Chris Fitzsimon
There were a few stories that didn’t make it into the year-end stories, news that you might have missed during the holiday break. One of them involves North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who is also up for re-election in November.
Dole is among a group of senators who recently signed a letter to Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne urging him to end the ban on firearms in National Parks. It is currently not against the law to have an unloaded gun in the park, but that’s not enough for Dole and the NRA.
They want park visitors to be able to carry loaded pistols in Yellowstone and Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. As you might expect, folks at the National Park Service would rather leave the law as it is.
So would park advocates like the National Parks Conservation Association, who point out the change would make it more likely that people could poach wildlife, adding more work to the already overburdened park rangers.
It is not clear why someone would need a loaded gun in a park that doesn’t allow hunting, but it doesn’t appear to be about need or hunting for the NRA and Dole. It is about politics and pandering. The holidays did bring some good news from an unexpected front. President Bush signed legislation that allows the District of Columbia to use federal dollars to implement a clean needle-exchange program to help reduce the HIV infection rate.
Studies of needle-exchange programs across the country have shown that they not only reduce the infection rate among IV drug users and their sexual partners, they also make it more likely that addicts seek treatment as a result of the relationship they establish with the counselors in the program.
Efforts in the North Carolina General Assembly to establish pilot needle-exchange programs have failed, with opponents claiming that the programs encourage illegal drug use, as if desperate addicts need encouragement.
Let’s hope the support of President Bush will provide enough political cover for state lawmakers to do the right thing this year. The lottery was back in the news too just before the end of the year, in another one of those heartwarming stories about lottery sales falling short of projections. This time it was the holiday raffle games that didn’t do as well as expected, the latest evidence that North Carolinians can see through the state’s shameful hucksterism that exists because politicians can’t bring themselves to raise money for state services honestly.
The sluggish sales came as the New York Times reported on the trend among state lotteries to rely more on instant scratch-off games to increase sales. The story quoted critics worried that that the reliance on instant games increases compulsive gambling. One state senator said that “scratch-off tickets are to the lottery what crack is to cocaine.â€
This past year North Carolina lottery officials increased the percentage of lottery revenues allocated to prizes for instant games in an effort to boost sales that have consistently been lower than projections.
An official with the Texas Lottery Commission said he understood the concerns about the scratch-off games but that the commission’s job was to generate as much revenue as possible as responsibly as possible. That also has been the message of North Carolina lottery officials since the game began.
But why does it seem that concern over revenue always trumps any worry about being responsible?