Online Gaming Dealt A Bad Hand

I like movies like “Ocean’s 11.” Obviously the eye candy is top rate, but I have always found it interesting that a thief will put more time, effort and resource into the big score than he will into honest work. Reading the news this morning, I see that life imitates art. Yesterday, eleven people were charged with conspiracy, racketeering and fraud. Who did they allegedly swindle? The American government. They are charged because they run online gambling sites that accepted online bets from Americans. The American government wants a piece of the pie. A $4.5 billion piece.

The American government has been slowly chipping away at the internet. These gambling companies are set up in other countries and most are run by people who do not live in the US.

Several of the defendants live outside the United States, which will make them hard to catch, said U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway in St. Louis. Among those who live abroad is Gary Stephen Kaplan, the founder of BetOnSports, which is incorporated in the United Kingdom and listed on the London Stock Exchange.

$4.5 billion worth of cash, cars and property is a pretty big deal. I guess that is why they tracked these people down and arrested them at airports. Funny, they never enforced my child support order. You would think that if our government was as concerned about the children as they tell us, they would get serious about deadbeat parents behind on support payments. Why do honest work for me, a taxpayer? If you just arrest and charge the CEOs of legal, foreign companies that make their earnings by providing a service that people obviously want, you may end up with a much bigger payday. If they get away with this, online porn sites will follow. Internet regulation is on its way and the march is led by the thieves in the American government.

UPDATE by Michael Hampton: BetOnSports’ CEO David Caruthers was arrested Sunday night in Dallas while he was changing planes on a trip from a business meeting in the UK to his home in Costa Rica. The crackdown begins…

posted Jul 18th, 2006 by michelleshinghal
  • http://www.gabejohnson.org/ Gabe J

    I am behind on my child support payments. See, I have a degree in Finance/Accounting, which qualifies me to have supposedly a very good job. My daughter’s mother lied to the police, and had me arrested, and I spent 9 months in jail before being found “Not Guilty” by a jury. Noone wants to hire someone who was in jail for a year to work at a benk, even if he was wrongly accused. I therefore have no job (I run my own bookkeeping firm, actually, but barely make enough to pay my power bill). It took me two yerars to track my daughter’s mother down, and then another year in court before I ws named the father (still doesnt have my last name). At this point, I was saddled with a three-year back debit on my support (including a 6-month period when I was being wrongfully incarcerated for a crime I did not commit [see above]), that I will never be able to catch up on. My drivers licence has been taken, and to this day for all the court fighting and money the state has stolen out of my

  • http://www.gabejohnson.org/ Gabe J

    meager paychecks, I have been allowed to spend less than 12 hours in total with my daughter (all supervised). And why did this all happen? Because my daughter’s mother had cheated on me at teh time she ot pregnant, and was afraid of my potential reaction. I never yelled at her, I never hit her, she screwed arround on me, and then because she wsa afraid that I would throw her out of the house, she had me locked up, and stole almost everything I own while I was incarcerated.

    So I ask you, am I a deadbeat dad? If my story is as such, how many other fathers out there have been so disenfranchised? Is it appropriate to use that term?

    I don’ feel like it is. I guess you have a right to.

  • ianbernard

    Sorry to hear that Gabe. For those who want to avoid Gabe’s situation, I recommend a vasectomy. It’s the only way to be sure.

  • michelleshinghal

    I would call you victim of a devious bitch. Notice that I used the word parents and not dads. My ex and I actually handled the back pay on our own. He did something for his daughter and I forgave the back support. I was trying to make the point that the government doesn’t go after just items, they go after the big payday. Perhaps I should have used a different example.

  • IanC

    Michelle — unfortunately Gabe’s situation is all too familiar to me.

    Anyone familiar with the California child-support system is painfully aware of this. While I myself have no children, I have met first-hand multiple men (always men mind you) whose livelihoods and the capacity to gain them have literally been stripped from them simply because they had the misfortune to have sired a child in California and then leave the mother.

    These things are ruinous. What is even worse is that less than 40% of all monies garnished from these men’s paychecks are even *GOING TO THE CHILD.* The child-support system taxes the fathers for the support of the administrative system.

    The child-support system in this nation in its current form is an evil as great as the No Child Left Behind act — a thing I consider the spawn of Cthulhu/Seth/Lucifer/et al.

    The american child-support system is *EVIL*. I will not endorse it under any circumstances. Sorry, Michelle. :)

  • http://warcriminal.freeservers.com Sol

    >You would think that if our government was as concerned
    >about the children as they tell us…

    The politicians and bureaucrats know if they shriek “It’s fer da childern” loud enough and often enough the Amerikan Sheeple will let them get away with just about anything.

  • jeffrey smith

    Before you go all sympathetic for persecuted fathers, just remember that there are plenty of parents who intentionally don’t support their children, either because they hate the other parent too much to care, or they just don’t care about their children. There are plenty of women who would say the system has failed in just the opposite way, because they are left to support their children without any help.
    I am possibly a little biased here. My father was the sort who had to be dragged into court because he didn’t want to bother with supporting me when I was a kid (financially and emotionally)

  • http://www.tom-hanna.org Tom Hanna

    Interesting that you’d use child support as an example the day after this post – http://hammeroftruth.com/2006/07/17/kidnapped-by-california-bureaucrats/

    And, for what it’s worth, child support collection is not one of the enumerated powers granted the federal government in the Constitution.

  • michelleshinghal

    Tom,
    Take me behind the woodshed and spank me please. I wrote this early this morning – more than a wee bit hungover. I will say again, that the gov says they do things for the children. This online gaming thing has been written about everywhere. Poor highschool kids who get caught up in it. I obviously did a poor job making my point. I will say, now that I have had time to digest the comments, that it is perfectly acceptable to enforce a court order on support. In the case of my ex, we agreed on $23 weekly support. He was behind thousands before I forgave it. It was simply a matter of the relationship being worth more than the cash. Libertarians believe that we can handle everything contractually- why not a support order? Especially one that was agreed upon.

  • IanC

    Michelle — here’s the sort of thing I have a problem with;

    “My father was the sort who had to be dragged into court because he didn’t want to bother with supporting me when I was a kid (financially and emotionally)” — jeffrey smith

    If it was a mutual agreed upon request for arbitration, and the person failed to meet up with ‘his’ end, throw the book at him.

    Now, yes, I know the counter-argument (almost always applied to men): If you create a child, you bear it a responsibility you cannot just walk away from. My position is: that line ends with custody.

    In jeffrey’s case unfortunately, everything went bad. Myself, I am the product of an early-childhood (mine) divorce (not mine :) ) that went well.

    But from a libertarian perspective, forced child-support with 0% custody is a no-brainer.

  • TerryP

    I agree with IanC

    No custody, no forced child-support unless you mutually agree to it.

    Now getting back to the point of the article. It seems to me before the republicans are pushed out of power they are going to try and push as much of their authoritarian moral beliefs onto all of us through the power of the gov’t. As has been pointed out by others it won’t stop at gambling. They are already doing the gay marriage thing and are trying to use gov’t power to stop pornography. They have been complacent or outright pushing for the smoking bans. When they are done the internet will be as regulated as the rest of our commerce and we will have just sat and done nothing since many of these things just didn’t pertain to us directly. Little by little our freedoms are being taken away by both the republicans and democrats and the common voter just hasn’t realized it. When will we learn and start voting for libertarians or other freedom loving people.

  • http://www.gabejohnson.org/ Gabe J

    I am beginning to wonder if teh republicans are going to be pushed out of power anytime soon.

    I have little faith in teh democrats to take any seats from republican incumbents in upcoming Senatorial and House Elections, and I am pretty sure that given Bush will be kicking up WW3 before he leaves office, I’d say the “Support our Troops” tit had a few more years of suckin before it goes dry.

    Plus you take into account teh huge increases in medicare and other horeshit sociual programs that have take place under “Big Government Conservtism”, I’d say the the republicans will hold the majority of power in this country another 8 years or more. Not that I’m happy about it.

    republicans and Democrats arent really two partiues anymore, anyhow. theyre one big party, the “Re-Elect Us Party” if the democrats run things, I get angry that my taxes go up and government is expanding. If republicans run things, I get angry that my civil liberties are being trampled upon. Can’t win!

  • IanC

    Gabe — we’ve been involved in WWIII for the last four years.

    The Korean War never ended. (An armistice is not the end of a war.)

    Modern warfare is fought with amongst other concerns a vastly higher priority than ever before set upon “Collateral damage.”

    “precision targetting” and “surgical strikes” — it’s Urban Warfare, and that is the future/today of war.

  • http://www.cleanleon.org/ Gabe J

    I’ll concede your points, Ian.

  • IanC

    And I’ll concede your worries about escalation.

    Stephen Colbert’s hopes notwithstanding. :)