Click the link to automatically send this letter to your Senators and Representative.
I am writing to urge you to oppose pending legislation that would limit the rights of individuals to play poker online. Currently, there are two bills in the House, H.R. 4411 introduced by Rep. James Leach (R-IA) and H.R. 4777 introduced by Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-VA). And in the Senate, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is pushing similar legislation that he wants to introduce.
As an avid poker player, I feel strongly that these bills and any other legislation that deny Americans the right to play a game of skill such as poker on the Internet, seriously and egregiously violate my personal freedoms.
More than 70 million people today enjoy poker. And while most play at home, in taverns or poker clubs, many enjoy this game of skill with friends and family on the Internet. The possibility of the federal government stripping away this right to play online is very troubling to me.
These bills trample the freedoms of online poker players and represent a slippery slope that could lead to the federal government denying citizens the right to play poker in offline venues. The bills also hypocritically make exceptions for certain types of gambling, including internet state lotteries, placing online bets for horse races and select fantasy sports, while prohibiting poker, which is objectively a skill game.
Equally troubling, though, are the bill’s enforcement mechanisms. All three proposals contain banking enforcement provisions which would extend a “know your customer” relationship well beyond what I want my bankers to know about my financial affairs. This regulation would require bankers to monitor my on-line purchases and even review my checks. Like most Americans, I choose my bank, and deposit my paycheck for safekeeping, not for them to monitor my withdrawals, funds transfer or even individual checks. These provisions put the government too deep into my pocketbook. According to Forbes’ magazine there are 5 FBI agents assigned to internet gambling, I demand that American taxpayers know the full cost of enforcing a ban on my rights to play poker on-line.
Separately, in Rep. Goodlatte’s legislation, Internet service providers (ISPs) are forced to remove gambling related hyperlinks upon court order. Such mandates require ISPs to remove or disable access to online sites that the government deems violations. This is censorship of the Internet, plain and simple. Congress rightly criticized China for blocking the free flow of information to its citizens via the Internet, and now Goodlatte’s bill deserves similar scrutiny.
From average citizens to presidents, generals, Members of Congress and Supreme Court justices, Americans have been playing poker for centuries, making it a rich part of our cultural heritage. Today, the evolution of game on the Internet should not be restricted by overarching government interference, and simply by putting the word “internet” in front of poker does not make it wrong.
I urge you to take these concerns into consideration and oppose H.R. 4411, H.R. 4777 and the Kyl proposal that will make outlaws of poker players who enjoy the game online.
13 comments:
Don't you think the "slippery slope" is a bit dramatic?
I don't think the G would ever care to try and limit your gambling or the gaming habits of anyone else...so long as they're of age.
huh?
that is exactly what this bill is trying to do - limit my gambling/gaming habits.
Aren't they just limiting the way you can fund such activities?
Besides, if it inconveniences your gaming or makes it more cumbersome for you to do, is it not worth that price to help keep underage kids from gambling?
Steak,
First of all, they aren't just limiting my funding options, they are basically killing them. Any American would have to jump through ridiculous and possibly illegal hoops to get money into a poker site.
They are doing other things too, like saying that the courts can censor the internet, but that isnt particularly relevant to your point.
Now, I really really hope you don't take this statement seriously:
"if it inconveniences your gaming or makes it more cumbersome for you to do, is it not worth that price to help keep underage kids from gambling?"
So by that same argument, would any measure that helps protects children from something bad be worth it?
Not allowing anyone out of their homes after 9pm would certainly reduce the risk of children facing violence. Shall we curfew the whole country?
Or maybe we only need to protect children from adult vice.
Maybe we should have to station a police officer at every establishment that sells alcohol or tobacco. Sure the cost of doing that would inevitably double the price of beer and smokes, but I'm sure we'd all be willing to pay $20 for a 6pack of Bud Light if it helps protect the children! Or better yet, lets just outlaw booze. That worked out really well last time, didn't it?
I don't think the idiots who are seriously advocating this bill have the children as their primary concern. Because if they did, there is a much better way to help keep kids from gambling online: LEGALIZE IT.
Bring Party Poker to America and regulate them. Tax them. They're begging for you to do it!
If you want to protect the kids, and you let these companies on shore, you can demand that they see 2 photo IDs before accepting deposits. You can demand any other age-verification measures. You can regulate all kinds of anti-money laundering measures. Plus it pays for itself since you can tax the earnings of these mega-companies. Billions of dollars are at stake.
(While greater ID security would annoy me, THAT is a price I'd gladly pay to keep kids off the sites.)
This legislation isn't about any of that. It is about a powerful minority trying to legislate their own personal faith-based morality.
Steak, you of all people should know that outlawing vices doesn't eliminate them. It might decrease the activy a bit, but it makes it much more dangerous for everyone involved, many of whom are otherwise respectable and valuable contributors to the community (this author excluded). Furthermore it wastes resources like yourself on enforcement of laws that most people don't agree with anyway.
Wow.
I'm not going to pull a Fern on you and just say "well, you're wrong since you don't share my ideas" - so hopefully you won't do the same.
The goal of running a decent and prosperus society can not be achieved by simply legalizing and subsequently taxing any activity/substance which is currently outlawed/ran overseas and thus not regulated properly bu the government of the citizens involved/using it. While legalizing weed would be awesome in that I would love to know just how retarded the kids I hated in college will feel when their entire nights (which in the past were always spent trying to score weed), were suddenly just able to go buy it at 7-11 and pay $40 for a dime bag since the govt would tax it so much....
And before I make the big point here - I have to say that your assertion of the faith-basis for any of this is a bit off base. People today hurl the "faith" card at the gov't whenever something happens they dont like in the same way some people toss around the race card.
People ask "come on man, do you really think someone at FEMA said 'oh theyre all black, lets not turn the plumbing back on at the Superdome'?" Of course, this unavoidable answer is no. SImilarly, do you really think legislators around the US are sitting somewhere in an antechamber saying "gambling is against my religion's rules - not counting bingo nights at the rectory." No, of course not.
So after that disclaimer, here is the big point. You're opinion of gambling is the same of a pot-smoker's opinion of pot...
"It is a good, acceptable thing. It is not a bad thing."
You're completely either forgetting/dscounting that most of the country might disagree with the gambler or the pothead in that instance. Hey, I love depriving people of their civil liberties - but that doesnt mean it's for everyone - and obscenely strict laws which err way on the side of said liberties are in place to limit/eliminate my doing so.
So, pot is bad. Sure legalizing it is a fun experiment which could save the time of thousands of cops and make the gov't billions of dollars and then piss of the drug cartels. But what then? We have kids smoking more pot? Wow, great. How long until they get stoned and go to coke... Shit, let's just legalize prostitution in all states.
Do we really want more people gambling? Younger and younger? Sure you see it as an enterprise or a way to live...but it is a vice which ruins more lives than those who make a wage out of it. How many people's lives have gone to shit by gambling?
I mean, am I to assume you're all for the legalization of many more "victimless crimes"? Because that's how it sounds. Illegal gambling. 17 year old kids drinking. Weed. An 18 year old sleeping with a 15 year old who both want it. Running a red light with nobody around.
This is a society which needs some rules, laws, and boundaries - to live only by what we think is right for ourselves should more or less preclude you from being in this society. Heck, move to the Caymen Islands if gambling is that important.
Sure its your choice to gamble, and if you lose it hurts noone but you/family. But there is a wider impact on society than in your backyard. Shit, look at Fern. I know he may be a good poker player, but please don't tell me his life wouldn't be on a better, safer, more stable track had he never seen a deck of cards. Not everyone has to live stable, this I know, but its part of a larger pattern when so-called victimless crimes become self-destructive. And a society in nothing but a collection of selves...and so forth and so forth
Ok, there are several different strings going here, and its hard to address them all.
First, I'll agree that "pulling the faith card" might not be appropriate in this case. It might be, or it might not be, but that isn't important to what I'm trying to say. I do think there are instances of people trying to impose their religions beliefs on others through legal means. I'm not sure that this is such an instance. We can certainly debate the gambling issue while ignoring the idea of faith-based conspiracy or whatever.
Second, I'd agree that my thoughts on this topic are related to my thoughts on other "victimless crimes" like prosititution and drugs. And I admit that I don't have fully formed opinions on those topics. Part of the reason I don't have well-formed opinions is that I don't use drugs (aside from alcohol) and I don't use prostitutes. So I have no personal stake in those issues, and am naturally less informed. So my main concern is gambling, but I might call on other "consenting adult" vices as analogy or something.
So let's work some of it out.
- I generally don't like the idea of one man (or a govt) telling another what he can do in the privacy of his own home, mainly because I don't want that to happen to me.
- I do think that private actions become the government's concern when they have negative effects on other people.
Understanding what actions affect other people negatively, and resolving the "free country" vs regulation conflict is key to a sensible policy in regards to matters like gambling.
Questions for you:
1) Can we both agree that a very responsible adult occassionally smoking a joint in a private place poses no threat to society, in and of itself? That 2 responsible adults placing a wager is fine? That 2 consenting responsible adults engaging in sex for compensation doesn't jeopardize anyone else?
2) Do we both agree that the key word above is "responsible" and that it is pretty fucking hard to trust the average person to be responsible?
3) Is potential for addiction and its frequently slippery dangerous slope a key facet of this discussion?
thats all for now i think
oh and one more point.
hit, look at Fern. I know he may be a good poker player, but please don't tell me his life wouldn't be on a better, safer, more stable track had he never seen a deck of cards.
gambling can be a vice/addiction for those prone to vice/addiction. poker is just one possible get-rich-quick-scheme for those prone to such schemes. in fact, poker is a much safer, responsible, and legal version than some of the other ones that he's been involved in. if anything, the deck of cards has been very positive for him.
you follow the above quote with:
Not everyone has to live stable, this I know
I suspect our friend is one of those people.
Answers for #'s 1-3 are all yes. I'm with you on all three.
The responsible thing has so many angles to it that it is almost heresy to discuss because it involves judging people on their past actions/choices or those of similar people. In the real world this should be called behavior or statistics, however in this country this is called racism or prejudice. It's like we say, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Its the whole principle behind hiring people for jobs, letting kids into certain colleges, choosing a stripper to dry hump you and your friends.
Problem is, in the US if we look at someone who has made mistakes or poor choices in one aspect of their lives, and use that to try and limit/deny their ability to do other things which may seem unrelated - what do we have? We get riots and Al Sharpton's hair.
Shit, in the US, if we try to limit the behaviors or someone in one area based on the shitty behavior even in that same area - we still have social conflicts. Re: People with 5,000 speeding tickets still have licenses, which while ok, leads me to how can someone convicted of vehicular manslaughter and has been paroled ever be allowed to operate a motor vehicle?
I'm tired and I don't know where I'm going with this.
Oh, yeah, I forgot. See, its a slipperly slope to judge people. Think about if someone is a 9 time felon, a murderer, thieft and a child rapist. Think if he has raped 12 kids per year for ten years before he got caught. Could we as a society inhibit his right to have his won kid? We still cant sterilize them, right? Even though thats the human thing to do for the hypothetically unborn child. Its just another way how our society errs so often on the side of individual rights (on the whole).
Just saying, I think you can judge someone pretty well on their level of responsibility at first glance. Not always, but usually. Even so, if we tried to only allow certain people to buy the pot for that one, quiet joint...who would choose them? All I think about is can you imagine the riots...
So I really think that is why we as society rely on one of the most arbitrary systems around, if not only for its undeniably objective means of measuring someone's worth - - - age.
Also, seriously. Have one of your anonymous friends (cough cough) tip me off next time about any illegal gaming rings in Timonium. Talk about enjoyment.
I love you last post because it leads me to an idea I've been working on since my last reply - vice liscenses.
You mention driver's liscenses, and the relationship between driving and 'consenting adult' vice is clear. They are activities that have potential to be dangerous to other people, but a responsible person should be allowed to do it.
And you're totally right that how we currently determine "responsible" is weak. But I think you would agree that in theory, drivers liscenses are a pretty good way to regulate the activity of driving: you have to learn about the activity, pass tests demonstrating that you have sufficient knowledge and skill, and make certain payments (the financial ability to do so demonstrates some responsibility as well). If the system for revoking/suspending/renewing liscences was better, it would be a pretty good way to deal with it.
The same kind of system for alcohol, gambling, prostitution, and even harder drugs might be a good solution. I haven't presented it very well yet, but I'm going to noodle this idea.
Does anyone know of any existing discuss on this idea?
I'm told that there was some Newsweek editorial by Mike Brake in 1994 about the idea of drinking liscenses.
A vice license.
I love the idea - but again, oh goodness can I only imagine the counterfeiting which would occur, and the whole black market which would flourish, and I guess that's fine.
But shit, when more white people were allowed to have one, then cities would burn. I am assuming it'd favor whites, since arrests would no doubt void your license, and I don't think I need to start reciting crime statistics for anyone.
Would one vice license be good for everything?
And I say frick it...one arrest and you can keep it, depending on severity. Two and you are done. Hell, I'm a softie - make it three and your out. Public at large would find 2 to be far too high a standard, but three is tough to argue here - patterns of past behavior...
Post a Comment