HA HA Your Time Is Up

Nobody could have predicted.

With Gov. Christie still lurking among the bottom feeders in most polls, his running for president instead of giving New Jersey's fiscal problems his undivided attention becomes even more galling. That is particularly so when you consider how much of the mess is due to Christie's actions. He took one of the nation's best-run state lotteries and turned it into a privately-run loser that punched a $136 million hole into last year's budget.

For every $1 spent, the lottery was returning about 34 cents to taxpayers when the state ran it. Under lottery operator Northstar New Jersey, that's now down to 30 cents on the dollar, according to an analysis by the Record of Hackensack. And this is happening even as ticket sales hit a record high of $3 billion.