . .
By
Randall
Jeff Davis photo
Lunch Time . . .
Guess they’re having the buffet! Chatham News/Record photographer Jeff Davis spotted these goats near the Frosty’s Store community last week around .
. . when else, mealtime. The goats, after checking out the cameraman, went on with their meal of hay.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
- and Stan the Man and Jack and . .
I’ve lost a couple of heroes
in the past few days – folks
from the world of sports of
my youth.
Role models, they were. Of
course, now so many people
in that realm aren’t models
anymore – at least that’s what
Charles Barkley famously
said some years ago. But I
disagree, at least to a point.
Maybe some of those individuals aren’t models of
what we might like youngsters to become but the little
folks still look up to them.
Why do you think there’s
so much trash-talking when
kids gather these days to play
basketball or football? They
do it because they see their
“heroes” doing it.
I’d almost bet that my heroes didn’t do any trash talking, at least not the profane
vulgar variety. No doubt they
were committed to what they
were doing and wanted to do
the best they could but I’d
use the word “gentlemen” to
describe these two.
I have no way to know if
these two ever met each other; I guess they could have
and maybe did. I know I never met them but I felt like I
knew them.
Stan Musial is the reason I
loved baseball, mostly as a
spectator since there wasn’t
much demand beyond little
league for slow third basemen.
He’s also the reason I’m a lifelong Cardinals fan and I’m
grateful for that. Best World
Series ever, to me, were the
Cards in 1967 with the Red
Sox and in 1968 against the
Tigers.
Movin’
Around . . .
By Bob
Wachs
The fact I was young and in
college and had the world by
the tail contributed to my enthusiasm but the fact that in
that period of time Bob Gibson
and Denny McLain and all
those characters were doing
their thing on the ball stage
and it wasn’t a bad thing.
Stan Musial, of course, didn’t
play in those series. He finished
his great career in 1963 but the
image of his awkward stance,
his demeanor even when he
struck out – which wasn’t often
– and just the gentlemanly way
he carried himself as a human
being are still in my mind’s eye
as the way you ought to act in
all areas.
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I don’t think Stan “The Man”
ever cheated or used illegal
substances or anything of the
kind in his career. Can’t say
that today.
The other here was Jack
Horner. At one time in my life I
wanted to be just like him.
He was the sports editor of
The Durham Morning Herald
in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s when it
was THE paper. If I could get
through the UNC journalism
school, I reasoned, I could
become the next Jack Horner
and go to the Carolina football
games, sit in the press, eat the
fried chicken they provided,
watch the games and get paid
for it. What a life, I reasoned.
Could it be any better?
Obviously that didn’t happen.
Jack Horner covered sports,
eventually falling in love mostly with golf and doing some career things with it but his writing style was at the forefront. I
can’t remember hearing fans or
folks in general blasting him the
way they do today’s scribes.
Both of these fellows were
in their 90’s when they
slipped across the Great
Divide. Imagine that . .
. years and years of loving what they did and
being good at it and being a good person in the
process.
I don’t think it gets any
better than that.
Would that there were
more of Stan Musial and
Jack Horner. Maybe they
never started out as role
models but they surely
became them.
Senate Bill 4 is
wrong on many levels
By Tom Campbell
Most everyone agrees
North Carolina’s Medicaid
program is broken, but fixing Medicaid hasn’t been
a high priority for previous governors or legislators. Now might be the
right time and Governor
McCrory might be assembling the right team to make
Medicaid operate more efficiently and effectively.
Medicaid is expensive,
complicated and a large
number of hands are involved in its administration
and service delivery. Our
Medicaid program costs
about 13 billion dollars
per year, about 3 billion of
which comes from the state.
There are approximately
1.5 million people in our
state covered by Medicaid,
which has 15 mandated and
about the same number of
optional services, most all
involving federal regulations and oversight, state
laws and regulations, state
agency management, local
and regional partnerships
and private sector service
providers. That does not
excuse poor execution and
administration but it helps
us understand the complexity of Medicaid.
We understand that legislators are frustrated at
years of reported mismanagement, cost overruns
involving new computer
processing systems and
repeated waste and fraud.
In comparison with other
states our program offers
more benefits and needs reform. We even understand
that our Republican controlled legislature doesn’t care
for Barack Obama or for the
Affordable Care Act Congress
passed with added Medicaid
mandates, but that doesn’t
justify the hasty and arbitrary
passage of Senate Bill 4.
The Affordable Care Act
mandates that all states set up
health insurance exchanges
and provides we choose between three options: state operated, a state-federal partnership or a federally controlled
and operated exchange. When
our legislature didn’t act in
a timely manner Governor
Perdue opted for the statefederal partnership. In what
seemed an arrogant power
play Senate leaders stated
these were not the governor’s
decisions to make, they were
legislative decisions.
Senate Bill 4 overturns
Perdue’s decision. Curiously,
Republicans who constantly
complain about big government want to relinquish total
control of our state’s health
insurance exchanges to that
government. SB4 also declares North Carolina will not
opt to expand Medicaid to
some 500,000 new recipients
because Senators are rightfully skeptical about potential
unfunded mandates beyond
the first few years, when the
federal government promises
to pay all or virtually all the
costs.
Senate leaders attempted to
justify their speedy action by
citing a February 15th federal
declaration deadline. That
dog won’t hunt. They weren’t
concerned enough to respond
to federal deadlines last sum-
mer or in December, saying
there was plenty of time to
make decisions. But the exchanges are supposed to begin operation in October and
Insurance
Commissioner
Wayne Goodwin has already
received five million dollars
in federal planning money
toward their implementation.
These are important decisions that demand our best
and brightest minds to find
solutions and need to include Governor McCrory,
our Insurance Commissioner
and we the public need to be
heard, since Medicaid impacts every citizen directly
See ‘Levels page 7-A
merits and its likely that few of
those opinions – mine included -have shifted much seven years later. Those who were opposed likely
remain so, and vice versa.
I was in the camp that supported the lottery then, and I still do.
But very few of my dollars have
contributed to those totals I just
mentioned. My lottery budget is
restricted to when the Powerball
jackpots reach headline-worthy
heights and I invest a couple of
dollars.
Obviously, a lot of people play a
lot more often than I do.
Even if I hadn’t recently seen the
latest lottery transfer figures, I’d
know from observation that the lottery gets plenty of public support.
On two separate trips to two separate convenience stores last week,
I observed an oddly similar scene.
Both times, I witnessed customers
carefully selecting scratch-off tickets. One customer had a particularly involved method of determining
the worth of a ticket; her method
involved quizzing the clerk on the
sequence numbers of the tickets.
And both customers spent what, in
my humble opinion, was way too
much cash on the chance to win
more. One plunked down $50; the
other customer spent $75.
I try not to involve myself in other people’s business and the only
reason I took any notice at all of
the lottery customers in front of me
was that they were taking up a lot
of the clerk’s time and, by default
since I was in line behind them, my
time, too.
N.C. House Majority Leader Paul
Stam has been getting a lot of ink
lately regarding his recent comments about the lottery, some of the
people who play and his proposals
for change, including removing
the word “Education” from N.C.
Education Lottery and regulating
the purchase of tickets by people
on public assistance.
Stam makes an excellent
point about removing the word
“Education” since it’s inclusion in
the title always seemed like a sugar
coating only aimed at making the
lottery deal go down easier.
But regulating who can buy a lottery ticket, however well-intended
the idea may be, is not only impractical, it’s also offensive.
Were it anyone’s place to do so,
those two people I watched so
carefully make their scratch-off
selections might have deserved a
lecture on money management.
Then again, so might other people lined up to buy other non-essentials, like cigarettes or beer.
But fortunately, we’re not living
in that country and I object to lawmakers trying to make it happen.
Letters to the Editor
Rebuttal to Gun
and Knife Show has
been held in NC since 1981.
year they have schedgun control This
uled 4 shows in Raleigh and 5
Charlotte. The organizers
vendors would not keep
concern inand
coming back unless there
To the editor:
Thankfully we don’t live in
the world envisioned in Mr.
Sommers’ recent Thoughts on
Guns letter. A world where
state officials invite exhibitions to the state fairgrounds
based on national lobbying efforts, schedule events on relatively short notice and should
break contracts at will.
Rather than the result of the
national gun lobby, the Dixie
were plenty of NC customers
at these shows.
Mr. Sommers fears the new
Walmart will create a “gun
problem” in Chatham County.
Apparently he forgot about
the Walmart in Siler City that
has sold guns and ammo in
the county for a number of
years without creating a “gun
problem”. Will Mr. Sommers
be satisfied with just “proSee ‘Letter’ page 7-A