Monday, May 08, 2006

Felony - a word that used to mean something

Wow. Just to the North, in the state of Washington, it is about to become a felony to gamble on the internet. There is a story about it here and an internet poker players thoughts on it here.

What I want to talk about is the felony. Felony means something. It means you can go to jail for more than a year. It means you can lose your right to a gun. It means you can lose your right to vote.

Felonies are serious shit.

And knowing all that, the fucked up Washington Legislature made it a felony to place a bet over the internet. This from a state with a Casino every other block. Like the Funny Man said, "I can't buy a pack of cigarettes without running into nine guys casinos you fucked gambled at."

Shouldn't felonies be reserved for really serious crimes? You may say to yourself "Well clearly the Washington government considers gambling a serious issue." Allow me to retort. If it were so serious, they would close all the casinos up there. Not all of them are Indian Casinos, so the government could close many of them with a flick of the pen.

What this is about is control and taxes. The State of Washington both gets no taxes from internet gambling and has no control over it. So what do they do? They punish the users. And when I say punish, I mean punish. What is next? Making a felony of jaywalking?

1 Comments:

Blogger TripJax said...

It's ridiculous.

Oh, and nice BoonDockSaints reference...I love that movie.

9:23 AM  

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