One of a Kind: DC Lobbying Ad of the Day
Posted on July 21st, 2009
by Lewis McCrary |
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Online gambling has broken another glass ceiling. Are you a parent who chooses to stay at home to raise your kids? You can now get in on a poker game—and use your winnings to feed the kids.
The Poker Players Alliance is on Capitol Hill this week, lobbying for a regulatory scheme that online gamblers can tolerate. Apparently they have quite a budget, taking out a full-page ad in Politico today alongside the pharmaceutical companies and defense contractors. Apparently online poker is a $6-billion industry.
At first, we only heard about the college students who put themselves through school playing poker (some dropping out to play full-time), but the Poker Players Alliance apparently also includes stay-at-home moms, who make some extra money without having to leave the kids.
Filed under: Culture, Economics
I’m a stay-at-home mom and I smoke crack would be a great way to help liberalize the drug laws. It too is a multi-billion dollar industry. The freedom to destroy oneself is no freedom at all. Our government is always looking for ways to help expand freedom while usurping actual freedom. How joyful.
[...] It was a full page Ad in Politico. [...]
I am a stay at home disabled person who enjoys a quiet game and yes, with developed skills you can (I do) actually win.
I am confused by JW’S statement that expanding freedom usurps actual freedom and that silly CRACK remark really shows a childish attitude.
obg
OBG,
In the last decades has freedom been on the increase or the decrease? Which freedoms have increased or decreased and what level of destructiveness have the freedoms increasing or decreasing had on society? If you could please explain what you believe the current zeitgeist would call freedom and how would it be defined?
I would argue that a lot of what passes for freedom in our modern society is actually counterfeit and or destructive. It is very difficult to define an abstract concept, therefore there are many people peddling many different freedoms.
First off, as a marketing executive and consultant to the Gaming Industry ( pari-mutuel, casino, sports and yes, poker) this ad, while does have a point, falls a bit flat… taking their premise, I would have had a series of different people, ages, racer and their reason why they play.
The text below the ad is trite…and “sounds” like adspeak.
Ads should be emotional…ads should connect emotionally to your audience…this ad doesn’t. It fails.
Were most of these facts overheard in a bar? Because ‘apparently’ pops up three times, two in consecutive sentences. Many conservatives are behind making online poker taxed and regulated (just like it is in many countries of the world), including former Senator Alphonse D’Amato, Congressman Ron Paul, and many poker players who are themselves conservatives, one of the most famous being lifelong Texas Republican Doyle Brunson.
Now the PPA made a mistake by implying that everybody who plays can make a living at it. That’s misleading and potentially dangerous. Im saying this as a casual gamer who just doesnt have the temperament to deal with the swings that come with the game. Let me tell you about myself, as a person who plays online poker.
I got started around 9/2004 playing on the play chip (free) tables before making my first deposit of $50 in 1/2005. Ive won money and Ive lost money and today Im at about $2000 in total bankroll. Sufficed to say, this is not a living, and Ive never been too busy playing online to go to work. Not all people who play online are degenerates in the same way that not all people who believe in God are zealots.
It continues to surprise me that it’s the conservatives, of all people, who want online poker banned. And the idea that allowing online poker will serve as a smokescreen to allow other freedoms to be taken away is ridiculous. By the way, I wonder where these people were when it came to warrentless wiretapping….
Ron Paul and Doyle Brunson? Care to back that RIDICULOUS statement up with some links?