Posted on 10/13/2006 5:03:36 PM PDT by KDD
EDITORIAL: Internet gambling 'ban'
Americans are playing poker online? Oh, the humanity!
Of the myriad policy crises churning on the horizon -- entitlement insolvency, illegal immigration and runaway federal spending among them -- congressional Republicans chose to spend the little political capital they have left on an Internet gambling ban.
With brick-and-mortar casinos in nearly every state and card games breaking into network television, millions of moralists found it unbearable that Americans were wagering about $6 billion per year on the Web. That their neighbors might be playing poker or placing sports bets from the comfort of their desk chairs demanded federal intervention. "Ban it!" they cried. "Misguided citizens will lose their homes! Their children will starve! Families will be destroyed!"
Never mind the folly of legislating leisure. (That Prohibition thing was a rousing success, wasn't it? And certainly, no sports wagering takes place outside of Nevada.) Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was determined to please his base with a new law before November's election, no matter how flawed or misguided it might be.
The cause was so preposterous it couldn't win passage as a stand-alone bill. Sen. Frist first tried to attach the Internet gambling ban to a defense appropriations bill. No luck. So he slipped it into port security legislation that passed the House and Senate early Saturday. A Bush administration official indicated the president plans to sign the bill into law.
And so no children will be forced into homelessness, their parents now prohibited from using personal checks, credit cards or electronic fund transfers to pay off Internet bets placed with online casinos and sports books. The costly, irresistible temptation of playing games of chance on personal computers has been eradicated. Right?
Wrong. Not only did Sen. Frist have to lard up the ports bill to win passage for his pet project, he included enough exemptions to rival the IRS tax code.
The bill permits Web-based betting on horse racing and for state lotteries. It also allows state-licensed casinos, once authorized within their jurisdiction, to construct Web sites with online poker and casino-style gaming. And these casinos would be allowed to provide links to other states and countries where gambling is legal.
So rather than deliver a "ban," Sen. Frist merely cut off the American market from online gambling sites based in Britain and the Caribbean. Like most heavy-handed regulations, this "ban" is really just thinly veiled protectionism.
"In order to get this bill passed, they (Republicans) sold their souls. They gave so many exceptions that it's now a wide-open area," attorney Tony Cabot, editor of the Internet Gambling Report and co-editor of the Gaming Law Review, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
This Internet gambling "ban" is nothing close to a ban at all -- and that's a good thing. It's foolish to think the Internet gambling genie can be stuffed back into its bottle. Technology is driving the evolution of the gaming industry, so it makes perfect sense that regulated American companies should be allowed to conduct business with their millions of customers through the World Wide Web.
The bill could bring some short-term pain to MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment, which use Internet poker sites to place some entrants in their own poker tournaments. But they'll figure out how to rebuild their qualification networks. The opportunities now available to Nevada gaming companies are staggering in their scope.
"The casino lobbyists in Washington, D.C., thought this was a pretty good deal. It's actually better than that," Mr. Cabot said. "It really opens up the field. It knocks out the offshore companies, and leaves the legal licensees open to take their positions."
It remains to be seen, however, whether the American conservatives who demanded this legislation will think it's a good deal. More likely, they'll realize sometime soon that they've been taken by a sucker bet.
So break the law then.
But face the fact that govts DO get involved when they see particularly destructive vices breaking down society.
If Frist deserves a medal it would be for being an anti-freedom, anti-American, pro-nanny state, pandering Senator.
The Founders of this Country, who saw nothing wrong with funding the Revolution with gambling proceeds, would be disgusted, as I am.
Unless it's in answer to unfair practices initiated on the other side, it's more likely that protectionist policies will ultimately be more damaging than they are helpful in the long term.
Everyone knows land based casinos in America are losing money to the popular online casinos so they got the Frist legislation passed to ban online gambling in the US.
This "fact" couldn't be more wrong.
Nevada casinos have been on an overall growth curve for years and July '06 saw revenues up sharply in a typically slow month. Nevada casinos do not support banning online gaming legislation and should be given credit for successfully lobbying the Leach anti-Internet gambling bill into an early death.
I take it we're supposed to dumbly accept that internet gambling is a "particularly destructive vice breaking down society" as self-evident truth.
Exactly. They had to specifically add an exception for securities trading in the bill, otherwise ETrade would be illegal.
You're comparing investing in the stockmarket etc to taking your money to a casino?
You're joking right?
Casinos are a business built and dependent on odds DESIGNED to take your money from you. TO MAKE YOU A LOSER.
Stockmarkets and investment firms are the part of a free capitilist system that gives everybody an equal chance to get in on betting on future profits.
You are free to support online gambling if you like but, spare us the unbalanced and distorted comparisons.
this has a very negligible effect on online poker. every site I play at except one (PartyPoker) has made it clear that for US players it's "business as usual".
even though this is a bipartisan bill - payback to the Indian casino lobbying money, most of the blame among poker players is landing on the Republicans. it could hurt them in November.
Only when it get out of hand.
By the way, like drug abuse, gambling has been found to most adversly effect the poor and lower class more so than the rest of society.
So the people who can afford it the least are hurt the most.
Do you think it's out of hand, and that it's the federal government's job to protect us from ourselves?
They are less likely to be able to employ the resources needed to defend themselves against the State then those in upper income brackets...that's all.
I hear the Democraps are banning it because they can't tax it and they're pissed!
Actually, for the most part, online Casinos have been begging to be reglulated and taxed.
They are less likely to be able to employ the resources needed to defend themselves against the State then those in upper income brackets...that's all.
Did the state make them blow their meager incomes in a casino?
OK. Whatever you say. Thank you for the response.
It's called "Choice".
Using the State to stifle Choice in matters of adults and their relationship with vice destroys the very concept of morality...
Albert J. Nock argues in his essay, "On Doing the Right Thing," that the moral development of the individual is stunted every time the State extends its activity into new areas because the area available for the unhindered and free exercise of the human moral faculties is thus reduced.
In fact, he argues, in moral philosophy there is a fundamental assumption that individuals are responsible for their actions. It makes no sense to say that an individual should or should not do something on moral grounds (e.g. place a bet on a football game) if that individual cannot freely choose between different courses of action (if betting is illegal). Nock argues that literally there can be no such thing as morality unless one has the freedom to choose between alternatives, without external sources of coercion.
All of those poker games that I played (while I play) with friends while watching football were (are) illegal?
The Law is often an ass.
Of course it is all about tax revenue after all, which makes anybody who votes for a professional politician the real ass.
When you really think about it.
With all due respect, that's absurd and the man you quote is a moron.
The Bible tells us that God Himself gives govt the authority to enforce moral codes.
Probably because if left to the individual it would lead to anarchy and the disintegration of society.
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