By Elaine Donnelly
Extending sexual misconduct to combat units
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
The Obama administration may have called off the game more than a year ago, but the nation's poker partisans are still looking for a deal.
Maryland's high tax rate on slot machines and reluctance to expand gambling have not only deprived the state of needed revenue, but have also nearly killed its horse-racing industry, according to the president of the American Gaming Association.
One man's sin is another man's revenue base, at least when it comes to Uncle Sam's tax coffers.
Just five years after its first casino opened, Pennsylvania now generates more tax revenue from card games and slot machines than any other state in the nation — and it isn't even close.
Led by Massachusetts, legislators and state officials across New England are lining up behind casinos as the heart of American puritanism eyes a transition into the Las Vegas of the Northeast.
The nation's largest casino trade group is going all in to legalize online poker, calling Tuesday for a proposed regulatory framework even as the Justice Department continued its crackdown on offshore gambling websites.
Companies such as Caesar's, he said, could jump on the Internet poker bandwagon, in the process offering players the security of a world-renowned name in gambling standing behind their money to ensure fair games, timely payouts and no fraud.
"There's a real problem. Right now, there are still about 2,000 offshore websites accepting bets from 10 [million] to 15 million Americans every year for playing poker," Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., president of the American Gaming Association (AGA), told The Washington Times in a wide-ranging interview this week. "We need a federal statute that will legalize just online poker. These offshore websites don't care about consumer protections, don't care about underage gaming and don't care about people who can't gamble responsibly."
