Oregon’s Mistake as Easy to Read as an Open Bookie

America the Beautiful is turning into the world’s biggest bookie parlor.

The numbers racket used to be run by Murder, Inc. Now it’s run by the state.

Cops on the take used to cut in on the crap games and the slot machines. Now, City Hall does.

You used to get hauled before a grand jury for shaking down high stakes poker games. Now, you get elected mayor.

Remember when they raided the gambling ships offshore? State cops, wielding axes, used to board them. Today, they’d fly the state flag.

Nathan Detroit would be flabbergasted. Sleep-Out Louie wouldn’t believe his eyes. Today, they’d be government officials. Damon Runyon wouldn’t have any material.

The vice squads will be out of business. There’s no more vice. The state of Oregon is the latest to join the underworld. They’ll book your football bets, pay the line, spot you the spread, do all the things that used to get you one-to-seven if you did it in a loft five years ago. The sovereign state of Oregon is now just another guy on a river boat with his own deck and a gold watch.

The really ironic note is that the profits from this wheel will go to the athletic programs of state universities. In other words, the state is turning into a guy in a pinchbacked suit in order to provide football players to keep the system going.

You have to pinch yourself to believe it. I always thought civilizations were brought low by the decadence of the ruling classes. This one seems to be on the brink of collapse because of catering to the baser instincts of the low lifes.

I once had a gambling uncle who made book, shot craps, played pool, cheated at cards. He wouldn’t work. He didn’t believe in it. But he wanted everyone else to. He considered everyone else in the world a “mark,” someone to be separated from their hard-earned wages by someone slicker. This is the role the state takes on today. It’s in the business of gulling the gullible, taking advantage of suckers. The state was Uncle Ed’s sworn enemy in those days. Ed was always making bail, serving time, on the lam, paying fines, leaving by the window. His whole life was a cat-and-mouse game with the vice squad. He was born 40 years too soon.

Not too long ago, historians were teaching us that state lotteries were a blot on civilization, that one of the reasons Napoleon’s early campaigns were so successful in northern Italy and Austria was because the citizenry were all sitting around daydreaming, waiting for their ship to come in, i.e., their number to hit.

The state has apparently succumbed to the argument that gambling is always going to be around, so why not get in on it?

OK. But, why stop there? People are always going to rob banks. So, why not get in on that? Let’s license bank robbers for a percentage of the take. Humanity is always going to sell dope, embezzle funds, cheat widows and orphans, rig the stock market. Should the government get in on that, too? Why put Ivan Boesky in prison? Just get him to let the Treasury Department in on his latest insider information. They’ll take it from there.

How about prostitution? A lot of people think that should be legalized. But why stop at that? Why not have it government-owned and operated? The government could take it over, including procurement and recruitment, indoctrination, advertising and the periodic beatings-up needed to keep the girls from going independent. The guys in the purple and gold velvet suits with the white beaver hats and gold chains riding around in fuchsia Cadillacs could all have American flags on the hoods and government license plates.

Why not get in on cat burglars’ take, safecrackers, jewel thieves? Maybe auto-theft rings should be government-operated. Old-fashioned morality is in headlong retreat anyway, why not nuke it into oblivion altogether?

The government notion seems to be, why should the crooks get all the money? We’ll become the crooks.

It’s one thing to decriminalize an activity. It’s another to join it. If gambling was bad for the guys with the bent noses and the gray fedoras, and the submachine guns, why is it OK for guys in three-piece suits with briefcases?

Nothing used to make me madder than to read a “sports” story written by some sports handicapper that would read something like “the Cincinnati Bengals are 60/40 to the number at home but are 70/30 on the road and I wanted the Jets to run out the clock without attempting a field goal.” Or, “the Rams are 0-5-1 in intradivisional games against the spread.” No mention of who won or lost. Or how they played the game. No human beings were mentioned at all. The NFL as a wheel.

Somehow I don’t think this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind for the Republic. Jimmy the Greek instead of Thomas Jefferson as model. The preamble should be amended to read, “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice--and beat the spread--do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”

The government is in the business of pandering to the worst instincts of its citizens. It’s not a government, it’s an accomplice. It now qualifies as a professional gambler. And we all know what a professional gambler is--no gambler at all. The professional doesn’t gamble. He rigs the wheel, stacks the deck, gets the edge. That’s the trouble with big-money gambling.

Like any other racketeer, the government might want more than the vigorish, too. Arnold Rothstein fixed the last rigged World Series. Maybe the Secretary of the Treasury will fix the next one.