Back in the day in the Local Chatter section of this paper there was a section called Human Scenery, where there were whimsical descriptions of people the editors spotted during the week, like, Joe Jones walking down Main Street wearing a polka dot tie or Sam Smith tooling through town in his new convertible.

I saw one of those, though the editors back in the 50s would have no idea what I’m talking about. I saw a man in a Jazzy tooling down the sidewalk on Wyoming Avenue in West Pittston looking at the screen of his lap top computer open on his lap.

President Barack Obama said he wants to move past “a dark and painful chapter” by exposing Bush administration legal memos that authorized harsh tactics in the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Yeah it was dark and painful all right -- for the terrorists, every one of who deserved every harsh tactic.

Remember when slot machines were going to save granny from losing her house because she couldn’t pay her real estate taxes? So, I guess we are now supposed to believe reducing granny’s tax bill by $200 will keep her in her house. Yeah, granny is out on the street if not for that $200.

Pennsylvania is facing a huge budget deficit, so what’s Governor Rendell’s solution – get the citizens to lose even more money gambling than the hundreds of billions they are already losing. Makes sense, right? Times are tight, so let’s gamble our money away. Video poker machines in every club, table games in the slot parlors, new lottery games with a cartoon character, Gus the Woodchuck, promoting them.

What are we targeting kids now? Daddy, buy some of those cute little Gus scratch-offs. Oh, daddy I can’t wait until I’m 18 so I can throw my money away on those cute little Gus scratch-offs that are all fun and games and never hurt anybody.

On the lottery website you can even vote for which of Gus’s costumes is most likely to get you to throw your money away on get-hit-by-lightning odds games, er I mean which costume Gus has worn on a TV commercial is your favorite. I’m not making this up.

Is it the tuxedo, genie outfit, baseball uniform or trench coat and fedora?

Oh boy, that’s a tough one, but I think I’m more likely to get ripped off by a woodchuck in a trench coat, than a woodchuck in a baseball uniform, don’t you?

It’s not that I’m against gambling. I’ve said a million times a sports betting parlor on a pier in the river would be the magic bullet for downtown Pittston revitalization that we’ve long been looking for. I’d bet on football if it were legal, unless the state took most of the money, which it would.

And I’m not against casinos, bingo or lotteries, Pamela Anderson marriage-length pools, or any other form of gambling. What I hate is the state running and regulating gambling and taking all the money. A slot casino license costs $50 million. Yo, talk about freezing out the little guy.

If slots are legal, then why can’t we have mom and pop slot parlors? There are storefronts for rent in Wyoming where I live. If the state would knock like seven or eight zeros off the cost of the license, I could rent one of those storefronts in Wyoming and open Jack’s Slot Parlor and Chili Dogs. You all could come in to Jack’s Slots and Chili Dogs and drop your coins in the slots and I’d get to keep 15 percent of your money. The state can stay out of it, except for the regular income tax they collect from small businesses, which is around 10 percent, not the 55 percent the state takes from the big casinos. Heck, for a sweet deal like that, I’d give away the chili dogs.

You think I’m kidding? I’m serious. Why should only those who can afford a $50 million license, be allowed into a legitimate business?

In Rendell’s proposed budget is a proposal to reduce school districts in the state from 500 to 100 and it says, “Consolidation is not a new idea in PA. In 1955 there were 2,700 separate school districts in two years it was reduced to 1,900 and by 1962 to 600 to 500 today.”

Yeah, so what? Is Rendell saying the public school education is better now than it was before 1962?

In Democrats stimulus package -- you know the one where we save the world by studying why hogs stink -- there is a tuition tax credit. If I’m reading this right the credit will be up to $2,000. Now that’s a tax credit, so you can knock up to two grand right off your tax bill if you a paying college tuition for a dependent. This is perfect timing for me as my daughter is starting at Penn State in September.

So I’ll greedily take the credit, but I do wonder, what about people who don’t have kids in college. Aren’t they subsidizing my daughter’s tuition since they aren’t getting the cut? Wouldn’t it be right to take all the tuition tax credit money and “spread it around”, to use Obama’s own phrase, to all taxpayers?

Harry Kalas and I came to the Phillies at about the same time. His first year as a Phillies broadcaster was 1971. My first year as a Phillies fan was 1972.

That was the year Steve Carlton won 27 games for a Phillies team that one only 59. Before that I was a Dodger fan. When I was a kid the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. They moved the year I turned 11.

Anyway, Harry’s voice was the backdrop of my summers since 1972, when Harry and I both got excited when Carlton pitched. I always had the Phillies game on the radio -- in my car, or in the yard, or at home.

About the Author

Jack Smiles covers for the Times Leader. Reach him at or jsmiles@psdispatch.com.

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