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I had two children under the age of three alone with me for a week and a day while their father worked late every night so that he could take this week off. What fun the summer holidays are. I need a holiday to recover, preferably a long weekend in a nice spa without children. My smallest is still feeding every two hours at night. One would think that by the age of eight months he would sleep through the night, but one would be wrong in that assumption. I didn't look at internet gambling news for an entire week. In fact I think I was online a total of 30 minutes for the entire week. Just long enough to go through my personal email daily and delete the message board emails that I subscribe to. No one received a response last week. My wrists were extremely pleased for the break from typing. Now life goes on, the hubby is taking care of the kids and it's my turn to work. I come back from my exhausting vacation with a new respect for stay-at home moms who do not send their kids to day care until the age of 3. Hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work I go. I took a quick review of what I missed last week by skimming my Google news alerts and one thing stood out like a sore thumb. First some background. The House of Representatives is doing what they can to make internet gambling illegal. H.R.4411 is an anti-internet gambling bill which would make it illegal for US residents to deposit into an internet gambling site directly from their bank account. It would also make credit card deposits illegal. This bill has passed the House and is waiting for vote in the Senate. There is another bill, HR 4777, which is aiming to ban the whole lot. It is still up for debate in the House so most likely this bill will go no where this session. As Congress is doing their best to make internet gambling illegal one would assume that the individual states would be following their lead, like Washington state did by making online gambling a felony. However, everyone knows that New Yorkers don't think like everyone else. Believe it or not Republican New York governor George Pataki signed a state law on July 26th allowing internet and cell phone betting for horse racing. The law will go into effect 180 days after the signing. The law was sponsored by State Sen. William Larkin, R-New Windsor and Assemblyman James Pretlow, D-Mt. Vernon. As the goal of this law is economic protectionism the law clearly states that offshore betting websites are beyond the control of state and federal regulators and technically off-limits to U.S. citizens. I looked everywhere for more information on this law. I checked out Pataki's website for a press release, Larkins website for news, and I looked through Pretlow's area on the state assembly website. When I checked for his legislation sponsoring I found a long list of shorthand written text which made it almost impossible to do a quick search, for example there were things like "V & T L. req ct ord fr cm tst " and " Gen Mun. bureau admin adju; Yonk ". After going through the cryptic list I found nothing that looked even slightly like it's related to internet horse racing. I did find some small articles regarding the new legislation. An article published on timesunion.com states, "The measure also represents an effort by the state's horse racing industry to reach out to younger bettors, including members of the Internet-savvy Generation Y as well as baby boomers who increasingly use computers for shopping, communicating and other tasks." This legislation is specifically aimed at younger betters. The exact same group the US Congress is aiming to "protect" by making internet gambling illegal. Am I alone in being in shock right now? People in the industry are thrilled to bits. They realize the economic potential of harnessing betting on the internet. Daniel Wray, executive director of legislative affairs for the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation said, "This is a very big win for the entire racing industry. This was already being done under our noses." Wray explained that countless New Yorkers were already making horse racing bets with wagering online sports sites even though it was "technically illegal" to do so. "The Internet has become such a big part of the way people live, and we need to be able to change with the times," said Bill Nader, chief operating officer for the New York Racing Association, which holds the franchise for horse racing in the state. Mike Connery, CEO and president of Capital District Regional OTB, said the extraordinary rise of online betting has "decimated us over the past couple of years," taking a sizable chunk of business from the state's OTB parlors. The off-line industry in New York is pleased to be able to go on line for obvious reasons. Internet betting means more profits. Phone betting means phone operators and expensive phone lines. Internet betting means a small team of programmers who write your website and allow people to deposit. Much more cost effective. Apparently OTB understood the popularity of internet gambling only five months ago when someone plastered all of the cars in their parking lot with fliers urging people to open accounts with an online betting firm. I just have to wonder if they were hiding under a rock before that, since sports betting is one of the most profitable forms of internet gambling. The flyers were the incentive to make internet horse betting legal in the state of NY and they succeeded. I find the whole thing bordering on the ridiculous. Off-shore betting is illegal while local betting is ok, and the only real difference between them is the location of the internet servers and the taxes. If the United States were to regulate the industry they would reap the benefits from taxes on both a state and national level. This is the whole point of the WTO lawsuit. Antigua and Barbuda are right. It is hypocrisy that the United States would allow one form of internet gambling and not allow another. Economic protectionism is hurting these nations economy and it isn't fair. Posted on: August 27, 2006
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