David Edwards: Another Lottery Loser

David Edwards: Another Lottery Loser

"The world's original hard luck story and a hard time losing man."

- Jim Croce

In light of increasing media cost consciousness, news outlets can save money by pre-arranging a "fill in the blanks" news story.

It would say:

Powerball winner ______________ is in trouble with the law again. This is the _____ time the jackpot recipient has been arrested.

There are reports that he/she has spent all of his/her money in _____ years. There have been ______ lawsuits filed against him/her and family members in the past year.

The media should have the story ready. They are going to use it over and over again.

The most recent chance to "fill in the blanks" came from Powerball winner David Edwards, who hails from Ashland, Kentucky.

Ken Hart at the Ashland Independent newspaper has written a number of articles about Edwards and his wife Shawna.

Edwards won a $41 million Powerball and took home $27 million in August of 2001. Six years later, the money was apparently gone.

Edwards was evicted from his $1.2 million home in Palm Beach Garden, Florida for not paying his association dues. Shortly thereafter, Edwards was evicted from a storage unit that he was apparently living in. The items in storage were auctioned to pay Edwards' storage fees.

His wife was arrested for not paying $17,000 in back child support. She was released and then arrested again; she missed a court date and failed a drug test.

You would think someone who won the lottery would get it right.

About a week after Edwards won the lottery, I watched him on television and predicted that he would run through all the money. He had every red flag for disaster. An out-of-work ex-con, Edwards immediately acquired an entourage and went on a buying spree. He was all over the media, and I remember him saying that he was going to meet with financial advisors.

If I had been Edwards' financial advisor, I would not put it on my resume.

I am not sure that even the best advisor could have kept Edwards from running through the money. However, there would have been several options to try. Before Edwards started spending like a drunken sailor, an advisor could have placed some of the money into a trust and some into annuities that would have paid over Edwards' lifetime.

It did not happen, and Edwards became another "shake your head" kind of story.

I saw Edwards on a show called The Curse of the Lottery. The show's premise was that winning the lottery was a curse, not a blessing.

Receiving a life-changing amount of money is not a curse as long as the receiver takes steps to keep him or herself under control.

Most people have built-in controls on their finances. They work for a paycheck and pay their bills. They have a budget based on the steady amount of money coming in.

When people get "sudden money" from an inheritance, lottery or other source, they often do not know how to handle it.

It makes them easy prey to family and friends wanting a "loan" and prey to the temptation to spend their money on unnecessary items.

There is a whole economy built around people who let money run through their fingers.

I have noted a ton of advertisements aimed at "helping" people spend their tax refunds. A tax refund is not manna from heaven. A refund means that the government took more money out of a person's paycheck than needed. People should be saving that money for a rainy day instead of blowing it on a trip to Las Vegas.

If people cannot handle a tax refund, imagine what they would do with $27 million.

It is actually easier to handle a large amount of money than to manage a small amount. With large amounts of money, there is a point where all your immediate needs can be met. You can buy a nice house and car and not have any debts. You can go anywhere you want and do what you want.

After that, everything else is just showing off.

It is the showing-off part that gets lottery winners into trouble.

The less flash they have with their money, the less likely they are to be part of a "fill in the blanks" media story.

Edwards is another lottery hard luck story and a hard time losing man.


Story Behind the Song

The Hard Way Every Time

Jim Croce is one of my favorite songwriters. He died in a plane crash in 1973 but his stuff sounds fresh and new today. He, like Steve Goodman, another writer who died too young, could do deep songs, silly songs, romantic songs and songs that made you laugh. I do not use Croce often but could probably find a lyric of his to match every column I write.

Croce will best be remembered for his hits like Bad Bad LeRoy Brown and I've Got A Name but some of his lesser known songs like Age, Lovers Cross, Hey Tomorrow, and The Hard Way Every Time, are the ones I like best.

http://www.jimcroce.com/


Note from Don

Al Cross runs an outstanding blog as part of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues based at the University of Kentucky. I get a lot of ideas for columns from the blog.
The enclosed story headlined, "Gonzales aide told OxyContin prosecutor to slow down, put him on hit list" is an absolute must read. It is based on a front page story in the Washington Post.

http://www.uky.edu/CommInfoStudies/IRJCI/blog.htm

The Poll

The following are the results from last week's poll:

How many books did you read last year?

More than ten - 79.2%
Six to ten - 12.5%
One to five - 8.3%
None - 0.0%

This week there are two poll questions:

Do you buy lottery tickets?

Would you hold a news conference if you won the Powerball lottery?

To vote in this week's poll follow the link below. The poll will be on the left hand side of the web page.

Weekly Poll

Don McNay is author of the upcoming book, Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do if you win the Lottery. You can write to him at don@mcnay.com or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com.

Oral Roberts and Me

Oral Roberts and Me

Please note that this is an updated version of a column I previously wrote. Part of the Son of a Son of a Gambler book will touch on my interactions with celebrities and this is a sample of one of those interactions.

"Now there are some preachers on TV with a suit and a tie and a vest.
They want you to send your money to the Lord, but they give you their address."

-Hank Williams Jr.

As an eighth grader in a Catholic school, I was once given an assignment to write a business letter. If the letter got a response, I got an A on the project.

My grandma was a huge fan of televangelist Oral Roberts. I was watching with her when Roberts said he always responded to anyone who wrote him.

I wrote him, got my A and was on his mailing list for nearly 20 years.

Thus began a 30-year period of people writing me for money.

I found out that magazines sell your name to affinity groups. In high school, I subscribed to Rolling Stone Magazine, which sold my name to every left-wing group in the world.

I was still receiving letters from Brother Oral and many pictures of his prayer tower. I even got return envelopes (Brother Oral never forget to send a donation envelope) with pictures of the prayer tower on the inside flap.

Along with that, I received mail daily from left-wing groups.

I would get letters from groups saving whales, groups saving baby seals and groups wanting to keep me, the whales and the seals away from nuclear reactors.

The letters had the same message as Oral Roberts: send us money.

During my senior year in high school, Oral Roberts University made a big effort to recruit me. After five years of being on the mailing list, they felt that I was part of the Oral Roberts family.

I had to be the only long-haired Democrat from a Catholic high school in Kentucky that they ever recruited. I still might be.

It was tempting as no other school wanted me. I was a lousy student with little money, and schools would reject my application within seconds.

Then I started telling people I was an Eskimo.

It happened by accident. I was taking some kind of national test, and there was a voluntary question concerning race. Since it was supposed to be voluntary, I left it blank. That did not suit the proctor, who insisted I check the Caucasian box. I refused, and checked the box for Inuit Americans instead.

My mother swears that she did not have a secret Eskimo lover, but I was angry about being forced to answer a "voluntary" question, so the Inuit designation stayed.

I was flooded with mail from colleges wanting to recruit one of the few Inuit Americans living in Kentucky. Oral Roberts University suddenly had competition.

I wound up at Eastern Kentucky University, which did not care about my grades or lack of Inuit heritage.

Although Oral Roberts eventually stopped writing, others persist in mailing me.

I gave money to Senator John Kerry sometime in the 1990's. He was the friend of a friend who got me to donate. I got to shake Kerry's hand and be on his mailing list.

Not long ago, I got a letter from Senator Kerry. It listed a variety of world problems, and then asked for $1,000. He did not say how he was going to solve the problems, but, according to the letter, sending him $1,000 would somehow make things better.

Brother Oral was smoother. He wrote me nice letters, sent autographed photos and never sent less than 10 pictures of the prayer tower. I never sent him any money, although I was tempted when he said he was going to die without it. I did root for the school's basketball team if my father had a bet riding on them.

Very few of Oral Roberts' followers voted for John Kerry for President. Some observers might point to their difference in ideology, but I'll bet the real issue is that people receiving mail from Brother Oral are used to higher quality letters.

They had to be thinking that if Kerry sends out garbage when he is asking for $1,000, there could be no telling what kind of stuff he would send out as president.

Thus, Kerry went down to defeat.

Oral Roberts suggested that prayer might be an answer to some of the world's problems. Kerry just listed a bunch of problems with no solutions.

Oral Roberts should have run for president instead. At least he had a plan.


The Poll

The following are the results from my last poll:

If you receive an injury settlement, would you give part of it to a stranger?

93.8% - No
6.3% - Yes

What will you do with your money when you die...

1. Leave it for your family - 29.4%
2. Give to a charity - 11.8%
3. Leave to a stranger - 0.0%
4. A combination of one and two - 52.9%
5. A combination of one, two, and three - 5.9%

This week there is one poll question:

How many books did you read last year?

To vote in this week's poll follow the link below. The poll will be on the left hand side of the web page.

Weekly Poll


Notes from Don

Three Executives Spared Prison in OxyContin Case

As expected, the cupcake deal that Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani negotiated for the makers of OxyContin held up in federal court and none of the top executives went to jail for putting a deadly drug on the market.

Thanks to the Giuliani plea deal, the executives got a weaker sentence than most people arrested for possessing OxyContin.

Of course, those people don't have a presidential frontrunner as thier lawyer.

If this drama played out on the television show, Law and Order, I'd be curious to see what kind of deal Fred Thompson's prosecutor character would give Rudy's clients.

I suspect they would do some serious jail time.

This is one time where I wish television replaced real life.

New York Times Article

Previous columns on Rudy Giuliani:

Rudy Giuliani and the OxyContin People

The OxyContin Letters


Editor and Publisher Magazine

My upcoming book Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win the Lottery was mentioned in Editor and Publisher Magazine this week.

Kentucky Columnist Authors 'Gambler' Book



Rick Robinson's First Novel: The Maximum Contribution

P.J. O'Rourke and I added comments on the first novel by long time attorney and political operative, Rick Robinson's. Rick's book, The Maximum Contribution, is a political thriller that I gave a good review to. I am enclosing a link to an excellent article that Vicki Pritchard wrote for the Kentucky Post about Rick and his book.

Politics Fuels First Novel

The article notes my lavish praise for the novel. This is a stark contrast to the review Mr. Robinson gave my book, The Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher. In response to my book, Robinson said, "Thank God the SOB wasn't writing back when I ran for office."



Don McNay is the author of the upcoming book: Son of a Son of a Gambler: Life's Winners and Losers and What to Do When You Win the Lottery. You can write to him at don@donmcnay.com or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com. His award-winning column is syndicated throughout over 200 publications.

Get Rich; Read Some Books

McNay on Money

Get Rich; Read Some Books

As someone who writes books, I am stunned at how few people read them. Many people who I consider intelligent read few books, if any.

In 1991, a reporter asked the nominees for Kentucky’s Governor which book had a major influence on their lives. Congressmen Larry Hopkins answered with the pop-business hit Megatrends. Brereton Jones, who won the race, said that he didn’t have a favorite at all.

My first reaction was to move to another state. However, I liked and respected both men. Hopkins was my neighbor at the time and I had several intelligent conversations with him. I think a lot of Jones as a business leader and Governor.

It’s just that neither sat around reading books.

Thus, I found the New York Times article, C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success fascinating. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/business/21libraries.html

The article noted many business leaders are devoted readers.

The best piece of advice comes from David Leach at the American Medical Association. “Don’t follow your mentors; follow your mentor’s mentors.”

I did this accidentally with Warren Buffet. I am a big fan of Buffet’s way of doing business and must admit that a chunk of my retirement plan is in Berkshire Hathaway stock.

I set out several years ago to read every biography written about Warren. Once I did that, I realized that I really needed to understand Benjamin Graham, the great Columbia professor who taught Buffet the concept of value investing.

Graham’s two great books, Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor are not easy to read but once you have, you immediately understand what motivates Warren Buffet and can easily predict the kind of investment opportunities Buffet is looking for.

The concept works in all walks of life. Harry Truman was an avid reader and a scholar of Greek and Roman history. You can see how many of his decisions were shaped by leaders born thousands of years before him.

That is what learning history is all about. You learn history through reading books; a concept that seems to have become a lost art.

Son of a Son of a Gambler to be Released September 22, 2007

Son of a Son of a Gambler to be Released September 22, 2007

Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win the Lottery

Published by RRP International. Expected release: September 22, 2007.

In his second book, Don McNay reflects on the worlds of gambling, addiction, celebrities and business. He also shows us life through the prism of his childhood as the son of a professional gambler.

McNay's offers clarity and solutions to complex problems. Along with his observations and insights, McNay offers financial suggestions to lottery winners and people from all walks of life.

Don's father was a friend to many of Cincinnati's rich and famous. Here, Don shares information gleaned from those relationships as well as his own interactions with celebrities like Al Gore, John Edwards and the Scissor Sisters.

McNay is an award-winning syndicated columnist. For over 25 years, he has also been one of the world's best known structured settlement consultants and financial consultants for injury victims.

His first book, The Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher, was published last year and was one of the best-selling local interest books in Kentucky.

Blood Money and the Pizza Hut Waitress

Blood Money and the Pizza Hut Waitress

"I don't feel like dancing."

-Scissor Sisters (song written by "Babydaddy", "Jake Spears" and Sir Elton John)

National headlines came out of Aurora, Indiana, when a Pizza Hut waitress received a $10,000 "tip" by one of her regular customers.

Buried in the story was an important fact: "Becky", the woman who left the tip, had just received an injury settlement. Becky's husband and oldest daughter had been killed in an accident.

"Becky" didn't win the money in a lottery. She received it as compensation for a terrible loss.

The media spin has been to pat "Becky" on the back for her generosity. The feel-good story is that the Pizza Hut waitress's life will be better because of the "tip".

The person I worry about is "Becky." Injury settlements are awarded for one reason: to help the loved ones of the people who were killed.

The injury settlement was calculated to take care of Becky and her children. The Pizza Hut waitress was not factored in. No one in the waitress's family died.

The waitress's "tip" did not come from an emotionally stable business person, like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. It came from someone going through a personal hell.

I don't know anything about "Becky" or her settlement. I don't know how much money she and her children received. I don't know if her lawyers helped her set up structured settlements or if she has good financial advisors.

I do know that roughly 90% of people who receive an injury settlement or large lump sum will run through it in five years or less. I pray that "Becky" is not one of them.

Giving $10,000 to a semi-stranger is not evidence of sound thinking or long-term financial planning. It shows signs of a hurting person who perceived that her settlement was "blood money".

When people receive a lump sum, they think it will last forever. Look at the history of most lottery winners. People think it is incredible that a guy like Jack Whitaker can run through millions of dollars from a Powerball jackpot, yet the same feat has been accomplished many times over.

Jack gave his tips to strippers instead of Pizza Hut waitresses, but the bottom line is the same: both Becky and Jack would have been better off keeping the money for themselves.

Going back to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, both of those two committed to giving away the fortunes that they accumulated through business success.

Instead of giving the money to a waitress with no strings attached, Bill and Warren gave their money to a foundation.

The foundation has goals and objectives. It also has rigid criteria as to who receives the money.

Bill and Warren are smart businessmen. They did not waste money once they earned it, and they are making sure it is not wasted as they give it away.

When my mother and sister died, I set up a college scholarship fund in their names. Both my mother and sister were single parents, and the scholarship's focus is on helping other single parents like them.

The scholarship will be helping someone for years after I am gone. It has professional administrators and investment advisors.

Since we don't know Becky's real name, we won't ever find out the final story. We won't know if the money she received from her settlement will allow her and her children to have a better life. We won't know if somewhere down the road, Becky will have frittered away her family's money and be broke.

We also don't know if the "feel-good" publicity from the $10,000 tip will cause Becky to do the same for another waitress, a gas station attendant or all kinds of people with hard-luck stories.

If I die in an accident, I don't want my family to give their settlement money to a waitress. I want them to spend the money on themselves. I have a suspicion that Becky's deceased husband would feel that way too.

Although many media outlets want us to jump up and cheer for "Becky", I don't feel like dancing.

ABC News Story about "Becky" and the Pizza Hut Waitress

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3374034



Story Behind the Song

"I Don't Feel Like Dancing"

As any regular reader knows, I have an undying love for the Scissor Sisters. I knew "Babydaddy" in the days when he was Scott Hoffman and Scott's parents are dear friends of mine.

I've had dinner with several group members, seen them in concert, buy all their stuff and will have a chapter about them in my upcoming book, Son of a Son of a Gambler.

Thus, it was natural that I use them in a column again.

I've used I Don't Feel Like Dancing before. I make it a rule not to use the same lyrics twice but since the Scissor Sisters are about breaking the rules, I will make an exception in their case.

I love the video to the Dancing song, which was a number one hit in England. I hope the group comes back to the United States but they are so hot around the world that we probably won't see them here soon.

I've written several columns about the group but my first, Babydaddy's Daddy, from August 2004 is one that I am particularly proud of.

Babydaddy's Daddy

http://www.donmcnay.com/content/view/266/9/

The video for I Don't Feel Like Dancing is incredible. Check it out. You can see Sir Elton John's influence. He wrote the song along with "Babydaddy" and "Jake".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXZ1tygRaVw



The Poll

The following are the results from my last poll:

Do you favor allowing people to legally bet on sporting events?

94.4% Yes
5.6% No

If you had to bring on form of gambling to a state, would you favor...

Sports Betting - 65%
Casinos - 25%
Lottery - 10%

This week there are two poll questions:

1. If you receive an injury settlement, would you give part of it to a stranger?

2. What will you do with your money when you die? Will you leave it for your family, give to a charity, leave to a stranger, a combination of one and two, or a combination of one, two and three?

To vote in this week's poll follow the link below. The poll will be on the left hand side of the web page.

http://www.donmcnay.com/



Don McNay is the author of the upcoming book: Son of a Son of a Gambler: Life's Winners and Losers and What to Do When You Win the Lottery. You can write to him at don@donmcnay.com or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com. His award-winning column is syndicated throughout over 200 publications.

Economic Incentives for States to Attract Businesses

Don McNay on Money

Economic Incentives for States to Attract Businesses

I did my Master's thesis at Vanderbilt on the role of the Kentucky Governor in Economic Development. I've followed the issue avidly since then.

Kentucky has had a lot of media attention about the use of tax incentives. The New York Times did a recent story about the UPS operation in Kentucky and the Lexington Herald Leader did an excellent series on the topic of incentives last year.

Incentives have become an issue in this year's Governor's race as Peabody Coal, may or may not bring some kind of plant to Kentucky. It may or may not have hundreds or thousands of jobs.

There are a lot of factors in attracting business that are beyond a Governor's control. The national and world economies are the major driving forces and no state Governor can start or stop a recession. Also there are practical factors. Yacht builders are not going to locate in Nebraska, no matter how hard the Governor of Nebraska tries and there are several factors that play into where a company locates.

States often give away too much to lure a new prospect and neglect businesses already in their states.

It's a little like courting. During the beginning process, you need to show interest, like buying flowers, but buying a potential date a new car and house is a dumb use of resources. You save the car and house for when you are married.

A big question for states to ask is does one business bring in other new businesses with it? Kentucky hit the jackpot attracting Toyota in 1985. Toyota brought in a ton of suppliers and other jobs. It also brought in lifestyle changes and changed the dynamic of Central Kentucky.

Kentucky was either smart or lucky to have a bet on a company that would become the largest car company in the world.

They could have very easily spent the same incentive money on a Saturn plant like Tennessee or the now Volkswagen plant that Pennsylvania had. There is little chance that Toyota will pull out of Georgetown like Chrysler did to Kenosha, Wisconsin.

UPS was a smart bet for Louisville. It brought highly paid, mostly manual labor, jobs to an urban area that has a job pool to fill them. People drive from other parts of Kentucky (and from Indiana) to work at UPS but you need a major airport if you are going to attract a UPS (or a Delta) to an area.

A side benefit of UPS is spin-off jobs. Many years ago, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about how a number of supplier companies located as close as possible to the Memphis airport so they had easy access to Federal Express. I started using one of them, PC Zone, for computer supplies as you could order as late as 11 p.m. and have it in your office by ten the next morning. If I ordered from another supplier, it would take a second day and I often needed a part to keep my business going.

I've seen a lot of companies locate in Kentucky with a similar philosophy to PC Zone. One of the reasons Amazon has big warehouses in Kentucky is proximity to UPS. It's not unusual for me to order something from Amazon via standard shipping and have it show up the next day.

All of this also plays into the series that CNBC did last week as to which states are most business friendly. Kentucky tied with Montana for 34. Virginia was number one and hard to argue with; a central location, great public universities, a diverse economy and the Internet capital of the world. Kentucky has the central location and none of the others. It scored high on transportation and little else.

I don't know if a Kentucky can ever catch a Virginia. However, they need to play to their strengths, like transportation, and focus on some simple solutions for existing businesses. The push for statewide broadband access, which is supposed to be here but is not, would allow Kentucky's current businesses to improve communications and their online capabilities.

Putting more money into communications would be a smarter bet than throwing money at big companies. I hope the leaders of Kentucky figure that out.

Why is Sports Betting Off the Table?

Why is Sports Betting Off the Table?

"Every gambler knows the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep."

-"The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers.

I regret that we did not have someone sing "The Gambler" at my father's funeral. Dad started working in a bookmaking operation when he was only 15 years old and gambled until the day he died. He was good at what he did.

During my father's era, almost all gambling took place behind closed doors. State lotteries did not exist, and casinos were only found in Las Vegas. The popular forms of gambling were sports betting, horse racing, and card games.

Bookmakers like Dad were small business entrepreneurs. Though they could not advertise or sue non-paying clients, they still made a good living. Gambling allowed my parents to move from an extremely poor neighborhood to a nice one. It put food on our family's table.

Although 48 states now allow some form of legalized gambling, only Nevada has legalized sports betting services. In most of America, lotteries, slot machines and casino games are still the only forms of gambling that are state-sanctioned. As someone who has been around gambling for most of their life, this trend is disturbing to me for a couple of reasons.

Lotteries and slot machines are terrible bets, and only large corporations can own a casino. Talented people can work for a casino, but there is no chance for those people to ever own one.

Instead of starting lotteries and attempting to lure big casinos, states should license small gambling operations like the one my father had.

For a while, sports betting dollars were flowing to online betting parlors based in other countries, but Congress, led by Senator Bill Frist, shut down that big loophole.

I was in favor of shutting down the online betting parlors. Government entities in the United States were not able to tax winnings or regulate them.

Betting parlors, regulated and taxed by individual states, would be successful.

Dad was able to make money in the days before ESPN and the explosion of televised sports. Millions of people now participate in college basketball office pools, and there are newer sports, like NASCAR, keeping bookmakers busy. Thousands of people bet with illegal bookmakers every week, and the states should be taxing that money to provide better schools and services.

Sports gambling is a fair bet. In a football game, one team is going to win and the other will lose. It is not a trillion-to-one bet like the lottery.

Furthermore, I don't like having a state's tax revenues tied to the few big corporations that own casinos. If the corporate executives were to commit stupid or illegal acts, like those who ran Enron did, then the state could be dragged down with them. Licensing a variety of smaller companies would give states a wider tax base.

As noted, 48 states already license and regulate some form of gambling. If they expand their regulatory reach to sports betting and allowed it to operate officially, innovators would have more leeway to create opportunities for wealth in their communities.

As a betting man, my proposal is a long shot. No one is pushing sports betting, while the casino and slot machine companies are spending huge amounts of money on lobbyists and political donations. Even though illegal bookmaking is widespread, colleges and professional teams would fight against the legalization of sports betting. Also, there are people who legitimately oppose gambling for moral or religious reasons.

I am opposed to the lottery because it exploits poor people.

The 37 states that have lotteries seem to ignore the fact that lotteries target their poorer citizens. Sports betting and poker rooms are better alternatives because they are fair to both the state and the gambler.

My Dad ran a fair and honest operation where people got paid on time and were cut off before they got too deep in the red. His career caused him to break the law, but he was one of the most honorable men I have ever known.

Dad detested gamblers that preyed on people who could not afford to lose and hated lottery games that targeted poorer people.

Before states rush off to embrace casinos and slot machines, they should allow small businesses to operate sports betting parlors and poker rooms.

As Kenny Rogers said, "The secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep." Sports betting is the ace that states should keep.

Story Behind the Song

The Gambler

Although my father was not a card player, "The Gambler" essentially became his theme song. I wish we had played it as his funeral but he had an old church, Catholic mass with a lot of songs from the middle ages. Kenny Rogers did not make the cut.

When my mother died, I went to great lengths to pick proper songs. We ended her mass with "When the Saints Go Marching In".

I taught a business seminar at Eastern Kentucky University in 1985 and 1986 and my star student quickly rose to a Vice President's level in a major corporation. He called and told me he had replaced Kenny Rogers as the entertainment for their next annual meeting with the Judds.

Later that year, the Judds split and had various personal problems. Wyonnna insulted some of their best clients. The Chairman of the company absolutely loved Kenny Rogers and it was a mess. My friend was soon climbing the ladder at another company.

As Kenny said, "You've got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them."

The Poll

The following are the results from my last poll:

Was Jeff Ruby correct in asking OJ Simpson to leave his restaurant?

76.7% said yes
23.3% said no

Do you agree with President Bush's decision to commute the prison sentence for Scooter Libby?

80.0% said no
20.0% said yes

This week there are two poll questions:

1. Do you favor allowing people to legally bet on sporting events?

2. If you had to bring one form of gambling to a state, would you favor the lottery, casinos, or sports betting?

To vote in this week's poll follow the link below. The poll will be on the left hand side of the web page.

Weekly Poll

Don McNay is the author of the upcoming book Son of a Son of a Gambler. You can write to him at don@donmcnay.com or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com. His award-winning column is syndicated throughout over 200 publications.