Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007

While I'd be surprised if this bill makes it into law, we can always hope. This is a breath of fresh air after the UIGEA.

 

lets face it, the government can always use a new source of revenue(tax)!

 

You'd think they'd be thinking along those lines. But in this case, I doubt it.

 

Actually, I'd prefer it if they didn't tax or regulate it, but I will settle for that over the ************ status quo.

 

Well said. Repped.

 

In principle, yes. Unfortunately the principle is IMO misplaced.

This is still a crap excuse for a bill that should and will get voted down if it ever gets that far.

What's next? Will we now need a license, oversight, and regulation to purchase a Powerball ticket, plunk $2 down on a dog or horse, sell something on E-bay, walk into a casino, or have dinner out?

Hello? Poker is legal, gambling is legal, poker is a game of skill – as is sports betting. Powerball is legal, lottery is legal, pull-tabs are legal, para-mutual racing is legal – even via internet. A great many other pure games of thin-to-none chance are still fully legal. This bill only serves to capture money that has, with predictable economic efficiency, gone overseas and will continue to do so, laws or not. Poker sites continue to break participation records every Sunday. Americans numbering in the millions still play. But, yet I couldn’t put $10 down through my American accounts on my Wizards to crush Toronto last Wednesday.

Also, ask yourself this: Is your government using your money wisely? Didn’t think so. So what makes you think they will spend even more money any more efficiently?

This whole issue of imposing morals pisses me off. This problem was created in cowardly and back-door fashion as a late add-on to a reactionary defense bill that nobody with aspirations to continued political life would dare vote against. My solution? Tax the be-jee-sus out of religion. That would solve it nicely....Oh, and get their 16 channels off of my cable system while you're at it. Oh Lord, why must I lose ESPN Classic and GSN while having to tolerate 15 thieves begging my money in Your Name 24 hours a day and have to pay for the “privledge”? ...I digress.

The solution is not to tax, over-regulate, and create a new mess for the exceedingly overburdened, out-manned, and outgunned Treasury Department.

The solution is to first stop allowing your money to come into the soiled greedy hands of organized religion at all, or at the very least untaxed. Second to simply reverse the original bogusly enacted code MR. Franks is trying to reverse with this waseful bill. Use the new found money to expand the IRS to numbers proper for our vastly increased numbers as aa American populace.

Easy.

In absence of such measure, the government will find that the current code prohibiting money from flowing freely will simply become ignored or unenforceable law like so many expired codes that have outlived usefulness or relevancy that remain today on our nations’ law books.

I believe Barney Frank has the interests of 'net gamblers at heart from Poker to Punting. He's attempting what little there is to attempt. Still, this is a bad idea. New laws are not necessary. Regulation is not necessary. You can still gamble on-line today most places in America. The problem for an average Joe is that getting the money in and out requires too many complicated steps. The problem for our government is that their roll as pimp has been minimized through market efficiency, which is exactly what should have happened given their original distain and economic law.

We don’t need further government infringement on our freedoms. We need less. Our government f'ed this up from the jump. The industry could have been as regulated as any other and taxed from the beginning. Instead it was ignored and left to foreign countries to be intelligent. This, not unlike many other industries throughout history. This results from religion and their ridiculous amount of free cash infesting our politics - unlike most every other developed nation on the planet. Make ‘net gambling universally “legal” again now? Great! Then be consistent and lump in hemp and cannibis. I’m just saying this as an example – I’m not a smoker in any form.

BTW, internet gains ARE CURRENTLY TAXED. It's called "Income" and is supposed to be reported as any other income. If you are not reporting income now, you are still in violation of our tax code. New code isn’t required to make this despicable act illegal, it is already.

This is an wastefully asinine bill that functions as a second error that fails to properly correct the original error.

Write a letter, but write one that kills this bill and demands the return of freedoms stripped from us that we enjoyed circa 2000.

-WC

 

Let me make it clear -- as I said earlier, I support the bill, but my first choice would be to have no regulation of all. Having said that, regulation is a lesser evil than the status quo, which has landed executives from BetOnSports and Neteller in jail and made it harder to gamble online. True, it is not illegal for individuals to gamble online, but eventually, if DoJ keeps cracking down, it will be darn near impossible.

I share your opprobrium for the misguided moral crusading that got us here, but realistically speaking, we're not headed back to the mythical "golden days" of a few years ago. Letting the status quo persist while pushing for a "better" arrangement is only going to preserve the status quo, meaning that it is going to get harder to deposit and CEO's of online gambling companies (and the companies that handle money) are going to continue getting thrown in jail. Eventually doing business in the U.S. market will be considered too big a risk and companies will follow the lead of Party Poker and leave the U.S. entirely.

I'd rather pay higher rake (and let's be honest, rake in online card rooms is pretty low) than not be able to play at all.

 

Sorry, I'm a few decades behind on my reading of the dictionary...my what?


I was clear on both of your views before posting. To me this issue has a connontation, if taken to the extreme and minus the social aspects, that equates to things like slavery, prohibition, and separately other industries that were or are overregulated.

The first two placed widely accepted improper limits on human freedoms, generally because a segment of our society in power deemed it to be morally proper. Neither code held or was obeyed. The last has been proven throughout history to be a eggregiously bad idea in most every industry. Any Economist worth a degree will tell you that less regulation where possible is the way to go. No regulation is required for 'net gambling. The income is already taxable, trackable, and therefore taxed.

You want to tell me that the current code prevents fraud, etc. Wrong, but we do already have laws in place penalizing such actions from foreign businesses. Here's another hole. How do you keep non-compliant and non-US liscenced 'net businesses from being accessed? Are we China now? Do banks have time and will to prevent funding to XYZ but allow ABC? There are already transfer limits in place to prevent the marco-error issues. That's part of the Orwellian named Patriot Act.

With respect, I believe your attitudes are much closer to the laissez faire stance.

The only opportunity in this bill is for any given lawmaker to run a Pork Attachment 101 class on the end of this thing in exchange for a vote here and there...which, BTW, is why this is an issue in the first place. Why do you think the huge numbers are up front on this bill? Poker is new to this law-making process. Mr. Frank isn't. This bill is a stamp of approval on the reductions of our freedoms. It isn't OK. It might be fractionally better, but it still isn't right.

This is a bad bill on so many levels that, much like the legal side of the slavery issue pre-Lincoln, doesn't even prevent states from superceeding the Fed. code.

This bill is 6 soaked band-aids covering a worker's wound in need of stitches, extensive PT, and an OSHA law to prevent the situation in the first place.

OK, I'm done. Resume soccer.

 

First off, the comparison to slavery is specious and a non sequitur in this discussion as far as I'm concerned.

Secondly, let me be clear on something else, because unless I'm reading your post wrong (very possible, it is long and I have a microscopic attention span), you seem to think I believe that the status quo somehow prevents fraud. I don't, in fact I think it promotes it.

Yes. As I've said -- I don't think this needs to be regulated at all. Having said that, even if this bill is bad in that it provides for taxation of online betting (btw, if I understand correctly, it taxes the cardroom, not the user), it is still preferable to the status quo.

A question: given that we agree that unregulated gambling is the ideal solution, do you prefer the status quo over Frank's bill? I prefer Frank's bill.

Having said that, it has very little chance of becoming law.