According to this AP report, the Poker Player Alliance (PPA) spent $900K lobbying the government to exempt poker from the UEIGA last year, including nearly $800K in the second half of 2007 alone.

They obviously are persuing the angle of having poker exempted, rather than having the UEIGA repealed.

While I applaud the PPA's stance of putting its money where its mouth is, I hope their effort doesn't succeed at the cost of all other potential options.

Sure, it would be great to have poker exempted, but what about the 20 or so other forms of online gambling that the UEIGA is oppressing?

Should the PPA's lobby effort be successful and online poker becomes exempt, I can see this shaking down a couple of ways...

- In one scenario, the lawmakers could view the flawed UEIGA as "fixed", and future ammendments would become harder and harder to get passed.

- In contrast, another scenario would see the UEIGE, then with even more carve-outs, become viewed as nothing more than a flimsy loophole-ridden document that is unenforceable.

Either way, this story is proof that the time is now for the rest of the online gambling industry to get it's collective butt in gear to start funding its own lobbyists, because the PPA's goals don't necessarily coincide with everybody else's.

C'mon, online casinos and sportsbooks! Your banner ads and press releases trumpet how fantastically great your business is doing. Let's see you put some of that money towards some proactive causes.