For a Few Lottery Winners, It Was a Curse

In a couple of minutes, there will be the drawing for the $1.4 or $1.5 billion Powerball lottery. I bought a ticket with two lines and the multiplier, but I don't expect to hit a single number.

It is much harder now than a couple of years ago to win anything on this and the MegaMillions.

While we await the winner or winners, if any, of tonight's drawing, here is one of several articles I found about the "good fortune" of people who won big lotteries and ultimately lost everything.

The most evil, most outrageous case was the Abraham Shakespeare murder. That woman Moore was evil, pure unadulterated evil.

She exploited a good man simply because he was basically illiterate.

Tonight's numbers are 08-27-34-04-19. Powerball is 10.

Update: There was at least one winner in California.

I am sure there are others.

Your Chances of Being Murdered Are Far Greater Than Winning the MegaMillions Lottery

Now the jackpot will go up to over a half a billion dollars for Tuesday, but the chances of winning ANY prize, let alone the biggest one, are getting more and more remote.

That's because MegaMillions changed the lottery to where now there are more numbers to choose from, which in turn creates far fewer winners but much bigger jackpots.

The odds against people winning the big prize are double what they were prior to the October changes.

I used to have better luck at the MegaMillions jackpot than Powerball, but now I rarely play either. The Oregon Megabucks is even worse; I rarely if ever hit even one number on it, so I have given up on it.

Etc.

There was just one jackpot winner in last night's $590 million Powerball jackpot, so this person, who bought the winning ticket in Florida, must be the biggest winner in American lottery history:

The single winner was sold at a supermarket in Zephyrhills, Fla., according to Florida Lottery executive Cindy O'Connell. She told The Associated Press by telephone that more details would be released later.

"This would be the sixth Florida Powerball winner and right now, it's the sole winner of the largest ever Powerball jackpot," O'Connell told AP. "We're delighted right now that we have the sole winner."

She said Florida has had more Powerball winners than any other state.

_____

Obituary: Golfing great and sportscaster Ken Venturi, 82, has died following a series of illnesses:

Venturi was CBS’s color commentator and lead golf analyst for a record 35 years, following a playing career during which he won 14 PGA Tour events, including the 1964 U.S. Open.

“This is not an easy one,” CBS color commentator Jim Nantz told listeners. “And it’s not going to be an easy one, quite honestly, to get through, to try to be detached about someone you really love.

“And I think I can speak on behalf of everybody at CBS right now. We’re all feeling a heavy heart.”

Nantz shared 18th towers with Venturi for 17 years, for roughly 20 tournaments per season. Venturi joined CBS when his playing career ended in 1967 and remained until 2002, leaving with a tearful farewell after the final round of the Kemper Open.

Etc.

North Carolina teachers are about to get the shit kicked out of them if an asshole legislator has his way and scapegoats them while stealing all of what few rights they already possess:

Ravitch’s criticism extended beyond conservative Republicans. She doesn’t like the “Race to the Top” program pushed by the Obama administration because it relies on standardized testing. She doesn’t care for reforms pushed by philanthropists who know little about teaching, such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad or New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Ravitch said the hot ideas in education – vouchers, charters, virtual charters, merit pay, standardized testing, school A-to-F grades – have not improved education but have distracted the nation from improving the basic dynamic of learning, a process as old as Socrates: teachers teaching.

It wasn’t a debate this week, but Ravitch’s views must win the argument. We should back teachers with better pay and public support. If we want children to learn, we must enable and entrust their teachers not to teach to tests or compete for bonuses but to do what they love and, particularly in pay-stingy North Carolina, what they do out of love – teach.

All true, of course, but it is hard for lawmakers to say no to the gangsters out to pilfer the public treasury.
_____



Why are civil rights lawyers asleep at the switch at the obvious class war being waged on public education?
_____

It's nothing short of sadism for companies to string desperate job applicants along by forcing them through a series of interviews and tests only to not bother to fill the jobs at all.

This is the NYT article Hightower is referring to:

The hiring delays are part of the vicious cycle the economy has yet to escape: jobless and financially stretched Americans are reluctant to spend, which holds back demand, which in turn frays employers’ confidence that sales will firm up and justify committing to a new hire. Job creation over the last two years has been steady but too slow to put a major dent in the backlog of unemployed workers, and the February jobs report due out on Friday is expected to be equally mediocre. Uncertainty about the effect of fiscal policy in Washington is not helping expectations for the rest of the year, either.

“If you have an opening and are not sure about the economy, it’s pretty cheap to wait for a month or two,” said Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University. But in the aggregate, those little delays, coupled with fiscal uncertainty, are stretching out the recovery process. “It’s like one of those horror movies, an economic Friday the 13th, where this recession never seems to die.”

Employers might be making candidates jump through so many hoops partly because so many workers have been jobless for months or years, and hiring managers want to make sure the candidates’ skills are up to date, said Robert Shimer, an economics professor at the University of Chicago.

But there’s also little pressure to hire right now, so long as candidates are abundant and existing staff members are afraid to refuse the extra workload created by an unfilled position. Employers can keep dragging out the hiring process until they’re more confident about their business — or at least until they find the superstar candidate.

Translation: Employers are being sadistic assholes because they can.
_____

Some nitwits in North Dakota think they can ban abortion by putting in a declaration that "life begins at conception" when in fact any proposal would have no teeth. Roe v. Wade, after all, is still the law of the land.

Texas is pulling a similar idiotic stunt:

The bill would require abortions, including those induced by drugs, to be performed in so-called ambulatory surgical centers. The regulations for such facilities include specific sizes for rooms and doorways, and additional infrastructure like pipelines for general anesthesia and large sterilization equipment.

The Senate Committee on Health and Human Services approved the bill on Tuesday, sending it to the full Senate for approval.

“There’s no recent spike in risk or safety incidents that this regulation is responding to. It’s pure politics,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, the chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four abortion clinics throughout the state and an ambulatory surgical center that performs abortions. “The thing we need to worry about is, when you take away women’s access to safe abortion, then what’s going to happen?”

_____

I forgot to play the Powerball lottery last night.

Do We Have Another Lottery-Related Homicide?

A couple of days ago I posted a link to the widely publicized case of Dee Dee Moore of Florida, who killed Florida lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare and wiped out the last of his lottery winnings. Now there is another case where the circumstances surrounding the winner's death are just a little bit suspicious:

Last June, Urooj Khan, a 46-year-old who owned several dry cleaners in Chicago, won a cool million in the Illinois lottery. He reacted in an appropriate enough way, yelling "I hit a million, I hit a million!" repeatedly before leaving the 7-Eleven, only to return after a few moments to tip the store's clerk $100. Several weeks later, at a ceremony where he was presented with an oversized check, Khan said "Winning the lottery means everything to me." Khan added he had plans to donate some of the post-taxes sum of $425,000 to a local children's hospital and then invest the remaining cash into his business.

Happy enough story so far, right? Well, exactly one day after the Comptroller's office cut the check, Khan was found dead, with no signs of trauma. Authorities initially ruled the death the result of natural causes, but after a request from one of Khan's relatives, did an "expanded screening." Now, six months after the initial ruling, authorities are saying Khan died after ingesting cyanide.

More info:

No signs of trauma were found on Khan’s body during an external exam and no autopsy was done because, at the time, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office didn’t generally perform them on those 45 and older unless the death was suspicious, Cina said. The cutoff age has since been raised to age 50.

A basic toxicology screening for opiates, cocaine and carbon monoxide came back negative, and the death was ruled a result of the narrowing and hardening of coronary arteries.

Cyanide can get into the body by being inhaled, swallowed or injected. Deborah Blum, an expert on poisons who has written about the detectives who pioneered forensic toxicology, said the use of cyanide in killings has become rare in part because it is difficult to obtain and normally easy to detect, often leaving blue splotches on a victim’s skin.

“The thing about it is that it’s not one of those poisons that’s tasteless,” Blum said. “It has a really strong, bitter taste, so you would know you had swallowed something bad if you had swallowed cyanide. But if you had a high enough dose it wouldn’t matter, because … a good lethal does will take you out in less than five minutes.”

Only a small amount of fine, white cyanide powder can be deadly, she said, as it disrupts the ability of cells to transport oxygen around the body, causing a convulsive, violent death.

It's perhaps long overdue for lotteries to allow major winners to remain anonymous, at least for a fairly long period of time.

Miscellaneous

Congress and the White House aren't doing one damned thing about the dire situation with massive numbers of unemployed and underemployed people in the labor force.

Of course not. After all, the more people who are out of work, the more wages and salaries decline, and the more fearful current employees are about their jobs and are less inclined to improve their own situations.
_____

The jobs report was nothing to write home about. In the old days, the weak economy would have been considered scandalous.

Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the report provided further evidence that the US economy “is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression.”

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis declared, “For nearly three years, steady gains have occurred across different sectors of the economy, and December finishes a strong year of consistent growth.”

These statements make it clear that the administration has no intention of proposing policies to address the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression or the growth of poverty, hunger and homelessness resulting from that crisis. Instead, it will continue to focus its efforts on protecting and expanding the wealth of the corporate-financial elite. Central to that effort is keeping unemployment at historically high rates so that big business can use the scarcity of jobs to drive down wages and working conditions.

Remember, this is a "Democratic" administration.
_____

The privatizers are attacking the Philadelphia school system:

The outcome of further eliminating access to public education in this case will not result in a revamping of the remaining schools, but a massive exodus of students disappearing from the school system altogether. This, in turn, will be utilized to close more schools and turn many of them over to for-profit charter operators.

This is line with the reactionary education “reform” agenda of the Obama administration, which has utilized standardized tests to scapegoat and fire teachers, expand charter schools and tailor the public education system ever more closely to the needs of big business.

_____

You bet people should be anonymous if they win major lottery drawings.

The woman convicted of murdering a $30 million lottery winner is about as evil as one can get. She was convicted last month:

The woman accused of befriending a $30million lottery winner, swindling him of his cash and then killing him was last night sentenced to life in prison.

Dorice 'Dee Dee' Moore, 40, was convicted of first-degree murder, after she killed Florida lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare. She became close to Abraham by claiming she was writing a book about him.\

Shakespeare's body was found under a concrete slab behind a home detectives say was owned by Moore's ex-boyfriend in Hillsborough County. He had been shot twice.

More about Moore:

Prosecutors say that Moore, 40, befriended Shakespeare before he vanished in April 2009 after he'd won $30 million in the Florida lottery. After Shakespeare had given away most of his money to people who simply asked for it, Moore agreed to manage the little he had left, but instead, prosecutors say, stole his winnings and killed him.

After days of crying in court throughout the trial, Moore had another emotional outburst Thursday after Butler's testimony. Tampa Judge Emmett Battles temporarily stopped the trial so Moore could pull herself together.

"Ms. Moore, I'm going to tell you once again, you need to compose yourself. ... Do you want another moment to talk to your lawyer?" Battles asked.

Moore was so distraught by Butler's testimony that she yelled out at one point, "I'm tired of these people lying. This is my life."

Etc.

Obituary: Actress Phyllix Thaxter, 92, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

She was one of the performers who made numerous television appearances in the fifties and sixties. Her first husband was disgraced CBS executive James T. Aubrey. For the record, they were divorced before he became disgraced.
_____

I haven't played the Powerball lottery for several weeks, so I wasn't in the running for the $377 million jackpot. Somebody in Michigan has the winning ticket.
_____

The media have gone out of their way to legitimize an extremist.
_____

Speaking of Ryan's extremist philosophy, in this piece from the distant past, the late writer Gore Vidal thought very little of Ayn Rand:

This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the “freedom is slavery” sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her “philosophy,” but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the “welfare” state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.

He saw through her just like Mike Wallace did.

She was actually on the Tonight Show in 1967.

Her "philosophy" was fatally flawed because she regarded altruism as "evil." Well, humans have to have the capacity for altruism because it is in their "self-interest." Without regard to other people's feelings or lives, humans could not exist. Those without altruism or empathy generally need to be locked up or get extensive psychiatric help. They are dangerous to themselves and to society.

People who are without any kind of altruism or empathy are regarded as sociopaths.

The tragedy here is this abortion of a philosophy has run rampant in political and economic circles.

It's been said Rand may have had Asperger syndrome, which was largely unknown in her lifetime, and its limitations had a lot to do with such a warped outlook.

What an Idiot

The woman who was too stupid to sign her name on the back of a winning lottery ticket is crying foul against the other woman who found the ticket in the bin and cashed the $1 million winnings:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If anybody should be sued, it's the outfit that owns the scanner and the lottery commission, not the woman who found the ticket.

Unfortunately, neither woman will end up with a damned thing by the time the lawyers get done with their take.

Etc.

Now we know for certain who won the Mega Millions in Maryland. While their names are anonymous, they have been described as two teachers and an administrator who split their share of the winnings.

One Maryland winner is a special education teacher, one is an elementary school teacher and the third is a school administrator. All three said they plan to continue to work, noting that they were committed to their students, Martino said.

"One said 'I can't give up on my kids," he said.

The winners had watched the news coverage over the last week - including stories about a Baltimore woman who claimed initially to have the ticket, then said she had lost it - and joked with each other, knowing that they had the winning ticket, Martino said. He said the woman who was in the news last week is not a winner. Calls by the Associated Press on Tuesday to the woman, Mirlande Wilson, and her lawyer were not immediately returned.

I think not at this point.
_____

NYC's DOE tried and failed to railroad a teacher out of his career over bogus charges.

He has a more accurate account at his blog.
_____

Rick Santorum has thrown in the towel by saying he is "suspending" his campaign. I think candidates do that because of the campaign funds or whatever.

He has for all intents and purposes quit the race.
_____

Fail of the Year

Was her claim a hoax all along, or did she really lose it? I mean the ticket, not her mind:

Martino said the winning ticket was sold at approximately 7:15 p.m. on March 30 -- less than four hours before the drawing -- at the 7-Eleven on Liberty Avenue in Baltimore. It was a Quick Pick ticket, and was the only one purchased at that time.

Martino said that officials have looked at surveillance tape at the 7-Eleven, but that there is an issue because the timestamp on the tape does not exactly match the timestamp of the lottery ticket machine, so they can't be exactly sure who bought the ticket from that video.

Because of all of the rumors swirling around who possesses the ticket, Martino is urging people who bought tickets at the 7-Eleven to check their tickets again to make sure they don't have the winner. He said he hopes that people haven't thrown out their tickets thinking that someone else won, only to have had the winning ticket all along.

If nobody claims it by the six-month deadline, we will KNOW it was indeed her ticket.

Oh, Yeah?

The mystery of the $105 million Mega Millions ticket sold in Baltimore has yet to be solved, and the alleged winner isn't helping matters:



I certainly don't believe the ticket is hidden at a McDonald's; that is just a diversionary tactic or else she has made the whole story up about winning.

Mirlande Wilson is now telling reporters the ticket is hidden somewhere in the McDonald’s where she works. But she has yet produced it.

Her attorney says he has not seen it and doesn’t know if his client has it.

Edward Smith Jr. held a news conference Wednesday, where the attorney asked the media to leave his client alone. She said little, only confirming that she is originally from Haiti.

She might want to look at relocating there.

link

All in all, it's starting to smell like a hoax:

The Maryland Mega Millions mystery only got more confusing after a woman who claimed to be one of three winners of a record prize appeared with her lawyer -- and without the ticket.
"I have not seen the ticket, nor do I want to see the ticket," said attorney Edward Smith, as Marlinde Wilson, who was an hour late for the news conference, stood behind him. She did not speak.
"We believe it to be a legitimate claim," Smith continued. "When it is time to present the ticket or whatever it is that needs to be presented to the lottery commissioner, I am sure that we will be there."

The real winner could be this guy. Or not.

This is Why You NEVER Have a Lottery Pool

Nothing but a mess if by some chance you all win the "big one." You end up fighting it out in court.

But of course this story could turn out to be false, and that the real winner or winners is/are consulting an attorney and a financial planner:

Wilson told the New York Post she planned to claim her $105 million share Monday but declined to show the ticket to a reporter. She was unavailable for comment Monday -- a Baltimore phone listing for her was non-working.

Co-workers told the Post they pooled their cash to buy several tickets and that Wilson is stiffing them.

Maryland Lottery spokeswoman Carole Everett said Monday, “I never expected, based on that story, that this is the actual winner. We really won’t believe anybody till they walk in with a ticket and the ticket is valid -- and they have identification.”

Etc.

There were at least three winners of last night's $640 million Mega Millions lottery. Winning tickets came from Maryland, Illinois, and Kansas:

Mike Lang, spokesman for the Illinois Lottery, said his state's winning ticket was sold in the small town of Red Bud, near St. Louis. The winner used a quick pick to select the numbers, he said.
The Maryland Lottery announced earlier Saturday that it had sold a winning ticket at a retail store in Baltimore County.

A winning ticket also was purchased in northeast Kansas, according to the Kansas Lottery website. A spokeswoman didn't immediately return a message Saturday morning.

Lang said each winning ticket was expected to be worth more than $213 million before taxes.

_____

The WSWS has an excellent overview of Earl Scruggs' life and work:

The Carolinas provided a rich musical environment during this period. Scruggs was influenced by a number of musicians in the area, both amateur and professional, including Snuffy Jenkins (1908-1990), who had begun to move away from the old-time “clawhammer” or “frailing” style of banjo in which the strings were strummed or rapped with the backs of the player’s fingernails. These new players utilized a freer, more syncopated finger-picking style. Scruggs surpassed them all, developing his own three-finger, virtuoso technique that would set the bar for all the players who came after him.

Scruggs’ big break in music came when he was hired by Bill Monroe, the “Father of Bluegrass,” in late 1945. Bluegrass music, which emerged and developed in the postwar period, was an energetic new style of folk music characterized by fast tempos and instrumental virtuosity, along with close harmony singing with soaring tenor vocalists taking the lead. The music seemed an almost cathartic release for the musicians who had finally put the Great Depression and the war years behind them.

Scruggs revitalized Monroe’s band the Blue Grass Boys, a group which also included the talented singer and guitarist Lester Flatt. Prior to Scruggs’ recruitment, David “Stringbean” Akeman had been the group’s banjo player. While a talented performer, Akeman played banjo in the old style and Monroe’s new musical experiments demanded something different. Scruggs’ new style of playing was the missing piece of the puzzle.

_____

While a handful of people did better in this economy thanks to the Mega Millions drawing, more people are suffering because of a new round of layoffs.
_____

Shelby's Cobra, a favorite of auto collectors, turns 50 this year.
_____

The Roberts court is known to make up shit as it goes along, and its attitude toward age discrimination is no exception. Given how much harder it is when one is over 50 to keep and get jobs, any bill to reverse the court's ruling is welcome:

The plaintiff in the case, Jack Gross, was from Iowa. In a welcome show of bipartisanship, his state’s two senators — Tom Harkin, a Democrat, and Charles Grassley, a Republican — recently introduced a bill to reverse the court’s age-bias ruling and restore older workers’ rights. Although this is not the first time that Mr. Harkin has offered such legislation, Mr. Grassley’s co-sponsorship of this year’s bill makes the outlook for Senate passage much brighter.

This is a matter of some urgency. Since the Supreme Court ruled three years ago, lower courts have applied its onerous standard of proof to deny thousands of age-discrimination claims.

You never know how the House is going to act, but at least this is a hopeful sign.
_____

Is bullying in schools really a crisis? Or is it just a bunch of overhyped garbage.
_____

Another reason the death penalty needs to be abolished. Although this guy was found to have had nothing whatever to do with the killing, he has yet to be exonerated.

On the morning of jury selection, the district attorney made another offer: if Mr. Cook pleaded no-contest with no admission of guilt, the case would be dismissed and he could go on with his life. Mr. Cook considered the deal. He had suffered terribly during his 19 years in prison — he had been stabbed, raped repeatedly and had tried to kill himself, once slitting his own throat after severing his penis, which was reattached.

He took the plea deal. Two months later, the DNA results returned. The semen belonged to James Mayfield, a married man with whom Ms. Edwards had been having an affair.

By then Mr. Cook was trying to move on with his life, but it was harder than he had imagined. The physical and emotional abuse he endured in prison causes nightmares and suicidal urges. And the murder conviction made him a second-class citizen.

That's because some officials are covering their asses.

Won $21 on Mega Millions Tonight

This is the best I have done in a long, long, time. I seldom play the big lotteries because it is so hard to hit any numbers.

The winning numbers are 02, 04, 23, 38, 46, 23 megaplier 3.

Mine were 04, 09, 23, 38, 56, 37. Since I always play the megaplier, I won $21.

There is Still Hope

Nobody won the Mega Millions jackpot last night, so it has increased to a record-breaking $476 million dollars for Friday's drawing.

It is almost impossible to hit one number, let alone all of them, in this lottery, so I very rarely play it and Powerball anymore. The most I have ever won is $28 ($7, with a multiplier of 4). I'll play this, of course, despite the very, very, very long odds of hitting anything.

Forty-seven people did hit five of the numbers, which pays $250,000 apiece if they didn't selected the multiplier.

News, Etc.

Although I didn't hit it big last night with the Mega Millions jackpot, two people who bought tickets in the Pacific Northwest did.

One winning ticket came from Ephrata, Washington, and the other one from Idaho.
_____

Expect the GOP majority in the House to work overtime trying to further wreck the economy in order to hang Obama with it.

Not that Obama really needs any help in that regard.
_____

News, Etc.

I am glad to hear I still have an itty-bitty chance to win the biggest single lottery in American history.  The MegaMillions jackpot is now up to an estimated $290 million, with the winner's share being $182 million, I suspect before taxes.

Southern Oregon had a major winner back in 2005 when a man and his father-in-law hit $340 million on Powerball; sadly, the father-in-law died a year or two later.

Miscellaneous News

No wonder this guy has won big a number of times; he spends lots and lots of money each month buying scads of lottery tickets.

The more one plays, the greater chances of winning. There is no "rigging" at work here:

A Calgary-area man who has collected more than $2 million from four lotto wins in five years has been implicated in a convoluted court claim disputing his latest jackpot.

Seguro Ndabene told CBC News that he hit the jackpot a fifth time on Jan. 16, winning $17 million in the Super 7 draw. But he has not been able to collect that money because of a lottery probe, followed by an ongoing court proceeding.

Of course that's Canadian dollars.
_____

Elizabeth Edwards talked the other day about living with her cancer. She believes the cancer will win out in the end, but she is not concentrating on that.

I Don't Care

if some people's lives are worsened because they win giant jackpots in lotteries, that will not stop me from playing it.

Miscellaneous News

Goddamn it, somebody in New Jersey won the $126 million Mega Millions lottery.

It pisses me off.

Now the jackpot is down to a mere $12 million, hardly worth the time playing.
_____

When you're a college president, the worse you do on your job, the better off you are, even if they shitcan you.
_____

It can be argued Larry Sinclair has been vetted more than the presumptuous Democratic nominee.
_____