Fight for Online Gaming!! -- Weekly action thread

[TheEngineer]

The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness sent a letter to several government officials concerning UIGEA regulatory burdens. It's at http://www.thecre.com/pdf/McInerney_Letter.pdf . The points brought up in the analysis may be good for us to use in our letters and in our comments on the proposed regulations (once they are released, starting the comment period.

Some points:

There is strong evidence that a substantial number of credit card issuers are small businesses.

Census Bureau data strongly suggests that a substantial number small companies are in engaged in financial transaction processing services.

Small, innovative American technology companies will be directly and/or indirectly impacted by the rule.

The rule will place significant direct and indirect burdens on a substantial number of small entities, potentially altering the competitive situation in financial transactions industries and leading to further consolidations in already highly concentrated industries.

The letter also contains a number of people to whom we may consider writing, including:

Ms. Roberta K. McInerney
Assistant General Counsel for Banking and Finance
Room 2304
Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
Washington, DC 20220

The Honorable Robert J. Portman, Director, The Office of Management and Budget

The Honorable Thomas M. Sullivan, Chief Counsel for Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration

Mr. Scott G. Alvarez, General Counsel, The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Mr. Peter A. Bieger, Deputy Assistant General Counsel, Banking and Finance

Dennis W. Carlton, Ph.D., Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economic Analysis

[Legislurker]

If anyone else was watching, the WSOP just ended, and Jerry is donating 10%(825k) to charities, and thanking God, rather sincerely for his victory. From all I can see, and read, he is a family guy, a refugee from Thailand made good in the US, and just won poker's biggest prize. Definitely a good face for poker to counter the frauds at FoF. Id love to see Yang stand up to someone like Bauchus on a panel in Congress witha life of real hardship and true faith, combined with respect for poker as a job and legitimate pastime. Im going to sleep now, but when I wake up Im going to start letters to the editor about him.

On the other hand, the commentary, especially Phil and Howard, disappointed me. Helmuth totally dissed online poker's contributions to the WSOP. No mention of politics, none. These guys were rich before this, but they are literally raking it in now. And if not for online poker, the WSOP would still be a small cult phenomenon. Literally almost popped a blood vessel listening to Phil before he left for the airport.

[TheEngineer]

What do you all think we should do next week to advocate for our rights?

[TheEngineer]

I vote for expanding the current actions a bit by adding more recipients to the "UIGEA regs letters" item, plus writing to our governors and state reps. When the UIGEA regs are released and opened for comments, I'll recommend we make as many comments as possible.

[oldbookguy]

I think in our letters this week we need to make a list of the not so obvious 'legal' interstate wagering going on all over the U S, even if in some cases is a bit of a reach.

1. Deal / No Deal Text .99 Fees
2. Sprint / Nextel NASCAR win a Million (no entry fee, just normal text messaging fees apply to enter)
3. Obama's 'donation' lottery to have dinner with him.
4. any other examples we can find as a group.

Doing this we can try and Main Stream wagering in the U S and show it is very common and the UIGEA regulations will affect many businesses / activities other than poker, the 'unintended consequences of a poorly conceived law.

obg

[oldbookguy]

OK, they have a video at Capitol Hill Broadcasting:
http://www.chbn.com/clip.aspx?key=124BDA9AA5668035

Right next to it is a GOOD Ron Paul Video.

I joined just so I could leave a comment and am making the follow-up call in the morning:
202-456-1111
Though NOT what FRC / FoF wants me to say of course.

I suggest you / we take a minute, join Capitol Hill and denounce this video!

obg

[Emperor]

[ QUOTE ]
What do you all think we should do next week to advocate for our rights?

[/ QUOTE ]

Throw all of their proverbial tea in the harbor!

[oldbookguy]

CNBC did a piece Monday on the WSOP and the drop in online qualifiers this year with Gambling911.
the video is here:
http://www.costiganmedia.com/cnbc-poker.html

CNBC nerver really got into any details other than a generic mention of the UIGEA.

We need to e-mail CNBC with comments and try and get a real story about the WTO case involving this.

Link to CNBC:
https://register.cnbc.com/email/EmailSupport.jsp

My letter to CNBC:
I found Darren Rovell’s piece on the WSOP interesting.
More of interest was the law passed by congress to block funds transfers for playing online poker and the effect it had on the WSOP and by implication on the American public as a whole.
Considering there has been little to no news concerning this I was, to say the least, surprised. Surprised especially in light of the recent arrest of Neteller executives and the settlement to return 94 Million Dollars of American Online players funds frozen by the DoJ / USAO in the Southern District Federal Court.
With the cooperation agreement signed by this company to defer prosecution and agreement to help the USAO office in further investigations, how far may this reach and what U.S. banks may be implicated and what affect will that have on the banking industry and stock valuations and the affect it has on limiting Americans freedom of association.

There has been no coverage of the WTO ruling and mounting BILLIONS of dollars in trade claims filed against the U.S. for passing the UIGEA by Antigua-Barbuda, Japan, Canada, Costa Rica, India and the entire European Communities along with Macao / China.

This most important piece of information related to the drop in online WSOP entrants is of utmost concern to all, especially U.S. companies doing business abroad.

[TheEngineer]

Fight for Online Gaming!! -- Plan for week of 7/23

<font color="brown"><u>Summary of actions:</u>
1. Write to Treasury and DOJ officials AT LEAST ONCE PER WEEK to request the minimum possible UIGEA regulations.
2. Write to your governor and to your state representatives.
3. Regularly write to Congress.
4. Write to newspapers and post to blogs.</font>

--------------------------------------------------------

Based on our group discussions, let's do the following:

1. Write to Treasury and DOJ officials AT LEAST ONCE PER WEEK to request the minimum possible UIGEA regulations. We should contact Steven D. Laughton (the UIGEA Treasury Dept. focal point), Roberta McInerney (Assistant General Counsel for Banking and Finance), Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Treasury Secretary Paulson, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. The regs were supposed to be out by now...the fact they they are not is probably good for us. I think a big push here on our part could really pay off.

Let's ask them not to exceed the specific mandates of UIGEA when drafting legislation. Let's ask them to exclude all ACH transactions (too burdensome for banks to filter). Also, remind them that online poker is not illegal under any federal law. We should ask them to require unambiguous state laws, so banks aren't in the position of trying to interpret state laws that may or may not apply to Internet gaming. Finally, there should be no "site blacklists".

Contact info:

Steven D. Laughton
Office of the Assistant General Counsel (Banking and Finance)
Room 2027B,1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
Washington,DC 20220
Phone: (202) 622-8413
Email: steven.laughton@do.treas.gov

Ms. Roberta K. McInerney
Assistant General Counsel for Banking and Finance
Room 2304
Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
Washington, DC 20220

The Honorable Alberto Gonzales
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

The Honorable Henry Paulson
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20220

The Honorable Ben S. Bernanke
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Washington, D. C. 20551
http://www.federalreserve.gov/feedback.cfm

Others:

Pres. Bush: comments@whitehouse.gov
Your senators: www.senate.gov
Your representative: www.house.gov
Republican National Committee: Chairman@gop.com
Democratic National Committee: www.democrats.org/contact.html
Speaker Nancy Pelosi: AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/email_form.cfm

2. Contact your governor and state representative. Congress won't pass anything that forces states to legalize gambling, so we ought to get the ball rolling at that level.

3. Continue to contact your senators and representative. <u>Let’s call and send snail mail at least once every four to six weeks</u>. Let’s email at least once per week or biweekly. Some of these may be carbon copies of letters to others (like the USTR, Frank, FoF, etc).

We have many issues, so we can focus on one item for each letter while rotating. It does not matter to our movement which items you choose; any communication against attempts to ban online gambling at the federal level work in our favor. After all, if IGREA fails due to lack of public support, it’s not like the media will report that people disagreed with giving power to the FinCEN or to issues relating to shutting out foreign operators. They’ll report, “Frank’s Attempt to End Online Gambling Ban (as if there is such a thing, but the media don’t care) Fails to Draw Public Support”. Our opponents will say, "see, Americans are happy we’re 'protecting the public'". If Wexler’s bill fails, the media won’t report that some felt it legitimized UIGEA. They’ll report that Americans didn’t even wish to legalize poker. This year, we’re all about generating support for our general position, which is that online gaming should not be prohibited. Let’s focus there. So, here are some issues we can rotate:

- Antigua’s WTO case
- IGREA
- Hypocrisy of existing legal online gaming (games of skill, horseracing, etc)
- Wexler’s bill: H.R. 2610, the Skill Game Protection Act
- Praise for the 6/8 hearing. www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/financialsvcs_dem/ht060807.shtml; webcast archived at http://financialserv.edgeboss.net/wm...ring060807.wvx
- Shelley Berkley's study bill

4. Now that we have bills progressing, we should try to work on advocating for the legislation. Let's write to newspapers, magazines, post to blogs, etc. Since we proved our position in the 6/8 House hearing, let's post the link to the hearing webcast wherever we can.

Letters to the editor, Washington Post: letters@washpost.com
Letters to the editor, New York Times: letters@nytimes.com

Thanks everyone!

[TheEngineer]

July 22, 2007

The Honorable Barack Obama
United States Senate
713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Obama:

I would like to congratulate you on your performance to date in your presidential run. I wish you well in the race. As you know, a lot of your support comes from young, Internet-savvy Americans. While we are a diverse group, we do share one common interest; we want individual freedom and liberty. One important area for many of us is Internet poker.

As you are likely aware, HR 2046, The Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007, provides for safe, secure, regulated online poker. The bill provides for stringent licensing to ensure that poker operators are legitimate. Via a regulatory framework, the bill addresses underage gambling as well as compulsive gambling. The bill also provides a provision by which states can choose to opt-out, thus preserving the rights of the states in this important area. Sports leagues can also opt-out, thereby allowing the leagues the ability to prohibit all Internet gambling on that sport anywhere in the U.S. What is your position on HR 2046 and on allowing Americans to choose to play Internet poker?

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

TheEngineer