I have some exciting news to share. PPA is kicking off the PPA Town Hall meeting tour this month. PPA Director of Grassroots and External Affairs Drew Lesofski and I will be traveling to various cities across the country to meet with the poker community, to hear your concerns and answer your questions in person, and to share all that PPA is doing.
The kickoff will be in Tampa, FL, on May 23rd, followed by a Fort Lauderdale, FL town hall on the 24th. We will be joined by poker coach and mindset expert PPA FL State Director Donna Blevins (PokerMindsetAcademy.com). Aside from great discussion, as an added bonus Donna will offer a one-hour complimentary poker training session! So, I hope everyone in the area will join us for a great evening.
Joe and I will be discussing gaming—including Internet gaming—developments in New Jersey. I think this is going to be a fascinating program. As many of you already know, Joe is a highly knowledgeable and well-spoken resource on what is happening in US gaming law and policy, especially so with respect to New Jersey. I know that you may well have questions about what’s happening in New Jersey, about its ‘opening up’ to Internet gaming licensure, about how its landscape compares with Nevada, and other matters. This will be a fantastic opportunity to put your questions straight to Joe to learn more about what’s happening in this jurisdiction.
Tune in live to the program on the 24th (through the link in this message) and call in with questions. I’m not sure you’ll have a better opportunity to engage on these issues with a more informed person than Joe.
Bryan in Washington DC sends along an update from PPA lobbyist Jeff MacKinnon (of Ryan, MacKinnon, Berzok and Vasapoli, LLP) on the current legislative landscape for online poker as seen by those working the hallways of Capitol Hill. It’s apparently all about gearing up for a lame-duck-session smackdown, and riding our net-positive revenue potential onto an appropriate bill.
MacKinnon explains:
Calm before the storm. That’s what it feels like on Capitol Hill these days. There’s a certain melancholy feeling around here – sort of like a lull between battles during the Civil War. Coming off a year of budget deficit/debt/payroll tax crises, Congress is quietly putting all pending skirmishes off until an end of the year legislative battle royale. If one were in college - it’s sort of the equivalent of taking an incomplete in every class the whole year then having to do a year’s worth of work in 25 days at the end of the year.
Before everyone rushes to E-Trade and shorts the market, in Washington I’ve found that things are never as good or as bad as they appear to be. The one thing Congress is good at is kicking the can down the road. This will be a test of wills like no other – especially for lobbyists like me.
The breadth and number of contentious issues to be decided after the election is overwhelming and quietly has garnered the attention of many CEOs and financial industry leaders. A few of the issues that must be addressed before the end of the year: expiring Bush tax cuts; extending the debt limit; stopping drastic reimbursement reductions for physians in the Medicare program; an unemployment insurance extension; a transportation bill to fund highway programs in 50 states; changes to the alternative minimum tax; tax credit extenders for renewable energy and research and development; and the expiring payroll tax cut. Combined, these issues on the table are equal to 3% of our GDP.
The 2012 WSOP is right around the corner, and one key question you have to ask every year: OMG, what am I gonna wear? It’s been a long time since i’ve seen a poker T-shirt that actually made me LOL even a little bit … but dare I say kinda cool?
And the good folks at Grinder Gear Clothing Co. (poker, surfing, skateboarding apparel) have partnered with the Poker Players Alliance to put out their “Live and Let Grind” collection — a political statement and slogan of solidarity that stands to catch on with poker players and strippers alike.
Grinder Gear says 20 percent of what they make on these shirts will go to the PPA, so it’s feel-good fashion all around — comfortable clothing for poker freedom.
Yesterday marked the anniversary of online poker’s Black Friday. Anyone who ever clicked a raise button remembers the fateful day, and many are reminiscing about how their world changed on April 15, 2011.
Here’s a best-of list of links, tweets and general brooding from over the weekend:
QuadJacks.com did a special anniversary live podcast, which included “original Black Friday audio.” Ah, the memories. http://quadjacks.com/poker-radio/
A bunch of pros, like Matt Waxman, told PokerStrategy.com that this year’s WSOP Main Event should hold steady. “It’s like so prestigious and like world renowned, you know, so everybody’s gonna just make it out cause this is the one tournament that like if you’re the guy who plays the nightly home game for 100 bucks, you’re gonna splurge your 10k just so you can play in the main event,” he said. Like riiiight. http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/world-of-poker/Daily-Rewind-Black-Friday-Anniversary,-New-Gambling-Film,-WSOP-2012-Thoughts_58570/
This week we again visit the regulated online poker situation in both California and New Jersey, plus big news for Internet gambling from Manitoba, Canada. Also, a look ahead to what’s coming up over the next several weeks.
FWIW: Fahrenkopf’s sway in the overall-world-is-bigger-than-just-poker political discourse extends far beyond gaming, as he currently serves as co-chairman of the Committee on Presidential Debates. So that’s one to grow on, obv.
Maybe it was just the mid-day glare … but LOL I thought they were talking about eccentric British billionaire Richard Branson, who has quite an interest in the future of money related to online gaming, not the non-knighted digital gaming wonk Richard Bronson:
Rumors reached fever pitch last week that a bill to legalize and regulate online poker in the U.S. would be tacked on to legislation extending payroll tax cuts. Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV), however, denied the rumors on Thursday. Congress passed the payroll tax bill sans online poker legislation on Friday.
Poker players are all too familiar with gaming-related bills getting tacked on to other legislation. In 2006, the UIGEA was snuck on to the “must pass” Safe Port bill in the dead of night. Last week’s speculation gave full measure to the adage “turnabout is fair play.”
But U.S. players (and casino interests alike) remain hopeful that online poker legislation is still in the cards for 2012 despite the false alarm and Wall Street’s long odds.
Online pokerers can get their schadenfreude on, as one of our game’s staunchest opponents, Spencer Bachus (R-AL) faces a Congressional ethics probe for insider trading violations.
OCE says they’ve been looking at the current Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee for more than a year to confirm suspicions that, essentially, Bachus, an active trader, was operating like a stock-options superuser! OK, maybe not exactly, because you gotta think Bachus woulda banked more than a few thousand bucks here and there if he were truly the Russ Hamilton of Wall Street politics. But still …
DC Power Broker? A leader in the cause of stifling online poker, seen here with his wife at an event honoring Rafe Furst and Phil Gordon, two Full Tilt Poker pros.
Regardless of whether or not this level of OCE censure might ultimately land Bachus in prison a la Martha Stewart (it’s often a fine line between unethical and illegal) Bachus’ woe is a big win for poker because such allegations alone effectively neutralize his power and influence on Capitol Hill. In the War on Poker, Bachus has been a General for the other side post-UIGEA, and twice before has shown the ability to stop online poker legalization efforts in their tracks by persuading other members to line up behind him on our issue. But not this go-round, it would seem …
Below is our second DC Update for 2012 available exclusively to 2012 PPA members. Because we’ve received so many questions from members about PokerPAC and how and why it’s important in our fight for the game we love, I’m providing this week’s DC Update with a bit of background on PACs generally, and specifically why PokerPAC is so important.
PPA DC Update | February 1, 2012 | Bryan Spadaro | Poker Players Alliance
While I am not technically a lobbyist for the PPA, I am excited to write this week’s insider piece to our membership. This week’s piece is about Political Action Committees, or PAC’s, an area in which I have expertise.
The following reminder that Nevada will be the place of political buzz this weekend comes via Lupe Soto, Nevada State Director of the PPA. While there are plenty of tournaments to play and press releases to spin — not to mention all the NL/PLO to heavily pimp! — it really would be a shame if these four key influencers of current national conversation rolled through Las Vegas, the poker capital of the world, and weren’t made to address the issue of online poker (and our right to play it with American money transfered through our own bank accounts without use of a sketchy third party payment processors). Because when it comes down to it, Pete Lubrano was right — “they took our fugkin jobs!” And right now before the federal government, right here (our state is ready to go!), are measures to give back these jobs and create thousands of others while guaranteeing freedoms and protections and net-positive taxes ftw … we all know the talking points.
And if online poker isn’t gonna be at least a bullet point to the national conversation now … well then, really, perhaps poker players will be getting exactly what we deserve?
dan,
This Saturday, February 4, 2012, the Nevada Republican Presidential Caucuses will be held throughout the Battle Born State. These caucuses will elevate Nevada into the national political spotlight, with all four candidates making appearances in the state in the next few days.
Check it out all you haters … PC World magazine, a non-poker-biased publication, has included “online poker lobby” among 10 examples of “How the Web Spurs Political Change”. Though online poker liberalisation doesn’t quite reach the level of using Twitter to overthrow the Egyptian president, Poker Players Alliance activism did receive an “effective” rating, the same as:
Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign to stop gay teenagers from killing themselves
Russia’s Wintertime Spring to prevent Vladimir Putin from regaining power
The Occupy (New York) movement spreading worldwide
Though personally I see Occupy ultimately going the route of Woodstock ’99, overall it’s a good crowd for poker to be runnin’ with. And that sorta social climbing didn’t come because of a Guinness World Record, crazy prop bet, or even a celebrity charity tournament; being on the national radar (in the right way at the right time) comes because of consistent and steady efforts to awaken the right people to what really is total government bullshit! political injustice.
And you gotta think Obama probably got briefed as the DOJ officially changed its position on the Wire Act, September 23rd — the first day of Fall, and the same day the DOJ labeled Full Tilt Poker a Ponzi scheme and took all of Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Rafe Furst’s money. But why then did the ever-PR-conscious DOJ wait some 60 business days later until December 23rd — the quietest media day of the year — before telling the rest of America about the Executive Branch’s significant change of digital heart?
I suppose it might not even matter at this point; SOPA and PIPA have been tabled for now, Megaupload has been slapped hard with the same government quarantine the Feds beta-tested on online poker sites, and Kim Dotcom is in jail awaiting a fate that Full Tilt and PokerStars lawyers say he coulda avoided simply by changing his name to Kim Dotnet!
OK, maybe I get a little factually carried away sometimes jest … but John Pappas has a serious message for the President — essentially a 22-second synopsis of all those emails and tweets from the Poker Player Alliance’s 1.2 million members, and a plea for “common sense public policy” on the eve of what could be Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address.
It feels like we’ve been talking about Caesars going public since before they were Caesars (we have) … but their latest S1/A filing with the SEC suggests not only that CZR really is might be ready to kick it Zynga-style with a big fat IPO … but also that any public offering from the worldwide gambling empire may be in preparation for imminent legalization of US online poker.
At a minimum, I found this snippet on page 7 suggesting that Caesars is getting ready for something big related to online gambling poker:
We believe that additional jurisdictions will legalize online gaming due to consumer demand, a broader understanding of the need to regulate the industry and to generate income through taxes on gaming revenue. As such, we support efforts to regulate the online gaming industry to ensure that consumers are protected. We believe that the potential for online gaming is substantial and believe that we will command, at a minimum, our fair share in any legal jurisdiction. An H2 Gaming Capital study conducted in 2010 projects that the global online gaming market will grow to $36 billion in revenues by 2012. We believe that the largest opportunity in online gaming in the near term is the legalization of online poker in the United States. [emphasis added]
There’s tons more in this document worthy of perusal … some of which I’ve already skimmed. And it doesn’t take much to see how an actual Caesars IPO — not just talk of it — could-well coincide with legalized American online poker hubbub (finally!) reaching critical mass.
Caesars, after all, formerly known as Harrah’s, was a publicly traded company until going private shortly after passage of the UIGEA in 2006. Changed their name to Caesars in November 2010 — the last time they prepped seriously for an IPO (right after their boy Harry Reid won re-election and owed them a favor) only to withdraw plans for a public offering of stock shares right after someone told them the lame-duck online poker Reid bill was just a farce for other political purposes a couple weeks later.
JoeOE18: Had a great session with Deus Ex. Then got to another boss. Contemplating giving up and moving on to something fun. Wish there were cheats. 24 hours ago
Dear dan,
The following reminder that Nevada will be the place of political buzz this weekend comes via Lupe Soto, Nevada State Director of the PPA. While there are plenty of tournaments to play and press releases to spin — not to mention all the NL/PLO to heavily pimp! — it really would be a shame if these four key influencers of current national conversation rolled through Las Vegas, the poker capital of the world, and weren’t made to address the issue of online poker (and our right to play it with American money transfered through our own bank accounts without use of a sketchy third party payment processors). Because when it comes down to it, Pete Lubrano was right — “they took our fugkin jobs!” And right now before the federal government, right here (our state is ready to go!), are measures to give back these jobs and create thousands of others while guaranteeing freedoms and protections and net-positive taxes ftw … we all know the talking points. 
