Thank You for Gambling
In the recent movie "Thank You for Smoking," a tobacco lobbyist comes under fire for working to protect people's right to smoke. A similar movie could be made about gambling and the villain would be Representative Bob Goodlatte. The Virginia Republican has been fighting to enact legislation on Internet gambling for some time, and he can now finally claim a good deal of success with the passage of HR 4954, a port security bill with an anti-Internet gambling attachment. Goodlatte's Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) is set to make it illegal for American banks and financial institutions to process online gambling payments from the United States. "The passage of this legislation is a step in the right direction in the fight against online gambling and will help to cut off the money supply to these illegal outfits," Goodlatte said. It is true enough that the legislation makes banks suffer the wrath that Goodlatte feels towards the online gaming industry, but a key question remains. Will tightening the rope around bankers' necks will really stop online gambling? Following passage of UIGEA, gaming companies took a beating. PartyGaming, the world's largest online gaming company, fell out of the FTSE 100 while World Gaming suspended dealings in its shares due to "uncertainty over its ability to continue trading." Most of the world's online gaming firms are not located in the U.S. due to government hostility, but now it appears that even those based in London and elsewhere are subject to America's dominance in a global economy.
That's only the short term. In the long term, people who want to gamble online will find ways to do it, even if it means they have to visit shady spots on the Web. Government policies that push innocent consumers into potentially dangerous black markets are misguided and harmful. Goodlatte's bill should also shame his supporters because it hypocritically exempts large parts of America's gambling industry, including government-run lotteries.
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