Never underestimate the ability of wingnuts to hold many contradictory ideas in their minds and be absolutely unable to see they are in conflict in any way…

According to these guys, government should be small, except for the giant bureaucracy that needs to be created to monitor the uterus of every woman in the country to see if she’s pregnant or not and make sure she doesn’t have an abortion if she is.

The gambling debate is a classic example of libertarian conservatives coming into conflict with “social” conservatives. Can the government ban gambling because it’s immoral and/or likely to cause harm (the two are actually both sides of the same thing, but that’s another issue)? Or should government get out of the way of would-be gamblers because, after all, it’s their money?

Some libertarians, like Ron Paul and Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman, see no conflict along these lines when it comes to opposing abortion. But on other issues (notably marijuana, in Chapman’s case), they come down solidly on the side of individual liberty.

Hmmm. Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that they have no personal stake in abortion rights, could it?

(To be fair, legalized gambling is something I’m pretty conflicted about myself.)

I’ve always been saying this about the big/small government meme.  If a government is “big” cause it raises taxes, shouldn’t it also be “big” for lowering taxes?

One of the biggest problems with online gambling is that the US authorities are using it to expand the reach of hysterical US criminal law beyond US borders.  Take for example the notorious case some years ago of them arresting—in Dallas, whilst switching planes!—a British citizen enroute to Costa Rica (where his company was located); he neither owned nor operated anything in the USA; his crime was operating an internet site that some people in the USA accessed.

In such cases there is a social conservatism at play.  There is also the traditional loathing of the revenue agencies (of any country) for any pie that they don’t get a piece of, (whether they’re entitled or not).  There’s also the ceaseless efforts of almost all American authorities of the past 40 years to extend US jurisdiction into other countries and onto other citizens.  (Remember the SCOTUS saying that it’s okay for US authorities to kidnap suspects in other countries, even where there’s an extradition treaty? We do.)  Your average US DA or USA doesn’t really believe that there’s any place where US laws and law enforcement desires don’t count.

They start getting Randian, and then fundamentalist, and shit just goes haywire, because there’s no way for anything to happen with respect to the government allowing or prohibiting online poker without some form of government involvement.

Bingo.  There’s a huge subset of libertarian True Believers that are just one big ball of anger that doesn’t require rational application for its rage.  This is especially so when confronted with something that they can’t argue against, like “if market choice rules, what if the market chooses government?”  This gets the truest of believers furious, because they regard any government action as a form of theft, and so riposte with deft arguments like “fuck your mother and fuck you in the face” [true story].

You need to work on your similes.  =D

As my wife has said often, I’ll take these yahoos seriously when they stop using government-built roads, drinking water filtered by local government water-treatment plants, sign a contract never to ask for Medicare or Medicaid benefits, refuse police and fire department protection of their property, stop using their telephones or cable televisions which access their houses by government-subsidized lines, and cheerfully eat tainted food not inspected by the FDA.

I can think of a few places I’d like to keep “Big Government” out of: my bedroom, my doctor’s office, and my reproductive organs.  Apparently to some conservatives, keeping “Big Government” out of the internet is more important than all those other things.

Why on earth would anyone participate in a game of chance that involves an unseen dealer holding an unlimited deck of cards with no guarantee the results aren’t manipulated?

And these are the people who distrust government?

I’m going back to bed.

Why on earth would anyone participate in a game of chance that involves an unseen dealer holding an unlimited deck of cards with no guarantee the results aren’t manipulated?

Well, except for the cards, that describes slot machines, which are by far the most popular form of on-site gambling (I’m not counting bingo or lotteries).

This is why I’m the only person of Greek descent I know who doesn’t gamble.

One of the biggest problems with online gambling is that the US authorities are using it to expand the reach of hysterical US criminal law beyond US borders.  Take for example the notorious case some years ago of them arresting—in Dallas, whilst switching planes!—a British citizen enroute to Costa Rica (where his company was located); he neither owned nor operated anything in the USA; his crime was operating an internet site that some people in the USA accessed.

In such cases there is a social conservatism at play.  There is also the traditional loathing of the revenue agencies (of any country) for any pie that they don’t get a piece of, (whether they’re entitled or not).  There’s also the ceaseless efforts of almost all American authorities of the past 40 years to extend US jurisdiction into other countries and onto other citizens.  (Remember the SCOTUS saying that it’s okay for US authorities to kidnap suspects in other countries, even where there’s an extradition treaty? We do.) Your average US DA or USA doesn’t really believe that there’s any place where US laws and law enforcement desires don’t count.

In almost any imagineable instance such as the one you describe, I’m with you 100%... the U.S. shouldn’t be getting involved.

Where I would become a lot more conflicted would be if the website owner - instead of operating a gmabling venue - was somebody trafficking in child pornography.

Say for instance, the foreign national running a child porn website landed his plane in Dallas en route to some S. American country to abduct some more children.

I’m not so sure I would have a huge moral issue with U.S. authorities nailing the fucker in such a case.

hehe.  #13 is made of win.

Wow, the huge bureaucracy to detect, intercept, arrest, and harass businesses which may have gambling on their premises both real and virtual isn’t a part of government?

Who woulda thunk.

Why on earth would anyone participate in a game of chance that involves an unseen dealer holding an unlimited deck of cards with no guarantee the results aren’t manipulated?

Well, except for the cards, that describes slot machines, which are by far the most popular form of on-site gambling (I’m not counting bingo or lotteries).

Not precisely.

Yes, on-site slot machines are games of pure chance, but assuming the state gambling commissioner isn’t on the take, you sure as shit don’t want to be running a gambling establishment that is operating tampered-with slot machines… it’s a damn quick way for the slot machine owner or casino proprietor to lose their license and face very stiff federal charges and possible jailtime.

True, one is going on faith that the machines haven’t been rigged to always lose when they play… but I’m pretty sure it’s extremely illegal for a casino to be operating slot machines that are incapable of ever producing winning results.  It’s a pretty flagrant form of fraud, and the kind of shit that I imagine would have FBI agents shutting down a billion dollar Las Vegas casino if they catch it going on.

Casinos and legalized gambling machines tend to be highly, highly regulated by government authorities, largely because organized crime has frequently infiltrated the industry… so Feds always have their eyes on that business.

I briefly drew an ms paint comic with the premise that (in political cartoons, anyway) conservative anger toward ‘big government’ was basically explained by taking a picture of something they didn’t like (e.g. a cat scratching their furniture) and writing ‘BIG GOVERNMENT’ on whatever they were mad at.

I’m still trying to figure out how it’s OK, or even beneficial to the public, for the gov’t to run massive gambling games, but evil for others to do so.

Well, the thinking, as I understand it, is that the government will run an honest game, whereas a private operator has a lot of incentive to cheat.

OTOH, per the excellent comment at #19 by DTG in STL, adequate regulation should remove that difficulty.

This is why I’m so conflicted about gambling. The main thing it has going for it is that it’s a “painless” way to raise revenue. (Painless for politicians, that is. It’s plenty painful for gambling addicts and their families.)

This is why I’m so conflicted about gambling. The main thing it has going for it is that it’s a “painless” way to raise revenue.

I have no conflicts about it.  It was first legalized in Missouri about 15 years ago, with the promise that it would provide massive amounts of new revenue for our horrifically bad public schools in the state.  And it would only be allowed on boats that regularly cruise on either the Mississippi or Missouri Rivers.  And gamblers would be limited to $500 loss limits per cruise.

And then a “cruise” got re-defined to mean regularly scheduled loading/unloading intervals, but the boats never actually left the docks.  And then “boat” got re-defined to mean a physical structure within 500 yards of the river surrounded by a moat of water.  And then “boat” got re-defined again to mean a $500 Million hotel and casino in the vicinity of the river, sort of.  And then “$500 loss limit” got re-defined to mean “Loss limit? What loss limit?”

And 15 years later, our public school systems still suck ass… but Harrah’s and Pinnacle Entertainment have lots of new politician friends.  And when St. Louis finally joined the 21st Century this year and instituted a public facility smoking ban, guess who got exempted?  The casinos… and pretty much no one else.

I’m actually not really terribly opposed to gambling itself.  I’m opposed to the thoroughly corrupt way in which (formerly) riverboat gambling was sold to the voters in the 1990s as this great panacaea for our ailing schools that it hasn’t been, and the fact that out-of-state (and out-of-country, in the case of Pinnacle) casino owners have way too much clout with our lawmakers, without delivering anything of real value to the community.

DTG in STL re the kiddieporn guy.

That falls into “hard cases make bad law”, doesn’t it?  I’m all for busting guys like that, but if the cost is that American law somehow magically applies to non-Americans who haven’t done anything in America then I’d say the price is too high.

I always heard that the slot machines in a casino were wired into a central computer that would dole out the “winnings” in such a way that the house always stayed ahead, but that there were enough meagre payouts to keep the plebes shelling out their chips.

I never understood the alure of video poker / video slots. How long would it take you to lose $50-60 on one of those machines? Not much as I understand it. Maybe an hour?

For $50-60, I could buy a new videogame with just as many flashing lights and weird noises, and even the stingiest of videogames usually gives me a solid 8-10 hours of gameplay before I put it down. I can even recoup the cost a bit by selling it back. Some videogames clock well over a week of playtime. Some of them even have a bit of replayability to them. (Of course, this reasoning is part of the reason I’m resistant to DLC… I probably won’t buy Dragon Age until a Game of the Year edition comes out).

Your metaphors are just fine the way they are
Almost as good as Pterry Pratchett’s

DTG and STL: Substitute “Illinois” for “Missouri” and “Chicago” for “St. Louis,” and every word of your post would still be true. (Except our smoking ban doesn’t exempt casinos.)

The only reason I’m blase about it is because this is Illinois, the most corrupt state in the Union. (See Blagojevich, Rod; Ryan, George; and others too numerous and depressing to mention.)

Ponygirl -

As a relative (indirectly) to several people “in the biz” as it were - most slots aren’t hard-wired into a central computer but rather are set at the machine to give a certain percentage of payout (i.e., 97%.)  By law if a casino advertises a 98% payout (i.e. of each dollar 98 cents must be paid as a jackpot) then at least one of the machines in the hall has to have that payout setting.  Most are much “tighter” than that (lower payout) - but even a 5% margin is all cash to the casino.  Besides, if they make the machines too “tight” business will drop off because the gamblers are suckered by the sounds of distant payoffs somewhere else in the hall (the old “if he/she won, I’m next” theory of probability.)

Some machines are indeed hooked up to a central database, but those tend to be the cross-casino mega-jackpot machines (like Megabucks.)

Mind you, some of my knowledge might be a bit rusty, but for what I recall the payout settings are controlled at the individual machine.

As for poker machines, the key to those is the illusion of control.  The only interaction the gambler has with the slot machines is to insert money and to pull the arm.  Poker machines give the gambler the sensation of choice (even though the card shuffle is controled by the same sort of probability calculations.) 

Casinos are even more insidious these days - I went “home” to Reno for Thanksgiving and saw that there were very few money machines any more (last time I’d been there was several years ago); most of them took prepaid cards (with ATM/Credit machines conveniently placed everywhere so you could load up the cards directly from your credit card account.)  This goes even more into the “I’m not spending real money” illusion that makes the gamblers overspend.

I meant DTG in STL, of course.

This goes even more into the “I’m not spending real money” illusion that makes the gamblers overspend.

The best gambling advice I ever saw was that you should designate X amount of money for gambling (like, say, $200 for a weekend in Vegas) and spend only that money.  That means that your winnings go into one pocket and the money you play with comes out of a different one, because otherwise human nature dictates that you’ll sit there and lose all of your winnings, too.

It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll come out ahead in this system, but at least you won’t lose more than you can afford and you have a decent chance of breaking even.

Then again, I put a couple of rolls of quarters into a slot machine and I’m done, gambling-wise, so I don’t entirely get the allure.  Maybe if I’d ever won more than $300 or so.

That falls into “hard cases make bad law”, doesn’t it?  I’m all for busting guys like that, but if the cost is that American law somehow magically applies to non-Americans who haven’t done anything in America then I’d say the price is too high.

You’re confusing physical crime with criminal actions.  The United States and just about every other organized country agrees that if you commit a crime outside of it’s borders to it’s citizens then you are in fact in violation of their laws regardless of citizenship.  The whole online gambling situation is a sticky situation but doesn’t detract from the fact we’re well within reason to arrest anybody who lands within our border for crimes they committed abroad.

On the topic itself, “big government” is just a ruse for their private political agendas.  The libertarians are off in their own private world where they play Ayn Rand and we’re all proletariat fools.  The social conservatives are looking for votes anywhere they can find them to keep their social structure intact.  The years since civil rights has brought us Barack Obama now.  Children who grew up without a real distinction between white and black elected him.  The clinton/Bush/Obama generation will continue this trend while libertarians will continue to chant big government but they know it’s a losing argument.

Xeranar:
Incorrect: the key being “to its citizens”.  If you have, say, a Thai man who has created child porn using Chinese kids and keeps his servers in Korea then I don’t see where you have an American crime.  A crime, certainly, but not an American crime falling under American jurisdiction any more than a Parisian shooting an Egyptian in India would be.

Please don’t forget that the gambling company executive ran a perfectly legal business in a perfectly legal way outside the USA and was arrested for that.  He wasn’t a wanted man anywhere save to the Americans deciding that they had a brand-new crime to charge him with.  To use a prohibition-era example it would be as if a Scotch distillery owner was arrested for having a distillery in Canada, just because some Americans got ahold of a few bottles. The fellow hadn’t committed a crime at all, save for the Americans arbitrarily extending their laws outward in an unprecedented way: the notion that people who are doing perfectly legal acts in foreign countries are subject to being criminally charged if their activities are contrary to US jurisdictions in which they do not operate.  Don’t forget, too, that he was arrested BEFORE the US federal government passed its BS online gambling law (snuck into a security bill at nearly the last minute) and had committed no offence against the law of Texas where he was detained; he was wanted only in Missouri.

Part of the problem is a macro one: the American federal criminal code has ballooned out of all proportion and, arguably, can make almost anything a federal crime.  The libertarians—for all of their conservative tendencies and farcical economic views—are pretty much the ONLY Americans jumping up and down and screaming about the fact that in fits and starts (and often the with the best of intentions) the US code has expanded to the point where being a federal felon is about as difficult as, well, living your life, because something in there can getcha.  And, speaking as a humble member of a country without a batshit criminal code I’d hate to do American prison time simply because some asshole American thought I should be in jail for noncriminal things that I do in my own country.

Research correction: Carruthers wasn’t arrested on Missouri charges, but on federal charges filed in Missouri.  He was charged under RICO laws and telephone era wire charges aimed at illegal gambling within the USA. 

Disclosure: I don’t gamble, at all, so hold no personal brief for online gambling which is merely an efficient transfer of wealth from the stupid or compulsive to the clever and rapacious.  I just hate the idea of America deciding that it’s laws apply everywhere.

Research elaboration: He was one of the most vocal and vigorous lobbyists against the gambling law, which the Bush justice department was in favour of, and the founder of his company had long been a target of federal prosecutors for his online gambling operations overseas, thoroughly pissed that laws aimed at Mafia activities in America weren’t covering legitimate operations abroad that Americans accessed.  You work it out.

Incorrect: the key being “to its citizens”.  If you have, say, a Thai man who has created child porn using Chinese kids and keeps his servers in Korea then I don’t see where you have an American crime.  A crime, certainly, but not an American crime falling under American jurisdiction any more than a Parisian shooting an Egyptian in India would be.

You left out the key part, if an american accesses that pornography then everybody in the chain becomes unwitting accomplices to the crime and are subject to the jurisdiction of our legal system.  I could point out again that almost every other organized country uses a similar approach because it is the only way to protect its citizenry.  Ironically I agree that internet gambling is a poor law but your excuse for making it possible to let accomplices go because of it is just obnoxious at best and dangerous at worst.

Honestly, I see no reason to keep internet gambling out of the US except for the fact that they aren’t subject to our taxation, regulation, and basic principles of business.  I’m not a fan of gambling but I would rather have people spending money in Las Vegas where we can legitimately tax it and make sure that the rules are being followed.  These off-shore sites may or may not be cheating people of vast sums and the money won on it may not be reported to the IRS which is in itself a crime.

Oh, and just for a back of the envelope (not that I’ve sat in front of a machine for more than an hour a time) if you play slots for entertainment value, you’re talking about 2-4 plays a minute, with a typical average expected loss of 1-5 cents a play. So typically $5-15 an hour on quarter slots. A little more expensive than a movie, but the food and drink prices aren’t as vicious.

And if they’ve got nickel or penny slots, what the heck…

Xeranar, there are fifty-one different kinds of criminal law in the United States, a great deal of which is batshit crazy by foreign standards.  It is patently irrational and unreasonable to expect foreign citizens to be cognizant of this myriad of codes and make them subject to all of them, especially (as in the Carruthers case) the law doesn’t even specifically apply to the situation at issue: they deal with telephone and telegraph communication and predate the internet by some decades.  There were simply no laws which specifically applied to the situation at hand, merely dated laws which were bent-to-breaking to fit, and our friend RICO which is one of the most easily abused statutes ever.  If Carruthers had asked his lawyers “are there federal laws prohibiting Americans from accessing our legal internet gambling services?” they would have said “well, duh, no, boss, there’s a proposed law that you’ve been lobbying against, remember?  but no laws yet”.  Do you really want law-abiding foreigners scooped up in airports because some mid-century relic designed to stop the mafia using tele-services to run illegal gambling can be picked up by some ambitious USA saying, “ah well, it’ll do!”?  Honestly?

We also need distinguish between acts which are crimes in the country from which the foreign individuals or companies originate (and child protection laws are pretty much universal, if very uneven in their application) and acts which are perfectly legal when performed in those countries.  You don’t seem to want to be bothered with that distinction, and seem rather cavalier about the fact that the 95.4622 of the people in the world who aren’t American want to be governed by their own laws, not yours. 

And for somebody to accuse me of making “obnoxious at best and dangerous at worst” statements when their own rationales for extending American gambling laws to into foreign countries which don’t want to follow them are “I’d rather” and they “may or may not be cheating” is a little rich.

If you want to make something illegal, pass a law.  In America it’s easy, as HR1144 proved.  Then people can avoid you because they actually KNOW that you’ve made something legal illegal.  Don’t just grab them and use the almost acquittal-free federal court system to lock up people whose only crime is that they pissed off the US government and its corporate owners.

Definition of “conservative”: regulate YOUR personal behavior, but hands off MY money.  Because a Real Conservative (tm) would never, ever, behave in a manner that would require intervention.

</snark>

What irks me is when I’m line at the card shop or the gas station and you get those people buying $30 worth of scratch off cards.  They bellow to the clerk the different names for the different game cards as if they have some air of importance about them.  Then I watch as they scratch their cards, win nothing, and then put down $20 for more.  I guess people plunk down the money for that momentary thrill they get that “maybe this time I might get lucky!” 

I played the slots a few times when I was younger, didn’t care for it much.  The whole idea of gambling seems stupid and harmful to me.  You basically have an entire industry that is ultimately funded by irrational people pissing away their money.

Hey, didn’t W once say something asinine in some town hall meeting, talking about his Social Security privatization plan, where he said one minute, “How dare the gubmint tell you what to do with your money, these elitists in Wershington think they know better” and then the next minute he said, “But don’t worry, we’re not going to let anyone take their Social Security money and go play craps with it”.  (Well, except for the big casino on Wall Street).

DTG and STL: Substitute “Illinois” for “Missouri” and “Chicago” for “St. Louis,” and every word of your post would still be true. (Except our smoking ban doesn’t exempt casinos.)

The only reason I’m blase about it is because this is Illinois, the most corrupt state in the Union. (See Blagojevich, Rod; Ryan, George; and others too numerous and depressing to mention.)

Oddly enough, Illinois’ gaming laws have largely helped drive Missouri’s gaming laws o be more lax… for a number of years, one of the top gambling destinations in St. Louis was the Casino Queen… located in East St. Louis, Illinois, directly across the river from the Arch.  When MO lawmakers saw they were losing Missouri gambling dollars to Illinois riverboats just across the river from downtown STL, they pushed to make our laws more lax so we would could be more competitive.

The only reason I’m blase about it is because this is Illinois, the most corrupt state in the Union. (See Blagojevich, Rod; Ryan, George; and others too numerous and depressing to mention.)

Illinois has a pretty strong case as the Union’s most corrupt state, but Louisiana certianly gives you a run for the money.  Back in the early 1990s, Lousianans had a choice between a convicted felon (Edwin Edwards) and a former Grand Dragon of the KKK (David Duke) as the major party candidates in their gubernatorial election.  They had to choose between a known racketeer and a wanton racist as their head of state.  The convict won.  And then later wound up being convicted again - and he’s sitting in prison today.

Research correction: Carruthers wasn’t arrested on Missouri charges, but on federal charges filed in Missouri.  He was charged under RICO laws and telephone era wire charges aimed at illegal gambling within the USA.

I loosely remember that case… I believe it came out of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in the Thomas Eagleton Federal Building in St. Louis.

I’m still trying to figure out how it’s OK, or even beneficial to the public, for the gov’t to <strike>run massive gambling games</strike> arrest and imprison people, but evil for others to do so.

Fixed.

It’s when push comes to shove and you actually have to start describing what it is that you’re angry about that the coalition fractures like some…fragile thing that fractures.  I need to work on my metaphors.

You forget - they don’t have to describe that at all before they are elected as long as they can scream loudly enough about the other guy being a KenyanCommieIslamoFascist.

And then after they’re elected, they’ll be raping the financial body politic like it’s a drunk coed passed out in the lifer section of a maximum security prison.  Offensive metaphor chosen deliberately - the corporate Republican approach to governance also results in shattered lives and unnecessary human misery. Cf Katrina.

And you damn well know the apologists will be working overtime sayinghow great they’re doing - Bush still has his fervant supporters.

My prediction is that in 2012, the Republicans ride a populist swell back to increased power - and your country suffers greatly for it. Fuck them and fuck Obama for being such a tool that he’s swinging power back rightwards.

DTG in STL re corruption: Do you remember that line from “Blaze”?  Something like “some day the fine people of the great state of Louisiana are going to have honest, upstanding and efficient gub’mint .... and’ they ain’t gonna like it a bit”.

PiaToR: We’re dealing with Obama’s in-office version of the Gore 2000 phenomenon, aren’t we? 
1. Ignore your own best qualities,; choose the worst of all strategic and tactical options; bend over for the people who hate you most; constantly deride and dispirit those who would support you most.
2. ??????
3. (Re)Election!

DTG in STL re corruption: Do you remember that line from “Blaze”?  Something like “some day the fine people of the great state of Louisiana are going to have honest, upstanding and efficient gub’mint .... and’ they ain’t gonna like it a bit”.

Ahh, yes, the great Kingfish, Huey Long.  What a complicated figure… corrupt as he was, I do believe Long probably had as much influence as any other pol in America in the 1930s in forcing FDR to implement the New Deal programs.

“So typically $5-15 an hour on quarter slots. A little more expensive than a movie, but the food and drink prices aren’t as vicious.”

The drink prices at the casinos I’ve been to/heard of are *free* if you’re playing. Including sodas, although they like to serve alcohol to muddle player’s thinking.
Mind you, I’ve only ever been once, and we won enough to cover the bus trip and the pretty skirt I bought at the craft fair we stopped at on the way. Of course, we walked away once we’d won enough and spent the rest of the afternoon at the buffet and the beach.