Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Don't gamble, send the money to Mexico

Lane County Problem Gambling Advisory Committee (PGAC)
Spanish PSAs:
Julie reported on public service announcements that were developed for the Spanish-speaking
population. Emergence providers and Latino providers task group chair Janese Olalde volunteered their time to record two spots:

o Women friends: Woman shares her husband’s problem with gambling;

o Father & child; child asks her father about why he didn’t come to her soccer match.

$2,000 in Spanish-speaking spots were purchased; the ads are airing on La “X” (Channel 660 AM) through mid-July.

One of these days I'm going to make a list of government acronyms and PGAC will be near the top. It just rolls off the tongue doesn't it?

The important thing here is that a government agency is taking our tax dollars and using them to try to convince someone to change their personal behavior. And of course they are doing all this in a foreign language.

In completely unrelated to spending priority news Lane County is very excited that "instead of releasing 13 people per day from the jail, that number will be cut to 10 per day."

How many government acronyms that spend tax dollars on illegal aliens would it take to reduce that number to zero?

2 comments:

Hal Lillywhite said...

The really sad part of this is that at the same time the state is buying ads to urge people to gamble on the lottery. Our money is being used for two opposing ads.

I'm not naive enough to believe we're going to stop gambling, but I do think it is obscene for the state to encourage addictive behavior such as gambling.

Bobkatt said...

That seems to be an inherent problem with taxing something you don't like in order to raise revenue. While the tax is usually proposed to raise revenue to fight some social ill such as tobacco use, gambling or street repair. The more successful the program in discouraging the targeted behavior the less money coming in. Only makes sense. This would probably be OK because as the behavior decreases so would the need for revenue. However, that cash cow provided by the "sin taxes" rarely is used for the given purpose but rather siphoned off to other projects or the general fund.