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Criticism against state Issue 3 could easily be compiled a la Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "Let me count the ways ." While proponents dub Issue 3 "Learn & Earn" for its wondrous tuition-generating effect, opponents say this proposal to allow 31,500 slot machines statewide is a smokescreen that would make a handful of private racetrack owners and developers very, very rich. Also, some of the numbers are in dispute. While supporters, for example, say the measure would yield some $850 million each year for Ohio college students, the state's own budget and management office estimates that the annual ca-ching! of slot machines would generate not quite $325 million for tuition. Then, too, there's criticism bubbling up from Columbus, from folks who say Issue 3 is disproportionately nice to Cleveland - where, with voter OK later, slot machine operations could blossom into full-scale gaming tables. Oh, and let's not overlook the much ballyhooed social costs. You know, "the evils of gambling" and all that - no small consideration, as I see it. Besides, any time our vote would authorize a new state commission with the word "integrity" embedded in its name (as in, "Gaming Integrity Commission"), well, I'm thinking maybe the joke would be on us. We could keep taking inventory of specific objections to Issue 3, but that skips over what to my mind is one of the weirder aspects of Learn & Earn, namely: How long do people have to sit around drinking at some bar before they can convince themselves that slot-machine gambling equals the future of Ohio college students? Are we not in The Twilight Zone when we think it makes any sense whatsoever to use higher education as a pitch for voters to approve gambling? I try and try to envision how this came about, but all I can conjure up are conversations between Rod Serling and his doppelganger. "Man, I sure would like to see Ohio get a slice of those gambling dollars, Rod!"

"Boy, Rod, so would I! Wonder how we can do it?"

"Hey, Rod, I've got it! Let's make slot machines a constitutional amendment! But, gosh, how could can we sell it to voters?"

"Oooh, oooh, I know! We'll tell 'em it's 'for the children' - that one works every time, Rod!"

The premise of Issue 3 is so absurdly specious that, were I the bartender on the night Rod & Himself stopped in, I'd have cut them off long before they reached that conclusion.

Alas, no one did.

If you go to the Issue 3 proponents' Web site and read "About Ohio Learn & Earn," you have to plod through five whole paragraphs and 137 words before reaching that section's first mention of slot machines.

It's true that Ohio gets an "F" for college affordability.