The PPA

The amount of money being raised for online poker lobbying is pretty amazing. The poker players alliance has been able to raise a couple million to keep up the good fight in congress (for all the good it’s doing). Now maybe if they were able to raise a couple billion things would be different. Let’s take smoking for example, how much money would you imagine the Philip Morris Company has spent lobbying in congress to keep the laws off of his Marlboro cigarettes?
Now regardless of your personal feelings for smoking we all know there is no way that a responsible government would allow for cigarettes to be legal. Personally I love it, in fact I’m going to go light one up outside as soon as I’m done writing this. Now you may have just asked yourself “outside?” Yes you read right outside, because I have a four year old daughter and even though I think cigs should be legal and I love smoking them I have full knowledge of how bad they are for you. But I am 100% addicted to them, and being addicted to something harmful I take responsibility for myself and smoke the damn things outside and the government says that’s ok. Now, I could legally smoke them inside and expose the little one to my second hand smoke and harm her and the government says that’s ok. I can slowly kill myself and everyone around me and the government says THAT’S ok, but I can’t play some poker because the government says that’s NOT ok.
I think it all comes down to money, and who has the most to shove into government pockets. The land casinos are fine as long as they have enough cash to pay for the right, and having lined said pockets with enough cash they can use the bribes to keep the competition off of their heels, the competition being online gambling. As carlin said “it’s all bullshit folks and it’s all bad for ya”.