The last Douglas administration idea to improve the Vermont State Lottery was to lease it to Lehman Bros.
Now Scientific Games, the company that has run the Vermont State Lottery for ten years, is suing the State. The suit involves the handling of the contract process that will allow Intralot (an international gambling concern based in Greece) to run the lottery.
Scientific Games International Inc. alleges in a lawsuit that the state Lottery Commission, its executive director, Alan Yandow, and Attorney General William Sorrell have violated Vermont's public records law for about a year by refusing to provide the documents. Business Week
Also, some concerns are raised about the ability of Intralot to properly manage the lottery game.
The complaint quoted from the letter, which said a satellite-based lottery system "will very likely experience performance difficulties in Vermont due to the unique weather and foliage challenges."
Intralot International runs lotteries world wide. Intralot Australia made an embarrassing entry into the Australian instant lottery ticket market when it was found that all the new machines’ instructions were in Greek,literally.
Currently Intralot is on a losing streak Down Under, operating at loss and borrowing funds heavily from two of its branches, one in the UK and France.
Sydney Morning Herald reports: The Australian subsidiary of the Athens-based gaming company has reported a $15 million loss for the 2009 calendar year, which brings accumulated losses for the past two years to $28.4 million. Loans from related parties were $21.5 million in 2009, compared with $6.5 million in 2008. By last month, Intralot Australia had borrowed a further $1.65 million from Intralot UK Finance.
In a nutshell, they exploit the vulnerable in order to avoid taxing the rich. Nothing bad that comes the way of state lotteries ever surprises me. Talk about a parasitic industry!!
Yep, that’s why most every state loves them. Avoid taxing the rich as they have the most campaign dollars available. But, in this case, why is a Vermont lottery leased to a private company and be potentially leased to an international one in a country with huge financial problems. Is this Douglas’s Challenges at work?
Mataliandy: Could not have said it better myself. The GOP, with Douglas here, has been trying, as you say, to make sure that government does not benefit us and that we the masses both serve and are victimized the elite, from where Douglas comes from. They began this with trickle down and are still trying to do this with challenges for change.
(Trading in Film Futures Contracts Approved, New York Times, 06/14/10)
****sigh**** I guess it’s been such a long time since the late great derivatives scam that caused the crash of ’08 that we just don’t remember.