Betting on Barney
Flutterers who swim at the novelty end of the betting pool may be intrigued to see that Paddy Power is offering odds on whether the always quoteable Democratic Congressman Barney Frank will succeed in his campaign to lift the US federal ban on internet gambling before 2011. Gambling on gambling, eh… The words “feedback loop” spring inexorably to mind.
“Rumour has it that President Obama plays a mean hand of poker so maybe the Congressman could find himself with some very powerful supporters!” the Paddy Power press release breathlessly intones, as it offers odds of 4/5 on the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) being amended by the end of 2010.
Of course, the President’s personal preferences didn’t help Big Tobacco when he signed a tough new anti-smoking bill into law last month, but the pro-gambling lobby still has a formidable ally in the form of Congressman Frank, who has become known for his colourful and cutting “Barney-isms”.
During a debate on a bill to ban bonuses, Frank accused the Republicans of opposing the bill simply so they could continue to enjoy fulminating against bonuses in perpetuity: “They appear to have become so attached to their outrage that they are even more outraged that they won’t be able to be outraged any more,” he concluded. Bankers, too, have been on the receiving end of the Massachusetts politician’s plain speaking: “People really hate you,” he told a cohort of bank executives on a public relations sojourn to Washington earlier this year.
Frank apparently declared to hundreds of happy Texas Hold ‘Em players at the World Series of Poker event in (where else?) Las Vegas on Sunday that Internet gambling was a right that must be protected. But, ironically, its casino economy means that Nevada is one of the most likely US states to veto the bill should it be amended. According to Paddy Power’s odds list, Nevada has a 4/1 likelihood of being the first state to opt out, the second favourite behind “Bible-bashing Utah”. Why take up residency at a rinky-dink slot machine in the middle of a desert when you can play Blackjack online in the comfort of your own home?
The effort that goes into protecting state monopolies on gambling is tortuous. Some years ago, I spent my J1 summer holiday visa working on the phone exchange (PBX) of a casino in South Lake Tahoe, on the Nevada side of the stateline with California. One of the most important rules in the PBX was not to put any calls from California through to the hotel’s sports bar: to do so was to aid and abet in an illegal act. It was still physically possible to connect such calls, though, and desperate Californian residents sometimes rang up and tried to persuade weak-willed operators to press the button standing in the way of them and their sure-fire punt on the Superbowl.
If US states split into two groups, with one group of states legalising online gambling and another group outlawing it, the cost of policing the bans would have to be less than the value of the commercial interests being protected. But then as the chairman of the US House of Congress Financial Services committee, Barney Frank already knows a thing or two about trying to control casino capitalism.
