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Greed that knows no boundaries

Tax greed is running rampant in California these days. The Statists have managed to, if not quite kill, make the golden goose quite ill. Revenues are falling and they have no way to fund more welfare for politicians and bureaucrats. They need a new victim – one that has not yet been bled to within an inch of its’ life.

The American Indians are in their sights once again. Over the last decade or so many tribes have gone from rags to riches. They’ve done it the old fashioned American way: capitalism. Some of this may be due to the leadership of people like American Indian Movement leader Russell Means, although I cannot state that as proven fact.

Russell’s imposing warrior’s frame is well known in the Libertarian community: he ran against Ron Paul for the 1988 LP Presidential slot. He lost the nomination but gave a memorable concession speech, spiced with his signature line, “Individual liberty; Individual Responsibility”. His after-the-vote party was also much more fun than Ron’s… almost as much fun as a Kansas Caucus.

Reservations are far from libertarian. They’ve been inundated by socialist activists for many decades. Even so, Marxism has not displaced the traditional culture. As Russell wrote in a paper long ago in his more radical youth, socialism is just another alien European philosophy. It has nothing to say to Indians.

It’s time again for the American Indian’s to string their lawyers and sharpen their lobbyists. The Great White Liars in State Houses across the continent are once again on the march to expropriate Indian wealth.

30 comments to Greed that knows no boundaries

  • Dave J

    The tribes are hardly much more innocent than the states are in this context: they take full advantage of their privileged status as “sovereign nations,” and those lobbyists you mention are permanently ensconced on Capitol Hill to draft federal legislation that would be flagrantly unconstitutional violations of Equal Protection if it dealt with any other group of people. Some free-market capitalism that is.

    Congress could abolish the tribes (some of which have only a handful of members, and dubious historical lineage to say the least) tomorrow, and I think it’s at least worth considering. I wish every state could be New Hampshire, with no sales or income tax, but as long as they’re not, it’s hardly “capitalism” to have one group with special privileges.

  • S. Weasel

    Well, I don’t know that I’d call casino gaming the old fashioned American way of capitalism. In fact, it wouldn’t be so obscenely profitable if gambling weren’t illegal most places in the US.

    It shouldn’t be illegal, of course, but that doesn’t make it a more attractive industry.

  • Mitch H.

    Of course it’s capitalism! Political capitalism, that is – also known as Rent-Seeking for Advanced Students.

  • Dale Amon

    The Indian reservations are extraterritorial. If you are an indian and are on those lands you are not under US laws. You are under tribal laws. Local laws and local life styles created by small soveriegn groups. That’s a very libertarian principle.

    As to Mitch’s remark, I’m sorry but that is just pure sour grapes. It’s like saying how dare your girlfriend escape being raped like mine was? You should glory in the fact that someone has managed to stick it to the State: and made the stick, well, STICK. I can’t see why Mick wants the Indians to help pay for his chains.

    We had a fair number of activists working with tribes the last time I was any where near those circles, which is admittedly over a decade. The more independence the tribes can enforce, the more hopeful it is for us as libertarians.

    As that fine old Libertarian bumber sticker says: “Smash the State”. And the way you do that is to cut it off at the tax base.

  • George Peery

    The Indians on reservations are free riders. What’s so “libertarian” about that?

  • Liz

    Native Americans, possibly?

  • Rob Read

    Well how about this for another stupid tax

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3163141.stm

    Surely removing incentives for possible parents to reproduce would solve the problem! Or even a tax on child places to subsidise the fiscally irresponsible?

  • George Peery

    Native Americans, possibly?

    No, Indians. Indians, Indians, Indians.

    Indians, Indians, Indians, Indians …

  • Dale Amon

    Free riders in what way? If you mean we should get rid of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and fire all of its’ employees, then I’m with you.

    If you want to tax someone else out of jealousy because you are taxed and they are not, then it is a very small minded and very unlibertarian way of looking at the world.

    The libertarian way is not to look for someone else to tax. It’s to find a way to get rid of the taxes you are paying by firing government employees, discontinuing government “services”, getting rid of government regulations and firing all the enforcers and interpreters.

    That is libertarian.

    So which state employees do you want to fire to level the playing field for you? They’re pretty much all useless outside the minimal requirements of defense, courts and police… and some think some or all of that can be made private (in the long run) as well.

  • Sitting Bull

    Anything which undermines the notion of inviolate unitary sovereignty is fine by me… that is why I have always liked the idea of Indian tribes just ignoring the US state as far as possible. After all, their measly little reservations are just a consolation prize for coming second in a series of genocidal wars in the 1800’s so it is not like the American Indians really owe the US state anything. I have always through the Indians who fought for the US Army in World War II, the same institution which exterminated most of them just a few generations earlier, were the most mixed up people in history.

  • The American Indians have been shafted for so long by the US State in the form of the monstrous BIA that it is just the final insult to demand that they pay the people who have been shafting them tax money for the privilage of continuing to be shafted.

  • Red Chief (Ransom Me)

    Dale says, “The libertarian way is not to look for someone else to tax. It’s to find a way to get rid of the taxes you are paying by firing government employees, discontinuing government “services”, getting rid of government regulations and firing all the enforcers and interpreters.”

    Not much difference between libertarianism and anarchy to Dale.

  • Sandy P.

    Average net worth of tribes that have casinos is $400K per member.

    Davis is trying to buy their vote by giving them final say so of building w/in 5 miles of burial grounds.

    Of course, he’s doing anything to save his ass that he wants to give driver’s licenses to illegals. And CA won’t check DLs against voter information when voting because it’s “invasion of privacy.”

  • Liz

    Sorry, I’ve had too much PC-ness today (spent the day at the Civic Centre and the Hospital) . . . I should have read more carefully.

  • Julian Morrison

    “Not much difference between libertarianism and anarchy to Dale.”

    Heh, anarchy is just libertarianism with the curve extrapolated through the zero. If less is better, then none is best.

  • Dale Amon

    “Average net worth of tribes that have casinos is $400K per member.”

    That is simply wonderful! I hadn’t realized they were doing so well. It should be a matter of great joy to anyone to know some of their fellow human beings are doing well.

    No wonder the Statists want to get their grubby little paws on it. It’s got to irk them that someone is doing well and they can’t steal it like they do from the rest of you.

  • I don’t know what tribes Dale is writing about, but here in Arizona many of the tribal governments tend to be glowing examples of nepotism, socialism, criminality and corruption.

    Libertarian, my ass! They get all sorts of goodies from the federal government. They don’t have to pay taxes, but they get to use the facilities funded by those of us who do. They only make money on the casinos because those casinos are illegal elsewhere, and are run by big Las Vegas companies who know how to do it. In one county in Arizona, the Indians have a majority of the votes in county elections, but don’t pay county taxes. Ask the non-reservation residents of that county about taxation without representation.

    Come out here to Arizona and travel a bit to the reservations. If you survive (a serious question if you go to certain reservations), you will realize that there is very little libertarianism going on at all! A local tribe (reservation borders Scottsdale) made a pile of money by selling freeway rights, and then a pile more with their casino. They have the highest gang crime rate in the state.

    Oh, and those libertarian indians almost always prohibit firearms on their reservations, so you can’t defend yourself either!

    Unfortunately, many of the Indian cultures collapsed in the face of first the mistreatment by the BIA and then the conflict of their primitive societies with modern culture.

    Russell Means was a nasty guy involved in some very ugly incidents. I guess from Europe his “imposing warrior’s frame” is enough to make him an object of worship.

    As far as having these little pockets of “sovereignity” – the whole thing sucks. Anyone who has lived in the southwest for long would know that you would never hold up reservations as a libertarian ideal! Quite the opposite!

    Sigh.

  • Dan

    Congress could abolish the tribes

    Um, no. Congress can no more “abolish” the tribes than it can abolish the European Union, the nation of France, the city of Paris, or the nationality of the people who call themselves “French.

    The United States Government signed treaties with the Indian tribes; the reservations are land that, under those treaties, the US Government allowed the Indians to retain. The land is not a gift; neither is their independent status. That land, and that sovereignity, is just the feeble remnant that we didn’t get around to taking from them, under force of arms, during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Taking it away from them now would be the moral and legal equivalent of forcible invasion and subjugation of a neighboring nation.

  • Dale Amon

    Yes, I’ve met Russell Means. I was a voting delegate for his nomination at the 1988 Libertarian Convention in Seattle.

    He’s been a strong libertarian supporter for a long time.

    If the residents in those areas are upset about people on the reservations using services from local taxes, then perhaps they should simply turn the services over to a private company and let everyone (themselves included) just pay for what they use.

    More government of someone else is *never* *ever* a solution to a problem. It’s the Socialist philosophy of Equal Misery and has nothing in common with libertarianism.

  • American Indian tribes that have invested in casinos have done well because they don’t have to pay taxes. Casinos in America proper have to pay onerous taxes. Call it capitalism if you want, but the only reason the Indians are succeeding is because the playing field is tilted heavily in their favor.

  • Dale Amon

    If that puts pressure on the non-Indian casinos and the people who work in them to try to get rid of the onerous taxes, then that is all to the good.

    What you have here is a case of competitve pressure. The state makes an industry uncompetitve by stealing part of it’s income; someone outside of the thief’s control then undercuts their price and in so doing, undermines the ability of the state to tax. It’s pure market forces. To survive you have to lower costs. To lower costs you have to dump the taxation.

    That is *precisely* what we want.

  • D2D

    All taxes are onerous.

  • David Crawford

    And what do these freedom-loving Indian tribes use their casino profits for? Well to lobby the state to use its (the states) power to prevent any competition with Indian casinos.

    I live in Washington state. The tribes spent millions trying to defeat a law that allowed the establishment of PRIVATELY-owned “mini-casinos”.

    Indian-owned casinos have tables games and slot machines. PRIVATELY-owned mini-casinos only have table games. Currently there is a legislative effort to allow the mini-casinos to also have slot machines. And how are the “freedom-loving” Indians using part of their casino profits? Why, to try and prevent the PRIVATELY-owned mini-casinos from getting slots.

    American Indians are probably the most government-loving minority in this country. They will bitch and moan about the BIA until the cows come home but don’t you dare suggesting that it be abolished.

  • David Crawford

    One other point. Name me one privately-owned Indian casino. You can’t because there aren’t any. Every single Indian casino in the U.S. is government-owned. Owned by the tribal government, yes, but still government-owned.

    (And do not try and say the individual tribal member “really” owns them. That would be like saying the individual Soviet citizen “really” owned part of the old GUM deperatment store in Moscow.)

  • u.fester

    I am a resident of Washington State and worked for one of the tribal casinos for almost 4 years before going to work at a mini-casino. my current employer pays 11% of our gross revenue in taxes on top of all other non-gaming taxes while the tribes pay nothing. The newspapers constantly praise the value of casinos for the tribes then claim that private casinos are evil, recessively taxing, family destroying thieves. The tribes own the news media AND the politicians. One successful tribe even pays all members $2k per month. How is this libertarian? Finally, the more profitable the tribe, the more money they are able to get from the federal government due to lobbying efforts. It is absolutely racist and statist to allow this government owned monopoly to continue.

  • Personally I do not think anything the tribes do is ‘libertarian’, but I also do not care. Anything which buggers up the system by distorting the tax burden, thus making things break elsewhere, and thereby encouraging the victims to see the state’s tax-theft for what it is (in this case non-Indian casinos and more importantly the common people who want to work for them)… is progress. The more people who escape the system for whatever reason, the better.

    As for the tribes getting ‘hand outs’ of ‘’Federal’ money, that is exactly what I meant when I said the BIA have been shafting the Indian people by making them dependent on the public teat.

  • Dale Amon

    I never said they were libertarian, only that some libertarians may have influenced them with some capitalist ideas.

    Tribal groups are essentially voluntary associations. If you don’t like the way your reservation is governed, its’ easy to leave. No one can force you to stay; and when you cross the “border” no one puts you through immigration nonsense.

    If that voluntary association is using its’ earned resource lobbying government for special privilege, then you should treat that no differently than say the farmers out there using their Grange groups to lobby to make you pay more for your food, or the steel interests who lobbied Bush to protect them so they could charge you inflated prices for steel; or any of a thousand others whose first thought is not competitiveness but to whine “get the State to protect us!”

    I don’t give a damn how the Indians run their reservation. It’s up to them to work things out their own way.

    It’s up to you to smash the levers of power that allows tribes, steel companies, farmers, and the rest of the long line begging at the Capital and State Houses to force you to subsidize them.

    Dump the BIA! Dump gambling taxes! As the post above said “all taxes are onerous”. Taxation is theft.

  • Red Chief (Ransom Me)

    LOL. About the time I begin to think there may be some value to libertarianism, along comes an absolutist (in effect an anarchist) like Dale, who convinces me to “Thank God the libertarians can’t poll more than about 5%.”

  • Well Red Chief, I would rather find ways to avoid, break or subvert The System that encourage people to vote for who gets to run it. In short, I am glad libertarians can’t poll more than about 5% too.

    Don’t vote, you’ll only encorage them to steal more.

  • Red Chief

    Perry, if its not too much trouble, could you clean up the grammar a bit, so I can figure out what you are trying to say?

    As nearly as I can tell, you don’t want libertarianism, you want anarchy. And in your last comment, I think I was insulted. But I am far from sure as to either.

    Cheers.