Bush Fighting Internet Gambling
U.S. President Bush is expected to sign a bill this week which makes it harder for gamblers to place bets on the Internet.
Bush was expected to act quickly after Congress approved the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act making it illegal for financial institutions and credit card companies to process payments to settle Internet bets. It also created stiff penalties for online wagers.
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The bill’s chief Senate sponsor was conservative Republican Jon Kyl, who, like Leach, has said he believed Internet gambling was a moral threat. He has called online betting as the Internet version of crack cocaine.
Gambling is regulated in the Netherlands as well. To ‘protect’ the people from, umh, well, themselves they have decided that the government should regulate it and… receive lots and lots of money from gambling. Hilarious: one should not gamble, yet when one does it nonetheless, the government is standing by to cash in bigtime. The utter hypocrisy of a ‘moral government’. Absolutely ridiculous.
11 Responses to “Bush Fighting Internet Gambling”
I wonder if that pillar of virtue (Bill Bennett) will be there for the signing. I wonder how his comp’s stand at the WH?
When you get to the state level the morality of it all changes. Here in Texa$ (Republican) we have the lotto. It’s ok to gamble as long as big brotha gets his dues.
Kinda funny considering Arizona (Kyl’s home state) has a lottery as well.
http://www.arizonalottery.com/
Oh the moral hypocricy …
Is it to protect people against themselves or is it to protect state lotteries and the gaming interests in Nevada from competition ?
MichaelF: good question. The argument they are using quite obviously is aimed at protecting people… from themselves. The result of worrying too much about what moral values people live by and to less on big government (;)).
However, it is a fair possibility that the financial interest reasons you mentioned play a role in it, in the US, as well.
Rubyeyes -> exactly. Utterly ridiculous ánd hypocritical.
Most states have lotto, an especially unattractive form of gambling, and then end up not using the money for what they originally claimed they would.
No question Vegas wants in on the action that’s going to all the off-shore bookies.
I definitely think attempting to ban gambling is the wrong approach.
Uhm, I think gambling is an activity that is boring and dumb, but I think golf is boring and I KNOW most television is dumb, and I wouldn’t put laws against either. Gambling does destroy some individuals, but so does alcohol, with the added bonus that no one ever got killed by a driver that had had one too many gambling chips.
I don’t get it, if people want to ruin themselves why shouldn’t they? At the most I would put safeguards up to try to protect helpless spouses and/or children from poverty as a result of one persons habit.
I understand the cynical reason for gambling “regulation” what I don’t understand is the moral conservatives reason for being so anti-gambling. But then, I don’t get why they give a damn about what you do in the bedroon either.
I think MichaelF is right, follow the money. Who will profit from the passage of this bill?
Is horse racing still excluded too? If so just another loop-hole in the morality of the GOP.
Lynx :
Uhm, I think gambling is an activity that is boring and dumb..
I agree . Hence the reason I play blackjack .
So much for the GOP being the party of “smaller government.” When it comes to sex, drugs, and gambling, Republicans abandon all pretenses of supporting the free market and demand that the heavy hand of government punish anyone who dares to engage in activities that they personally find distasteful (except in the case of Bill Bennett and Rush Limbaugh, who self-righteously condemn these activities and then engage in these activities themselves).
If Republican politicians understood free market economics half as much as they claimed, they’d understand that prohibiting victimless crimes only leads to black markets where such activities thrives and victims are left without legal recourse.
Oh, and we can blame Senator Frist for tacking on the Internet Gambling Ban to the Port Security Bill at the last minute in order to pass this ban without allowing any debate. What internet gambling has to do with port security, I’ll never know.
Radley Balko over at The Agitator wonders how many senators who vote against this protectionist piece of legislation will be labeled as being “soft on terrorism.”
Just another example of how the GOP is using the War on Terrorism to advance pet causes that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.
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