Perhaps you did not read my response where I clearly say WE NEVER discussed payment processing or SunFirst Bank in our meeting with the State AG. And again where I say I exchanged a total of 6 emails with Jeremey Johnson (and others on the email) over a two week period.

Or did you just gloss over that?

John A. Pappas
ED, PPA

hi mr pappas-

it would be very helpful if you could answer these summarized points of haley's questions:

as quoted by toilet bowl----
"
Quote:
1) Where can one find the annual financial filings for the Poker Players Alliance, a nonprofit organization, for the years 2009-2012? A link to this information does not seem to be present on the PPA website.

2) How much money did the PPA receive from corporate contributors PokerStars and Full Tilt, on a year-by-year basis? Please itemize: “Full Tilt’s contributions for the calendar year 2010 = $$$$” and so on. It’s okay to lump contributions to the PPA, to PokerPac, and to third-party organizations such as D’Amato’s firm together as a single total. I’m more interested in how much Stars and Tilt spent in $$$ that went through the PPA.

3) When did the PPA’s John Pappas first meet SunFirst Bank payment processor Jeremy Johnson? What was the nature of that meeting?

4) When did the PPA’s John Pappas first have contact with Jeremy Johnson, in the form of e-mails, phone calls, or through another medium? What was the nature of that contact, and for what purpose?

5) When did the PPA’s John Pappas first have contact with Mark Shurtleff and John Swallow, the former and present Utah Attorneys General? Was it due to Pappas’s prior work with Dittus Communications (and if so, on behalf of what lobbying cause), or was it through Pappas’s work as a staffer for Arizona Congressman John Shadegg?

(some of these have been answered, but 1 and 2 have not been)

Stars must have been a little upset when they realized their fate was tied to that of Jeremy Johnson. Did they have any idea who and what he was? Did the PPA vet this guy?

i did gloss it over, it was a load of garbage

u still didnt answer each question

Just because they may move the goal post after we score is no reason to not to try to score. If I get in the car and drive, I might get hit but that shouldn't stop me from driving.

Tamiller is saying, or so it seems to me, that the skill argument shouldn't be made in any state because if we win, they'll just change the law.

It seems to be the perfect argument to make in a state that allows paying to play darts for cash prizes, paying to play pool for cash prizes, etc. They are legal because they're skill games. If we show poker is skill, then we can say the other games are legal so we're legal.

I can answer this:

The answer is $0.

that would seem to be at odds with this

yeah.. just 1% of revenues comes from membership.. They are fundamentally lobbyists for the gaming industry.

There is some very good reason the PPA wants and needs the cooperation of all us troublesome poker players.. but I can't figure it out.

well being able to claim you are representing the people, not gaming interests, is a big deal in the game of politics

that occurred to me and it does make some sense, and it could explain why they accept non-paying members. I still think there's more to it.. something much less obvious.

I have nothing against the PPA and they have a huge fight on their hands and I am glad someone is taking the task.

But this guy Pappas just pops in here and types a novel that correlates to basically nothing. He has avoided the 2 major questions people are asking in this thread and will NOT give a direct answer.

If you were lobbying for sun first to "pay back" all of the money the poker sites gave the PPA just come out and admit it instead of typing 40,000 character novels

The PPA likely has no idea what % of their funds were from Pokerstars/FTP. They definitely know what % of their funds is from the IGC, but $0 came directly from PS/FTP.

I realize the goings-on in a private enterprise like the PPA are nobody's business, and they would resist opening the books to the world at large, but I might have a question they will answer (simply because it is documented and no doubt considered public knowledge somewhere in the IRS files..)

A line from a page on Nolo
Nonprofit corporations can engage in only limited lobbying activities. Tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofits that influence legislation to any "substantial degree" face the loss of their nonprofit status. However, for tax-exempt nonprofits that want to participate in lobbying, the IRS simply sets a limit on the money they can spend on political activities.

Question... What limit did the IRS set?

What specifically do you want to know? Pretty much everything they spent money on is public knowledge.

Something here reminds me of the "journalistic" method of repeating insidious questions over and over again for the apparent sake of being insidious.

i understand you are defending them for the reason that you think they are a valuable organization to the cause and this i do not doubt; i just think its worth knowing how much influence pokerstars/fulltilt have on this organization

if the answers were actually what you said (0), why aren't they adamantly defending themselves of that, instead of circumventing and dodging the question

Is Haley one of those people who can dish it out but can't take it? Here's a link to something she wrote about me that contains some very inaccurate information. (For example, I never called John Caldwell.) But when you're writing stuff like this, and then claim that other people are trying to smear you, it seems to me that something is our of kilter.

Best wishes,
Mason

The problem is, if you have one person or group willing to fund 95%+ of things, and the millions of players willing to fund less than 5%, as long a the 95% is doing something that is in the interest of players, and not taking away from players or effectively strangling other player lobbying efforts (the PPA does neither), then what you have is a pretty solid +EV situation, to speak in poker terms.

You're taking apart what you don't like and ignoring things that go with it. If you say the PPA can't lobby to include foreign poker sites (a semi pipe dream, again you're using hindsight to act like it was a full pipe dream, much more extreme things have been lobbied for in this government), then you also have to take away the 95%+ funding from those foreign poker rooms. You just can't say "PPA should've lobbied for US regulation, but discounted PS/FTP" or you lose all your funding.

He didn't answer #1 and #2, but iirc it's been discussed on QuadJack and in 2p2 NVG threads how much comes from that group that is basically FTP/PS.

What the PPA advocates is of interest and advantage to poker players. It is also very +EV for poker players to get the value we get from the PPA for apparently only 50k in yearly donations? Christ, how can a single one of us players bitch and moan about the PPA even if they had some extreme stance as "if PS and FTP can't make a state market from day 1 then we won't spend a dime" (they obv don't have that policy)? How can we complain when 50k gets you like nothing done at all on this issue. The PPA has clearly been very +EV for poker players, and before you say "where my federal bill" figure out what 50k gets you on capitol hill. One or two sit downs with a senator?

Yea isn't this info out there? I remember shortly after BF there was some special on quadjacks making a big deal out of having this data. Maybe someone can find it and share it.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: Shills, damned shills, and the PPA.

Tell us dear PPA people, if you care so much about the players, how come you NEVER gave a crap about the rake raping??

Frankly, it was bloody obvious from day 1 what the PPA was about: MORE RAKE FOR SCHEINBERG AND LEDERER.

Pokerstars/FTP were(are for PS) members of the IGC. The IGC(not PS/FTP) funded the PPA. No money was ever sent from PS/FTP to the PPA. Individual donations were made from Lederer(etc), and those are all publicly available.

Everyone always knew the PPA was indirectly funded by PS/FTP. What specifically is your problem with that? As far as I know the IGC's mission hasn't changed much and it was founded 5 years before pokerstars came online.

I've never seen an IGC donors list, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Regardles it doesn't really matter. We know PS/FTP funded the PPA indirectly.

You'd think these people would go troll FoF or some other dominionist group that will never allow poker. I guess PPA bashing gets the hits on the internets. Meanwhile poker's enemies slinking around like snakes in the grass where they are not in power already.

Oh here comes the straw man. Look I am out almost 400 bucks. I know it's gone and it's a fraction of what most lost. Fine. I knew it going in and it's my own fault.

Getting back to the PPA I don't remember them every lobbying FTP or PS to leave offshore and come to the US. This was never an option. If you want to provide some proof that the PPA wanted this then produce it. It's not hard to see that the major players I.E. Lederer didn't want to change anything but having the US sign off on it. We all knew it was a dream and that the US government would never go for it. Which is why Black Friday happened.

I can open my eyes. You can too.

This.

It seems many think this should be super-easy and can't comprehend why anyone would oppose online poker. Then, somehow the fact that it's tough is their "proof" that PPA must be doing something wrong.

What a joke. Are you angry that people are organized and fighting back?

Seriously...I don't get the venom. We need to stand up for ourselves.

Like how? You think Congress will pass rake controls of the sort you'd like?

PPA does have a strategy here. It's to keep taxes as low as possible and competition as high as possible.