Texas Holdem Poker Blog

Of course, the States argue that lotteries generate billions of dollars for education. But if you taxed online poker the PPA has estimated that revenue would be over 3 billion. That would fund the Port Security Act to which the bill was attached. Or the money could go to education, raising teachers' salaries, expanding police forces, whatever the state wanted it for. So that argument is specious since it only applies if the government chooses not to regulate online poker.

Another huge problem I have with the Law has to do with censorship and prohibition. Anytime the government tells us what we, as consenting adults, can do with our discretionary income we are treading dangerous ground. The authors of the bill argue that 5% of the population have an issue with gaming online. Well I will not argue with that statistic. But, rather, I will point out that 5% of the population also has a problem with online shopping. 5% of the population has a problem with online stock trading. 5% of the population has a problem with alcohol. This is because the numbers of people who have addiction issues in our population is around 5%.

We tried once to sacrifice the majorities freedom of choice to protect a small minority who had a problem. It was called Prohibition. What prohibition brought us was tommy guns and Al Capone. Before prohibition, the population was deliverd a safe and regulated product. During prohibition, demand was still the same and now people were delivered an unregulated prodcut brewed out of backyard stills that were often unsafe. It brought violence and more problems than it solved and we should have learned our lesson from that.

If we allow the goverment to erode our freedom and censor what we do with our own free time and our own disposable income in the privacy of our own homes, what is next? Is the government going to tell the banks to monitor our online shopping too? If we want to buy that third pair of shoes online that week is the bank going to deny our ability to transfer money onto ShopBop.com? Censorship is dangerous ground to tread. We have proven that in the past. Remeber when Mark Twain was banned from some libraries in the country?

The current administration has created an atmosphere of fear. And they have used that fear to further and further erode our personal freedoms and degrade the spirit of our Constitution. Benjamin Franklin warned that in times of heightened fear we must not give in to a government who claims that to keep the population safe that its people must give up certain personal freedom. Franklin knew that that only led to a more unsafe population where the people were in danger from its own government rather than an outside threat. It is why The Constituation is so clear on right to privacy. I believe our Founding Fathers knew what they were talking about.

As for what I am doing about it, as soon as the bill was passed I went on a media tour for the PPA, http://www.pokerplayersalliance.org/ They are doing amazing work lobbying the lawmakers on Capitol Hill and I think they are really making a difference. If you want your voice to be heard on this issue, please join that organization. And let your voice be heard with your vote in the next election.

xo
annie