Down On Our Luck

When I first started this blog, I posted my feelings on banning gambling. I don’t agree with the government controlling the lives of everyone, but the more I think and write about what Q’s gambling addiction has done to our family, the more I am torn on my position.

Gambling has put my household in an extreme predicament to digging out of a hole that seems never-ending. In Wisconsin, where I live, we have the 5th highest tax burden in the country according to this CNN article. Now, let’s take into consideration that according to our LONG overdue budget, our Indian Casinos here in the state are budgeted to pay $75 million to the state of WI in the 07-08 fiscal year and $79 million in the 08-09 fiscal year. Where would our tax burden be without these payments? I’m not really sure right now, but I’ll try to do the math for a later post.

I’m sure a lot of the money these casinos are making is coming from households with children that can’t afford to be losing money because they should be feeding their children. In turn, the state turns around and feeds the children with food stamps and other such programs, so how much money is the state really making? Right now we are just subsidizing our state budget with the broken dreams of families in a downward spiral.

Let me know what you think.

All of the casinos in the Green Bay area are run by the same Indian tribe and they offer an option for a person to ban themselves from their casinos. The problem gambler needs to go to the security desk with someone to sign a contract that they will not enter the premises ever again. Security then takes their picture for future reference and in theory they are supposed to watch for these people to be entering the casino or gambling there. The way that I understand it is supposed to work is the first time he is caught, he’s escorted out; the second time he is supposed to be thrown in jail. I may be wrong on the consequences for strike two. In order to be “allowed” back in legally, they need to take the same person that signed the original contact back with them to security to sign a reinstatement contract.

In theory, this all sounds great, the loved one of the problem gambler can now breathe easier and think their life will because some semblance of normal again. DON’T fall for this false sense of security. Here in Green Bay there were about 3,500 people that have self-banned themselves from the local casinos, there is absolutely no way security can watch for all of them to be entering the casino. If a compulsive gambler wants to gamble, they’re going to find a way to do it. Personally, I think this program was set up to make the state happy and the casino feel better about the families who’s lives are being ruined every day at their establishment. In reality, this could only be enforced if they stopped everyone at the door to check their ID against the database and that will never happen.

Q has been back several times since banning himself 2 years ago and he has been caught once; not because security noticed him. He was caught because I busted him and then notified security myself. Lots of good that did, he’s been back several times since in the last year and a half.

I still recommend self-banning, but don’t be lured into a false sense of security.

This will be my last and final post about the whole Blogrush fiasco. I have better ways to spend my time than to worry about why my blog wasn’t accepted. In the past 2 days I have found out that I am in good company, many other very well known blogs which were rejected also.

I have to thank them for deactivating Down On Our Luck and upsetting me enough to write about it. I’m pretty sure my rant about their company has brought me 10 more times the traffic than your widget ever brought to me. Of course, I can’t verify this; I don’t even have access to my dashboard because I’m “inactive”. I’m pretty sure that it was zero or pretty close to that anyways.

This now brings a bitter end to my relationship with Blogrush. Stay tuned for some more productive ways to spend your time online and more ways to help you stay sane while dealing with a loved one’s gambling addiction.

Until later.

The Widows Story - Gambling Addiction at Destiny.org

It is stories such as the one that I’m referring to today that really trip my trigger. Tales like this are so sad and Q and I have both seen it. When Q would still talk to me about going to the casino he would talk about these old people that he would see every day, sitting at the same machine day in and day out. Many have lost their life savings and even their homes because they just can’t seem to find anything to divert their attentions from the dings and lights at the casino.

I often wonder if someone, besides the cashiers at the casino, were to pay more attention to them if they would be able work through their addiction. I’m talking about someone that wouldn’t lecture them or even talk about their gambling problem, but just someone for the person to hang with at a place other than the casino once in a while during the week.

I worry about Q becoming like this if something were to happen to me. I have often thought about setting up a trust fund with stipulations for withdrawal and a trusted family member as the trustee. Unfortunately, this would put me back into the position of the enabler even in my death.

Let me know what you think.

Obviously my blog is fairly new and I’m still learning some ropes, but I received the now famous “You’re not good enough for Blogrush” email today. I’ll post it word for word for you at the very end for you all to read.

If you received the same letter, I urge you to post about it, even if it’s not related to your blog. Let’s show Blogrush how much damage a bunch of new blogs with only a few posts can do.I write this blog as therapy to help me get through my husband’s gambling problem. I hope other people find it, read it and enjoy it, but I don’t need some big ole company telling me “Your blog isn’t good enough to display our widget.” Do they really think they’ll get any good press telling all of us newbie bloggers that we’re not good enough? Let’s see what kind of damage we can do.

I understand that there were people that manipulated the system and I may sound hypocritical, but I don’t even think the person reviewing the blogs stayed long enough at my site to even figure out what it was about. According to Google Analytics, I had one unique visitor yesterday. This visitor WAS from a direct source, but they didn’t go any farther than my homepage and the time spent at my site was 0:00. How can you make a judgment about my site when you didn’t even spend enough time at it for the page to load?

I’m 100% sure that I won’t be crawling back on the 21st of November begging Blogrush to tell me my blog is good enough now.

All I can say is RIP and you can kiss my butt. How’s that for original content?

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Tags: Blogrush, Blogrush Inactive, Finance

JD over at The Grumpstump has started a stock picking championship for the month of November and I couldn’t help but give it a try. The UpDown looks like fun and shouldn’t take a lot of time away from the 20 other things I do during the day. Here are the rules that he has outlined, quoted from his blog post:

• Sign up for The UpDown and become my friend (Loyalis).
• Begin Trading Stocks on UpDown. (This is totally free, simulated stock picking. Think Fantasy Football with Stocks.)
• Whichever one of my friends on The UpDown has the highest return and beats my return for the month of November, 2007 will win the following:
  • Free Blog Hosting for a year from yours truly (300 Meg Storage / 5 Gig of Bandwidth)
  • $25 of cold hard cash (via PayPal).
  • A Squidoo Lens pre-built and optimized on the topic of your choice.

That’s it for my online income post for today, I hope you join us. This looks like fun.