When the average person goes on a job interview, they are on their best behavior and the same goes for just about every politician out there (save Ross Perot and Ron Paul). When politicians run their campaign, they will tell the American people anything and everything to secure their vote and despite years and years of broken promises, the good-hearted, trusting people of America buy the political snake oil. Take for example, Herbert Hoover’s pledge to end poverty. FDR’s pledge to maintain a balanced budget and to refrain from significantly increasing taxes. Richard Nixon’s pledge to quickly resolve the Vietnam War. Or remember George Bush’s (the first one) now infamous “Read my lips! No new taxes!” Yeah right.

Enter Barack Obama. The man is dynamite behind the podium. His charismatic approach and message of hope and change excited democrats and converted some republicans (or more than likely George W. Bush sent them running into his arms). With the message of big change comes big promises. Among them, to see that every American has health insurance. Another, not to raise taxes on working class Americans who make less than $250,000. And the American people fell for it. Again. Another charismatic guy with a message of hope, another promise too big for anyone to keep. The latest plan the president is hawking involves required health insurance for all citizens which will be paid via collection from the IRS (now I guess they’re just an automated bill-pay service?). If citizens fail to get the insurance, they are fined $3,000. And he says this is not a tax increase. One of the ways the government is looking to subsidize this “non-tax” is through the legalization and regulation of online gambling.

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee is considering an amendment that would legalize online gambling in hopes of funding a reformed U.S health care system. Senator Ron Wyden proposed the amendment which would dedicate the income from government regulated online gambling to subsidizing health care costs. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers estimation, the regulation of online gambling could generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 billion per year.

Michael Waxman, of the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative praised the idea stating, “We applaud Senator Wyden’s proposal to collect and put to good use tens of billions in Internet gambling revenue that would otherwise be lost in the underground marketplace.”

“The Senate Finance Committee should approve the resolution, finally putting to an end a failed prohibition on Internet gambling that leaves Americans unprotected and unlicensed offshore operators as the only beneficiary in a thriving marketplace.”

Of course, $6 billion dollars in online gambling money is nowhere near the amount needed to fund a health care system aimed at insuring over 300,000,000 Americans. So this would work sort of like the post office, which hemorrhages money year after year, but is kept afloat with our tax dollars. In this case, the government would take the online gambling tax money and any other money they can get their grubby little hands on, and send it health care’s way, until they realize it’s not enough and raise the federal income tax. It’s not the first time the government low-balled an estimate to get it past the American people. Take Medicare: Predicted cost in 1970 was $3 billion per year. Actual cost? $6.8 billion. The predicted cost by 1990? $10 billion. The actual cost of Medicare by 1990? $110 billion.

With that in mind, will $6 billion in online gambling funds even make a dent in our nation’s health care? Or is it just another smoke screen to ease people’s minds so that they won’t think about it. What do you folks think out there? Real solution or smokescreen?

A major online gambling lobby has launched an aggressive advertising campaign pushing for the legalization and regulation of online gambling in the United States. The campaign is in support of bills introduced by Representative Barney Frank and Senator Robert Menendez that would repeal the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which has been called unconstitutional yet has been upheld in the courts. Of course, the courts have a history of upholding unconstitutional laws (such as eminent domain).

The series of ads has been released by online gambling advocacy group the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, as reported by CasinoGamblingWeb.com. The ads will propose two major reasons for legalizing online gambling. The first, according to spokesman Jeffrey Sandman, is that the government needs to “start collecting taxes on the billions in revenue currently lost to unlicensed, offshore gambling operators.” He says that the extra tax money can be used to pay for healthcare reform and “other worthy programs.” The second reason given is that, according to the lobby, gambling online in an unregulated industry is much more dangerous than if the government was in charge.

I don’t know which advertising firm worked with the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative on this, but if they think they can persuade the American people to legalize online gambling with those two arguments, then they spend too much time reading The Huffington Post.

First of all, using the funds from online gambling to pay for Obamacare is kind of like me opening a lemonade stand to pay my mortgage. Even if it was able to make a significant dent, “the government needs more tax money” isn’t exactly a winning argument right now. Haven’t they been paying attention to the tea parties and healthcare protests? If not those, surely they’ve seen Obama’s approval rating plummet the more he talks about spending and expanding government programs. As for the other argument, does anyone actually think that there is an industry out there that is run better by having the government involved? The idea that government regulation of online gambling will end corruption is laughable. Creating another bureaucracy isn’t exactly high on the wish list of the average American citizen.

Instead, a smart campaign for online gambling would focus on the fact that the government has no right to tell the people how they can and can’t spend their money online, unless of course they spend it on child pornography. As it is, I think the ad campaign could do more harm than good. If UIGEA is repealed, it won’t be because the American people are eager to feed more money to the government beast.