Poker Pros Bet Big on Lobbying Congress
BY RUSSELL BERMAN – Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 23, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/65037
WASHINGTON — Coming off a resounding defeat in Congress a year ago, the country’s top poker players are trying their hand at a time-honored Washington parlor game: lobbying.
Nearly 100 leading card players are flying into the nation’s capital this week to urge lawmakers to roll back a ban on Internet gambling. They are led by Senator D’Amato, the New York lawmaker turned lobbyist who serves as chairman of the Poker Players Alliance.
The group is pushing a bill that would legalize and regulate online gambling through the federal government, effectively reversing a law that President Bush signed last year making it illegal for American banks and credit card companies to process online bets.
…Mr. Frank’s bill, introduced earlier this year, would create a licensing system to regulate Internet betting through the Treasury Department. The proposals would mandate that Web sites implement safeguards against underage and compulsive gambling, such as identification requirements and limits on the amount and frequency of wagers. The government would also take a cut of the winnings under the bill through a tax that could provide a possible annual revenue stream of more than $3 billion to the federal coffers, according to an estimate cited by the Poker Players Alliance.
There is no estimate, however, on how much it would cost to administer and enforce the new regulations. The alliance also is supporting a narrower proposal by Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat of Florida, that would classify poker, chess, bridge, and mah jong as “skill games” and exempt them from the gambling ban.
The American Gaming Association, the lobbying arm of casinos, has taken no position on the proposals, nor has the National Council on Problem Gambling. The council’s executive director, Keith Whyte, said none of the bills, including the one enacted last year, devote any money to combating gambling addition. “It was a bill that dodged all the major issues,” he said of the ban.
Here is the full article.
I hope it won’t happen.
I skillfully received two aces from the dealer.
In a free country you should be allowed to bet and gamble as much as you want.
Don’t be silly. The government regulates business in innumerable ways and the Feds explicitly have the right to regulate interstate commerce. Just because they’re gambling doesn’t make it somehow sacred.
The Feds do not ‘have the right’ they have seized the right. They over-regulate and control, based on imposition of a religious viewpoint. If you like to gamble, you should be allowed to do it. Regulating for safety, as in the food industry, is different to regulating for coercive morality, as with gambling.
Are you setting yourself ahead of the Constitution, or are you just guessing?
Read Section 8 of the Constitution for yourself if you think they don’t have the right. It doesn’t say anything about “safety” nor does it say that the Constitusion is superceded by the off-the-cuff pronouncements of the Great Anonymous.
The idea that only the religious might see any problem in legalized gambling is laughable. You’ve got to think for yourself and not just try to figure out what your enemies are saying and say the opposite. I hope you don’t decide you need to go out and kill somebody just because there’s a religious commandment against it.
Additional: Of course, whether they have the right to do it and whether they in fact ought to do it are two different questions. But good idea or bad, the right is unmistakable if you’ve read the Consitution.
You do not have the constitution of a free society. Federal power, through the constitution, is coercive. i was talking about a free society, not about US society.
I agree with the legislation which aims to ban credit cards as a payment method for online gambling of any sort… and i think it should be enforced worldwide – not just in America. In fact, gambling with a credit card should be banned full stop. Not just on the internet. It’s a no brainer when you consider you are placing backing the outcome of an uncertain event with somebody else’s money. Chance and credit do not mix well in my opinion, and continuing to allow it would only contribute further in negatively affecting the high levels of personal debt many citizens today find themselves in. I do however, think that the prohibition won’t work; or at least it won’t be received well amongst gamblers – I mean what’s the point in banning a credit card payments made on an online poker game, for example, but not online sports betting? Slightly hypocritical no? I mean how can you allow someone to participate [with or without a credit card] in online horse racing betting, but not put any money on a hand of texas hold’em poker? both activities involve a large degree of chance, and neither are guaranteed to yield financial return.
What really infuriates me is that the minority of irresponsible gamblers [those paying with someone elses money!] have now ruined the fun of online betting for everyone else – those like me who pay with money they actually have in their bank!!
At least for the Americans there is always the free online poker games!
Yes! Legalize all forms of gambling and let people do what they have the constitutional right to do.
There is no more luck involved in winning a hand of poker than there is in backing a particular horse to win a race… the outcome of both depends on numerous circumstances which are out of your control. So what is it the point in American government banning a credit card payments made on an online poker game? I disagree with stickyboi because you must be 18 to gamble and to have a credit card. By this age you should have learnt how to be responsible with money!
I realy feel for the gamblers in the US. I cant beleive your Congress banned all banks and credit card companies from accepting transactions from online gambling sites which makes you unable to play online poker. What a bunch of hypocrites your state government are. They have the largest gambling operations with lotto, keno, etc. If they truly believed their rhetoric about internet gambling they would cut out the state operations also. And now they are bringing in a law to legalise slot machines. Personally I would have a big grudge against any party that stopped me from playing on a online poker site. I think there must be some way for you guys to get around this problem. Must make you wonder if you are living in the land of the free when it seems the government has full control on what it will and wont let you do.
I realy feel for the gamblers in the US. I cant beleive your Congress banned all banks and credit card companies from accepting transactions from online gambling
sites which makes you unable to play online poker. What a bunch of hypocrites your state government are. They
have the largest gambling operations with lotto, keno, etc. If they truly believed their rhetoric about internet gambling they would cut out the state operations
also. And now they are bringing in a law to legalise slot machines. Personally I would have a big grudge against any party that stopped me from playing on an
href=”http://www.littlewoodspoker.com/index.htm”>online poker site. I think there must be some way for you guys to get around this problem. Must make you wonder
if you are living in the land of the free when it seems the government has full control on what it will and wont let you do.
It’s ridiculous, they give us cigarettes and say we can’t smoke… they give us computers, credit cards, and websites like littlewoods poker and say we can’t play online poker
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