Is Online Poker Legal?

It’s not often that you see a conservative website rip apart a Republican but Big Government does exactly that. They focus on Kyl’s childish attempt to block Treasury nominees in order to get back at the Obama administration for agreeing to delay the UIGEA. Here are some of the more choice parts of the article.

So, is Kyl standing up for improvements in the health care bill, reduced federal spending, or limits on federal power? No, he is not. Sadly, Sen. Kyl is wasting this powerful, one-shot weapon to register his dissatisfaction with the administration’s granting of a delay in implementing Internet poker and gaming-related financial regulations — a delay that was requested by his fellow Republicans.

The bottom line is that UIGEA is completely unworkable and unenforceable. Many traditionally conservative organizations agree that the act needs to be fixed. These groups include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, many financial institutions and credit unions, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

As a result of the many problems with UIGEA, twenty-one Republican lawmakers wrote to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to ask him to delay implementation of the regulations that enact key provisions of the law for six months. Included in this group are Senator Mitch McConnell, the entire Kentucky Congressional delegation, Rep. Peter King, and Rep. Ron Paul. Only two wrote in support of UIGEA — Sen. Kyl and the hapless Rep. Spencer Bachus.

As a result of the mainstreaming of poker, Americans now realize that the talking points of those who wish to stop others from playing poker are quite exaggerated. The dwindling ranks of poker prohibitionists (who represent the final remnants of the Prohibitionists of the Progressive Era) will say whatever they think needs to be said to persuade others to vote for poker bans. No one knows if they are lying on purpose or are simply clouded by their preconceptions, but fortunately there are real studies and real experiences from which to draw data.

As I mentioned in my last column, the UK, a nation with ample licensed online and “bricks and mortar” gaming, has a problem gaming rate of just 0.6%. This is unchanged from the pre-Internet gaming days of 1999. That is hardly the dire situation anti-gaming folks would have us believe. Likewise, online poker is available right now in all fifty states, and there has been no massive explosion of people with excessive gaming habits. Also, as online poker is already widespread throughout America, poker rights supporters are not seeking an expansion of online poker. Rather, they simply seek to bring the industry onshore, where it will create American jobs while placing the industry under the auspices of American law.

The article is definitely worth a read in it’s entirety so go check it out.

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Usually it’s the Democrats in the US Congress that look to push legislation that tells us what is good and not good for us but Jon Stossel has a great little blog post about Senator Jon Kyl who was one of the architects of the UIGEA. It seems Kyl is being a little baby about his anti-gambling bill and is holding up Treasury Dept appointments because he’s mad that Obama is stalling on implementing the full force of the UIGEA. Kyl’s even using the old “click the mouse and lose your house” quote on his website to justify his stubbornness.

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