Thank goodness we have the Republicans to protect people from themselves and limit international on-line commerce.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to restrict Internet gambling, a move Republicans hope will boost their popularity before the November election. By a vote of 317 to 93, politicians approved a controversial bill that tries to eliminate many forms of online gambling by targeting Internet service providers and financial intermediaries, namely banks and credit card companies that process payments to offshore Web sites.
Net gambling “is a scourge on our society,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who’s tried for the better part of a decade to enact legislation that combats Net gambling.
‘Our’ society? Bob Goodlatte should really get out of the coercion business and follow his natural career as a barista and leave the series of social interactions we call ‘society’ to its members, rather than using force to distort it.
Now can someone remind me why the Elephants are supposed to be trusted with imperfect edifice of American capitalism and civil liberty but the wicked ol’ Donkeys cannot? A pox of both parties I say but at least the Democrats were on the right side of this issue.
My prediction: People who want to gamble on-line will start registering with trusted on-line off-shore providers, who will change a forwarder URL of their sites every few days and notify their clients of the new URL via or-mail or SMS in order to get around ISP blocking for those unable to use proxies and other ways to confuse the ISP where you are really going. Payment will be between the client and a series of disposable off-the-shelf companies in Panama or Grand Cayman which shut down, only to be replaced by a new company, as soon as the US credit card companies identify them as receiving money from gambling.
The US state can make it harder but if people want to wager their own money, they will always find a way. If i was a betting man (i.e. statistically challenged, which I am not), I would put my money on the Feds getting their arses kicked when they try to shut the off-shore sites down (particularly as they are legal in the countries they operate in and can take clients from the rest of the world without much difficulty).
Can anyone say “Drug War”?
C’mon Perry, don’t you feel bathed in the fatherly (or motherly) concern our gov’t has for our welfare?
They are just looking out for us weak-willed saps, protecting us from ourselves.
I notice that state lotteries have not been made illegal by this act. I wonder if that has something to do with whose ox is being gored? Your analogy with the drug war is apt – offshore gambling being the pot and lotteries being the alcohol.
All hail the fucking nanny state, which will give me a ticket for not wearing a helmet when I ride my bike but thinks it perfectly acceptable to take money from those who produce and give it to those who do not.
I also read about this earlier today and had similar thoughts to Mr Bombadil. Could it be that gambling is such an important part of State income (and I believe the Republican have the Governorship in the majority of States) that the mafi\\ elected official do not like the competition and are using their monopoly on violence in an attempt to make the competition ‘sleep with the fishes’?
By the way. Remind me. There is a difference between organized crime and government. Isn’t there?
By the way. Remind me. There is a difference between organized crime and government. Isn’t there?
Yes, you can sometimes cut a deal with OC, and their taxes tend to be lower. Less record keeping needed too.
“…By a vote of 317 to 93…”
and then later you say:
“…A pox of both parties I say but at least the Democrats were on the right side of this issue….”
Huh, so there’s only 93 Democrats in the house?
Not going to defend the Elephants on this one, but seems there’s a whole bunch donkeys in bed with them.
So the lawmaker was a Barista (Bartender) and this somehow relates his vote on the gambling bill?
So we have two competing Nanny State interests here;
1.) Save stupid shitheads from squandering their money on-line gambling, so they go to a Casino.
2.) Let stupid shitheads loose their money and create a new victim class, complete with bottom feeding lawyers and class action suits ala the Tobacco Indstry.
… looks like the Republicans protected the state revenues from on-line competition all while stiffing the tort lawyers.
…. and this is a bad thing?
Er, dude, just look at the guys name! I thought it was kinda witty.
The congressman is called GOODLATTE!!! Good Latte. Geddit?
Oh, I was beat to it. Sorry.
Actually, I’ve long thought that the legality of Americans doing online offshore gambling was a big reason why secure anonymous digital cash has not taken off as previously predicted. Now that they’ve outlawed it, a good and proper black market will develop using previously developed digital cash schemes to continue to pay for it.
Now, there is a good Constitutional argument to be made that the anti-gambling bill was unconstitutional, since it was based on the commerce clause, however, prior rulings have stated that bans produce no commerce, ergo cannot be considered to be constitutional regulation. The Act negates its own authority for being.
One man’s (or a House’s) stupidity is another man’s opportunity.
It’s funny that they fail to see that they are meddling with something way beyond their control or ability to comprehend in a rational fashion.
I look forward to providing US citizens with whatever tools they require to access the markets they demand.
I look forward to providing US citizens with whatever tools they require to access the markets they demand.
Good Luck! But be prepared to be extradited.
Looks like the Democrats supported it 115-76.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll363.xml
And here in the state of Washington, the Democratic legislature and governor have just made online gambling a felony, as well as online talking about online gambling.
A dollar’ll get you ten that this will be as effective as all the previous anti-gambling laws throughout history.
Another point: if you think about it, online gambling is international trade in risk. If the congress bans international trade in gambling, but not domestic trade in gambling (its own lotteries, indian casinos, las vegas, atlantic city etc), then it is erecting trade barriers that violate GATT which can be protested in the WTO.
I look forward to using those tools. And this from someone who almost never gambles. What the hell happened to my country?
I hope this dies in the Senate.
The hypocrisy of this is shown by the fact, as a commenter said higher up, that many states have their own lotteries. And of course in the Native Indian reservations, there are casinos. The whole moral panic crap about online gambling looks like an attempt to shore up the existing gambling enterprises and the tax take that comes out of them.
Gambling addiction is a problem, but of course it would take guts to come out for a total ban. And in any event, if this creep applied his own logic, he’d argue for the closure of Wall Street and the derivatives markets.
I get the impression that a lot of libertarian-minded folk might vote Democrat if — big if — the donkeys run a half-decent candidate next time. The GOP is becoming more of a nanny-state, big spending joke by the minute. Rather like Britain’s Conservatives, in fact.
Brandon,
Nothing has happened to your country, it has always had a puritanical authoritarian streak.
Prohibition anyone?
Not to mention the whole stupid war on drugs, which has achieved nothing positive whatsoever, and has managed to (amongst other things) destabilise much of Latin America, fund the Taliban, erode everyone’s civil liberties, cause people with terminal illnesses to die in agony, and various other stuff. I love America, but minus several million out of ten for good thinking on that one.
I wonder, will the gambling companies start sponsoring Free Haven?
http://www.freehaven.net/
SJG
This is daft, and of course the hypocrisy of it all is considerable when one considers how much tax the states get from monopolistic national lotteries.
A previous post of mine saying this hit the spam filter. Not sure why – I did not accuse the politician in question of being the Devil or suchlike.
I think this will only strangle (perhaps) the credit card companies. There is such a thing as PayPal after all & it is not a credit card. Or people will invent something else, which is more anonymous and secure..
As noted already, 317-93 shows this wasn’t a “Republican” thing (and the odds are the majority of the “nays” were Elephants); you can bet a lot of the “yea” votes were from Reps attempting to protect their state’s lottery incomes, same as their collective lust to apply taxes to any and every form of ‘net commerce. As far as most of them are concerned, any financial transaction involving an American citizen requires government, be it federal, state or city, to get a piece of the pot.
My state, Ohio, is losing millions to neighboring states that allow limited riverboat gambling.
Note: I’ve never understood laws that allow gambling only if the casino floats — does floting prevent addiction.
While I’m for government free from overly-burdensome taxation, this is a huge missed opportunity for tax revenue. Those in Washington are looking out for state lotteries, but they also want bigger federal government. Why not allow internet gambling and tax the hell out of it?
Many Democrats said the messure did not go far enough – “loopholes” and so on.
However, your point is well taken. Neither party is really interested in liberty.
The Republican party came (mostly) from the Whig party – they are a business party, a rather different thing from a freedom party.
If mainstream business folk support an anti freedom measure (such as central banking, trade taxes, bans on certain forms of business that other business people do not like….) then the Republican party will tend to support the measure also.
The Democrats used to be (in the main) a pro freedom party. But they turned their backs on that in 1896. For all his faults (such as the I.C.C.) President Cleveland was basically pro freedm – but the Popularist wing of the Democrats won in 1896 and the Democrats have never really been pro freedom since then.
Of course it is a complex story after this (with different States having different stories), but basically there were a few decades of drift and then F.D.R. provided mainstream Democrats with a new set of principles – radical statism.
This remains the basic Democrat philosophy to this day.
Broadly speaking the Republicans are pragmatic – they may even support freedom if there are votes in doing so.
Whereas the Democrats support more government spending and regulations ON PRINCIPLE.
Very good synopsis Mark.
Or Paul, or whatever the hell your name is.
Personally I don’t know what the problem is, if someone loses big, they can only deduct up to their losses, while someone who wins big pays taxes. Perhaps they’re more concerned that they aren’t getting their cut versus the
blessedlawful modes of gambling? Sounds to me like they’re not so concerned about people losing their savings, and children going hungry, but that their not getting their share from the winners consistently.It’s a shame that Rep. Paul from TX is now seen as some crazy loner (he is one of the 17 Repubs to vote no). It just goes to show that the two party system is a 1984-ish joke.
I know I make reference to the $46 trillion accrual debt the US faces in just about every comment I make, but it is so frustrating that liberty restricting laws, that will have little affect, are running off the assembly line while we face a major economic impasse/collapse. Both sides are creating boogey-men that they must slay, that are small potatoes relative to the social transfer monster they’ve both created. Meanwhile we talk about gays, and gambling, and car seats for 8 year olds, etc etc etc while we have major crisis upon us, and little or nothing other than a slight “privatization” (that was nothing of the kind) that went nowhere anyway.
“Yeah, let’s get rid of that gambling scourge. Not that it matters much because we’ll be taking it all, where ever it is, anyway.”
Here in Costa Rica, the offshore gambling capital of the world, none of the sportsbook operators and employees that I know are worried about this. Politicians are pissing into the wind if they think they have the slightest chance of putting a crimp in web-based gambling.