This really is part 3 of a multipart series of articles regarding proposed anti-gambling legislation. In this short article, I continue the discussion of the reasons claimed to make this legislation necessary, and the facts that exist in actuality, including the Jack Abramoff connection and the addictive nature of online gambling.
The legislators want to protect us from something, or are they? The whole lot seems only a little confusing to state the least.
As mentioned in previous articles, the House, and the Senate, are yet again considering the matter of “Online Gambling” ;.Bills have already been submitted by Congressmen Goodlatte and Leach, and also by Senator Kyl.안전놀이터
The bill being put forward by Rep. Goodlatte, The Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, gets the stated intention of updating the Wire Act to outlaw all types of online gambling, to make it illegal for a gambling business to accept credit and electronic transfers, and to force ISPs and Common Carriers to block access to gambling related sites at the request of law enforcement.
In the same way does Rep. Goodlatte, Sen. Kyl, in his bill, Prohibition on Funding of Unlawful Internet Gambling, helps it be illegal for gambling businesses to accept charge cards, electronic transfers, checks and other forms of payment with the aim on placing illegal bets, but his bill does not address the ones that place bets.
The bill submitted by Rep. Leach, The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, is simply a copy of the bill submitted by Sen. Kyl. It centers on preventing gambling businesses from accepting charge cards, electronic transfers, checks, and other payments, and like the Kyl bill makes no changes from what is legal, or illegal.
In a quote from Goodlatte we’ve “Jack Abramoff’s total disregard for the legislative process has allowed Internet gambling to keep thriving into what’s now a twelve billion-dollar business which not only hurts individuals and their families but makes the economy suffer by draining billions of dollars from the United States and serves as an automobile for the money laundering.”
There are numerous interesting points here.
First of all, we’ve only a little misdirection about Jack Abramoff and his disregard for the legislative process. This comment, and others which were made, follow the logic that; 1) Jack Abramoff was in opposition to these bills, 2) Jack Abramoff was corrupt, 3) to prevent being connected with corruption you ought to vote for these bills. This really is needless to say absurd. If we followed this logic to the extreme, we must go back and void any bills that Abramoff supported, and enact any bills he opposed, regardless of the content of the bill. Legislation must certanly be passed, or not, on the basis of the merits of the proposed legislation, not on the basis of the trustworthiness of one individual.
As well, when Jack Abramoff opposed previous bills, he did so on behalf of his client eLottery, attempting to get the sale of lottery tickets online excluded from the legislation. Ironically, the protections he was seeking are most notable new bill, since state run lotteries would be excluded. Jack Abramoff therefore could possibly support this legislation since it offers him what he was looking for. That does not stop Goodlatte and others from using Abramoff’s recent disgrace as a way to make their bill look better, thus which makes it not merely an anti-gambling bill, but somehow an ant-corruption bill as well, while at the same time rewarding Abramoff and his client.
Next, is his statement that online gambling “hurts individuals and their families” ;.I presume that what he is talking about here is problem gambling. Let’s set the record straight. Just a small percentage of gamblers become problem gamblers, not just a small percentage of the population, but just a small percentage of gamblers.
Additionally, Goodlatte could have you think that Internet gambling is more addictive than casino gambling. Sen. Kyl has gone so far as to call online gambling “the crack cocaine of gambling”, attributing the quote for some un-named researcher. To the contrary, researchers show that gambling on the Internet is no further addictive than gambling in a casino. As a matter of fact, electronic gambling machines, present in casinos and race tracks all around the country are far more addictive than online gambling.
In research by N. Dowling, D. Smith and T. Thomas at the School of Health Sciences, RMIT University, Bundoora, Australia “There is a general view that electronic gaming is the absolute most ‘addictive’ kind of gambling, in that it contributes more to causing problem gambling than every other gambling activity. As a result, electronic gaming machines have already been referred to as the ‘crack-cocaine’ of gambling” ;.
As to Sen. Kyls claim about “crack cocaine” include “Cultural busybodies have long known that in post this-is-your-brain-on-drugs America, the simplest way to win attention for a pet cause would be to compare it for some scourge that already scares the bejesus out of America” ;.And “Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, it was only a little different. Then, a troubling new trend wasn’t officially on the general public radar until someone dubbed it “the new crack cocaine.” And “On his Vice Squad weblog, University of Chicago Professor Jim Leitzel notes that a Google search finds experts declaring slot machines (The New York Times Magazine), video slots (the Canadian Press) and casinos (Madison Capital Times) the “crack cocaine of gambling,” respectively. Leitzel’s search also unearthed that spam email is “the crack cocaine of advertising” (Sarasota, Fla. Herald Tribune), and that cybersex is a type of sexual “spirtual crack cocaine” (Focus on the Family)” ;.
As we could see, calling something the “crack cocaine” has turned into a meaningless metaphor, showing only that the individual making the statement feels it’s important. But then we knew that Rep. Goodlatte, Rep. Leach and Sen. Kyl felt that the matter was important or they wouldn’t have brought the proposed legislation forward.
