Posted on 03/01/2006 4:01:15 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Just pick a number, lawmakers were told Wednesday by both sides looking to Congress to resolve a lawsuit over billions of dollars in federal royalties that American Indians claim they are owed.
Estimates of the money owed for unpaid royalties on oil, gas, timber and other resources from Indian lands range from half a billion dollars to $27.5 billion, a panel of negotiators and tribal leaders told Senate and House members.
Many people with a stake in the bitter class-action lawsuit against the Interior Department are now convinced that only Congress can settle it equitably. And many now believe an arbitrary decision could be fairer than any technical, data-driven fix.
"One number's as good as another?" asked Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
"Ultimately, this is an arbitrary solution. There is no right number," mediator John Bickerman told a joint hearing by McCain's committee and the House Resources Committee.
No one disputes that the government has done a poor job handling the Indian trust funds in the past, he said. The only question, he added, is how to put a value on that liability.
The tribes' $27.5 billion estimate is based on the presumption that Indians are still owed about a fifth of the $100 billion to $170 billion in royalties they should have received, most of that accrued interest. The government's much lower figure is based on efforts to account for possible errors in collections, deposits and payments.
Congress created the federal trust to handle Indian royalties in 1887. It demanded an accounting in 1994, and two years later Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Indian tribe and others filed suit when the accounting was still not done.
"This trust system was imposed on people, we didn't ask for it," said Mike Marchand, the first vice president of Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. "We're doing the best we can to work with the system."
Marchand looked to Congress, saying a court settlement "seems to be getting farther and farther away every day." He complained that Bush administration officials "don't seem to have a lot of knowledge about life on our reservations or how to communicate."
Since the case was filed, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington has been sharply critical of the government's problems showing how it handled the royalty money held in trust for Indians.
Lamberth has twice ordered the Interior Department to disconnect its computers from the Internet for failing to provide adequate security for the Indians' trust records. He has held Interior Secretary Gale Norton and her Clinton-era predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, in contempt.
Rep. Richard Pombo (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., the House committee's chairman, said it would take a miracle for either side in the dispute to propose "an acceptable amount" for a legislative settlement. There are several bills pending in Congress, but they leave blank the settlement amount.
"If we don't do this, the case will drag through the courts as it has dragged on for the last 10 years," Pombo said. "And all Indian Country suffers, because rightly or wrongly, scarce federal resources meant for important tribal services are being diverted to deal with it."
An independent administrative tribunal to process claims — similar to what was done to help make reparations after World War II — could be established, said Stuart Eizenstat, a former undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration. Eizenstat negotiated the historic agreement with Switzerland's two largest banks to pay Holocaust survivors $1.25 billion.
"You cannot have courts settle historical wrongs," he said. "They cannot settle a case like this, where the evidence is poor, the number of claims is uncertain."
Eizenstat, too, acknowledged "an element of arbitrariness" in any solution.
"There'll never be litigation that satisfies both sides," he said. "How do you measure the injustice to American Indians who misplaced their trust in the government?"
___ On the Net:
Senate Indian Affairs: http://indian.senate.gov/public
The ones with the biggest stake in this are 1) The Lawyers who will get the bulk of the money and 2) The Taxpayers who will pay the entire amount.
Jeez in 1887 it was still Bush's fault!
I'll go ahead an pick a number... $0.
Works for me !
That's pretty close. The only actual audit of records of the original plaintiff's leases all the way back to 1909 determined that with 95% assurance, a total of $67 was unaccounted for. This is the largest scam ever perpetrated on the American taxpayer.
Since this government isn't even following the Constitution, I'd say we're already at square one, and treaties with the tribes mean nothing at all. Certainly there is no justice in the taxpayer paying the bill for this - who made off with the goods? Pursue them for the money. The taxpayer is innocent.
Any of the offended that are still alive (not the heirs who had no dog in the fight) can collect, in my book. Same ol' reparations-type argument here, that says some Lawyer wants to redistribute the wealth from the Taxpayer's pocket to their own.
The quote above is pretty indicative of what we have in the USA today (unless you're a designated "minority")
Why?
Any minimally qualified CPA could probably come up with an actual, logical, equitable and fiscally justified figure in 90 days or less.
$100 million+ has been spent to date attempting to comply with the judge's order to completely account for the payments since 1887. It is not a money issue as much as a record issue. Records do not go back far enough for a complete accounting. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, the only audit done of the original plaintiffs' leases reflected $67 unaccounted for, and that back to 1909. BTW, if any money is actually missing, look to the Bureau of Indian Affairs which had responsibility for accounting and distributing the funds for most of the time in question. It has been run almost entirely by....Indians!
Please help me out here. What books are being cooked, and who is knowingly fleecing the tribes, and by what means?
The Federal Government owes money to property owners, in this case, tribal reservations, for physical assets that they legally contracted with the tribal leaders, to extract at a given rate of financial return.
Perhaps you are not aware that this is actually not a tribal issue, but an allottee issue. If you do not understand, please ask and I will try and help you out.
Those "offended", or as it is correctly termed "the plaintiffs" are indeed still very much alive, and the "offense" happened to them, not their ancestors.
Not so. This suit requires accounting back to 1887.
The feds failed to abide by the legal contract. They were judged to be guilty of theft, and breach of contact.
Again, you are completely incorrect. No such judgement has been rendered. The entire issue is about whether the Interior Department can or should do a 100% accounting of all of the allotted leases since the Act was signed. No "money", other than the $67 I previously mentioned has ever been referred to as stolen (and the $67 was actually paid to the wrong allottee), therefore theft as you put it is not at issue. Of course, if theft did take place, the question is which Indians stole it, and how much?
And I am not ignorant on this topic. Ignorance is easily cured by factual knowledge. Stupidity happens when one intentionally avoids proven facts, and stubbornly clings to ignorance as a method of reinforcing their ignorant opinions.
I do recommend you avail yourself of your own advice.
For what, my question of why you chose $27 billion?
If there's real money owed, let's see an accounting and hear the story of how things got to be this way. If money was stolen, it went somewhere, and those who got it are the ones to be held accountable. This "just pick a number" is an admission that this has nothing to do with justice and is simply a way to dishonestly leverage the legal system into yet another theft from the taxpayer.
If the Indians are owed a fair deal, what about the US citizens? Don't we ever get the opportunity to be treated fairly? I saw nothing of what was taken from the Indians and I find the suggestion that I should be the one to be held accountable for alleged misdeeds (in which I played no part) to be offensive to any reasonable concept of fairness.
In a country where the 2nd Amendment can be interpreted in such a way that in the capital itself there is no right to bear arms, I see no justification for holding me or any other taxpayer to the letter of a 120-year-old agreement to which no one alive today was ever a party. Double standards are not OK, not when it is the decent law-abiding citizen who gets the short end of the stick every time.
We can keep playing this sh*t for brains game til hell freezes over and the country goes belly up, or we can draw a line in the sand on the rational side of insanity and say, "no more."
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