Ross: A song celebrating America’s favorite false hope: the Powerball

The Newsroom that dares to dream. We here at KIRO Newsradio are realists, we spend our working days steeped in current events, buried in news stories. We’re not perfect, but we are also not easily fooled.

We hold politicians to account, we don’t like them playing fast and loose with money, we are pragmatic, we don’t fall for impossible dreams.  And we know that playing the lottery is a dumb way to fight back against inflation, except when Ursula Reutin organizes one of her Powerball office pools.

More from Dave Ross: McCarthy said just because you’re ‘angry,’ ‘chaotic’ doesn’t make you conservative

So to celebrate America’s favorite pipe dream I wrote a little song, with clips of Ursula backing me up, which you can listen to above. Here we go!

“I barely got the words out of my mouth. I said should I do an office pool? And I already had people lining up,” Ursula said.

All the crazy bureaucrats are out of control

Taxin’ me and spendin’ all the money they stole.

Rip me off for parkin’ and they’re raising my rent

And my health insurance jumped 900%. (Thanks Big Pharma!)

 

So I buy me a Powerball ticket

It’s a hell of a thrill

I buy myself a dream for a couple dollar bills

All around America they gather up the dough

Then turn around and give it to a guy I don’t know!

“It’s worth an estimated $1.192 billion to get those tickets out. We have 100% participation in the newsroom,” Ursula said.

The media will tell you the odds are too high

There’s a better chance you’ll fall into a sinkhole and die

Or an asteroid could hit you and make you go splat–

But who’s gonna pay a dollar for that?  (I’m no sucker)

 

I buy a Powerball ticket, maybe two maybe three.

Just a couple dollars, why they’re practically free.

Politicians gen’rally are not all that bright

But when they gave us Powerball they finally got it right.

“We have no chance of winning we have one in 290 million chance of winning. So just that alone, just having that conversation was worth the two bucks,” Ursula said.

And just as she predicted, no one won.

Follow @http://www.twitter.com/thedaveross