A New York Times piece takes a look at Rebecca Paul Hargrove, the $750,000 per year, former beauty queen/Chair of the Illinois Republican Party in charge of the Tennessee state lottery.

She's supposedly worth it, given that her marketing prowess has increased the Lottery's sales substantially -- and truthfully, $750 thousand per year is a drop in the bucket for the state Lottery. The average Tennessean spends 93 cents per day on lottery tickets. When you consider the fact that Lottery players are far more likely to be less-educated minority men, the terrible impact of the Lottery becomes more clear. According (PDF File) to a Georgia study, "Black males are more than 10 times as likely as white females with the same levels of education to be active lottery players. This effect is especially pronounced for less-educated black males. The model predicts that the incidence of active lottery play for that group is nearly 43%, which is more than 30 times the rate of play among non-black females who have an education above the high school level".