By Brian Shosten

Do you want to know who is playing the Powerball? The poor, and apparently the unemployed will also fork over whatever cash they can find underneath the couch, and let it ride. David Edwards, 46, of Kentucky won the lottery with the help of God (of course). Apparently he was able to out pray the other people with less than enviable math skills. Why God would care who wins the lottery is beyond me, but I think your supposed to give God the credit for the good things, and blame bad luck for the bad things, or something like that; its all over my head.

Edwards was one of four winners in one of the highest Powerball takings ever. Edwards choose the one time cash option, which makes his cut of the loot 41 million before taxes, after taxes thatÕs 27 million to blow, and blow he will. Watching MSNBC the night he came forward as one of the Powerball winners, he said that he was going to buy his fiancé Shawna Maddux, 26, a Ferrari.

Reading the paper the next day I learned Edwards went to gaze at a house he was interested in, and the owner lent him his Mercedes to drive around in, but not to worry Edwards said he plans on buying his own Rolls Royce convertible. Stupidity got him into this money, and surly it will get him out of it. Sure those things alone won’t make him go broke, but those spending habits will. As reported by MSNBC, 7 out of 10 lottery winners go thru their entire winnings in 3 years. If he spends $10,000 a day for 7 1/2 years the money will be gone. 27 million seems like a lot, but he’s going to have everyone in the world coming after him for that one thing that never goes out of style.

The lottery is a tax on the poor, and anyone else who is bad at math. The lottery creates a lot of revenue, but all that money is coming from the poor. Rich people don’t play the lottery. Wealthy people realize they have a better chance of dying by a train coming thru their house, then winning the lottery. To a great extent, the lottery tax does not benefit the people who pay it. Providing more college scholarships is a worthy social good for the community. But using the lottery to do it amounts to taxing the poor to subsidize the education of middle- and upper-income families. If we want to give more scholarship aid, why don’t we raise income taxes, which affect taxpayers more equitably, rather than enacting a stealth tax that hits the poor the hardest?

Kentucky corrections officials confirm Edwards has been in and out of prison for the past two decades, and has served nearly 10 years in prison before being parolled (Edwards was convicted in a robbery of a convience store). Edwards will have a negative balance in his checkbook five years from now, but hopefully he won’t resort to robbing clerks at convenience stores again (not the Christian thing to be doing).

Brian Shosten is a senior political science major and a columnist for The Louisville Cardinal.