THE INDIAN SCAM

New York Post ^ | 8/25/03 | RICH LOWRY

[kattracks]

August 25, 2003 -- AMERICAN Indians have always occupied an outsized place in our imagination, usually as a noble people at one with a pristine North American continent. It's time to upgrade the image. Forget buffalo, eagle feathers and tribal dances. Think slots, Harrah's and dirty politics.

[strela]

It's time to ditch the fiction of tribal sovereignty, and recognize the tribes for what they are: good, old-fashioned, all-American sleaze merchants and scam artists.

First you invade their home without being invited, then murder them in vast numbers with disease and firearms, then later "allow" them to live on reservations located in the lousiest, harshest, most godforsaken parts of the country. It takes a lot of chutzpah to now call Native Americans "sleaze merchants and scam artists."

Don't like casinos? Don't like hanging around with "sleaze merchants"? Then go the **** home, white eyes.

[tkathy]

It's time for ALL Americans to play by the same rules, and quit whining about what's done and gone.

[Adder]

Agreed!
The Eastern Cherokee have some 14,000 members, decendants of a robbed and screwed over people. Their casino, Harrahs Cherokee, paid each tribal member some $14,000 in cash[depending on the take: it varies], and has built numerous buildings and civil projects.
Yeah, the casinos take a cut even if its 40%. Who else is gonna run the casino? The welcome wagon ladies?
Sounds like a lot of sour grapes over the success of a few tribes. Wonder what his real problem is?

[strela]

Sounds like a lot of sour grapes over the success of a few tribes. Wonder what his real problem is?

I was wondering where all the bile in his article originated from. Maybe one of his ancestors got a premature short haircut from one of my ancestors ;)

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[Adder]

Maybe he got a short haircut himself at a casino. I know I've had bad days at some.
Sounds to me that the "fayyyyerrrr" whine is somewhere in his voice as in "its not faaayyyy-eerrr" that they get this "easy money" when other communities can't.[shrug]After years of being raped, I don't see what this attack against Indian casinos is all about. So long as no one takes it seriously, he can blow off as much as he wants. But it sure sounds dumb.

[Vaduz]

Agree 100%

[strela]

Maybe he got a short haircut himself at a casino. I know I've had bad days at some.

Same here. But I certainly don't go around blaming fat white guys who smell like garlic and have a bad suntan when I get taken to the cleaners at the craps table.

After years of being raped, I don't see what this attack against Indian casinos is all about.

The more I read of the hit piece in this article, the more I want to "put on my makeup a little funny" and go slap him around a little bit. (I promise to leave the more traditional Comanche "tools of the trade" at home though, although a bottle of honey, some rawhide strap, and an anthill might come in handy). ;)

[general_re]

Don't like casinos? Don't like hanging around with "sleaze merchants"? Then go the **** home, white eyes.

Bingo. No pun intended ;)

I got to stand in line at a convenience store a week or so ago, as one of the customers ahead of me began complaining to the (Asian) Indian clerk about the price of some thing or another, a rant that culminated with "I bet you're gonna take all this hard-earned American money and send it back to your own country, you m-f'er". Whereupon the guy proceed to give his "hard-earned American money" to the clerk in exchange for whatever it was he was complaining about - this article being a slightly more erudite, if less concise, version of that exact rant, of course. Both Rich and the convenience-store whiner want it both ways - we want the things they provide, while complaining long and loudly about the means by which they're providing it.

When Rich's friends and neighbors stop going to casinos, and mine too, then they'll have a right to complain - basically, when they put their money where their mouths are...

[Elsie]

INDEED!

I, myself, am a Native American - no, make that a native American - who KNOWS what a grand f**king the original inhabitants, and their descendants, of this country, have received over the years!

Note to poster #2: "No, we CAN'T all just get along!"

Slavery was ENDED in the South many YEARS before it was ended in the West, and if there were EVER to be any 'reparations' made to a group of people, it had BETTER be unto the Indian, who has lost FAR more than the Blacks did to death and disease at the hands of the White (superior firepower and numbers) folks.

Our treatment of the 'indian' problem could have very well been a model for Hilter's answer to the Jewish one.

To all in this country who love the 'rule of law', ask yourselves just WHY the 'laws' concerning the various Indian peoples and tribes, have NOT been enforced, because you sure won't be getting any answers from Washington.

Upset by the way our country makes 'laws' today, and then does not bother to enforce them? Well....... we have a LLlllooonngg precedent in doing so.


Ya don't like Indian Casinoes???

DON'T GO then!!!!!!!

I do not LIKE the fact that my STATE (Indiana: yeah, we USED to have INDIANS here!) has decided that the way to prosper is to have all kinds of gambling - no, wrong word: GAMING - available to it's citizens.

Does ANYONE think that a STATE run casino is BETTER than an independant INDIAN run one?

Come on...........

[J. L. Chamberlain]

Wonder what his real problem is?

Um...Lowry is a racist. How about that?

J

[Guillermo]

Casino Indians use every part of the Dollar.

[strela]

Its simple common sense that ANY casino won't be in business very long if the punters consistently win more than they drop at the tables. It doesn't matter if its run by a tribe, the Mafia, or the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Lowry's rant was idiotic on a number of levels.

Both Rich and the convenience-store whiner want it both ways - we want the things they provide, while complaining long and loudly about the means by which they're providing it.

True. Tell it to the hyper-patriots who stamp their feet and jump up and down in high dudgeon when it comes to illegal immigration, while at the same time hiring those selfsame illegals to do a little "off the books" yardwork or carpentry.

In Ft. Worth near where I used to work downtown, there's a highway overpass where a bunch of illegals and homeless guys hang out during the day. Once in a while, La Migra goes in and cleans it out but they just drift right back in a few days later. And for good reason - on weekday mornings, the place looks like a parking lot for dualies, King Cab trucks, and Cadillac Escalade SUVs as the local gentry picks up cheap labor for various construction projects.

[strela]

Casino Indians use every part of the Dollar.

hehehe ... you is bad.

[Guillermo]

At least someone gets it! LOL!

[Elsie]

In California, amazingly, the tribes pay no taxes under the Gray Davis compact.

And HERE is the REAL concern: greedy Gov't ain't gettin' their skim from the action!!!

---

John Doe has been transformed to a creature that GETS things from his Gov't (you know; all the JANE does, and JOHN roes and smiths and jones and the rest that pay taxes).

Now, the pol's have to get the MONEY for that vote buying venture from SOMEWHERE, and ol' JD, even though he LIKES to get, is just about fed up with the GIVING end of it to PAY for all of this (Hello California!)

So, the question becomes, "How to raise JD's taxes without him squealing about it so much that he keeps US awake at night?"

Hhmmm.... let's put a big tax on something OTHER than directly on JD, and, him being so blind to follow the paper trail, will THINK that the OTHER guys is paying, when actually, all along, the OTHER guy is merely being OUR (GOVT) taxCOLLECTOR!!!!!

Now JD has a bit of disposable income left (after taxes, of course) and SOME of that has to go back into the big MLM scheme.

If a new business (pick one) starts up, then Gummint will steal - oops, sorry... TAX at a certain rate. If, however, a CASINO starts up, then the Gummints rake is MUCH greater!

THAT'S why governments are so GLAD to have ALL kinds of gambling going on in their state: they get more money to play and pay with!!!! (and why they be so MAD if they DON'T get their filthy paws on it!!!)

[strela]

At least someone gets it!

Darned straight. On those rare occasions when I open my wallet, George blinks at the light.

[ought-six]

Gee, that's funny, but perhaps ypu fprgot that the various tribes slaughetred each other quite regularly, and were quite adept at enslaving captured foes. The American Indian first became romanticized by James Fennimore Cooper, and other easterners who had never seen an Indian. Folks with a more intimate associate with the tribes painted a far different picture. Now, don't get me wrong: there are many things I admire in the Indian culture, but there are also many things I abhor. The American Indians are pretty much like people everywhere, only a tad less familiar with hygiene (kind of like the French, which may explain why the French and the Indians got along so well).

[general_re]

Tell it to the hyper-patriots who stamp their feet and jump up and down in high dudgeon when it comes to illegal immigration, while at the same time hiring those selfsame illegals to do a little "off the books" yardwork or carpentry.

Too right. We claim don't like illegal immigrants, but God forbid the price of a head of lettuce should go over $0.59. Indian casinos will stop operating when white folks stop blowing the rent money at the slots. Asian convenience store owners will stop sending money back to the home country when slack-jawed mouth-breathers stop buying smokes and beer from them. Mexicans will stop floating - well, walking, anyway ;) - across the Rio Grande when there aren't any jobs for them to float into.

But none of that will ever happen in my lifetime, so we get to put up with poorly thought-out articles like this.