^^ THANK YOU FUNKYJ! That was the whole reason that I made this post: so that we could discuss the DOJ's line of thinking and come up with a way to alleviate their fears and concerns. Unfortunately this thread has been badly derailed.

Let's get it headed back the right way.

The DOJ says that they were concerned that they were not able to monitor the financial transactions that the poker sites were conducting. What do we have to do to address that issue?

Simple tell the government to legalise and regulate it because that is the only option that achieves those goals.

I thought it was pretty obvious that either the UIGEA needs to be repealed, or poker has to be proven and upheld in court to not fall under the scope of the UIGEA.

Transactions were transparent pre-UIGEA. At least all of mine were.

You need to realize (and you probably do) that much moral oppostion to gaming is a little bit more evolved than "gaming is evil". It sounds like half of the reasons you list for the federal crackdown really are because of moral opposition to gaming.

Perhaps this is true for poker players who prefer poker to be unregulated. I happen to think this is a minority of poker players. I think most poker players would prefer that sites were regulated. They would feel their funds were safer. And while I'm sure most players would prefer their regulated poker to be untaxed, I am sure that American players, at least, realize that American regulation will have to come with American taxes.

The problem I have with the notion that the DoJ action was just about shutting down the potential for terrorist funds transfer or money laundering is that the UIGEA wasn't an act to prevent such transfers. If was an act to prevent funding illegal online gaming. For one thing, it does nothing to prevent terrorists or other criminals from laundering money through legal operations. Meanwhile it also prevents a lot of otherwise legitimate fund transfers. I expect that the DoJ knows that legal US-regulated online poker would be almost as easy to use for money laundering as regulated offshore online poker and probably easier/safer to use than unregulated online poker.

So, the UIGEA doesn't really solve the supposed problem of money laundering, but in its futile attempt it further circumscribes liberty in order to provide an illusion of safety. Alternatively, it never was really intended to prevent terrorists money landering. That was just an addtional excuse to ease its passage by attachment to Safe Ports. It was designed to prevent online gaming.

Do:

1. Cheating and underage gaming certainly are not simply moral issues. Most of the poker players I know are opposed to both of them.

2. I think you are confused between the concepts of "law was passed and enforced because of concern about potential crime facilitation" and "law will be completely effective at stopping any terrorist financing".

The UIGEA and the DOJ's enforcement of it are the former. They are not required to be the latter. It's enough that offshore unregulated online poker raises the potential of these problems.

"not simply" <> "not".
Most poker players can be morally opposed to certain aspects of poker without being morally opposed to poker. Many moral opponents of poker believe that those elements that even poker players are morally opposed to are so inherent that poker itself is therefore morally wrong.

I'm not confused by those two different concepts at all. Neither am I confused between the concepts of "law was passed and enforced because of concern about potential crime facilitation" and "lawmakers and crimefighters really thought the law would have any material impact on the supposed concern."

I agree with your first sentence here, insofar as concern about money laundering was an excuse both for the passage of the law and now is given by the DoJ through a senatorial aid as an excuse for the enforcement. However, offshore poker, regulated or not, does not materially increase the potential of money laundering. I doubt that the DoJ or the strongest backers of the UIGEA thought it would. I might go so far as to say I think it more likely that if they really were trying to catch terrorists and organized crime money launderers exploiting online poker, they would legalize, regulate and monitor online poker in the US.

I think the real purpose of passing the UIGEA and enforcing the UIGEA was to do exactly what it purports to do: make it difficult to fund online gaming.

Then their appropriate action was to pass a law providinf for the regulation of online poker in the US, not to pass a law restricrinf fund transfers to online gaming

Really, don't you think that poker players might not have some reason other than morality to oppose cheating and underage play?

As for having a material impact on crime financing, this depends on the timeframe. In the longer term, it certainly does benefit Americans for it to be harder to move money into offshore accounts. At least every DOJ prosecutor is going to believe this, whether you do or not.

Remember, the DOJ can't pass a poker bill. Only Congress can.

I, for one, am quite glad that there is a lawyer here who often posts in contradiction of Skallagrim. This is not because I think he is frequently or fundamentally wrong. In fact I think he is right much more often than you think he is. The value to having a dissenting opinion consistently available is it improves the quality of the end product by burning out many of the inevitable flaws. No one person has a monopoly on correct pereception of the law.

I am certainly no Libertarian myself. I agree that people more easily believe things that accord with their usual viewpoint, and that Libertarianism is much more prevalent among poker players and has little currency in mainstream American politics. However, I am concerned that your dislike of Skallagrim or his Libertarian orientation sometimes leads you to argue from the conclusion rather than from the evidence. This makes you less objective, and more like a person designated as opposing council rather than a person acting as judge. Kneejerk opposition might tend to be viewed as a boy crying wolf. It will therefore be less effective than opposition that is seen to be unprejudiced and objective. Saying that you "correct him when he is wrong" rather than "offer a different opinion when I disagree" could easily be taken for unseemly presumption or bias.

I'm going to agree with you that the DoJ's motives are very clear, but I expect we will differ on at least some of those motives. Perhaps we agree that one of their motives is to enforce the law as they understand it.

One last thing we can quibble about If you are going to abbreviate Skallagrim's SN, it would be more proper to call him "'grim" or "Grim" not "Skalla". "Skalla" is an old norse adjective meaning "bald" (same root as "skull" and "scalp", I think). Grim is the proper name. In English we might call him "Grim the Bald", or "Bald Grim" much like we say "Eric the Red" for "Eirikr Raudi".

I actually agree with Skalla that if you just look at it in terms of "the law as they understand it", the DOJ comes off rather suspect. Nobody forced them to attempt to stretch the Wire Act in the way they did, for instance.

My differences with Skalla come from the fact that he reads that as meaning that they must be a bunch of moralists, and I read it as meaning they must be really concerned about opening up the floodgates to Americans moving their money offshore.

I certainly think many poker players might have reasons other than, or as well as, morality to oppose cheating and underage play. However, I think that widespread moral views are all formed from practical roots.

I'm going to disagree that the materiality of the effectiveness on crime financing depends on timeframe. It depends on portion of possible transactions covered and degree of monitoring of those transactions.

I'm going to vehemently disagree with the proposition that Americans are better off with it being harder for them to move their money into offshore accounts. Aside from the expected Libertarian arguments, there is the obvious example of the pitiful state of American banking regulation that led to the 2008 collapse and the resultant obscene cost to taxpayers of the bailouts of automakers and financial institutions, as well as the trillions in lost equity on the markets. Compare that with the performance of the highly regulated Canadian banking sector and the fact that Canada had the healthiest economy in the industrialized world in the aftermath of the collapse. There is also the argument that protectionism is a long-term losing strategy. Prohibition on transfers to offshore accounts is certainly not consistent with the principles of capitalism.

I highly doubt that every single DoJ prosecutor has the same set of politcal and economic values and ideas.

I think you should assume that I am somewhat aware of the different roles of the DoJ and of Congress. You were the one who mentioned both passage and enforcement of law in the same sentence, which is why I continued to talk about the DoJ and passage of laws in the same post.

What you are forgetting is that the collapse of the American financial and banking system in 2008 was on the lending side, not the saving side. If it were something like the S&L scandals in the 1980's, you could argue that giving Americans an offshore banking option would have helped. But it wouldn't have helped here.

Allowing Americans to bank offshore in larger numbers facilitates tax evasion and crime financing. And yes-- while DOJ prosecutors have different ideological views, they are basically trained to think this is really important and that being able to control money flows is central to the agency's mission.

I agree with you that the DoJ are not primarily motivated by anti-poker morality in their prosecution of the site.

Are you sure that Skallagrim ascribes this anti-poker morality to the enforcement arm, not the legislative arm? Is it unreasonable to say that enforcment of a moralistically motivated piece of legislation is a moralistic enforcement, because the enforcers don't share that moral viewpoint?

Being concerned about opening the floodgates to Americans moving their money offshore is not the perview of the US Attorney for the SDNY. That is a policy matter. Enforcement agencies should not be trying to make public policy. If you are correct about their motivation, then we should be concerned about getting the DA and FBI back into their box. If they were merely acting on orders from Holder, the cabinet or the President, then we have something else to be concerned about.

I think it is more likely that the concern you mention was not the prime motivation in the SDNY for this enforcement decision and neither was a moralistic opposition to poker.

I assure you that of all the US attorney's offices in the country, the Southern District of New York is MOST concerned with the movement of money offshore. Indeed, the mere fact that the poker investigations are being conducted by THAT office is a big tell as to what is motivating the prosecutors.

And as a matter of fact, you are wrong about the role of prosecutors. While it isn't really set out in the Constitution, prosecutors do have a policymaking role in their decisions as to what to charge and what not to charge. For instance (and I wish they would do more of this), they have discretion not to maximally enforce the drug laws.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, if your innuendo at the end is intended to imply that Harrah's and the B&M casinos are behind this, that would assume that they are really dumb. Online poker has been a boon for their business, because it brought a lot of players into poker rooms. Before the online poker boom, it was hard to find poker tables in many Vegas casinos. They sprouted up like flowers after the boom happened. Online poker also paid for television coverage which was great publicity for the sport.

That's an interesting point. If American banks lost customers to foreign institutions because these latter were seen as safer, would the American banks (or American regulators) react by cleaning up their act, or by producing even riskier and shadier approaches? If a greater portion of American savings were in steadier deposits, would bailouts need to be as big and would the effect on the American market and economy be as big? If American financial institutions had less capital to invest, would they put as much of it in shaky derivatives? If Americans were deposting offshore, would they also seek to borrow offshore?

Here you are being just as blind as the Congress that passed the UIGEA or the Patriot Act.. Yes, these laws may make it easer to combat certain crimes. But at what cost to American society as a whole? When considering legislation, one must take into account all probable effects, not just the intended effect.

If you are correct that the DoJ prosecutors are trained to believe that controlling the flow of money is central to the DoJ's mission, then I am more worried about the DoJ than I used to be.

Of course.

There are a number of reasons that could be why that office is the one involved. It could be, as you suggest a motivation. Alternatively, it could be a question of skill set. Who do you ger to investigate an alleged gambling related crime that happens to involve complex international financial transactions and internet financial crimes? The DA whose staff have the most experience. As well, it could be because the laws of New York State are more likely to yield a legal decison that online poker was in fact illegal in these instances.

Until we know whose decision the instigation of this investigation ultimately depended up, it is of little value to speculate about motivation. The DA's motivation would be different from the FBI's motivation which would be different from Attorney General's motivation.

I think your argument has some problems wrt scope of policy.

I certainly hope that when big business interests attempt to exert influence they go though channels. I.e. I hope they can't influence Preet Bharara directly. I have no idea how corrupt US politics really is, so I have no way of knowing how likely it is that Big Casino interests are behind the investigation.

Anyway your argument that the casinos wouldn't be behind this has a hole in it big enough to house a real casino. Sure the casinos benefitted from the online boom. There is no reason to believe that they think they'd be better off with somebody else providing online poker to Americans than with the casinos themselves providing online poker to Americans. Getting rid of potential competitors is a great way to prepare for dominating the future US online market.

I think there are plenty of reasons that this investigation could have been instigated that have little to do with B&M. The actual motivation depends on which level caused the investigation to happen.

Well, count me on the side of "Morals against underage play", then.

... and drinking... and drugs.... and smoking.....

I agree with this, somewhat. I think you BOTH have good points at times and the arguments are valuable.

Where BOTH of you **** up is, you make/take things personally, partially because of the antagonistic tone that comes out. YOU, sir, are just as bad (if not more- I can't say for sure, not having followed ALL of your fights) as you make him out to be, in this regard.

Remember that, the next times you two decide to butt heads.


NonoNO! I don't want them to put their difference aside! I want them to continue to debate them, so that various viewpoints are hashed out and brought up.

Take the personal animosity out of it, and we're good.

Huh?



I sure hope you weren't serious, with that gobblygook.

If people in this country want to stop being told this lie, they should stop acting stupid about taxes and government and the math behind them.... or start truly paying attention to politics and voting appropriately.

Otherwise, they deserve to be lied to.

Well, I'll at least give you credit for being consistent, in what seems to be your goal: becoming a well-known troll.

Keep rockin' it, baby!


By the way, can you point me to the things that YOU have done, to fight all of this? You're very good at ranting on others, about their supposed lack of effort, but I don't remember seeing a step-through of your heroic work on this front.

Can you enlighten me?

While I am far from sure that ability to monitor financial transactions or concern about controlling the offshore movement of funds is what really motivated this investigation, if they say it is a reason then we will have to address it.

Keep in mind that we are unlikely to be able to affect the motivation of the enforcement arm. We're really talking about affecting the motivation of their political masters.

If they say this is about monitoring we should say it will be a lot easier to monitor transactions regulated in the US than ones driven underground.

If they say it is about stopping money from leaving the US economy, say they should provide a place in the US economy to satisfy the market demand that the rest of the world is happy to satisfy.

If they say it is intended to stop criminals and terrorists from laundering money, ask them to show a single successful prosecution for money laundered on an online poker site from crimes not associted with the actual playing or funding of online games. Claim that there is no known evidence that criminals actually ever use online poker sites to launder money from crimes unrelated to playing poker on the same site. When they say, "it hasn't happend yet, but it could in the future", ask why you have to give up your liberty to prevent such a longshot.

Ask why an American company can offer you a poker game in a B&M casino, but not online.

Ask why forms of gamblng that are clearly not in the financial interests of the gambler are available online (horse racing, lotteries) but a game in which a skilled player can expect to make a profit is not available. Ask why it is morally defensible for a government to take money from suckers stupid enough to play a lottery, but not morally defensible to raise taxes by offering online poker.

Ask why they think prohibition of an American pastime is more effective and more desireable than monitoring funds transfers.

Remind them that prohibition breeds criminal activity, Regulation breeds tax income.

Ask why they are pursuing a policy that is costng tens of thousands of Americans their recent jobs, and preventing hundresds of thousands of other Americans from getting jobs in this industry.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but drinking, drugs and smoking have an additional component of bodily harm involved that is obviously not present when playing a card game.

These too are all areas where legislated morality is prevalent, but not exclusively so.

Every poker bill under consideration had provisions to ensure Harrah's got a big shot at taking over the market. The DOJ action didn't affect that; it only hurt Harrah's to the extent that some online players find other things to do and don't come back.

Oh come on that is crap. The UIGEA was passed for ONE thing and ONE thing only: PartyPoker, Paradise, UB, and the like were viewed as a threat to B&M, horse-racing, and even the NFL ffs. AT NO POINT was a thought put to prevention of terrorist-funding. This, along with the trumpeted moral component used to make FoFers happy was the disguise for the actual ONE thing that it was passed for. If it was so meant to benefit Americans long-term, why was it snuck into attachtment to the PS bill so surreptitiously?

Also, the UIGEA didn't make it harder to move money offshore. It forced all the money that was moving offshore from transparent to clandestine.

The DOJ knew where the money was going when PayPal, NETeller, FirePay, ePassporte, and etc. existed. All the UIGEA did was make finding that same money harder.

The DOJ prosecutor is only going to believe such bull**** if he/she is politically driven. Any idiot involved in all this hullaballoo can see what a collossal waste of time and money this whole circus show is.

Did they feel this way before or after they seized all those 3rd party processors for millions (billions?) without even bothering to put the Wire Act, UIGEA, and the like to the test in court?

The "floodgates" stay wide open so long as those laws perpetuate a gray area for which they can freeroll/bully rich mother****ers like Anurag Dik**** into handing away hundreds of millions of dollars.