Two-pronged reprise of appeal for state AGs to push for online gambling ban
Remember last year's abortive attempt by some Adelson-inspired state Attorney Generals to get their colleagues on board in supporting the Restoration of America's Wire Act (RAWA)? That fizzled out when only fifteen officials in total agreed to sign a petition, but now the Adelson crusade is back with a repeat.
US media reports have revealed that on October 20 the AGs of Missouri and South Carolina, respectively Chris Koster and Alan Wilson, penned a letter to other state AGs (copied to the chairmen of Congressional Judicial Committees) asking for their support for RAWA, which is currently stalled at committee stage in both the Senate and the House.
The names Koster and Wilson will be familiar – they were behind last year's attempt to influence Congress to adopt RAWA, in conjunction with Jon Bruning, the AG for Nebraska. That communication was controversial in that it very closely resembled a late-2013 letter authored by Adelson lobbyists and presented to Republican Party AGs (see previous InfoPowa reports).
Recipients of the latest appeal for support are asked to sign a petition to Congress dated October 30 which contains many of the half-truths and dire (and unsupported) predictions of terrorist financing, criminal activity and harm to citizens that has characterised Adelson's expensive ongoing PR campaign against online gambling (one has to wonder how much the multi-billionaire land casino mogul has spent on this objective over the past three years).
The letter suggests to Congress that because internet gambling is inherently a cross-border activity, it should be governed by federal rather than state laws.
State legislators and regulators will probably be offended by the RAWA rationale that "…states are ill-equipped to enforce gambling laws against interstate and international companies, particularly when age and location verification mechanisms are subject to compromise and the technological vulnerabilities of the Internet."
Of course the letter does not acknowledge the successful regulation achieved in New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada through the use of modern geo-location and identity and age verification technologies.
Releasing details of the letter this week, the Poker Players Alliance urged members to once again take to their emails and debunk both the content and spirit of the letter.
Online Casino News Courtesy of Infopowa
