Tribes of Gamblers

nytimes ^ | December 12, 2002 | WILLIAM SAFIRE

[dennisw]

Tribes of Gamblers By WILLIAM SAFIRE

ASHINGTON We were told that the glitzy gambling casinos springing up on Indian reservations across the land would lift poor Indians out of poverty. Certainly the slot machines and gaming tables produce plenty of money. The nearly 300 casinos pull in almost $13 billion a year in revenue, of which more than $5 billion is pure profit.

But where is that money going? In Time magazine's cover story this week, titled "Wheel of Misfortune: Look Who's Cashing In at Indian Casinos," Donald Barlett and James Steele — a team twice awarded Pulitzer Prizes when at The Philadelphia Inquirer — present the troubling answer.

A few tribes near big cities haul in as much as $900,000 per member. States with only 3 percent of the Indian population — California, Florida and Connecticut — take in 44 percent of the gambling revenue, while states with half our 1.8 million Indians account for less than 3 percent of the take. The poorest of our aboriginal Americans are getting poorer, while non-Indians get rich hiring lobbyists to get federal recognition of a tribal front for the sole purpose of buying land to build a casino.

Lim Goh Tong, for example, is the Malaysian contractor billionaire behind the Foxwoods spread in Connecticut. As a foreigner, he can legally avoid most U.S. taxes on his profit, likely to run about $40 million a year. The South African developer Sol Kerzner, "first of the Mohegans," worked a similar deal that was O.K.'d by a federal official now doing just fine as a lobbyist. And Minnesota's Lyle Berman, a tycoon reported to have taken down $18 million a year in salary and stock options in his leather business, has a hot casino deal going near Chicago. And those are only the most blatant examples of non-Indians cashing in.

I'm a free-enterprise freak who doesn't begrudge big profits to investors who take big risks, but this is no gamble; rather it is a financial-political scandal of stunning proportions. Under the cover of helping the 28 percent of Indians now mired in poverty, financial vultures and highly paid, revolving-door lobbyists are ripping off the U.S. taxpayer and promoting a noxious something-for-nothing slots philosophy — not to mention degrading the countryside's moral and physical environment — by gaming the American political system.

Who's to blame? The Department of the Interior, with its moribund Indian Affairs bureau, professes to have no authority to oversee the National Indian Gaming Commission, whose three members have just been appointed by Secretary Gale Norton to be sworn in today. The new chairman, Philip Hogen, a friendly member of South Dakota's Oglala Sioux, was a commissioner through the late 90's and will rock no boats.

He tells me he was "disappointed" with the critical tone of Time's story (another one coming next week) and notes that even the small, less profitable casinos far from big-city markets provide some jobs for Indians. What about the secrecy, fraud, corruption and intimidation rife in so many lucrative tribal casino operations? Hogen's agency has only 63 employees to inspect and audit the $13 billion take in the nearly 300 all-cash businesses. Despite many complaints, that toothless tiger has never uncovered a single case of corruption.

Here's why: The casino tribes lobbied for, and Congress supinely agreed to, a cap of $8 million that can be collected from casinos to finance the nation's Indian gaming commission. That should be tripled.

Will Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, next chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, ask why, as Representative Frank Wolf notes, 80 percent of the Indians in the U.S. have received not one nickel from skyrocketing gambling revenues? Will Representative Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, likely to head House Resources in January, pull that committee's head out of the sand? Will House Government Reform, under Tom Davis or Chris Cox, dare to hold hearings on a scandal rooted in the manipulation of Congress?

Hard-hitting reporting will help. Casino press agents will continue to trot out warm and cozy stories of hospitals and schools built and Indian lives rehabilitated by gambling money, each one true, but distorting the whole truth of a rapacious operation protected by politicians fearful of seeming unkind to Indians. The result has been attention to the few, neglect of the many, and the herding of a proud people into the demeaning culture of slots and croupiers.

[185JHP]

Bill's right. As Atlantic City found out, casinos are vice magnets. Shut 'em down.

[GalvestonBeachcomber]

I think it is racial discrimination that an Indian can run slot machines and I can't.

[lewislynn]

You can choose to not participate.

Speaking of vice magnets. It looks to me like the corruption in the Indian casino industry (among others) begins in the halls of congress and government bureaucracy.

[Hugin]

Will Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, next chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, ask why, as Representative Frank Wolf notes, 80 percent of the Indians in the U.S. have received not one nickel from skyrocketing gambling revenues?

Because each tribe is a seperate entity, and always has been. That's like asking why people in Alabama make less than people in NY. Obviously casinos near NYC, or in Florida and California are going to make more money than than casinos in South Dakota. I guess it's the fault of thier ancestors for locating in the wrong part of the country. Too bad, so sad.

[Hugin]

Shut 'em down.

By all means. Give the government a monopoly on gambling.

If adults want to gamble (which they obviously do) that's their business. There are no casinos in NYC and there's no shortage of vice there.

[185JHP]

Set up some stings and send some bribe-paying filth to prison - that would please me.

[cherry]

what I want to know is do Indian casinos pay any taxes?

do Indians themselves pay any taxes?

[XLurk]

Forget the Indians. Come to Reno for the superior gaming experience!

Less traffic, crime and vice than Vegas. Better deals on hotel rooms also. And Tahoe is only 30 minutes away for you skiers.
(Personally, I don't gamble myself...)

(END COMMERCIAL)

[lewislynn]

I lived at South Shore, Lake Tahoe for eight years...I love Nevada, all of it.

[XLurk]

Now that all remaining manufacturing in the US is being exported to China and elsewhere - and gubmint regulation / taxation have made it nearly impossible to actually MAKE ANYTHING here in the good ol' USA - all we have left is sin.

Invest in the Vice Fund which invests in companies involved in tobacco, alcohol, gambling, etc. (They do NOT invest in porn because it doesn't meet the profitability criteria.)

Cheers!

http://www.vicefund.com/

[lewislynn]

do Indian casinos pay any taxes? do Indians themselves pay any taxes?

I doubt it.

[Blue Collar Christian]

Pervayers of drugs(inlcuding alcahol), porn and gambling, whether legal or not, are for the most part only interested in profits regardless of the colateral damage. It's against the law to do what needs to be done.