Online Gambling — None of Washington’s Business (But Its Enemies Don’t Care)

George Leef writing for Forbes cites Michelle Minton’s work on online gambling.

One of the things that gives capitalism a bad name is the way those who’ve been  successful in it sometimes turn to the government to keep out competition that could reduce their profits or even put them out of business. It’s deplorable when people who have used their entrepreneurial talents to create goods and services that consumers want later turn to the nasty game of politics to keep others from trying.

There are numerous examples of that but in this piece I’ll focus on the gambling industry. Casinos have made some men very rich and one of the best known is Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire who likes to dabble in politics. (In 2012, he was the big money behind Newt Gingrich’s campaign, as we read here.) He knows that online gambling reduces the traffic into his casinos and is doing all he can to stop its growth.

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Michelle Minton of the Competitive Enterprise Institute informs us here that Pennsylvania Representative Charlie Dent, a Republican, plans to attach an amendment to the current budget bill that would prohibit online gambling. She writes, “While details about Dent’s plan are scant, the tactic sounds like a repeat of the scheme he and other members of Congress cooked up in 2016. For years, prohibitionists have fought and failed to enact a ban on state-based Internet gambling through the normal legislative process.”

Read the full article at Forbes.