Gambling Away the Republican Future?

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The all new Poker Players Alliance letter to President Obama is up on the PPA website. It focuses on the actions of Obama's DoJ against online poker players and demands that these actions stop. It takes just 60 seconds to send, so please send it now and please have your friends and family sent letters as well.

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by RICH MUNY

Continuing financial problems at Focus on the Family have resulted in more job cutbacks within the social conservative organization. The group recently announced a new round of layoffs, this latest one affecting 75 employees. This is expected to bring the number of employees down to 860 employees, from a high of about 1400 in 2002. However, the organization apparently still has plenty of cash to fund an expensive Washington lobbying effort, including a major Focus initiative to try to stop adults from playing online poker in their own homes with their own money.

Focus on the Family typically utilizes a two-pronged approach to achieving its goals. The first prong is the group's ministry.  The ministry assists people in choosing of their own free will the path Focus recommends.  The second prong is Focus' Congressional and state lobbying, where Focus seeks laws restricting behaviors the group deems immoral, thus using the power of the state to achieve its ends. Sadly, the fact that Focus is laying employees off while doubling-down on lobbying shows a disturbing shift in the direction of the organization.  It seems the group now prefers forcing the changes they seek through the power of the federal government over encouraging people to choose the appropriate path.

Regarding the latest round of layoffs, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger said, "Managers are meeting with their employees, praying with employees. We want to make sure that even after this process, they have a transition package and that's not just about money, but helping them find a new job." This is somewhat kind of Focus, perhaps, but I imagine it’s cold comfort to the families of the laid-off employees who know those salaries are now going to Washington lobbying. One wonders how many would have voluntarily given up their jobs to ensure that Focus had sufficient funding to continue their all-encompassing fight against poker players.  As poker players are showing no signs of giving up, one wonders how many years and how much donated money Focus is planning to put into this fight.

Anyone who believes Focus on the Family should focus on ministering to those in need while keeping the lobbying -- especially on issues like online poker -- on the back burner during lean times like these ought to write to Focus now. Let them know that you want your money to go to ministering and that you will not donate if they plan to use the bulk of your money on Capitol Hill lobbying. You can contact them at http://family.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/family.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=14190.

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The PPA's efforts are paying off in Washington, DC!  Legislation has been introduced in both the U.S. House and the Senate that will affirmatively license and regulate Internet poker.

These federal bills respect states' rights by allowing each state to choose whether its citizens can participate.  With Congressional action on these bills expected in the near future, we must start now to let your state's elected officials know we demand the right to play poker on the Internet.

In just 60 seconds, you can send a letter to your governor and lawmakers.  It is critical that your governor, state senator, and state representative hear from you TODAY. Your state officials need to know that passing up the opportunity to license and regulate online poker would limit your freedom while ignoring the needed revenue the program would bring to your state.

Please take a moment and send the following letter.  By doing so, you will help us to achieve our shared goal of protecting poker wherever it is played.  

Proud to Play Poker,
Alfonse D'Amato, Chairman
Poker Players Alliance

The Poker Players Alliance

Here's the letter:

The U.S. Congress is considering legislation to license, regulate, and tax online games of skill like poker. The legislation contains a provision that allows states to opt out of the federal licensing program, and the choice for our state to stay in or opt out will come shortly after implementation of the legislation. As a constituent, voter, and proud poker player, I ask that you support keeping our state in this important program.

U.S. House Bill H.R. 2267 and U.S. Senate Bill S. 1597 provide for sensible licensing, regulation, and taxation of Internet poker. They mandate rigorous, verifiable safeguards against underage participation while providing consumer protections for the millions, including many in our state, who play online poker every day. These bills also include dedicated funding to establish and implement programs for prevention and treatment of those with excessive gaming habits.

Both bills benefit our state economically. According to an economic study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers in April, tax revenues from these bills will provide billions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury and to the states in the program. Additionally, the Senate bill provides for revenue-sharing with participating states, bringing even more much-needed funds into our state's coffers. Both bills allow American companies to participate in the world's Internet poker market, bringing needed jobs to our state as well.

Solutions like H.R. 2267 and S. 1597 provide the most rational approach to controlling this industry and preserving it for adults who choose to engage in games of skill like poker. An unenforceable, unpopular prohibition provides none of these benefits. All prohibition can do is drive players underground or overseas while limiting my personal freedom.

What's most important to me is your support for my rights. Please respond to this letter and let me know if you will support keeping our state in this important program. I will be watching your actions on this issue closely. I hope that I, along with my over one million fellow Poker Players Alliance members can count on your support.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely, 

[sender's name]

Howard Lederer, aka "the Professor," is a professional poker player, not a gambler. If Congress will acknowledge this distinction, it will rectify one of its recent mistakes.

In 2006, Congress, cloaking cunning with moralizing, effectively outlawed Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks or credit-card companies to process payments to online gambling operations. This was more than moral pork for social conservatives. It also blocked online competitors from poaching gamblers from the nation's most aggressive promoters of gambling -- state governments. They are increasingly addicted to revenues raised by lotteries -- the 42 states that have lotteries spent $520 million in 2007 promoting them -- and from taxation of other legal gambling. The law exempted Internet state lotteries and two powerful and vocal interests -- online betting on horse racing and some fantasy sports betting online.

Having turned gambling, which once was treated as a sin, into a social policy, government looks unusually silly criminalizing online forms of it.

Granted, some people gamble excessively (although not nearly as many people as eat excessively). Granted, gambling becomes addictive to a small minority (although it is not nearly as addictive as smoking and drinking).

Granted, gambling is morally dubious when it is only the unproductive pursuit of wealth without work (although gambling is productive of pleasure for tens of millions of Americans for whom it is a frequent pastime). But never mind whether government should try to tightly circumscribe a ubiquitous human activity that generally harms nobody.

That is beside the point Lederer and the Poker Players Alliance are toiling to make, which is that by sweeping online poker into its proscription of online gambling, Congress committed a category mistake.

Congress, Lederer thinks, should revisit the work of John von Neumann (1903-57), the Hungarian-born mathematician who, after working for the Manhattan Project on implosion design for the atomic bomb, became a defense intellectual specializing in the relevance of game theory to strategic thinking. Chess involves logic; roulette involves probability theory. Poker involves logic, probability and something pertinent to military and diplomatic strategy -- bluffing.

"Theory of Parlor Games" (1928) and, with Oskar Morgenstern, "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior" (1944) established the field of game theory. Another of today's leading professional poker players, Chris Ferguson, is the son of a mother who is a mathematician and a father who teaches game theory at UCLA.

When you play chess, Lederer says, there is symmetry of information:

Both players have all the information provided by the location of the pieces on the board, and both are equally ignorant of the opponent's intentions. A computer can be programmed to "play" a powerful game of chess, but not of poker, wherein your opponents' cards are concealed.

Lederer is confident that a brain scan of someone playing poker would reveal a lit-up frontal lobe, but the lobe of someone watching television would show up cool blue. A poker player -- unlike someone playing roulette, a lottery or "video poker" (which Lederer says is a misnomer; it is a game of chance governed by a machine) -- is trying to apply skill, acquired by experience, to increase the probability of winning each hand.

The son of an English teacher at St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, Lederer decided to spend a year studying chess before matriculating at Columbia University. Instead, he discovered poker. He started at Columbia but left, reasoning that he had found his vocation. He has won about $5 million.

But what is his stake in decriminalizing online poker? After all, he plays much more on green felt-covered tables than online. His interest is threefold. First, his libertarian temperament -- he lives in Las Vegas, where almost anything goes -- is offended by mother-hen government. Second, he wants as many people as possible to have access to poker's delights.

Third, the more poker players there are, the larger will be the ranks of competitors, and the television audiences, for professional poker competitions. Hence the larger will be the potential winnings. This year, Lederer says, there were 6,494 competitors in the World Series of Poker Main Event, down about 1,000 from 2006, largely because more players used to win their $10,000 entry fee in online tournaments.

It is a poker skill to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

Congress probably should fold its interference with Internet gambling, and certainly should get its 10 thumbs off Americans' freedom to exercise their poker skills online.

by RICH MUNY

In his new book, “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts,” Wayne Allyn Root asserts that America is a nation of gamblers and always has been.  Mr. Root, who was the 2008 Libertarian vice presidential nominee and who is now preparing to lead what he calls “a Ross Perot-like third party movement in 2012 for economic and personal freedom,” discusses this in detail in Chapter 29: The End of Prohibition - Why Gamblers Will Empower the Citizen Revolution. 

Mr. Root starts the chapter by citing gambles that were taken in our nation’s early history.  The brave Pilgrims who took great risks in leaving Europe in search of liberty in the New World, the lotteries that helped fund colonial America, and the daring exploits of George Washington, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin - who risked their fortunes in the Revolutionary War for freedom - are just a few examples of the risk-taking, gambling heritage of the American people. 

Gambling did not end with the founding of our great nation, either.  Immigrants with nothing but a strong will and unshakeable desire to succeed, entrepreneurs, and business owners all gambled that their dreams would come true, and they put all they had at risk to make it happen.  Americans are by nature risk-takers who are leaders and bold dreamers.  This willingness to gamble on success is an essential part of the character of America. 

This risk-taking legacy lives on.  During the last decade, Internet poker and gambling were a global phenomenon.  Still, despite the worldwide appeal of online gaming, 70 percent of money wagered came from Americans - this notwithstanding the fact that the Justice Department asserted that the activity is unlawful.  Americans made 376 million trips to casinos in 2007, and there are now 185,000 places to buy a lottery ticket in America versus only 14,000 McDonald’s.  In fact, more money is spent on gambling in America than is spent on books, movies, videos, and DVDs combined.  The facts are clear - Americans enjoy a good gamble and are proud of it. 

Mr. Root then discusses poker. Party Gaming reported $45 billion in wagering in 2005, for almost $1 billion in revenue.  Online poker was escalating in popularity when the Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.  This action outraged poker players.  Since passage of that act, over one million Americans joined the Poker Players Alliance to speak out and demand their right to play poker on the Internet.  Mr. Root believes the power of poker players is being harnessed by the Libertarian movement, as the 10 million to 12 million Americans who play online poker and the 50 million who play in person comprise a very formidable group. 

Mr. Root notes that the proponents of a new Prohibition - a prohibition on online poker - are straight-laced, nanny state busy-bodies who are afraid to take risks.  They want to police what others do, this despite the fact that it does not affect them in any way.  He notes that there are people in the Middle East who think the same way - the Taliban. 

Mr. Root wraps up the chapter by expressing his belief that the government will fail miserably in its attempts to stop online gambling.  The American people have tried online poker and gambling and they like it.  They want their freedom and are demanding it.  It makes far more sense to license, regulate, and tax online gaming than it does to try to enforce an unpopular prohibition. 

The chapter is well-written, and Mr. Root does a fine job in explaining the phenomenon of gambling in American culture and how gambling and freedom are intertwined.  I personally believe government has attacked the very people - people who cherish freedom and liberty - who are most likely to take a strong stand.  In fact, poker players have taken a strong stand against the UIGEA and will continue to do so.  In my opinion, Mr. Root “gets it” in a way that few who have run for national office do.  I wholeheartedly recommend this chapter of the book. 

Amazon.com: The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts 

Wayne Allyn Root’s Libertarian Presidential Candidate Website: “Root for America!“

The U.S. Department of Justice maintains that all forms of online gambling are illegal, based on the 1961 Federal Wire Act. Contention exists, however, about the intent of this law, as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Wire Act only applies to sports betting – not to other forms of online gambling (emphasis added). Forbes online claims the online gambling industry exploited U.S. laws because of their ambiguity - lack of clarity: "... hundreds of companies have been exploiting the fact that U.S. laws on online gambling are as hazy as your classic, smoke-filled casino."

The economic downturn is affecting casinos, but not online wagering. The Las Vegas Strip saw a 15 percent decline in gambling revenue in January (2009). And betting proceeds in Atlantic City reportedly were down 19 percent last month. But online gambling revenue is up — surpassing $20 billion in 2008.