We’re all depressed about the poker indictments and the aftershock shutdown of a few other sites earlier this week, but are you ready for a little good news?
Maybe very little good news, but these days you take your victories when you can if the U.S. government has a hair across its backside and is coming after you.
If you’re at all plugged in to the political scene, you know that there was a special election in western New York a few days ago to fill the seat abandoned by Republican Chris Lee after Lee decided to send shirtless photo of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist in hopes of . . . well, we all know why.
Anyway, the special election to replace Lee was supposed to be a lock for Republicans, who outnumber Democrats by 30,000 registered voters. Only it wasn’t, because Republicans have scared the pants off senior citizens by voting for a House budget that would basically end Medicare as we know it. Anyone with elderly parents knows that life after 70 is about staying as healthy as possible through the Golden Years, and all the backpedaling in the world couldn’t save the GOP candidate, who lost to the underdog Democrat by 4 percentage points.
Gambling? Oh yeah.
Well, the result got giddy Democrats to thinking that they actually have a chance to ride the Medicare boat to enough wins in the 2012 election to actually flip the House back to their control. And if Republicans – typically hostile to gambling interests unless they are in tight with someone like Jack Abramoff -- have to pack their bags, then we basically revert to 2009: Online gambling champion Barney Frank would probably again be chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, where he could presumably wield his power to take the heat off banks which process online payments. A House with a Democratic majority would also be more likely to be friendly to legislation that would legalize gambling, at least poker. Legalization would then bring the online sites, and the subsequent tax money, to the United States.
It may be a pipedream, and lots needs to happen between now and November 2012. But at least it’s a step in the right direction. And in the still-unlikely event that things do fall into place, we would have the Medicare issue to thank.