U.S. House to Vote on Anti-Online Gambling Act 334
SonicSpike writes to mention that the House is set to vote on an act designed to choke off the U.S. money flow to internet gambling. Though illegal here in the states, overseas operators are getting a good deal of business from individuals with U.S. bank accounts and credit cards. From the article: "The legislation would make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to these sites. It also allows law enforcement officials to force Internet service providers to remove links to the websites. Many major credit card companies already refuse to process such payments. Opponents of the bill, including online gambling sites and a new group representing U.S. poker players, noted the growing popularity of Internet gambling and predicted that people would continue to sidestep laws."
EXCEPT (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
And why not tax....both on the side of people who win and when the house wins. That is a lot of revenue. Online casinos usually fund one small group of people (it doesn't take much to own/manage an online casino).
The gov't wants a few things
Tax the players who win
Tax the casino
Ensure that it is not so easy for people to spend their lifes earnings (and money they dont have, such as credit card money) on gambling and blowing their lives away.
remember, it is not the easiest thing in the world to legalize gambling in a state. Pennsylvania just legalized slot gambling, not even table gambling, and that was a fight and a half.
Disconcerting... (Score:0, Interesting)
The legislation would make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to these sites. It also allows law enforcement officials to force Internet service providers to remove links to the websites.
What does that mean exactly? Am I to believe that they can make the linking of sites illegal? Is this for any website? or just ISPs? And what ISPs advertise these places on their sites in the first place?
What about RPG Gam(bl)ing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Money can be funneled in via purchases of credits/dubloons/tokens, which can then be used in gambling on games within the meta-game. I use YPP as an example because it just recently added poker to its arsenal, although it's had multiplayer gambling for years (especially in tournaments, where you don't even have to convert the dubloons into anything to use them as prizes).
Granted, the dubloons in YPP are meant for purchases of items such as clothing and swords, but they COULD still be used for gambling...
The eternal workaround (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a very interesting item as far as globalisation is concerned because a number of countries where gambling is a major industry have filed a WTO case against the US for restricting free trade. More specifically it is related to stopping credit card payments to entities in these countries by Visa and MasterCard. Any congress intervention before the WTO proceedings are complete is putting the US on a deliberate collision course with the WTO.
Also, it is a classic case of double standard. Free trade which lines the pockets of an American corporation is OK. Free trade which cannot line the pockets of an American corporation and goes to other nations is not OK. And god forbid if it is against the beliefs of the taleban elders.
Re:What about internet billing/payment companies (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Land of the Free? (Score:5, Interesting)
We all would love to live in a Land of the Free. It implies we have absolute control over our own actions, and "there ain't nobody that can tell us what to do!" Reminds me a lot of that feeling you get when you turn 18 and start flipping the bird to all and sundry.
The problem is that our actions, when taken in public, can have an effect on an awful lot of people. Riding without a helmet? Great. When you wreck and live in a persistent vegetative state, the Insurance Company has to cover it. The problem is, I'm paying into the same insurance company you are, so my rates (may) go up, just because you were too stupid to put a hat on your noggin. Ditto with seatbelts, only now you may have 4 people in comas for the rest of their life, and the cost increases dramatically.
If there was no monetary pain to me, at all, because you didn't want to wear a seatbelt or a helmet, go for it. After all, it is your life. If you can ensure that I don't have to pay a cent more because you want to risk it, I'm all for you not wearing helmets or belts. Or, rather, I'm all for your freedom to do as you wish. It's not my fucking job to keep you alive. I may tell you you're stupid and to put a seatbelt on, but that's just freedom of speech. It's not like you have to do what I say.
Drugs and gambling are somewhat similar, but subtly different. The only downsides to these: people, due to their dependence upon either, breaking the law and stealing shit to fund their habit. The subtle difference is that, the act, itself, does not DIRECTLY (or as-closely-indirectly-as-seatbelts-do) cost me any money. I mean, the justification for outlawing drugs is a: social (we don't want drug use in our community), which is, in my opinion, the antithesis of a "free" community, or b: financial (we don't want drug users stealing our stuff), which, in my opinion, has some grounding. But the problem is that the habit, for all of its power over the person, is too indirect, in my opinion, to be banned. Example: if I'm a billionaire, and I want to sit in my mansion all day and do coke, who the fuck are YOU to say that's wrong? it's my life, it's my house, and I'm paying for it with my own money. Right there, whether you agree with drug use or not - doesn't matter. It's about freedom. Ditto with gambling. But when a crackhead steals my bike to pawn at a pawnshop to finance their need, I tend to get a wee bit pissed off. With that said, I'd probably be just as pissed off if it was just a bunch of punk kids on a dare. Or a hobo who thought he'd take up cycling for unspecified personal reasons. So really, in this instance, it's not the drug use, or gambling, that is bad, it's what people CAN do to finance it. Which is, in my opinion, a separate issue. They may be linked, but they're not one in the same. If you're Michael Jordan and you want to gamble away crazy moneys in Poker, go for it. You've got the money, and I'm not going to tell you what to do. But if you steal something of mine, then you're a thief, and you need a swift kick in the teeth.
Prostitution is way different. That's just the moral police acting like the world will end if they don't "protect the people". I'm old enough, thanks. I can think for myself. Are you going to protect me from credit card debt, too? No? Then shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down. Legalize prostitution. Tax it. Spend that tax money on setting up education programs for prostitutes. If they have a pimp who is abusing them, protect them. Mandate monthly checkups. STDs.
Nanny state, true. In some ways. However, sometimes your freedom to do something impinges on my rights. In that case, maybe a law is in order. Maybe it isn't. That's what public debate is *supposed* to be about. Instead, it's just a bunch of boiled down, trite sound bites strung together to rally the masses. Phooie.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
While the struggle to get slot machines in Pennsylvania was, and still is, an acrimonious debate, the reason behind the debate is because of who benefits. Slots coming to PA is not to help increase revenue (though it will) nor to stop people from going to West Virginia, Delaware or New Jersey and spending their money at those gambling locations (though it will slow the exodus) nor is it to help in property tax reduction (um, yeah).
No, the one and only reason that slots came to PA was to keep the horsetrack business alive. Without the slots the horsetracks in the state would have been dead within 5 - 10 years. Don't believe me? Then why is it that all the racetracks in the state (8 total) get to have slots licenses but only fourteen total licenses, including those at the tracks, are available for the entire Commonwealth? If the Commonwealth wanted to bring gambling to the land it would have allowed slot parlors to open anywhere that one could afford to pay the licensing and other fees. You'll never see a slot parlor in downtown Harrisburg but someone is fighting to build one just outside Gettysburg.
Let us not forget also the current controversy of having a middleman buy the slot machines and then distribute them to the parlors instead of allowing the companies to sell directly to the parlors. Just another way for certain elected officials to get kickbacks and produce jobs for their connected friends.
Oh, and as far as not allowing table gambling is concerned, you do know the reason for that, don't you? It's because a table game requires the person to concentrate on the game at hand and thus wouldn't allow them to watch the horse races. A slot machine requires no concentration and one can stop playing the machine for a moment and place bets on the races then resume playing the machine.
I'm not against gambling. I used to go to Atlantic City and spend a few bucks. I've gambled in Vegas and would like to see the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. But what I object to is the typical PA bullshit of how the process was done and will be implemented. The Gaming Control Board is a joke. It's rules are so lax that corruption in the industry will be rampant.
Not to mention that one of the employees of the board dangled his girlfriend [poconorecord.com] out their apartment window and dropped her [papundits.com] while they were celebrating his job appointment in the commission because both were drunk as skunks.
Then there's the employee [pittsburghlive.com], an investigator no less, who was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, escape and public intoxication. Let us not forget the other folks of the gaming board who have also had issues including one who lied on his application and two others, attorneys in fact, who were involved in drunken brawls.
The real fight is not whether to allow gambling in Pennsylvania. The real fight is over how much money will be skimmed off the top for political purposes. Does the word WAM ring a bell?
Re:They won't get rid of it (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't even get me started on that Ponzi scheme known as Social Security.
Land of the free (Score:1, Interesting)
Its effectively a closed market, yet they can freely enter European countries. Yet the US endlessly talks about the importance of free trade.
This news story is also interesting from a freedom point of view. In a country that prides itself of freedom and "land of the free" and free thinking etc... its fascinating how many times the land of the free isn't at all free to choose how to live.
Re:Land of the Free? (Score:2, Interesting)
For even further information about negative and positive freedom the journalist, author and philosopher Julian Baggini has written about it in numerous books and articles
Re:They won't get rid of it (Score:4, Interesting)
The legal fiction is that it's sovereign land. The truth is that it's federal land, held in trust. This is clearly true because soverignty does not apply to members of the tribe, only to the tribe as an entity in itself and to the land itself.
I work for a Tribal casino in Northern California. There is some truth to what you say; some tribes have contracted someone to come in and build and operate the casino, and those entities typically get the bulk of the profits for something like ten years.
The tribe[let] I work for put up a Bingo hall in the 80s and has been operating it more or less continuously since. When it came to be time to open a casino, they went to the bank, got a loan against the business, and built a new, larger bingo hall/event center, a 40-some room hotel, and a little conference center.
Consequently, the tribe gets the majority of the money. Not only do registered members of the tribe get a share of the money (aka the "per capita" payment) but a certain, significant amount of money goes into the tribal council's coffers. They've built quite a few homes with the money, and they're preparing to build more.
Nevada just legalized mobile gaming, which is to say, on phones and handhelds. I think they're going to be implementing video keno via sms first. This will knock out a considerable amount of online gambling, but only in NV. The simple fact is that people will do destructive things with their money and if we really want to "solve" the problem, we should be allowing it in the USA, with extremely tight regulation. If we're worried about the cultural impact of legalizing online gaming, maybe we can funnel a percentage of the taxes to a fund to deal with the ills. Ultimately though, people will end up gaming on-line via encrypting anonymizers, and the money will continue to leave the country, unless we legalize online gaming in the US, and collect the money here.
Re:They won't get rid of it (Score:4, Interesting)
He probably WOULD be redistricted. See, this war on drugs shit means that the law enforcement agencies get more and more money to buy new toys so they can abuse them. (Five-oh is outside, waiting with the van, hoping that shit will get out of hand / so that they can test their weapons on innocent civilians / the high tech shit costing millions and millions! --Michael Franti/Spearhead) In fact we just had some of that here in Lake County, which is known as a methamphetamine production center throughout California; the cops just got tasers like a week ago and they've already used 'em twice, then claimed that they've only done it once in a statement to a paper on the second occasion. Fucking pigs.
We have helicopter overflights every day in my neighborhood. Ostensibly, they're looking for meth factories, and large outdoor plots of weed, since probably something around half of the people in my neighborhood are producing marijuana. And no, I am not exaggerating. It's kind of a mecca. Personally, I moved up there (it's at about 2800 feet) to try to get some cooler weather, and it hasn't been working worth a crap this year, but it's been over 100 degrees on the flatland pretty often. But the point is, they have a bunch of fun toys.
And speaking of fun, here's a fun fact: They took over 1,000,000 marijuana plants out of the Mendocino and Tahoe national forests to the north of me, in this county and the neighboring county alone. Since they're outdoor, that could be anything from 750,000 pounds up to about 3,000,000 pounds of product, and the average person will smoke less than an eighth of an ounce a week. 16 ounces to a pound makes that enough for (assuming 1lb/plant) 8 eights * 16 oz/lb * 1,000,000 pounds = 128,000,000 man-weeks of smoking, or enough to keep about 2.4 million people smoking for a year. (I'm not sure if there's any valid statistics on average marijuana consumption per user - marijuana research is actively suppressed in the USA unless you're aiming to prove that it's harmful. The government paid a bunch of money to try to prove that it's harmful, and failed, and decided not to publish the full results of the study. Surprise, surprise.)
In spite of that, there is no shortage. Prices have not gone up. Marijuana has not become scarce.
If you need any more proof that the war on drugs is more about buying toys and making money on the "corrections" system than about any moral issues, you're not paying sufficient attention. The war on drugs is doomed to be an ongoing failure until it ends, causing more crime than it could ever solve, just as prohibition of alcohol was.
Re:They won't get rid of it (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.ksrevenue.org/perstaxtypesdrug.htm [ksrevenue.org]
The drug tax is due as soon as the dealer takes possession of the marijuana or controlled substance. Payment of the drug tax will purchase the drug tax stamps. Attach the stamp to the marijuana and/or controlled substance immediately after receiving the substance. The stamps are valid for 3 months. Drugs seized without stamps or having expired stamps may result in criminal or civil penalties which may include fines, seizure of property or liens against real estate.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)