Do you think they have ever considered a relationship? Don’t you think they should since a lot of us stay at home, wanna play at home online poker players are seniors? I got my AARP Bulletin a few days ago and as I was leafing through the pages to find something on enhancing your hearing and how loss of hearing can affect dementia (yikes) I saw another page that suggested we go to the AARP Deficit page and list how we felt we could help cut down the US’s gigantisod deficit. I did go. While I was there I got the demented light bulb idea, why isn’t AARP, with all of the zillions of boomers, out there screaming for the right to play, tax, regulate, and license online poker?
I sent them the following email to AARP and also sent it to the PPA:
Dear Member,
I would like to approach the subject of online poker and have AARP consider checking into the full value of what legalizing, regulating, and licensing it would mean for the US and its always failing budget. Please let me state first that I am prejudiced, I have been involved in the poker industry for 38 years and still am the editor of http://pokerworks.com.
Recently the DOJ indicted PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker and the online poker sites closed their doors to US players – not because online poker is illegal, but because of laws concerning bank fraud and money laundering, which are bogus charges at best. When the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act was tacked on to a Port Securities Bill in 2006, by Bill Frist, online poker was lumped under the ‘gambling’ concerns. The US has never defined the UIGEA and how to enforce it, other than putting all of the pressure on banks to not allow transactions from players to online poker sites. The UIGEA is flawed, yet the US DOJ uses it to carry out attacks on online poker sites and reap fines from those sites and people behind the sites. While this issue may seem fair, the fines are pennies compared to the many studies that have been done in the last five years that show the US would bring in over 43Billion in the next 10 years (that is a conservative estimate) if online poker was legalized, regulated, licensed/taxed in the US.
I would like to point out that people went on to play online poker long after the UIGEA went into effect in 2007 and there are still sites that offer poker to US citizens, the DOJ simply stopped ‘the big 3’ but the battle isn’t over yet.
Another point; tens of thousands of online poker players in the US lost their jobs when the DOJ handed down their indictments and the poker sites closed. Poker isn’t gambling, it is a skill game and many people make a living playing from their homes, millions in fact. Many retired people play online poker for entertainment and income, and people that are physically handicapped and can’t sit at a casino table, and people that live miles away from casinos, and those that are healthy and fit that choose to play. Our freedom of choice has been compromised by the DOJ because they want to protect our morality and keep us from playing online poker in our homes. I’m very angry over this.
I’m also distressed because all of the media people are now facing cutbacks and I may be next to be out in a glutted job market looking for work because the DOJ is protecting me. I turned 64 yesterday, looking for a job outside of my home is not an attractive prospect.
I would love to have AARP contact http://theppa.org and visit with Alfonse D’Amato and John Pappas and find out the full story and why it’s so important that online poker be regulated, licensed, secure, and legal in the US. People are playing anyway, why not send all of those billions of dollars that are going oversea into the US coffers instead?
Thank you for your consideration,
Linda Geenen
—
Linda R. Geenen
Editor: http://pokerworks.com
a mix of life and poker AKA a blog
http://table-tango.pokerworks.com
Poker is a game of people played with cards!
Real world post coming tomorrow – I hope. I’d like the real world to have online poker legal in the US. Come on Kids, right your representatives, call them, scream, let’s get this fixed.
I less enamored with the PPA that you are. They’ve been more a creation of the sites than anything grass roots. Overpaid and under-performing seems the right description. Some of the mail I get from them is embarrassing.
Not sure about the verification but it is “sended Senator”; maybe Gus can figure it out.
Hey Ken, I don’t believe I’m enamored, I believe the only way to make things change is to help someone pushing for the change. If they are funded by online poker, so be it. How many of our federal officials are funded by casinos? Funding always has to come from some place for there to be an organization, government, work place, relationship of any type – personal or business. I just want my freedom back and that isn’t all wrapped around playing poker, it’s the bullshit that someone thinks they should make the choices for all of us.
I like your capcha, I can’t even read mine.