Gambling Bill Delayed

[Harvey]

WASHINGTON, DC – As reported by Reuters: "A bill to outlaw most forms of Internet gambling appears unlikely to win U.S. Senate passage before senators begin a month-long recess on August 4, two Republican leadership aides said on Tuesday.

"They said backers of the legislation were trying to build support for it and resolve differences as the Senate focuses on other legislative matters and gets ready for a summer break.

"The bill was not among the priorities outlined by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, during a session with reporters on Tuesday in which he laid out measures he hopes to wrap up before the August vacation.

"…Backers of the legislation had hoped to swiftly push it through the Senate this month after the U.S. arrest of David Carruthers, the former chief executive of U.K.-listed BETonSPORTS, on charges of racketeering and conspiracy…"

[Harvey]

The Senate reconvenes after the long Labor Day weekend in the US and the anti-internet gambling bill is a steamy hot issue they will face upon returning. The bill gained some serious momentum after a hearing at Coe College was led by bill leaders Bill Frist and Jim Leach, both Republicans.

With the amount of heated support by the two it makes one wonder whether this is just a political issue they are supporting for politics sake, while having no merit to what the majority of the public really wants.

Frist and Leach are gaining quite a bit of recognition from people who had previously never heard of them before. They are getting stronger support from people who already supported them. There seems to be good reason why the two of them are promoting the bill so vehemently.

Many polls have been taken over the past several months, some on gambling websites which of course would be biased, but others from the New York Times, "http://discussions.wsj.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=wsjvoices&nav=messages&msg=3828 ", and other respected publications. All, that means every single poll, overwhelmingly reveal that the American public would like internet gambling to be legalized, not illegalized. Most opinion polls agree there are problems, however, most agree the answer is to regulate, not to ban.

88 other countries, including the UK and France, have legalized internet gambling. Italy, one of the only larger countries to actually ban the activity, faced serious protests from its citizens and is currently in the process of reinstating online gambling.

Leach and Frist make long mention in every speech they make against online gambling siting the college boy who lost his life savings then robbed a bank in order to pay off his debt. They also mention five known suicides as a result of adults losing their money to online gambling. And their last argument is that children can gamble with their parents' credit cards too easily online.

Leach and Frist never seem to mention the millions, we are talking more than 6,000,000 unique people, a year who gamble online for their entertainment purposes WITHOUT any harm done. They seem to site the couple hundred people who have let 'online gambling go bad' while they disregard the other 5,999,457 instances where people actually harmlessly enjoy a night on their computer, interacting with other adults who enjoy playing the same poker game that they do.

This bill, though, has many more obstacles it must confront before passing. The main obstacle it has to overcome is the world of banking. Passing the bill would put a huge burdern on the banking systems of America. The bill would make it illegal to transfer funds via a bank or credit card online to gambling operations. That means the banks would have to monitor this somehow, and if they fail to monitor it correctly they will be held liable. The banks are equally opposed to this bill.

Another side of the bill says that if it is passed your ISP server will not be allowed to let you visit a gambling website. This means the ISP would have to decipher whether an online site is a gambling site or if it is not. Not being able to properly enforce this law would mean federal punishment for the ISP's. Not wanting to face federal punishment, ISP's would in turn not let you visit any site even remotely related to gambling, like Vegas or Atlantic City information sites, or even the CasinoGamblingWeb.com.