If anyone has followed this story from the beginning over the years, there is more than enough evidence that (a)billion$ in mineral-rights leases were granted by the BIA on parcels of land for which there is no question that they were held “in trust” by the BIA for various tribal people, and (b)the record keeping of the BIA for those leases was so abysmal that if only sheer incompetence could be prosecuted as a crime, someone would have gone to jail long ago, and (c)the admitted payments of the parties who paid the leases, by itself (if only they could be tracked within the BIAs record keeping - they can’t) is sufficient knowledge, against the paltry sums actually allocated to appropriate tribal interests for the leases, (d) to suggest that the $3.4 billion that is being agreed to now IS PROBABLY LESS than what would have been paid - over the entire period of years covered by the suit, plus the interest that should be due on payments never received.
I remember one of the earlier court rulings in the case admitted all that I noted above but claimed, with the least bit of logic, that the court had no power to demand full payment of what is probably owed, simply because what is probably owed is so much.
I suspect that the tribal parties concerned are accepting the $3.4 billion, to just finally put the case behind them. We are lucky that they are willing to do so.
I guess we now know why it took Zero so long to get around to the Fort Hood tragedy. He was in the middle of kissing the Indian who’s who with the inside scoop of another massive wealth transfer. Just the kind of thing this guy lives for. Any emotion he had was about how this spoiled HIS moment and not our Soldiers.