MA Proposes Two Year Jail Term for Online Gambling 248
tessaiga writes "The Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is trying to sneak a provision to criminalize online gambling. The bill, if passed, would make online gambling punishable by up to 2 years in prison and $25k in fines. Ironically, the provision is buried deep within a bill to allow the construction of three new casinos in Massachusetts to bring more gambling revenue into the state. 'If you were cynical about it, you'd think that they're trying to set up a monopoly for the casinos,' said David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Democratic House representative Barney Frank, who earlier this year introduced federal legislation to legalize regulated online gambling, also criticized the move as 'giving opponents an argument against him.' Indeed, groups such as the Poker Player's Alliance, who were previously supportive of Patrick's plans to open the new casinos, have already announced opposition to the bill because of the online gambling clause."
Re:Apathy (Score:4, Informative)
Most "political activism" groups are happy with 5%-10% participation after an intense effort to "get out the mail" over several attempts and several weeks.
The NRA, famous for "flooding" Washington with letters, averages around 3% response to it's "Legislative alerts". Admittedly, a larger scale, since they have way more members, and a National issue rather than One Single State, but still...10% does not suck.
Not legal, death to WoW and enforcement (Score:3, Informative)
Enforcement: If it becomes a criminal act does this mean the cops will be kicking in doors to arrest? How about using no-knock warrants? The magic eight ball says: "All signs point to yes". Welcome to the People's Republic of Massachusetts.
Gov. Patrick is on the way to becoming an every worse Governor than Romney (who set the bar pretty low).
Re:Online gambling (Score:5, Informative)
For the last time -Femocrats are not socialist! (Score:4, Informative)
Socialism is national healthcare, nationalised industries, nationalised housing, government control of resources.
The democrats and republicans are two very closely related flavours of free market conservatism (with a huge military/industrial bias).
You don't know what socialism is.
Mass resident here (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a Massachusetts residence [wikipedia.org] who's been observing the whole gambling thing over the past six months. I don't know exactly why Deval wants to criminalize online gambling, but I can give you some background into the whole debate.
First of all, why does the state want to legalize gambling in the first place? You guessed it: money. The state is facing severe budget shortfalls in pretty much all areas, but especially the transportation infrastructure [boston.com] (and for you non-Mass Romney supporters out there: remember this when Romney brags about his economic accomplishments. He didn't to shit except turn Massachusetts into the butt of his jokes [washingtonpost.com]). Some of the state's biggest cities (Boston, Springfield, Lawrence, Lowell, etc) have violent crime problems and these cities are looking for money to fund the police and outreach programs.
The state is trying very hard to develop new revenue streams by encouraging investment in biotech [boston.com] and green energy [renewablee...access.com]. But the problem with trying to bring those industries into Massachusetts is that land/rents in the eastern part of the state (with access to MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, etc) is very expensive. Costs in the western part of the state is significantly cheaper, but you don't have the highly-educated workforce like you do in the eastern part of the space. Also, these initiatives are long-term fixes, and we need money now.
So some Mass residents have been gazing longingly at Foxwoods [foxwoods.com] and Mohegan Sun [mohegansun.com] in Connecticut (especially since lots of Mass residents spend money there) and have decided "we want some of that!" Hence the push to legalize gambling.
Of course the push toward casino gambling has created opposition with their concerns. Most of the concerns center around the potential for increased crime - some of the proposed locations (including Springfield) are dealing with crime problems and are worried that the casinos may create more crime, but since the state will be taking most of the money, the city/town will have to deal with the crime levels on their own. This isn't an unreasonable concern - western Massachusetts used to have homeless and public assistance centers all over the region, but they were consolidated by Romney into Springfield. Since western Mass doesn't have an extensive public transporation infrastructure, people on public assistance (and in too many cases, their deadbeat/criminal children/SO/spouses, etc) came to live in Springfield without a corresponding increase in the LEO/outreach budget which help cause our crime levels to spike.
Patrick (or his advisers/aides) spent some time meeting with people on both sides of the issues and researching the expected benefits and disadvantages to weigh the tradeoffs. Patrick finally recommended legalizing gambling at three casinos (eastern Mass, western Mass, and the Cape) after deciding that those three casinos could be prove beneficial, and create manageable problems.
That's where we are. So why the harsh penalties for online gambling? Maybe he is corrupt, but having seen how he kept his composure in response to a brutal campaign waged by his gubernatorial opponent [wikipedia.org] last year makes me doubt that. My guess would be that it's a gift to casino opponents who are worried that unchecked gambling in the state might lead to increased problems in already high crime areas.
I can't say I'm all that happy that these penalties are in the bill, but given the various problems the state is
Re:Online gambling (Score:2, Informative)
Can't comment on US state laws specifically, but in general that isn't true. For example I know that here in Canada, our laws on sex-abuse now apply to any Canadian citizen even if you are not in the country at the time. Now I don't think the government is going to send some special force to kidnap you from a foreign country if you leave, commit a Canadian crime, and stay there; but most countries have extradition treaties, and in practice you're probably going to want to come back, or at least go to a Canadian consulate to renew your passport.