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On the right is a videotaped debate from CNBC on whether legalizing online gambling is a good idea. Sorry about the commercial!
The reason I'm posting it is because I
found it rather entertaining. There's a guy named Les Bernal, (the bald dude)from
Stop Predatory Gambling and
when he's done with his rant, the CNBC announcer actuallykind of makes a little
fun of him,asking him if a PR firm came
up with the name "predatory" gambling
("you make it sound like like "child
porn," he says at one point)
Later he starts questioning his statistics
saying it sounds as if he just made
them up off the top of his head.
When Les (the bald dude) says
he got the statistics from a study done
in Canada, the announcer actually says,
"Avoid Canada Joke Here". Funny stuff.
He then goes on to tell the bald dude
that he's so extreme and that his
"bible toting" is hurting his case.
The only case I can make is that "Les is NOT more." As I said, this is some pretty funny stuff...especially considering it's on CNBC and not YouTube.com
For those unaware, on Wednesday Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., introduced a bill to legalizeInternet gambling. I think it's H.R. 2268. Harrah's today said it supports it. So did MGM. Oh, and YouBet.com too. Surprise!Supporters say it could yield billions in taxrevenue, but others say it could raise gambling addiction. What are your views? As always, feel free to comment. Just click the title of this post and the comment box will be at the bottom of the post.
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The video is indeed funny but the CNBC announcer was unfair, rude and almost obscene. Ok, maybe Les is not that charismatic, but I would have to agree with him. We have already legalized too many vices. We do not need another form of escape. Online gambling will propogate despondency and lost futures. You get hooked on the highs and lows. You realize it the perfect place for your emotions. You're in heaven until your last dollar is gone. You are blank and desolate until your next paycheck. You beg, borrow or steal to keep it going untill you hit rock bottom.
I got addicted to online gambing and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and the prime of my life because it was available.
Recovering gambling addict
RS...first, let me say that I am sympathetic to your story. I personally just spent 4 days in Las Vegas and lost nothing (didn't bet anything either) so I cannot be empathetic. I suppose that the only way I could relate to people having a gambling problem is by making a couple analogies.
Back when I grew up, everybody smoked cigarettes. TV personalities, movie stars, parents, friends of parents...etc. So, you know who got addicted to smokes. Turns out that cigarettes are not only addictive...they kill thousands of people per year..yet, in spite of this, they're not illegal. Instead cigarettes are "heavily taxed," to the tune of billions of dollars in revenue for the Feds. So a few thousand lives in return for billions in tax revenue? Get serious. They probably justify it with the question: If cigarettes were made illegal would people stop buying tobacco? The answer is no.
Case in point: The Feds made Alcohol illegal from 1919 to 1933 which also coincided with the Great Depression. So not only did that NOT work...it "blew up" in their face. It resulted in the creation of a whole new industry, and what flourished was an "underground world" of speakeasy's, corruption, organized crime and tommie guns. (oh, and come to think of it, a good Elton John song called Danny Bailey)
Pragmatically speaking, the Fed's just dropped over a trillion dollars to theoretically "avoid" the next "Depression" Speaking of addiction, the truth is that the Feds are "addicted" to tax dollars..therefore, based on the fact that a regulated online gambling industry would create billions in new tax revenue, I expect H.R. 2268 will eventually pass.
The importance of the governments "addiction to tax dollars" far outweighs a few hundred, or a few thousand people losing their fortune. It may be "Machiavellian" but that would NOT be either the first nor the last time. It is what it is.
On May 6, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced a companion bill to ensure that individual and corporate taxes owed on regulated Internet gambling activities under Rep. Barney Frank's (D-MA) Internet gambling regulation and consumer protection bill (H.R. 2267) would be collected. McDermott's bill is called the Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act (H.R. 2268).
If taxes were collected on regulated Internet gambling activity within the United States, the U.S. could collect from $48.6 billion (excluding online sports gambling) to $62.7 billion (including online sports gambling) for federal government coffers over the next decade, according to a recent analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Without the Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act, Americans will continue to play poker online and gamble on the Internet, and these revenues will remain uncollected.