America is 'Going to Pot'

   This message may “date” me a little bit, but I wonder how many of you remember this:  do you remember, back in the 1970s, watching the evening news when the local grocery store broke into the programming with a horse race?   Yeah, I said a HORSE RACE.
 
   It was called “Let’s Go to the Races” and it was about a minute-long clip of a horse race, and it was sponsored by the local grocery store.  Here’s how it all worked... to encourage the viewers of the evening news to shop at their store, the local grocery would hand out free horse race tickets with every purchase.  Then, each evening, during the local news broadcast, they would play a short clip of a horse race.  If the number of “your” horse on your free ticket matched the winning horse in the race, you would win a big prize.... anywhere from $2 to $500.
 
   This wasn’t considered “gambling,” (something that was still “unseemly” to most people in those days) because, after all, the tickets were “free,” with every purchase at the local grocery store — and everybody has to buy groceries, so most every home would get at least one race ticket a week.  The store benefited because, as people saw the excitement of the horse races on TV during the evening news eac ...

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