A Little Selective Morality
2007-11-19 15:02:05
By:
Gene Bromberg
While there have been positive developments on the political front for
online poker, that doesn't mean there aren't hypocrites in high office still taking trying to take shots at innocent people who like to play cards. And the
actions of Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick are among the more cynical we've seen so far in the debates over gambling.
Patrick introduced a bill to allow three new casinos to be built in the state. Ten-year licenses would be sold for the casinos for between $200 and $300 million apiece. Add to that the tax revenue the casions would bring in along with an influx of jobs, it would be a nice little score for the state coffers.
However, buried in Patrick's bill is a nasty little surprise for his casino's potential customers--Massachusetts poker players who choose to play online would face a two-year jail term and a $25,000 fine. I think this bears repeating--Governor Patrick wants Massachusetts residents who play poker online to go to prison for TWO YEARS. He proposes this even as he puts forward a bill legalizing casinos in his state.
Play poker in one of his casinos, you're a welcome guest. Play from the comfort of your own home (which, of course, doesn't bring in any tax revenue for the state) and you're worthy of incarceration.
As you might expect, Patrick's quiet attack on
online poker>/a< didn't go undetected, or unremarked. Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, who of course has introduced a bill in Congress to legalize online gaming, didn't think much of his fellow Democrat's bill.
"Why is gambling in a casino OK and gambling on the Internet is not?" Frank said. "He's making a big mistake. He's giving opponents an argument against him."
Another quote in the Boston Globe piece sums up the situation quite nicely:
"If you were cynical about it, you'd think that they're trying to set up a monopoly for the casinos," said David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
If Patrick's intentions is for the casinos to bring in much-needed revenue to the state, it seems especially strange that his anti-online-gaming stance will directly subtract from the bottom line:
"It (Patrick's bill) does not say specifically how the state would enforce the ban, but the bill would establish an independent Gaming Control Authority and a division of Gaming Investigation and Enforcement within the attorney general's office, which would have broad powers to enforce regulations and investigate crimes."
Awesome. Instead of letting Massachusettians (Massachusettsese?) play poker online, Patrick prefers to create a "independent" Gaming Control Authority and have a separate division in the attorney general's office to investigate these "crimes". And then prosecute these miscreants and lock them up for two years. Didn't they fight a bunch of battles in Massachusetts during the Revolution to keep King George from pulling crap like this?
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