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Boxer Resurrects Indian Tribe Deemed Defunct 40 Years Ago, Son Profits $8 Million Off It
The Hill ^ | 10/30/10 08:55 AM ET | Rick Manning

Posted on 11/01/2010 8:19:12 AM PDT by OregonRancher

Boxer Resurrects Indian Tribe Deemed Defunct 40 Years Ago, Son Profits $8 Million Off It

(p)It doesn't get more corrupt than this....

For the past 10 years Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has been playing a game that would make Jack Abramoff blush, a game that can best be described using the language of “Get Smart’s” Maxwell Smart as “the ole family-profiting-off-of-the-Indian-tribe-that-you-created trick.”

Here’s the story.

In 1998, Lynn Woolsey introduced legislation reinstating an Indian tribe in the wine country of Northern California that had been declared defunct by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1958. None of the Indians of the tribe objected at that time; they received a payment and went about their lives. The Woolsey bill would reinstate the tribe but specifically prohibited them from starting a casino. The legislation ran into trouble when the Bureau of Indian Affairs opposed the legislation because it had not seen any evidence that the tribe was significantly tied to the terminated tribe.

In 2000, Boxer helpfully picked up the Woolsey bill, but changed the prohibition against gaming, and designated any land that the group owned to be considered as a reservation.

In the same year, Boxer got her language into the Omnibus Indian Advancement Act of 2000, and with the changes unbeknownst to either fellow Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) or House sponsor Woolsey (D), the bill was signed into law by then-President Clinton.

That’s when the game got interesting.

Shortly after passage, the newly minted Indian tribe declared that after much soul-searching, the only thing it could do was open a casino on the outskirts of San Francisco in the town of Rohnert Park.

The tribe turned its fortunes over to two firms to make its dreams of wealth come true — Platinum Advisers, a political consulting/lobbying firm, and Kenwood Investments 2. Amazingly, and I’m certain quite coincidentally, Barbara Boxer’s son, Doug, was a partner in each firm.

To avoid immediate citizen concern about a casino popping up in their posh neighborhood, Doug Boxer’s Kenwood Investments 2 kindly fronted for the casino interests in purchasing a tract of land in Rohnert Park, as well as helpfully taking options on adjoining parcels of land for themselves to sweeten the pot. (Can I say pot and Sonoma County, Calif., in the same breath?)

Then Platinum Advisers sprang into action to try to gain community support for the casino. They apparently didn’t do a very good job, because the casino still is not built 10 years later.

According to Reference.com, Doug Boxer’s take from the project was a very Abramoff-like $8 million.

What makes the story timely is that the federal government just a couple of weeks ago was compelled to declare the land that Boxer’s son had purchased on behalf of the Indian casino a reservation, effectively killing the local zoning and lawsuits that had tied the project up in knots for most of the past decade.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat rightly pinned the federal decision right on the Senate Ethics Committee chairwoman’s doorstep by pointing out that since she used the word shall, rather than may, in the legislation that birthed this tribe, the federal government had no choice but to declare the property that the tribe subsequently purchased to be tribal lands.

Of course, my favorite part of this story is the poor bedraggled, downtrodden Indian chief, Greg Sarris. You see, poor Greg Sarris is a Ph.D. who has served as a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Dr. Chief Sarris, according to his own biographical story, was adopted out when he was born, never meeting his natural parents. At some point in his life, like many who have been adopted, he wanted to know about his birth parents, and began to research. He discovered that his mother was deceased, and his father’s name was unlisted on the birth certificate. His mother was not a Native American.

Just so this tale is believable, I am now directly quoting Sarris’s bio from Reference.com. According to Sarris in Mabel McKay (a book he wrote), Bunny (his mother) claimed that the father of her baby was a Mexican stablehand who worked where she kept her horse, but her brother disputed this (based on Sarris’s looks) and suggested that the father was more likely to have been a boy called Emilio. Sarris describes looking through yearbooks from his mother’s school to locate him:

“Then I saw it. The name, Emilio Hilario. I looked at the picture and saw my face. Darker, yes. But my face all the same. I ended up interviewing over twenty people, and yes, they confirmed that Emilio was my father. Other girls had gotten pregnant from him also. ‘Oh, your mother loved him so, even as wild as he was,’ her best friend told me.” — Mabel McKay. p. 142.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, Sarris located the Filipino father of Emilio, who said that Emilio’s mother’s father had some Indian ancestry, and so Sarris adopted his “father’s mother’s” heritage and proceeded to regenerate an Indian tribe.

And that, boys and girls, is the abridged story of how you create an Indian tribe and profit off of it in six easy steps. Isn’t it nice to have a Senate Ethics Committee chairwoman who is so skillful at playing the game?


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Front Page News; Government; US: California
KEYWORDS: abramoff; barbaraboxer; boxer; boxercorruption; boxerindiandeal; california; casino; congressional; corruption; cultureofcorruption; democratcorruption; democrats; indiancasino; indians
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To: Beagle8U

Uh, what is the name of this tribe?

The fukkarwees.

The long lost tribe who’s battle cry was;

“Where the FUKKARWEE ?”


21 posted on 11/01/2010 9:02:11 AM PDT by maine yankee
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To: freekitty
Uh, what is the name of this tribe?

The Bohica tribe.

22 posted on 11/01/2010 9:11:26 AM PDT by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all -- Texas Eagle)
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To: muawiyah
You just have no idea how difficult it is to re-establish an Indian tribe if you believe this tale.

While it may be very difficult for most people, it doesn't seem to have been quite so hard for (hopefully) soon-to-be ex-Senator Boxer.

Are you refuting the facts that are presented here? If so, do you have any further information that does so?

23 posted on 11/01/2010 9:16:49 AM PDT by Bob
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To: maine yankee

LOL!

I must be part Indian, I’m feeling the urge to take some scalps... at the ballot box tomorrow.


24 posted on 11/01/2010 9:25:37 AM PDT by Brucifer (Proud member of the Double Secret Reloading Underground.)
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To: freekitty

Kick-an-U.....


25 posted on 11/01/2010 9:27:20 AM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously... You'll never live through it.)
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To: OregonRancher

Gonna be a big war party if this is emailed to Fiorina’s camp. Is it too late. Call her son Chief Conjob. Call her senutter Scumbag.


26 posted on 11/01/2010 9:30:03 AM PDT by Karliner (Now this is not the end. .... But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning, Churchill 1942)
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To: Beagle8U

Actually the tribe’s correct name is the “Yesweekan”.


27 posted on 11/01/2010 9:34:00 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Clem Hussein Kadiddlehopper would be a vast improvement.)
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To: Bob

Yeah, you have to find some Indians FIRST. That part simply isn’t in this tale ~ one Indian does not a tribe make!


28 posted on 11/01/2010 9:42:27 AM PDT by muawiyah ("GIT OUT THE WAY" The Republicans are coming)
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To: Bob; muawiyah; freekitty; wideawake; alancarp; AppyPappy; OregonRancher; Liz; STARWISE; Qbert; ...
The posted article was pulled by The Hill (Why?), but it is confirmed at length here (includes Boxer's son's connection and evasive quotes by Boxer). Can this go viral and sink Boxer?

Rohnert Park casino bill tarnishes Boxer's green image

"Boxer's bill restored sovereign rights to a few hundred Miwok and Pomo Indians in the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.

On Oct. 1, the tribe reached a milestone, albeit without public fanfare. The U.S. Department of Interior took 254 acres into trust, essentially creating a new reservation for Federated Indians directly off Highway 101 south of the Sonoma County city of Rohnert Park — prime land for a Las Vegas-style casino".

pressdemocrat

29 posted on 11/01/2010 9:47:11 AM PDT by thouworm
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To: muawiyah
Yeah, you have to find some Indians FIRST. That part simply isn’t in this tale ~ one Indian does not a tribe make!

Apparently it does so sufficiently that they're federally-recognized and have a legally-designated reservation for their planned casino. While a legitimate tribe would need to consist of more than one Indian, a sham such as this one obviously doesn't.

30 posted on 11/01/2010 9:48:47 AM PDT by Bob
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To: Texas Eagle

“The Bohica tribe.”

Not many of them left. Best to call them “The Last of the Bohicans.”


31 posted on 11/01/2010 9:49:47 AM PDT by TexasRepublic (Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves)
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To: OregonRancher
Can the House Ethics Committee investigate the Senate, or are they restricted to House only shenanigans?
32 posted on 11/01/2010 9:51:54 AM PDT by muleskinner
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To: freekitty
Uh, what is the name of this tribe?

The Boxer tribe of course or as some call it, the half-step-neighbor-in-law-of-a-third-cousin tribe.

33 posted on 11/01/2010 10:20:03 AM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot (Not all that needs to be done needs to be done by the government.)
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To: thouworm

Crickets from the media. But we’re suppose to care Meg Whitman was snookered by an illegal alien.


34 posted on 11/01/2010 11:00:00 AM PDT by MissesBush (Stay angry--right through November)
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To: OregonRancher

Democrats are raising the bar on corruption each & every day.


35 posted on 11/01/2010 11:31:46 AM PDT by ridesthemiles
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To: MissesBush
"Crickets from the media."

I have posted this in every thread I thought might be effective, and it has been mostly been crickets on FR.

If ever there was a direct paper trail of newly exposed corruption on the eve of an election, this is it.

Are we celebrating our victories too early, or has FR become too diluted by its own success to be the influential force that got us to this point?

36 posted on 11/01/2010 11:55:58 AM PDT by thouworm
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To: AppyPappy; OregonRancher; NormsRevenge; Grampa Dave; SierraWasp; tubebender; Carry_Okie; ...
Yes , talked about that on this thread yesterday:

CA: Barb Boxer’s Indian tribe take

37 posted on 11/01/2010 12:43:30 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: thouworm

It’s because so many people on FR spent so much time demonizing Fiorina as a “Rino” during the primary that they don’t much care about this race. The fact is she has maintained a pro-life, pro 2nd Amendment, pro fiscal sanity stance all during the general election and is hardly a Rino. If this corruption revelation helped a Tea Partier Free Republic would light up like a Christmas tree about it. Plus there’s an element of having no faith the media will do anything about this anyway for it to make a difference, so people are apathetic.


38 posted on 11/01/2010 12:57:29 PM PDT by MissesBush (Stay angry--right through November)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Sleazy, twisted, complicated, but it has the ring of truth.

What a scam!


39 posted on 11/01/2010 12:58:40 PM PDT by BenKenobi (Support COD - "Cash on Delivery" for DE Senate!)
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To: MissesBush

“Fiorina as a “Rino””

In researching “boxer,” as a keyword on FR, I see that your point is well taken. Only to look at this thread to prove your point:

Real Clear Politics: CA senate race moved to “toss up”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2618231/posts

In this case, my opinion is that the devil we know IS NOT worse than the devil we do not “know.”

In corruption and power, Boxer is the female second only to Pelosi. This scandal has been buried, and it is BOXER who should be buried by this late-breaking scandal.


40 posted on 11/01/2010 1:08:21 PM PDT by thouworm
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