The Irish government is fed up with losing tax revenue to offshore online casinos. Online gambling is legal and regulated in Ireland, but there are plenty of Irish citizens who visit and play at online casinos based in other countries. Ireland wants a cut of that money.

Last week, Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen announced a plan to begin taxing online gambling companies that access the Irish market. If his bill is passed, online casinos, bookmakers and any other internet or telephone betting companies would have to obtain a license from Ireland in order to do business with Irish customers.

It sounds like a good idea. If a company is going to do business with people in your country, why shouldn’t they have to be taxed like domestic countries do? However, there is a problem with it. For one thing, there is no law preventing Irish citizens from gambling at online casinos based overseas that do not have the required license. Also, there is no way for the Irish government to prevent their citizens from playing at an offshore online casino that they find via the internet (such as by doing a Google search). They could only prevent that if they decided to act like China and take authoritarian control over the Internet, which is not something I can see the Irish doing.

Therefore, it really only comes down to advertising. Foreign online casinos can only advertise in Ireland if they obtain the license. Without one, they cannot put ads in magazines, on TV, on the radio, on benches and buses, on subways, or anything like that. They will, however, still be able to advertise freely online, since the internet is global and Ireland doesn’t censor it.

Casinos in Connecticut are struggling to make money and are searching for ways to keep their business alive. That isn’t exactly a surprise. You can take that first sentence and replace “Connecticut” with any other state and replace “casinos” with virtually any other type of business and it is still accurate. Everyone is hurting right now, with the exception of labor unions, government employees, and political activists that are helping shape government policy.

Casinos are among the hardest hit by recession, though, because when people begin to tighten their wallet, trips to casinos start being cut out of the budget. Even President Obama told people not to go to Vegas anymore, which didn’t exactly please their Chamber of Commerce.

In light of all of that, casinos are looking at new ways to make money. Some in the Connecticut casino business, such as Rodney Butler, the owner of Foxwoods Resort Casino, are suggesting a reduction in the legal gambling age. Currently you need to be 21 to gamble in the state of Connecticut. The proposal would reduce the minimum gambling age to 18. Others within the casino industry, such as Mohegan Sun casino owner Lynn Malerba, disagree.

Malerba is chairwoman of the Mohegan Tribal Council and chief of the tribe. Through a spokesman, she stated that she believes that “the difference between a gambling age of 18 and a drinking age of 21 would make such a change very difficult to implement and manage.” Malerba indicated that changing the gambling age to 18 would only work if the drinking age was also lowered to 18 due in part to the fact that gambling and drinking tends to go hand in hand within casinos.

I imagine Malerba is worried about potential lawsuits if the casino staff serves alcohol to minors. Currently anyone allowed admission to the casino is legally allowed to drink so there is no problem. In addition, are 18 year olds going to be interested in visiting a casino if they can’t drink? I don’t think so. That brings up two possibilities then. Either reducing the gambling age would not attract new business because the 18 year olds would not go to the casinos knowing they can’t drink, or the casinos would have to be lax in their carding of guests. Many bars have a reputation for not checking ID’s frequently, which makes them popular with minors. However, a casino caught doing that could conceivably be fined, face legal action or even be shut down.

And while we’re on the subject, saying that 18 year olds are old enough to gamble with their money but not old enough to order a beer is just ridiculous. Society needs to determine at what age a person is an adult. Different states have different rules on that. The legal age of consent ranges from 16 to 18, the drinking age used to range from 18 to 21 depending on the state, but that changed with the passing of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which effectively changed the minimum age to 21 in every state. You must be 18 to buy cigarettes in most states, though in some it is 19. In most city, county and state law enforcement agencies you must be 20 or 21 to join. You must be at least 21 for a federal law enforcement job. However, in every state in America you may join the military at the age of 18.

Does any of that make sense? Now I support a state’s right to set their own age limits rather than having it all done federally. That will cause a difference in the ages from state to state. Can we at least get some consistency within the state borders, though? Why do we have some states where you can have sex at 16, join the military at 18, join the police department at 20 and drink alcohol and gamble at 21? If you’re 18, you’re mature enough to go off to a foreign land and risk your life defending America but not mature enough to have a beer while you’re there? Oh, and you better not play poker in the barracks, either. I also think it’s crazy that we have cops who are not legally allowed to drink arresting people for underage drinking.

So what should the age be in Connecticut? It’s something to think about.

Oh, those crazy Chinese are at it again. We know that the Communist Chinese government isn’t too high on freedom, including a free flow of information or the ability for people to do what they want with their money. Come to think of it, in China it’s not really your money, is it?

Anyway, those zany folk in Beijing have stated that there will be a crackdown on what they call “overseas hostile forces.” Of course, in China, you are seen as being a hostile force if you are anything other than the Chinese government, which means that everything overseas is automatically hostile.

In Red China, there is actually a department in the government called the Information Office. It is that office that controls what information the people are given and is responsible for telling the people what they want to be known and hiding what they don’t want to be known. So, in that way it’s a lot like Obama’s relationship with the New York Times.

Anyway, Wang Chen (no, I didn’t make up that name) is the chief of the Information Office and he released a statement saying that China “will strengthen the blocking for harmful information from outside China to prevent harmful information from being disseminated in China and withstand online penetration by overseas hostile forces.”

Allow me to translate that from propaganda to English. When China says “harmful information,” what they mean is any information that doesn’t match the official information released by the Information Office. For example, information about freedom, democracy, protests, ownership, property, and human rights would be considered “harmful” information that needs to be kept from the people. Such information is currently being blocked from the Internet in China, but there are always ways around that censorship, which is why they need to crack down.

How this relates to online gambling is that in China’s mainland, gambling is illegal. That includes online gambling. However, there are many online casinos from overseas that currently accept Chinese customers. Online gambling is another thing that is considered harmful by the Chinese government, because it is a way for the Chinese citizens to spend money on something that is not provided by the government.

In response to this statement, many online casinos that were accepting bets from Chinese customers have stopped. Some have delayed deposits and withdrawals from China. Some online casinos have warned Chinese customers that the government may be monitoring their transactions.

So for any Chinese online gamblers, I’m sorry to say that you may soon be out of options for casinos. Of course, I’m also sorry to say that you live in China, don’t have freedom, and may soon be arrested and taken to a secret prison for the “crime” of reading this article.

Just so we’re clear, here’s a list of things that China does and doesn’t like. This is not a comprehensive list.

Chinese government likes: communism, controlling all aspects of the lives of its citizens, manufacturing products and selling them to America, running over protesters with tanks, executing political adversaries and starving millions of people to death.

Chinese government dislikes: freedom, democracy, truth, Google, privacy, religion, public gatherings, private property, self-sufficiency and online gambling.

Daniel Tzvetkoff doesn’t appear to be a bright man. After allegedly ripping off lots of online casino operators, he showed up at a conference in Las Vegas that was full of them and was surprised when he ended up in jail.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Mr. Tzvetkoff, who is an Australian citizen, was arrested on Friday for bank fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to operate and finance an illegal gambling business. According to the indictment, he created fake websites for shell companies and used those companies to engage in financial transactions with financial institutions. All transactions were sent by these shell companies. Mr. Tzvetkoff allegedly used an Automated Clearing House (ACH) system to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars between the United States and the British Virgin Islands.

Using the ACH transactions, Tzvetkoff, former co-owner of IntaBill, allegedly moved money from the bank accounts of online gamblers in America to his offshore shell companies. From there, he moved the funds to accounts at online casinos. The shell companies were used to move money back and forth between the online casinos and the player’s accounts.

The American legal system has a term for those types of transactions: money laundering. According to the indictment, the online casinos stopped doing business with Tzvetkoff in March of 2009 because he had stolen $100 million from them. On Friday, Tzvetkoff appeared at a conference in Las Vegas attended by representatives from many of those online casinos. Not surprisingly, a tip was called in to the FBI and Tzvetkoff was arrested a short time later.

I think there are some lessons to be learned here. First of all, don’t launder money or commit bank fraud. Secondly, if you rip off a group of people for $100 million, don’t go hang out with them at a social event.

If convicted, Tzvetkoff could spend 75 years in prison and pay back at least $543 million in fines and restitution.

The U.S. state of South Carolina is considering revising their gambling laws, which have existed unchanged since 1802. As is often the case with governments, even at the state level, things move slowly. There was outrage in the Palmetto State when several dozen people were arrested and charged with illegal gambling when a Mount Pleasant home was raided in 2006. Their crime was playing poker, which is in violation of the state’s gambling laws, which are among the strictest in the nation.

The 207-year-old laws make all card and dice games illegal. The crack team of journalists at the Post and Courier and virtually every blog that has used that newspaper as a resource have reported that using a strict interpretation of the law, playing the board game Monopoly with your family is against the law. Rhetoric like that has enflamed the public and may be the catalyst for changes in the state constitution.

Before we get into all of that, though, let’s get to the facts. South Carolina may have very anti-gambling laws on the books, but they’re not going to throw grandma in jail for playing Yahtzee at home – or even for playing poker, for that matter.

Ed Knisley prosecuted the players arrested in the Mount Pleasant raid and he said that it wasn’t a small game between friends. According to Knisley, the defendants “were part of a large group involved in a setting up quasi-professional casino-style poker games, with numerous tables set up at each commercial location, using paid dealers.”

In addition, Knisley said that although the gambling laws are vague enough that Monopoly could be considered illegal, the authorities look at the intent of the legislation. He stated that it’s not a crime to play card or dice games “for amusement,” but it was a different matter when betting is involved.

Five of the men arrested in the Mount Pleasant raid were convicted in February of this year. From 2006 until now, there has been a lot of confusion about what is legal in the state and the Poker Players Alliance, among other groups, have been pushing for a rewriting of the laws. They may get their wish.

A new bill has been proposed in the state House and has cleared a subcommittee by a 4-1 vote. The bill would make changes to the gambling language, clearly outlining that it is perfectly legal for non-profit organizations to hold raffles to raise money. In addition, the legislation would specify that social gambling, such as home poker games, are okay. The bill would also allow state residents to vote on whether to amend the state constitution to allow betting events by churches, schools and other charitable organizations.

This may have all come about because of a misunderstanding, but this bill seems like a good thing for the state. In addition, the PPA and other gambling advocacy groups are hoping that it is a foot in the door that will eventually lead to an expansion of gambling in South Carolina, including casinos. Only time will tell, but don’t hold your breath. After all, it took us 207 years to get this far.

So Michael Jordan owns the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats now. This is exciting for the people of Charlotte because if all of the team owners got together for a pick-up game, theirs would definitely win. The move hasn’t been without criticism, though, with the main one being that Jordan didn’t make a ton of great decisions as GM of the Washington Wizards (including his bad idea to come out of retirement and play for them). There has also been a rather muted protest about the NBA letting a known compulsive gambler own a team.

I think the NBA should let anyone own a team who is willing to pay for it, since America is a free country, but it does bring up an interesting question. Major League Baseball banned Pete Rose from the league for life because of his gambling habits when he was managing the Reds, though it was never proved that he bet on any of his team’s games. He is not even allowed in the Hall of Fame, despite his accomplishments as a player. Now that the world knows of Jordan’s compulsive gambling habits, which was largely kept quiet during his playing days, how does the NBA feel about him owning a team?

There are a lot of reasons to be for or against sports betting, but the biggest concern among most people is the integrity of the game. People worry that if enough money is involved, the games could be fixed. We’ve all seen the movies where a gangster walks up to a boxer and informs him that he’s going to take a dive. If you don’t think that organized crime has its hands all over the boxing profession, then you’re naïve.

But while many people don’t see boxing as legitimate for that reason, look at the other sports. Baseball had the Black Sox Scandal, when Chicago threw the 1919 World Series, resulting in eight players being banned for life. The NBA for years had endured conspiracy theories that the powers that be made sure certain teams (especially the Bulls and Lakers) made it to the championship games and certain players (such as Jordan) always got special treatment from the refs. And then came Tim Donaghy, the NBA referee who was convicted in a gambling scandal that involved, you guessed it, organized crime. I’m fairly certain that if Donaghy one day wanted to own an NBA team, the league would say no. So why does Jordan get a pass? No one has ever proved that he bet on his own team, though the same can be said for Rose.

And I guess the bigger question is this: Should sports betting be allowed or not? For the aforementioned reasons, many sports fans support a ban on sports betting, though doesn’t everyone love those Super Bowl office pools and filling out your Tournament brackets? In Europe, sports betting is common for their major sports, including soccer, and to my knowledge there has been no cheating scandal (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). And in the United States, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 makes sports betting illegal, with the exception of jai alai and horse and dog racing. The pari-mutuel racing, of course, would be pointless without betting, but the jai alai exemption seems a bit strange.

What is stranger, though, is that the law also doesn’t apply to sports lotteries in Delaware and Oregon and sports pools in Nevada. Las Vegas has a thriving sports betting industry. So is sports betting wrong and dangerous unless it’s done in Nevada? Maybe we’re supposed to think that sports betting is wrong and dangerous if it’s not being regulated by the government, so they can “protect” us, but if you think that government involvement in an industry reduces corruption, then you have way too much faith in the government (and you probably haven’t paid attention to any other their dealings with unions and lobbyists). So if government involvement doesn’t give it more integrity than involvement with the Corleone family (some would say that the federal government is actually organized crime), that brings us back to the original question: Is sports betting okay or not?

The state of Massachusetts has been working on gambling legislation for some time and the current bill would make online gambling illegal in the state. The bill’s latest version has been introduced by Robert DeLeo (I know what you’re thinking, but no, it’s not the Stone Temple Pilots bassist).

DeLeo, who is Speaker of the House, has called for a vote on the bill within the next two weeks. However, he is facing some opposition from his governor, fellow Democrat Deval Patrick, who wants public hearings on the legislation first. DeLeo says that the issue has been discussed enough and besides, “we’re Democrats, so that means we’re not supposed to care what the people want.” Okay, I made up that quote, but you get the point.

The gambling bill that DeLeo has proposed will create licenses for two full casinos, with each paying $100 million for the license, as well as four slot machine licenses, which will cost $15 million each. The bill is being touted as a job-creation bill, though clearly opening slot parlors will not create many jobs. The main reason behind the push for legalized gambling in Massachusetts is the tax revenue and licensing fees, which will help a state whose budget is in the red.

The gambling legislation contains some bad news for online gamblers in the state, though, because it will make that activity illegal. The bill would make it a crime if anyone living in Massachusetts “knowingly transmits or receives a wager of any type by any telecommunication device, including telephone, cellular phone, internet, local area network… or knowingly installs or maintains said device or equipment for the transmission or receipt of wagering information.” Anyone convicted of such a heinous crime as spending your own money online can face up to two years in prison and a $25,000 fine.

The reason for this is clear: Lobbyists for the brick and mortar casinos that may soon be legalized in Massachusetts don’t want any competition from online gambling websites, so they have convinced the lawmakers to ban that competition. Sounds like a good deal. If only Wal-Mart could get Congress to ban online shopping, especially those bastards at Amazon.com, they would make a lot more money.

So it seems that this is politics as usual and your average citizen may get punished because politicians are more concerned with satisfying their lobbyist friends than serving their constituents. Of course, this is Massachusetts, so I would expect nothing less.

You can only keep Americans in the dark for so long. Sure, you can fool us with propaganda and lies for a while, but Americans are resourceful people with access to a wealth of information from the internet, newspapers, online blogs (*ahem*), talk radio, Youtube, and more.

For that reason, only 6% of Americans still believe that President Obama’s “stimulus” bill has helped the economy. Only 19% of Americans believe that Bigfoot exists and only 6% of Americans believe that the moon landing was faked. People are resourceful and they eventually figure things out.

What about online gambling? Despite campaigning by the Department of Justice and other groups to convince people otherwise, there is no federal ban on online gambling. Neither the Wire Act nor the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) bans online gambling, with the exception of sports betting.

Until recently, however, the common belief among Americans was that online gambling in any form was illegal. The number people who feel that way, though, is dropping. In 2007, it was as low as 41% and earlier this year it was only 37%, according to a survey by Canadian group Ipsos Reid.

So what does this mean? It means that people are waking up and learning about their rights. They are learning what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do. Americans don’t like the government or anyone else telling them what to do and by educating themselves, they are empowering themselves.

The same survey shows that 55% of Americans would like a federal regulation of online casinos to ensure their safety while 45% would prefer the regulation be done by each individual state.

And here is example number one billion of why governments are stupid, ineffective creatures that do more harm than good. The state of Idaho actually has a law that makes using common sense illegal.

Yes, you read that correctly. Right now it is a misdemeanor for prosecutors or police officers to fail to act on a gambling “crime” that they know is in progress. Sure, we want the law to be enforced, but I have never heard of them being held accountable for not doing so before. This whole issue came up when the police raided a senior center and made arrests because a $20 poker game was being played. The police acted on what common sense says to ignore because failing to do so would be against the law, and they took an oath to uphold that law.

People should never knowingly break the law, but it is necessary for the police and prosecutors to use discretion in the enforcement of those laws. How would our society be if the police ticketed everyone who jaywalked, rode a bicycle on the wrong side of the road, or drove one mile-per-hour over the speed limit? Common sense says to focus on the bigger crimes and when it comes to the smaller ones, use your own judgment to determine whether or not it is worth your time.

Luckily, due in part to arrests like the senior center incident, lawmakers in Idaho have changed their minds. Yesterday, Governor Butch Otter (yes, that’s his name) signed a bill into law that allows law enforcement agencies to use their discretion in such cases. The law will go into effect on July 1. From that time on, the police will not be committing a crime if they decide not to haul grandma into jail for betting $5 on a square in the office Super Bowl pool.

The original law came into existence because once upon a time there was rampant illegal gambling going on in Idaho and the authorities were ignoring it. However, time and again we have seen that increasingly restrictive and specific laws usually end up doing away with common sense. In fact, if we just followed common sense, there wouldn’t be need for very many laws at all. After all, do we need a law saying you can’t steal someone else’s property? Obviously that’s bad!

But I digress. The new law is a victory for anyone who favors common sense over Draconian rule. Sense, of course, isn’t all that common, especially in government, so it’s nice to see it prevail on these rare occasions. Now they just need to consider whether or not it’s common sense to let people gamble with their own money.

As the recession that Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner won’t admit exists shows no sign of getting better, states are looking at ways to make more money. Right now, most states are hemorrhaging cash and every little bit of revenue is needed. For that reason, Iowa and Kansas are the latest to look at their current gambling laws and discuss whether they need to be changed.

Right now lawmakers in Iowa are considering expanding their legal gambling by expanding the areas where it can occur. Currently casinos can only offer gambling on the gambling floors. The new legislation would allow gambling to occur in other rooms in the casino. The advantage would be that casinos could open poker rooms and start hosting major poker tournaments, which in theory could be a big source of revenue for the state. So it seems that in 2010, the politicians in Iowa finally realized that poker is big and involves a lot of money. In related news, the state legislature has said that they believe that the Internet is starting to catch on. If only there was a way of making money off of the Internet…

Meanwhile, Kansas lawmakers are basically asking for a do-over. In 2007, the Democratic-led Congress passed a law to bring in four state-owned casinos. As early as 2008, they realized that they wrote a terrible law that gave no incentive for anyone to actually buy property, build a casino on it, and open the business. Basically, the state charges way too much upfront for everyone involved and in a bad economy, no one is willing to risk paying that money. This is why Democrats should never try to have anything to do with business or economics. They simply have no understanding of either.

As a result of the bad bill, though the casinos are legal in the state, none exist. Last year, the lawmakers realized that they badly needed the casino revenue due to the recession, but were unwilling to take the time to discuss changing the law because they were too busy dealing with the recession and trying to find ways to help the economy (no, I’m not making this up). So now that, according to the federal government, the recession is over, they want a do-over.

Some Republicans are against amending the law. Republican House Speaker Mike O’Neal said that “they got the deal they wanted. They can live with the deal they got.” The Democratic response was something along the lines of, “Look, we’re Democrats. We always write terrible bills. That’s what we do! (It’s also why we don’t bother reading them). Don’t hold that against us. Let us try again and I assure you we’ll come up with a good one this time!”

The proposed changes in the law are aimed at making it more affordable for companies to come in and start up a casino. Among other things, there would be a drop in the investment that is required of developers from $225 million to $100 million. There is also a fee that must be paid up front to the state for the privilege of allowing the state to run your casino. That fee would drop from $25 million to $11 million. Another change would be to give the developers a larger cut of the profits from the casinos.

It will be interesting to see if the Kansas lawmakers do end up rewriting the gambling bill and if so, whether it will bring any casinos to the state. If not, they can always try again. If at first you don’t succeed…