PATRICK BILL CONTINUES TO ATTRACT FLAK

16 November 2007

Governor's attempt to expand land gambling could stumble on Internet banning clause


The row over Massachusett governor Deval Patrick's attempt to ban online gaming whilst promoting land gambling expansion in the Bay state continued to make mainstream headlines across the United States yesterday.

The widely read daily Boston Magazine typified much of the comment when it declared it was still trying to figure out "...what the hell the governor was thinking."

The op-ed article continued: "Making it legal to play poker in buildings while making it illegal to play poker on computer screens, is beyond hypocritical, it just sounds stupid."

The magazine goes on to examine a scenario where land casino operators are made "sole overlords" of Massachusetts gambling as a means of generating bigger revenues for the state, and associates the attempted ban on Internet gaming with eliminating fair competition to the land casinos.

But it points out that Deval’s casino bill faces an uphill climb, and the last thing it needs is more boulders blocking its path, "....and hypocrisy tends to be a pretty big rock."

Democrat Rep. Frank Hynes was questioned on the Internet gambling ban proposal and the severe penalties Deval wants to impose with it. Despite maintaining that it’s way too early in the process to decide his final vote, Hynes sounded exceptionally miffed when discussing the online gaming clause. “I mean, why do that?” he said. “It doesn’t make a whole of sense to expand gambling and then say online gambling should be shut down.”

Hynes’ main gripe—especially coming from the perspective of a gambling sceptic making a concerted effort to study both sides—was the lack of thought and analysis that seems to have gone into the online gambling clause, buried deep within the legislation.

Hynes told the magazine that he is of the mind that the state ought to be embracing the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act bill that Democrat Rep. Barney Frank is working through Congress, which would make online gambling legal.

“By marketing online, you plug into a very easy way of capturing revenues that otherwise would be lost,” said Hynes. “We ought to embrace the Internet as being the new marketplace of the future, rather than prohibiting its use.”

The magazine hyptothesised that if the state’s three new [proposed] land casinos hosted online poker games themselves, maybe even with incentives, it could work for them as well.

"Better to use the Internet than try to quash it, right? We’re not China, after all," the article concludes.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa