The below article was written by Brian Cherry for Launch Poker launchpoker.com
and futher supports why the UIGEA needs to be overturned! The President and our leaders in Washington need to pay attention to what the poker players can do to help our economy
By Brian Cherry, Jul 2, 2009
If you are the sort of person whose brain functions are determined by emotion and ideology, I propose you stop reading at this point and go off to read something that is more in line with your intellectual abilities; I suggest a nice “Where’s Waldo?” book. If you are a person whose thinking is governed by logic and reason keep reading.
When George W. Bush took office in January of 2001, he had it pretty rough in his first few months. He was left with the Clinton recession to deal with while also having to get the nation through the emotional and economic damage caused by the terrorist attacks of 9-11. When you throw in Hurricane Katrina it is pretty amazing that the unemployment rate rarely got over 6%. In reality the Bush economy spent most of its time in the 4% and 5% ranges, and brought record amounts of cash into the federal treasury. The industry of poker, of course, thrived in this environment.
By contrast, Obama was handed a recession (much like Bush) but through an economic policy that is the fiscal equivalent of trying to tune a piano with nitro glycerin, he has stimulated the United States to almost 10% unemployment. His “economic stimulus” has created more debt in less than six months then the combined fiscal efforts of the two centuries of Presidents that preceded him. He has guaranteed that America will experience world class inflation by printing trillions of new unbacked dollars, and his cap and trade policies will cost the average citizen more than $3000 per year in raised gas and electric bills. In short, he has done to the United States economy what Loreena Bobbitt did to her husband’s manhood. If the World Series of Poker is any sort of barometer, the poker industry is still managing to thrive; even in this challenging environment.
When you look at the number of people participating in World Series of Poker events, you see numbers that that are into the hundreds and thousands. More than one event has flirted with the 3000 mark; and we are not even to the Main Event yet. When you take these numbers as a small representation of the national pool of poker players, and (much like Nielson ratings) conclude that for every guy who takes the trouble to spend his vacation days (and cash) playing at the WSOP, there are thousands of others who are also willing to play for money. In an economic environment that can only be considered a quagmire, somebody with the ability to make laws has got to see this and conclude that people like to use their money to play poker. After that rather obvious epiphany, they could also make the leap in logic that people would also like to do this online. Maybe, just maybe, someone in Washington will look at this recession proof industry, and decide that legalizing it and taxing it might be more fair then trying to pay for a radical agenda by raising the taxes on social workers, engineers, teachers and tech writers. That’s just a thought.