Viva Las Vegas...Mentality

US indictment charges operators of Antigua gambling website by Rob Lever Wed May 17, 4:01 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two operators of an Antigua-based Internet gambling site have been indicted on US charges of money-laundering involving some 250 million dollars of wagers, officials announced. [Yahoo News]

Now, before you start thumping your bible about how the Federal government is doing everything it can to "protect public morals or maintain public order," you have to remember this is about money. More to the point, this is about the United States Government not getting any while the Government of Antigua, which successfully argued in front of the WTO that the US laws banning Internet gambling constitutes an unfair trade barrier is getting the money (or some of it, or maybe none of it - but that does not seem to upset them as much as it does the current Administration).

From the article:

The Caribbean island, with a population of about 68,000, is a centre for offshore Internet gaming operations, attracting large numbers of US residents to its casino-style games and betting services.

I wonder why that is? Perhaps because the US citizens that go there to gamble are not at risk of having to report their winnings to the IRS? If you think it is for the water, you are nuts. Yes, Federal law says you have to report your winnings, but if the transactions are in cash (and large numbers of bets are made that way), then how do you know if a player won a million dollars or $100 million? And if they bank it off-shore, it makes it even harder to collect against.

What really bothers me though is that while the government in the guise of the Internal Revenue Service goes after the individual, they tend to ignore the large conglomerates that operate and evade billions in taxes every year. In fact, the aid and abet these corporations by passing tax laws that are so complicated and contradictory that it is impossible to actually compute how much is truly owed. What is know, is that at the current rate, the deficit will exceed $10 trillion by the end of the decade unless some form of fiscal responsibility is rapidly put into place. I am not holding my breath.