US Government Goes After Online Gambling

In a bill passed by the house and soon to go to the senate, online gambling would not only be illegal as it is now, but would prohibit a gambling business from accepting credit cards, checks, wire transfers and electronic funds transfers in illegal gambling transactions.

This includes playing poker at partypoker.com or anywhere else online. It includes gambling on sports over the Internet as well.

The way it works is this; If you live in a state or country (US) where gambling is illegal, the company will not be able to accept your credit card or other forms of payment.

Many legislators are against gambling altogether and this is their way of stopping people from doing what they want with their own money. These moral midgets want to control what you can do, period.

However, I guess their morals only go so far, because online betting on horses will still be allowed. They preach the evils of gambling as the reason for the new law, then allow certain forms of gambling they approve of?

I hope to obtain a list soon of exactly who is voting for and against this choice piece of legislative crap.

You cannot legislate morality. What some politician thinks is immoral is irrelevant to the rest of the world. Each person has the right to determine what to do with their own hard earned money. Our government needs to be smaller, not larger. If they would stop sticking their nose where it doesn't belong, we'd have less problems.

Here is the big issue for me. What they say is illegal for US Citizens to do means nothing to the rest of the world. They cannot tell someone in Antigua what to do. They can't tell someone in any other country what to do. So Americans get to have LESS FREEDOM than people in other countries due to bills like this one.

People in all other countries will still be able to gamble online all they want. Our politicians seem to think that when they pass a law it affects the whole world somehow. Meglomaniacs and zealots don't belong in office. Anyone who votes for this bill fits into one of those two categories.

The real scoop; The Government makes money from online horse race betting. The offshore poker websites and other gambling companies aren't paying taxes to the US government. The US government said it was illegal for them to be based in the US, so they based themselves outside of the US. Now that they are profitable, the US government wants to be able to tax them and can't. The mistake was when they made it illegal for those companies to be based in the US.

by Chris McElroy
More things that just piss me off