There are many legitimate arguments against and in favor of legalizing gambling in order to fund state projects. It's a subject that I'm somewhat conflicted on myself.

On one hand, the lottery is a voluntary tax. If you don't play, you don't pay. The same can be said of revenue made from slot machines or casino taxes. It gives the state more funds to run worthwhile projects such as education without raising taxes for those that, like myself, don't really gamble.It also allows more freedom for more people, which can be considered a good thing in and of itself.

On the other hand, gambling is enormously stupid. It's addictive and it ruins lives. The government, by keeping its hand in the gambling jar and running its own gambling institutions, is actively preying on the least educated. I never gave this point of view much weight until I started spending time at the truckstop, watching poor, drunk, and uneducated people literally spend their last drop of money on lottery tickets. If a people cannot ask their government to refrain from taking advantage of people that can't do simple arithmetic, what can it ask?

These are the questions I ask when contemplating whether or not it would be a good idea for the state to endorse gambling.

Silly me, I was worried about the education of an entire generation versus thousands upon thousands of potential addicts gambling away their paychecks. According to the Chron's editorial board, I should frame the entire debate around 600 Kickapoo Indians in south Texas:

Unfortunately for the Kickapoo, the proposals put forward by the Texas Lottery Commission, if adopted without special accommodation for the tribe, would mean the end of their Class II casino. The depressed Eagle Pass area alone cannot support the tribe's casino, which depends on customers from San Antonio, about 150 miles to the north. If San Antonio's tracks offered video gambling, there would be little reason for residents to go to Eagle Pass.

Because of the Kickapoo tribe's history, cohesion and surviving language, federal law allows it to apply to operate a Class III casino that would offer the full range of gambling: blackjack, roulette, dice games and the like. However, the Kickapoo leaders say they have no wish to operate a large casino, which many Texans would oppose.

If race tracks get video gambling machines, the Kickapoo leaders say, the tribe just wants a variety of games broad enough to compete with the race tracks. If their casino goes under, the impact on Eagle Pass and the tribe would be disastrous. The unemployment rate, already at 25 percent, would skyrocket. The state would have to pay for much of the tribe's social services, costs the tribe now pays with its earnings.

Gov. Rick Perry has long opposed gambling and says he does not wish to increase gambling's footprint in Texas. However, the need to reform school finance might cause his resolve to weaken. If expanding the range of gambling at race tracks does not intolerably enlarge the state's gambling footprint, there would be little danger in accommodating the Kickapoo tribe's reasonable desire to remain competitive.

I sympathize with the Kickapoos. The gambling loophole is indeed one of the few things that the Native Americans have going for them. But they ran across that loophole because they made a choice to endorse gambling while the state of Texas chose not to. Texas is under no moral obligation to delcine to emulate the Kickapoos because it would hurt the tribe if the state did precisely what the tribe is doing.