[DVaut1]

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The goal is to not encourage gambling, period, which in itself is the right thing to do.
We are here a poker/gambling community and we see things from another point of view, but there must be no doubt that the world would be a better place without so many gambling sites tempting fishes all the time.

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Agreed; or put differently, there are many Americans with serious moral and ethical concerns about the wide-spread access/easy availability and accompanying pernicious influences of gambling, including poker. I'm not saying I agree with those people, but I am saying that those people do exist and are quite numerous in number.

It's undeniable that these people have powerful lobbying groups fighting for their interests in Congress, in the executive branch of the federal government, and at various levels of state government -- and these constituents have interests that lie outside of legalization/taxation/regulation.

Their interests instead lie in outright prohibition and deterrence of internet gambling.

The whole point of this rant is to suggest that blaming 'greedy' internet gaming stakeholders and operators for refusing to accept a deal for regulation/taxation is unfair, in light of the fact that it's a deal that to my knowledge has never, ever been offered. Conversely, suggesting that the federal government's new found interest in aggressively enforcing Wire Act/UIGEA regulations is attributable to their inability to "get the hands on unregulated money" seems off the mark as well, given that such regulation/taxation options were likely at federal government politicians/regulators disposal, and yet they never availed themselves of those options.