I really wish that Robert Mitchell would invest some of his time into the Indian Casino issue. He has more of a sense of the absurd than I do and there is a lot of absurdity in the never ending spin commercials regarding Propositions 68 and 70. There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of commercials you see and the amount of profit involved. One does not have to be very cynical to believe that the benefits they seek are not public ones.
In the long history of these United States, the sense of greed has driven the actions of otherwise good people. It has often been disguised in fanciful terminology, such as “manifest destiny.” According to one encyclopedia, the term manifest destiny “was coined by New York journalist John O'Sullivan in 1845, when he wrote that 'it was the nation's manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.'"
Manifest Destiny and California gold were all that was needed to fuel the great western migration, covering the plains with wagon trains. If you happened to be one of the natives living there, too bad. It was this nation's manifest destiny to take what it could in any way that it could. O'Sullivan many have called this the “great experiment of liberty” but the native population had other names for it.
Recently these American natives finally saw the light. After many years of being shut out of mainstream life, shut off participating in the economic life of an industrialized society, the native “tribes” had found a way to turn that greed back on its originators.
The one thing that our laws have maintained was the idea that on their own land they were still nations, under the control of Federal Law, not that of the individual states. Using this conceit , the nations have discovered that those who confined them to reservations before will now flock to Indian owned land for the purpose of visiting an Indian casino. We have not lost the goal of getting rich quick. Just as earlier Americans made the Gold Rush west, and later to the Yukon, we now trek to the nearest casino in search of riches. And our Native Americans, having figured it out, are trekking to the bank.
We all know that no one likes to pay taxes. The more money you have, the less you may be willing to pay. The financial planning profession is founded on the legal precedent that everyone has the right to pay as little in taxes as possible. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is dedicated to protecting that right. And they all have found a great way to transfer the burden of taxation from the rich to the poor. And the secret is that it is NOT by re-election George W. Bush. And I notice that the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is supporting Prop. 70. There was just too much money involved for them to stay on the sidelines.
The California Lottery holds out the same dream of instant wealth for the many and pays a little to the state for education. The people who pay in to the lottery are, for the most part, not the rich and famous, not Silicon Valley venture capitalists. It is the relatively poor or middle class who often really feel the effects of buying that ticket.
Still I find that the most disingenuous are the politicians who see Indian Casinos as a wonderful source of local revenue. The money just comes in and they do not have to let the voters know that they are raising taxes on the poor and middle class. Even Kerry won't do that. It is like magic. Politicians tout the advantages of greater employment. They do not discount the value by the costs of new roads, larger police forces and other social impacts. They just rush to grab the gold before someone else does.
Still, this may be the only way to get someone to fund the long needed improvements to state highway 25. Let someone build a casino and recover the cost of those improvements as mitigation fees.
Tribal leaders no longer have to figure out how to get someone to come to their reservation. All they have to do is borrow some money, buy some land in a convenient location and they can claim the right to build a new casino. There are many developers who would be quite willing to identify the land, loan them the money and build it for them. There are high flying casino operations corporations who will run it for them. All the tribes have to do is live the American dream of sitting back and fulfilling their own manifest destiny.
I hope that our local politicians will think long and hard before agreeing to any casino operations in the area. And I also hope that you join me in voting No on Proposition 68.