US Online Gambling Ban Could be Lifted in 2008
Submitted by Julie on September 5, 2007 - 10:37pm.
The ridiculous "poker prohibition" that is currently preventing US citizens from easily participating in online gambling sites might soon be coming to an end. While nothing has yet been decided, it seems as though the tides may be changing.
US Representatives Steve Israel (Democrat) and Pete King (Republican) of New Jersey recently published a compelling editorial in the New York Post which outlines why they are staunch supporters of efforts to regulate and tax online gambling, instead of prohibiting it. The article, entitled "Web Gambling: Tax, Don't Ban", explains their reasonings for supporting such measures.
One of the most logical arguements that they present is that the Treasury Department simply has bigger fish to fry. The Treasury is charged with more than a few crucial jobs, including investigating counterfeit money, tracking terrorist financing, and even protecting the President. With the ban on online gambling in place, they've been forced to take on the additional burden of handling something much more trivial - people who play card games online for money at home.
Other issues to consider are that by banning online gambling, people really aren't going to just stop gambling. They'll do it, albeit not as easily as before, but now they'll be doing it without legal protections that could potentially protect them against fraud and ensure age-verification. What its really doing is pushing the business off-shores, into the hands of less than savory businesses with shady practices, using the money for who-knows-what.
What Israel and King argue is that the ban should be lifted, but they aren't asking for things to return to what they were pre-ban. Instead, they're arguing for a set of framework to be created under a bill they're co-sponsoring, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act, that would regulate and tax the industry and make sure that it is a safe entertainment outlet for American citizens.
Lastly, they point out that the Treasury's Secret Service agents were once used to help President Harry Truman organize poker games in the White House. But if he were to do that in these days, he could very well be arrested!
With both a Democrat and a Republican co-sponsoring the bill, it really has a chance of getting pushed through - especially if votes are on the line, as they will be in 2008. Come next year, we could really see the state of US online gambling make a huge shift.
US Online Gambling Ban Could be Lifted in 2008
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Originally Posted by bigboydan
