PPA Urges Sending Questions to the Obama Administration
Play Poker » PPA Urges Sending Questions to the Obama Administration Regarding Online Poker
February 7, 2012
The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) is urging the poker community to send their questions to the Obama administration through You Tube. This will be a step forward to get the President to address some of the issues currently faced by online poker. A question related to online poker regulation has already been submitted by the executive director of PPA, John Pappas.
The Obama administration is offering US citizens an opportunity to post questions through YouTube. Already over 100,000 questions have been asked. Of these, about 123 are posted by the people who want to play poker online in the US. It has been stated by the website that the president will answer those questions which get the maximum votes.
John Pappas’ Question to President Obama
Pappas stated in his question that regulating online poker will result in the creation of a large number of jobs and add to the revenue of the country significantly. Strong consumer protection will also be established once poker is allowed to be regulated. Pappas asked the President whether he will support the proposal to regulate poker.
As of now, the question asked by Pappas has about 446 likes. The number of dislikes for the question is 46. Poker enthusiasts, interested to find the question, have to visit the White House page on You Tube and search for online poker on the table appearing on the right side. In order to vote, users have to login to their YouTube account. A wide range of questions which are not related to poker have also been asked. More than 3,000 likes have been recorded for these questions. The last date for voting was January 28th. President Obama has not yet answered Pappas’ question. The entire poker community is awaiting his opinion on the issue.
Petition made in September, 2011
The online poker petition was made in September 2011. It passed through the required number of signatures – 5,000. 41 responses have been recorded till date. These are not given by the President himself but by individuals who deal with the issue within the Obama administration.
In the second set of petitions made last year, it was stated that the provision for submitting petitions to the White House is a good feature, but the administration should take the petitions seriously. The responses to the first round of petitions clearly indicate that the White House supports its current stance. The responses that were given would have been known to anyone who had done some research on the topic, and didn’t take the debate to a meaningful conclusion.
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