Home / Poker News May 2011 / Online Poker Supporters Rally on Capitol Hill
Online Poker Supporters Rally on Capitol Hill
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2011-05-26 15:14
On Tuesday, Capitol Hill witnessed a rather out of the ordinary event: a rally in favor of taxation.
Online poker players gathered outside the US Capitol, flown in from all over the country by the PPA to voice their discontent with the current legal mist surrounding the status of their favorite pastime which – for many of them – is really a job. The 50-75 participants wore red T-shirts with “Poker is not a Crime” inscriptions, and conveyed various pro-online poker messages through the placards they carried.
The rally came in the wake of online poker’s Black Friday, during which numerous online poker domain names were seized, together with the bank accounts used by the payment processors that served the targeted online poker operations. Indictments were also handed out to some of the top online poker executives.
The rally drew quite a number of high-profile speakers. US Rep. Joe Barton, who is currently working on a new poker bill with the PPA, spoke too. He defended online poker and the basic right of US citizens to play the game for real money over the internet. Rep. John Campbell was another speaker. He said that even though he did not play poker himself, he could understand why US-based poker players would feel slighted by the Government coming into their houses and telling them they could not spend their monies on what they saw fit. He also said that the online poker bill he co-sponsored back in March was not about letting Americans play on foreign sites, but rather about foreigners playing on US sites in a fully regulated and taxed environment which provided safe-guards against underage and problem gambling.
Greg Raymer also spoke at the rally. He urged to participants to get active about the cause, as the majority of Americans are supportive of it.
According to John Pappas, director of the PPA, legislative clarity was needed instead of the whack-a-mole antics the Government has engaged in lately.
