Help Defend the Legality of Online Poker!

[keepitlegal]

Hello all,

After last weeks horrific display of a lop sided vote; the bill HR 4411 was passed inside the House of Representatives. 373 out of 465 voted for this bill brining it one step closer to it becoming a law; making it illegal to use the internet to play poker. It is now going to go before the Senate and if passed there, to the President.

I am writing you all with one simple message; please help us defend our rights to play online poker and keep the banks from monitoring our accounts for suspicious activities and to prevent the ISP's to shut down links to the sites i play on like Fulltilt and Pokerstars. The Poker Players Alliance is the only organization defending your rights at the state and federal levels and with your help; we can be a much bigger threat when it goes before the Senate. Poker Players Alliance is a members based non-profit and we are currently at about 35k members.

I am not here to distract you from 2+2 but to hopefully get all of you to write your senators and let them know you are not going to sit down and take this without a fight. if you to our website which is www.pokerplayersalliance.org (http://www.pokerplayersalliance.org) or www.keepitlegal.net (http://www.keepitlegal.net) or just cut and paste here: http://www.pokerplayersalliance.org/keep.html.

Regards,

Keith Regan
Membership Coordinator
415-975-0897

Poker Players Alliance

“Just by adding the word “online or internet” before poker does not make it a crime”

[Wynton]

To quote a phrase, help us to help you.

Keep us informed about what is happening behind the scenes (if you can do so discreetly) and check in here every now and then to answer the many questions that arise.

[IronDragon1]

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373 out of 465 voted for this bill

[/ QUOTE ]
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brining

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you forgot the rule of first impressions.

[Zele]

Mr. Regan:

You may find this website (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2006-363) to be a helpful reference for all your questions regarding HR 4411.

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Votes on Passage
Jul 11, 2006: This bill passed in the House of Representatives by roll call vote. The totals were: 317 Ayes, 93 Nays, 22 Present/Not Voting.

[Mr.K]

I'll be brutally honest, keepitlegal. As an outside observer with no stake in how this shakes out, you guys are doing a really [censored] job handling this issue right now, at least from what I can tell. I may very well not see the whole picture, but most everything I have seen has been a day late and a dollar (or a few hundred thousand) short on the part of PPA. Grammatical mistakes in your communications ("sites i play on") do not help with your credibility -- though we do all make such mistakes I'll grant. Better here on 2+2 than when lobbying the Senate Judiciary Committee, I suppose.

Not being one to just take potshots without making suggestions, here are a few things I'd be doing if I were in your shoes:

1.) Generate an intelligent, brief script (50 words or less) that interested poker players can use when calling their Senators. Link script to a page where such players can get the phone numbers for each Senate office. Have all your member companies refer players to the script every time they log on.

2.) Have your member companies stop dealing hands for a few seconds every hour to remind players what is at stake via a popup or dealer message. Yes, they'll take a small hit in per hour earnings, but such a hit is likely the price they'll have to pay to generate sufficient awareness to prevent 100% loss of U.S. income that would result from enactment of the House bill.

3.) Identify your champion in the Senate, and send players to him/her to provide support. Or, in the instance that your strategy involves keeping that member on the down-low, indicate to players that you've identified a champion to hold the bill up, and call upon players to donate to a support fund controlled by PPA that will eventually help this member out. You do have a champion in the Senate who will hold the bill up, right? Right?

4.) While you gained some good visibility when you did the event in the Longworth House Office Building a few months ago, attention has dissipated since then as far as I can tell. One quick, easy, and free way to do this is a coordinated calling campaign. Get the message out via forums and your member companies online card rooms that all players are to use the script (see #1 above) and call their Senators during a specific 4 or 5 hour stretch during a specifically identified day (on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, when the Senate is in session and voting). Do it next week, when members are actually around, because anything you do in August won't matter -- nobody is around during recess. Uncoordinated calling campaigns mean nothing, coordinated ones, however do garner some attention.

5.) Do a better job differentiating poker from sports betting and casino-style blackjack, etc. Good progress has been made on this in the press, as articles have routinely distinguished poker from the other activities, but I do not have the impression that legislators are making this distinction, and if that remains the case, your cause is in deep, deep trouble.

6.) How about a public offer from the heads of the major online card rooms to open the books and pro-actively work with DOJ/Treasury on the money laundering issue. Say there isn't an issue (if indeed there isn't), but offer to work hand-in-hand to make 10000% sure there isn't now or in the future. Poker players are patriotic, and they care about stopping money laundering, terrorist financing, and all that just like everyone else does. The prospect of even talking with U.S. federal authorities may seem repugnant to Dikshit and co, but the offer itself is a necessary step both in terms of PR and in terms of taking away the best arguments of those who favor the bill.

7.) Go after the sound bites the bill's proponents are using, if you can do so with a straight face. The "click the mouse and lose your house" bit is KILLING your cause right now perception-wise. It perfectly encapsulates what the ban's proponents believe, and it puts the terms of discussion completely in the negative. Can you get your member companies to document that this has not happened? Maybe it has, but hell, put *some* kind of stat out about how 99% of your users are responsible patrons, and back it up with numbers/comparisons to B&M casinos.

8.) Convince Ted Kennedy that he absolutely, positively must have another vote on his minimum wage amendment before he'll allow the Internet gambling bill to get past the motion to proceed. Throw some financial support behind SEIU and the AFL-CIO, and enlist them to say the same. B&M casino employees care about wages, and if I had to guess, a lot of your patrons do as well. Convincing Kennedy to take such a stance also allows the Democrats to continue the drumbeat of "misplaced priorities" as they have been doing in recent weeks/months.

9.) Get John Ensign and Harry Reid to come out and see just what the WSOP is doing for tourism in Las Vegas, what the demographics are, and what the influx of younger Americans with disposable income means financially for Nevada for decades to come. Show how online cardrooms have contributed directly to this phenomenon. Focusing on real dollars and impact in home states is a sure-fire way to get the attention of Senators whose support you need.

10.) Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) has an easy re-election race, and he has dog tracks and jai alai operations without an equivalent exemption to horse racing. His constituents who make their living on these things should be steaming mad, right? Their Senator should probably be doing something for them, right? Well...? Get on it.

Anyhow, those are the things I'd be doing if I were in your shoes. Of course, I'm not, and I'll say that I'm certainly not envious of the task you've got ahead of you. If I were out there working to oppose this bill, I'd be more than a little concerned right now.

[Wynton]

Totally agree with everything MisterKing said.

And I'll amplify one thought. If I were an interested party, I would be drafting legislation myself, in an effort to prove a viable alternative to banning exists. I would also detail the rules and regulations abroad, forthrightly indicating strengths and weakenesses with such rules.

And while we're attempting to distinguish poker from other gambling, how about effort at educating people about the history of poker in this country?

Another thing: why not enlist the assistance of those television programmers who rely on the poker shows?

We here at 2+2 just want to see some evidence that your group is taking affirmative action.

[Leavenfish]

Me, I would just like to know a bit more about what the Alliance is doing right now about a potential vote in the Senate.
In poker or in war, you have to find a weakness and attack it...what is the weakness the Alliance is attacking?

---Leavenfish

[Uglyowl]

Awesome post Mr. King.

[spatne]

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My name is [xxx]

I'm calling to voice my concerns about the internet gambling bill that may come before the Senate this session. This legislation would require banks and ISPs to routinely violate the privacy of millions of Americans by snooping around our bank transactions and internet habits. This is unacceptable and, quite frankly, un-American.

My privacy is important to me. I would hope that it is important to Senator [xxx], as well, and that [he/she] will oppose this legislation.
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More than 50 words, but it uses the privacy issue, which I think is our best shot. Not the most eloquent thing I've ever written, but it took all of 10 minutes. That the PPA doesn't have something like this is by now is profoundly disheartenting.

The forum can tweak this and send it along to the PPA, since I doubt their rep (that was keepitlegal's first post /images/graemlins/confused.gif) is even following this thread.

[Mr.K]

[ QUOTE ]
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My name is [xxx]

I'm calling to voice my concerns about the internet gambling bill that may come before the Senate this session. This legislation would require banks and ISPs to routinely violate the privacy of millions of Americans by snooping around our bank transactions and internet habits. This is unacceptable and, quite frankly, un-American.

My privacy is important to me. I would hope that it is important to Senator [xxx], as well, and that [he/she] will oppose this legislation.
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More than 50 words, but it uses the privacy issue, which I think is our best shot. Not the most eloquent thing I've ever written, but it took all of 10 minutes. That the PPA doesn't have something like this is by now is profoundly disheartenting.

The forum can tweak this and send it along to the PPA, since I doubt their rep (that was keepitlegal's first post /images/graemlins/confused.gif) is even following this thread.

[/ QUOTE ]

EFFORT SCORE: 9
EFFECT SCORE: 2

Note that PPA likely deserves a 0 in both counts at this point, so even a 5.5 average is great in comparison. I rate this a 2 for effectiveness because I think privacy is non-issue to most Senators, at least in the sense that it is being invoked here. Look at how isolated Feingold is on his privacy issues, or how badly Feinstein & co. lose on roll call votes requiring heightened privacy standards in banking, homeland security, and telecommunications bills. I am not sure how a better message would be targeted, but that's what the PPA's people are being paid to figure out!

[spatne]

I think that the privacy issue works much better than "poker is a game of skill," or another such narrow argument. Then again, my politics are more similar to Feingold's than anyone else in the Senate, so I probably overweight the resonance of this argument.

That said, it's pretty clear that we're never ever *ever* going to get 51 Senators on board, so the best strategy might be to cherry pick a small group of Senators who might step up and derail the bill somehow. I'm hoping that Reid and Ensign will work something out behind the scenes, but I'm not counting on it.

[keepitlegal]

I'm following the thread. All I am trying to do is get people aware of the situation and see if they are going to offer help, rather then ideas or suggestions. Mr. K had some very valid points and I will deal with them in this forum a bit later. Although i am fairly new to the PPA, our voices are being heard. We knew that the Republican heavy House was going to vote in favor of HR 4411. Our president is in DC atleast 3 times a month speaking with our folks in DC as well as Senators and House Reps a like.

[meleader2]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm following the thread. All I am trying to do is get people aware of the situation and see if they are going to offer help, rather then ideas or suggestions. Mr. K had some very valid points and I will deal with them in this forum a bit later. Although i am fairly new to the PPA, our voices are being heard. We knew that the Republican heavy House was going to vote in favor of HR 4411. Our president is in DC atleast 3 times a month speaking with our folks in DC as well as Senators and House Reps a like.

[/ QUOTE ]

this forum is NOT the place to be making people aware. WE ALREADY ARE. make the fish aware, that's who we care about. Mr. K's points were spot on, and dealing with them involves executing them.