We've been screwed....

Well looks like our wonderful crooked, stupid politicians have figured out a way to push through legislation to make online poker legal, but at what price?

I'm all for legalization, regulation and I don't even mind the taxation too much but there are many things that may be in this bill that I don't like at all.

The worst thing is 15 months with no online poker. What are people who play online for a living supposed to do? Their online winnings pay their bills. Many of them have families and mortgages and other bills that have to be paid.

Many online players live no where near a casino and even those who do can't make anything like the same amount of money live as they do online.

Why does there need to be a 15 month blackout? In my opinion it's in order to give brick and mortar casino corporations like Harrah's and MGM a leg up in starting up their own online poker rooms. It's obvious both companies have Harry Reid in their back pockets. Unfortunately I think if this bill gets through we can anticipate Harrah's and MGM having a monopoly on the U.S. market.

Another thing is the part about non U.S. citizens not being allowed to play on U.S. sites. Oh no, no one but U.S. players for 3 years, tell me it isn't true. Why should the U.S. not want to get tax dollars from foreign depositors.

And my favorite, the state opt out clause. If this goes through with most states who currently have no law prohibiting online gambling or skill games automatically opted in then fine but if only states with legalized gambling are automatically opted in then I'm so screwed because Georgia will never put through legislation to opt in.

I feel screwed over by the PPA, I really don't know how they can support this legislation. I think we will all be better off if it doesn't pass. I could be wrong but there definitely needs to be some serious modifications to the original bill.

Poker as we know it may be coming to an end. So let me grind away while I can. What really sucks is I recently lost my job and was hoping to be able to make some money playing poker and now if this bill passes I may not even have that.

Hummm, my husband's company has an office in Montreal. Maybe I should start learning French.