Online Gambling & Senator Kyl: To laugh or cry?

Does Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) seem way too obsessed with the online gambling issue? He sure does. And what better place to show it than during the congressional hearing of the Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.

Senator Jon Kyl and gambling online The Senator from Arizona, during the questioning of Mr. Gonzalez in relation to the firing of eight state attorney generals, had the audacity to start asking questions about online gambling!?! Mr. Kyl was obviously trying to pressure and take advantage of the current situation Alberto Gonzalez is in, and wanted to know far the Attorney General Office has gotten in prospective to the online gambling restriction.

Was Senator Kyl just trying to take advantage of the widely publicized issue with the firings, and did he just go way over the line, asking online gambling questions during such an important investigation, completely unrelated to Internet gambling?

Is it a coincidence that Senator Jon Kyl is continuing his public pressure on this matter during a time when we see one of the biggest nation-wide Indian gambling expansions ever?

Asking questions of one's personal crusade shows that this man would not hear any facts, be involved in any discussions, or would consider anything rather than banning online gambling (except the forms he seems to approve, such as online track betting and online lotteries), do noting but hurt Sen. Kyl's cause, because in a democratic country, laws are made for the people, not for the senators.

Senator Jon Kyl is also part of the "Terrorism, Technology & Homeland Security Subcommittee", and let's hope he will not go too far and try to declare online gambling an act of terrorism...

Mr. Kyl, did you know that according to the Arizona Office of Problem Gambling's Youth Survey of 2006, out of more than 60,000 students (grades 8 through 12) surveyed, 13, 117 were frequent gamblers and 92.4% have never gambled on the Internet? And only 69.4% have never played the lottery or scratch tickets? Don't you think that you should really focus on curbing the state-promoted gambling addiction among the youth in your state of constituency?

Did you also know that participating in the Arizona State Lottery and games is prohibited for persons under the age of 21? Don't you think that when that lottery seems to convert over 30% of the underage residents into gamblers, you, as a state representative, should focus first on the 30.6% of the Arizona students which have gambled on the state lottery games, and only after you take care of this huge problem, help the 7.6% who have gambled online in the past 12 months?

Here are some more statistics, just to see where the gambling problems of Arizona may be coming from. According to the Arizona Office of Problem Gambling's Helpline Statistics for 2006, some of the primary gambling preference of the people who called were: Slot Machines: 59.8%, Lottery: 4.5%, Internet: 2.5%, Stock Market: 0.2%. Obviously, for the most part, the gambling problems come from the state's Indian casinos, although stock market gambling seems to pick up speed, so maybe we should ban online day trading, as well?

04/21/2007