With Gambling, Personal Freedom Is Always the Best Bet, Says Barney Frank. There are many vices in the U.S. Those that hurt others must be stopped. Online gaming need not be.
By Barney Frank
Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
There is one major reason that leads me to oppose the ban on Internet gambling: It is an activity that adult Americans enjoy and that does no conceivable harm to anybody else…
Several other negative arguments exist. The least serious comes from the professional sports leagues, which express their horror that if Internet gambling were allowed, people might actually bet on sports games. The bill I proposed prohibits betting on sports through the Internet, but the notion that the people who run professional sports leagues are shocked by the idea that people might actually bet on their games has to rank as one of the least credible in human history.
Indeed, one of the major shortcomings of the current law is precisely that it prohibits human behavior that in fact harms no one. Thus, it winds up doing more to discredit the law than to discourage the activity….
Finally, there are two blatant contradictions in the position of those conservatives who push to outlaw Internet gambling. First, it is the most glaring example we have of interfering with freedom on the Internet. Second, to those who claim to be unhappy with the intrusiveness of the “nanny state,” there is no stronger case than for a nanny government insisting we be “better” people by reducing our freedom.
On this issue, there is a very clear case for the citizen’s right to be left alone.
U.S. News & World Report provided a forum for representatives of both sides of the issue of legalizing and regulating (and taxing) online gaming. When Rep. Barney Frank introduced H.R. 2267 on May 6, Rep. Spencer Bachus was quick to respond with a blurb about criminals, youth, blah blah. But the U.S. News piece allowed both parties to cool down and present their opinions with some thought.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tY5FO6CKkSFYMDiqfKJOmuIWvfCDwzyijqiF991oi5JCIJBk84ot_3XUyttTwipuG_ZltgFrqR224MPZ-meuGDHhe5hwIGNe3dBTNnzRSBT_L1SIisPWKnEmcPjjN5ujJXbCdtmrRyaoL3TWsBoUzx=s0-d)
