Native American Media: Tribes' greed led them into Abramoff scandal

[NVMojo]

Updated Feb 1, 2006, 06:35 pm Refer this article
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Graphic: Harold Muhammad/MGN Online
American Indian media give little sympathy to tribes involved with Washington, D.C., lobbyists Michael Scanlon and Jack Abramoff, currently under investigation for buying influence in Congress on behalf of clients, including Indian gaming interests.

—News Analysis—

"There is some suggestion Jack Abramoff victimized unwary tribes and politicians," says former Native American Times editor Louis Gray in a guest editorial in the Oklahoma-based newspaper, "but this is more a case of unbridled greed than people taking advantage of powerless tribes and corrupting innocent politicians."

"It would be easy to play the victim card," Mr. Gray writes, "but that would be avoiding the responsibility many tribes had in their unrelenting drive to protect and obtain more gaming opportunities."

The weekly newspaper, distributed in Oklahoma and New Mexico, updates its website several times per day. Mr. Gray’s editorial, headlined, "Abramoff Scandal Is About Players, Not Victims," says gaming created heretofore unknown wealth and jobs among poor Native Americans. "But at what price and when is it enough?" he asks. Mr. Gray says that Mr. Abramoff and his tribal clients share blame for mismanagement of funds.

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http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2398.shtml

[NVMojo]

1. and what isn't mentioned here is the rich white developer who gets 70%

of the gaming profit plus loan payments from the tribe to pay for construction, development, initial management costs that take some tribes YEARS to pay off. So of course, they are going to lobby to keep the heavily indebted cash cow milking.

[OKNancy]

2. Native American Times has been a good liberal

voice, so I wouldn't throw out this author's opinion as the ravings of some right-wing looney.

[progdonkey]

3. correct, but kind of pointless argument...

Of course the tribes deserve to an extent the treatment they got from Abramoff. But they're no more guilty of anything than any other industry or interest group that lobbies Congress. They wanted Congress to vote more favorably for them so they hired a lobbyist to soften up congressmen to vote for bills beneficial to their interests. That's just unfortunately how Congress works.

The problem is not that people aren't "properly" recognizing that the tribes weren't just "unwary victims", but that the narrative has been spreading that they're actually something along the lines of co-conspirators with Abramoff. They were just as "unwary" as any other interest group, only they had the misfortune of being targeted by Abramoff.

Gray's point is correct, I'd say, but it's kind of beside the larger point: the issue here is not that the tribes were playing the "Congress game" and got burned, but that a well-connected lobbyist and major player in partisan RNC politics set out to cheat them and use money that was ostensibly to be used for lobbying Congressmen (while odious and not good on the tribes' parts, it's neither uncommon nor illegal) to simply fill up Republican coffers.

It could easily have been "Soda Companies' Greed Led Them into Abramoff scandal" or something similar, only Abramoff chose the tribes as his victims because they have a lot of money, they're racially inferior in his view (so he wouldn't feel too bad), and they normally would be giving that money to Democrats, so he'd be in essence transferring money from Democrats to Republicans (again, meaning he wouldn't feel too bad--assuming he has a conscience).

Giving the tribes an extra scolding for getting involved in this mess seems rather unfair to me (regardless of the truth of the matter), as they were no more or less greedy than any other group that hires lobbyists to push their interests before Congress.