In late 2007, I was in my second-to-last semester of my Masters Degree. I did a paper on online gambling and was privileged to interview Mark Shields - at the time the Director of Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division (AGED) at the Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS) - note: he's still at DPS (apparently now the Executive Assistant to the DPS Commissioner). The interview, with his permission, was recorded. Who knew I'd need to reference the thing 18 months later? I can't immediately find the full 25 or minutes, but I do still have the three excerpts I used for a presentation. I've put them (to the best of my memory) in the order they occurred. Here they are (about 30 seconds or so each):
As you can hear - Mr. Shields - once head of AGED (through at least mid-year 2008) and now top assistant to the DPS Commish - believes regulation is the way to go. To be fair, he did stress that such a position didn't necessarily reflect his personal morals on gambling, but rather that it was/is futile to try and stop - he spoke of the "genie being out of the bottle" and of the impossibility of trying to recork it. Perhaps his staff position change and the DPS's new tactics are related?? In any event - seems to me to be a full blown case of cognitive dissonance coming from the DPS.
On another rational front - State Representative Pat Garofalo has introduced House File 2370 which would stop DPS from taking their proposed ISP-blocking actions (see our post below from May 2. The bill has had its first reading in the House and was referred to the Commerce and Labor Committee.
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1 comment:
To bad the Democrats want to kill on-line poker for everybody in the state. Thank God for the Republicans once again looking out for the best interest of the Minnesota tax paying citizens.
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