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Border controls, who needs ‘em? Reduced government spending, nah! Improving the economy, we can wait on that. The voters have spoken and what they really want from the GOP is (drum roll please), legalized online poker.
Gambling911.com isn’t making this one up folks.
Under the liberty and freedom section of the new GOP website America Speaking Out, more Americans voted to legalize Internet poker than weighed in on any other issue, the Politico website points out.
But is the GOP listening?
This past week, hearings were held in Washington, D.C. to discuss the prospects of legalized online poker and other forms of gaming a la H.R. 2267, which looks to amend title 31, United States Code, to provide for the licensing of Internet gambling activities by the Secretary of the Treasury, and to provide for consumer protections on the Internet as well as to enforce the tax code.
The most outspoken critic of H.R. 2267 was none other than Republican representative in Congress, Spencer Bachus of Alabama.
It was also the GOP, courtesy of Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) who pushed through legislation effectively prohibiting online poker back in 2006, though that particular legislation features so many carve outs it has been almost impossible to enforce.
The fact that America has not already regulated Internet poker but has actually tried to prohibit it by deputizing U.S. banks to play the morality police is bizarre, writes Alfonse D’Amato, the long time Republican Senator of New York who is now chairman of the powerful Poker Players Alliance.
D’Amato adds: “It is fashionable these days for politicians to ask for voters’ input about what they want from their government. When will it become fashionable for these politicians to actually listen to the voters?”
“The freedom to play poker is not one of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. But when the Founding Fathers conceived of a new nation, they never dreamed that someday Congress would dream up a law to ban that particular freedom — especially when such a ban was so clearly against the wishes of the American people.
“What the Founders did envision was a government that would necessarily listen to the wishes and demands of those who sent them to Washington in the first place.”
Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
