"Given the state's dire fiscal circumstances, California's Legislature is ripe for a politically painless source of new revenues. On the surface, Internet poker appears to provide just that. But don't bet on it.

None of California's gambling schemes, whether the lottery or the state's now-burgeoning Indian casinos, has ever provided the painless fiscal fix for the state that supporters always promise.

As reported last week, one of California's richest gambling tribes has hooked up with the state's biggest card room operators to push a bill to legalize Internet poker in California.

Details have not been worked out, but a draft of the proposal now circulating calls for the creation of a consortium of card room operators and the state's 100 or so federally recognized tribes to run the online gambling enterprise. The state would get a cut of the action, but how much has not been specified.

Even though Congress approved legislation in 2006 to curb illegal online gambling by prohibiting the use of credit cards, checks or bank fund transfers for Internet gambling, many experts believe the law has failed. Offshore Internet gambling still rakes in an estimated $4 billion a year from U.S.-based gamblers."

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Editorial: Internet poker is bad policy gamble (The Daily Breeze 8/18)