Balko Wants Online Gambling Reinstated

January 30, 2008

Radley Balko, the Reason magazine editor and writer, appeared on Fox News this week to discuss online gambling. Balso says that all attempts to make online gambling illegal should be opposed and that legislators need to heed his warning.

Balko says that the US is going to spend years more working to try and ban online gambling, and much money is going to be wasted in a fruitless attempt to do so. He says that as they are still protecting the horse racing, lottery and fantasy sports industries, they are already supporting online gambling and that this attempt is simply to make it easier for those groups to make money.

He says that the US Trade Office won’t even release the details of their settlements with those that have brought suits against them. Since the money from the settlement comes from taxpayer money we should have a say in how it is spent. He says that the claims that this is a matter of national security don’t really have anything to do with any of this.

Balko goes on to talk about the award given to Antigua regarding their annual reparations for us banning online gambling and thus taking away most of their revenue. Rather than reverse the online gambling bill, they are willing to sit back and let the WTO give away our copyrighted materials.

The US had previously settled with several other countries in regard to the online gambling battle, which weakened their position with the WTO. Balko says that the only reason online gambling is really banned is because of the “moral majority” that is behind it.




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