On The Reservation — In The Pocket
Micah Sifry, my good pal and blogfather, and a top analyst for Public Campaign, left this comment on my Tuesday blog post:
Marc–
I’m noticing two interesting push-backs happening right now around the Abramoff news. One is from the Republican spin machine, saying that “everybody does it” and “what’s being called bribery is hardly illegal in Washington.” The former is the more dangerous claim (the latter is hilarious), for they are trying to dispel public anger by suggesting that what they’ve been up to for the last few years of one-party domination of DC was business as usual.
At the same time, Dems caught in the backwash of having received Indian tribal money are arguing that they were just serving their constituents. Now, while it’s true that some Dems indeed come from states with large Native populations, taking money from the gaming interests is hardly the same thing as doing right for the poor on those reservations.
You’ve educated me in the past on the extent that Indian gaming money has come to stand out in Democratic party fundraising balances…Now would be a good time to reinforce that point. Is Indian gaming money progressive?
Micah
Thanks for the slow, high-curve ball Micah. The simple answer: a resounding NO. The tens of millions in Indian Gaming money that has been funneled to Democrats serves few if any “progressive” causes.
The Democrats who take that money -- a chunk of which was packaged and pointed toward their way by Casino Jack Abramoff—are as guilty of selling out to narrow special interests as are Republicans on the take from insurance and pharmaceutical companies.Indeed, you could argue that the lobbying/legislative-bang-for-the-buck generated by tribal funds is of a rather spectacular level. A few tens of millions handed out to primarily Democratic officials has created, and protects, a booming and lightly-regulated $20 billion a year industry --an industry that is legally sanctioned, no less, as a genetic monopoly. That's one helluva of a payoff for some campaign contributions, no?
The mushrooming Indian casinos, however, benefit barely 10% of Native Americans while creating veritable new mafias that regularly disenroll tribal members who are disqualified from sharing in the gambling profits. Just in California alone, more than 1000 Indians are currently fighting their ouster.Here in the Golden State, the gambling tribes have become one of the primary sources of Democratic Party funding. As I pointed out in a feature report in 2004 , California tribes have spent a staggering $150 million or more on political campaigns over the last decade.
So how, we might ask, does all that cash get targeted? What are the top legislative priorities of the gambling tribes? In short:--Defense of the Indian monopoly on casino-like gambling
--Resistance to taxes
--Resistance to federal and state regulation or even legal jurisdiction
--Resistance to labor unions
The Big Daddy of California’s political tribes is the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians , a former Abramoff client which has spent multiple millions in contributions. Owners of two casinos, and of literally half the land in the California desert resort of Palm Springs, the Agua Caliente are a fabulously rich tribe; arguably its membership constitute the 350 most politically influential citizens in the state (or they did, until a Republican Governor Schwarzenegger took them on for his own political ends).
Called by its critics, “the Wal-Mart Tribe,” the Agua Caliente have been bitterly fighting a unionization drive while it simultaneously (and unsuccessfully) tried to exempt itself from scrutiny under state campaign finance laws.An allied and neighboring gambling tribe, the Morongos, have –likewise—not hesitated to flex their political muscle. Back in 2001, the tribe forked out $200,000 for a last-minute smear campaign that torpedoed the L.A. Mayoral run of progressive Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa (who was subsequently elected last year in his second try).
Two years later, when Villaraigosa ran for a City Council seat, the Morongos financed yet another smear campaign against him. Why so much animosity against a candidate who – when he sat in the State Assembly a few years earlier—was a recipient of Indian funding? Well, Villaraigosa’s cardinal sin was to have supported (failed) legislation that would have required gambling tribes to allow union organization. Nice folks, eh?
So, let’s repeat this one more time. The Abramoff scandal is primarily a Republican scandal. But rank-and-file Democrats should be under no illusions. The Democrats who have been on the Indian dole – from Harry Reid to Byron Dorgan to Patrick Kennedy and many, many, many others – have been mucking around in the very same special interests gutter dominated by Tom DeLay and friends. There is nothing morally uplifting about being on the tribal pad.
January 4th, 2006 at 4:26 am
Yeah, yeah, I know: THE RED MAN CAN’T GET ANY JUSTICE IN AMERICA. But it irks me that tribes get a quasi-sovereignty based on racial lineage alone. It’s a lineage that’s considerably diluted, even dramatically so in some cases. “[A]n industry that is legally sanctioned, no less, as a genetic monopoly,” still hits the nail on the head, though.
What if the criteria were changed so that tribal membership was made contingent on some measured degree of mastery of the tribal language? And on taking traditional names? Then, anybody could join (and many might leave). If it’s really about cultural survival, why not make culture, not race, the touchstone? Tribes could offer significant tax benefits to corporations that located within their reservations, with the proviso that the children of employees — as well as the current tribe — must undertake to keep the language alive through the education system. It could be the best thing that ever happened to them.
These criteria may sound arbitrary, but what we’ve got is pretty arbitrary: membership based on some fraction of genetic inheritance that a great many Americans who don’t call themselves “native” could claim. Sure, in some cases my proposal might mean reviving a thoroughly “dead” language. But that can be done. There were no native speakers of Hebrew at the beginning of the 20th century. By its end, there were millions. And a great many of these native speakers of Hebrew are about as distantly related to the original tribes (if not more so) than many Americans calling themselves “native” are related to tribes in which they claim membership. Stand a red-headed, blue-eyed ashkenazim next to a black guy whose parents immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia under right-of-return, and you still have to call both of them Jewish, under the Israeli understanding of such matters. Race shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
January 4th, 2006 at 5:31 am
Pardon my ignorance, but what is the history of this pernicious scam ? It’s only a couple of decades – or less – old, as I recall. Was there some federal judicial ruling, a law passed in Congress or is it state by state ?
January 4th, 2006 at 5:53 am
Unless one is willing to attack the sovereinty of the tribes I don’t see how one can erase the genetic legacy. It is what it is. The rest is just business. Are they more corrupt than vegas was or is? Is this just a rerun of that history?
January 4th, 2006 at 6:44 am
Dare I say that I don’t think rank-and-file Democrats who tend to the activist liberal wing are under very many illusions about corruption of their party by big money. But it’s also incumbent on anyone reporting on this to seperate issues into the general – campaign finance reform – and the specific – an unbelievably sleazy GOP slush fund machine. The worst of the Abramoff scandal so far as I can tell has nothing to do with Indian gaming money, but Russian oil and gas interests who funded a fake “Family” lobby that provided a “safe house” for Tom DeLay and his buddies to operate out of. It’s also, I believe, going to be a bigger stretch for Ralph “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know” Reed to rationalize funding his political ventures out of Indian gaming money than the other Reid – the one from, duh, Las Vegas. If the “cons” can start whining about the pitfalls of “moral equivalency” over a Spielberg film, I feel no embarrassment in attempting to apply some respectable journalistic standards to reporting on this issue. I think the Post and some others in the print media have done a pretty good job. The idiot talking heads on television and right-wing blogmeisters have tended to reach for the “bi-partisan scandal” meme.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Totally OT, but dammit…I went to bed believing those miners had been rescued, and rise to find that all, save one, are dead. I was taken in by a false report that circulated for hours – weird and very sad.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:32 am
“It is what it is. The rest is just business.”
How startling … conservative. Considering the source, anyway. I always love it when people say that change is impossible because it would require change.
Thanks for pointing out the Russian connection, reg. Didn’t know about that. Here’s some extensive WaPo coverage
http://tinyurl.com/9mgz2
Offers of luxury cars declined — not because it would be wrong, just because it would mean going to jail. SST return trips taken, however. A supposed family advocacy group with ONE employee in the back room of a townhouse (bought, and mysteriously dubbed “the safe house”) accepting $1 million from Russian oil tycoons. Then paying it out in big chunks to lobbying groups working on behalf of the DeLay agenda, groups who also put DeLay family members on the payroll not as employees, performing useful daily functions, but just for supplying those all-important mailing lists. And nothing in this Rube Goldberg money-shuffling machine is illegal, it appears. Just … a tad unseemly. Just the kind of “no criminality here!” muck that makes voters tune out politics. Thanks, Tom!
January 4th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Question for discussion: Would it be fair to label the whole Indian gaming thing as an essentially liberal-side phenomenon, speaking very generally? Springing as I assume it did from an urge to make things right with the Native population that had beend decimated?
Has it been worth it? I guess that’s another question. They’re quite common here in MN; in cases where an outstate string of bank robberies occur, it’s about 50-50 that what you have is a gambling addict behind them. Walk into any casino, and you’re greeted with hundreds of blank-faced senior citizens and unhappy people of all stripes sitting blankly in front of video screens.
And there doesn’t seem to have been any dramatic change in the economc fortunes of the Native population. It’s almost like we handed them a resource like oil for the Arab world, a source of easy money that doesn’t really prod innovation and etc. And which gets entangled in their victim-based sense of themselves as something they dserve, and even as a way to get back at their victimizers. I’ve actually heard that said. (Blue-skying there; and of course the Native populaiton has some pretty strong basis for the sense of victimization, to say the least. Yet everyone has to evnetually move past that sort of thing if they’re going to really live.)
So – as for the original question – i’m positing it as a classic example of unintended consequences of a liberal program. Although to argue with myself, I don’t really have a strong handle on the benefits so far to the Native world, and that’s also a story that may be yet only beginning.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Were the gaming licenses, in fact, prompted by a liberal desire to make things right with the Native Ameican? Were you Paul, in your liberal incarnation, in any way put at ease by the notion of Indians gaming their way out of past injustices? I’ve driven past Indian casinos many times without ever sensing their unrealized moral grandeur. I don’t doubt that there were a few misguided souls who argued for the Indian gaming licenses on this sort of basis (though probably disingenuously), but surely the real force behind the licenses was a lot more cold-blooded.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:24 am
Washington Post:
http://tinyurl.com/9yoan
“Jack Abramoff represented the most flamboyant and extreme example of a brand of influence trading that flourished after the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives 11 years ago.” ….
“Abramoff was among the lobbyists most closely associated with the K Street Project, which was initiated by his friend Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), now the former House majority leader, once the GOP vaulted to power. It was an aggressive program designed to force corporations and trade associations to hire more GOP-connected lobbyists in what at times became an almost seamless relationship between Capitol Hill lawmakers and some firms that sought to influence them.”
Just keep repeating the mantra .. ” the Democrats do it too, the Democrats do it too …” and don’t damage your brain from spinning so hard.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Good question, Paul. I won’t claim the following is an answer, but it does supply some clues.
http://www.backlash.com/content/race/2004/rodvanmechelen081604.html
“…as both parties drifted to the left, conservative Democrats, like President Ronald Reagan, fled to the Republican party. Reagan carried with him his Constitutional sense of obligation to the tribes, and while some of his policies alienated Indians, on October 17, 1988, he signed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), which is arguably one of the single most important pieces of legislation to Indian country, because it is fueling unprecedented economic growth and development.”
There is a Supreme Court decision that bears on, and paved the way, for IGRA (though there were several other cases that brought the issue to a head).
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=480&invol=202
See Footnote 21. Sounds like Reagan was for Indian gaming. On the other hand, Scalia and O’Connor were among the dissenters (though on what grounds, I don’t know; I haven’t read the dissent they concurred with.) I haven’t found the votes in congress for and againt the IGRA, to see how they might be analysed ideologically.
Reagan’s 1983 Indian Policy statement is invoked in more than one tribal gaming policy document.
http://www.skokomish.org/SkokConstitution&Codes/Codes/STC4-02.htm
“In 1983 President Reagan reaffirmed that commitment in his Indian policy statement, encouraged tribes to reduce their dependence on federal funds by generating more of their own revenues, and pledged to assist tribes in that endeavor.”
“Liberal”? Yes, at least in the older sense of “libertarian”, I suppose. Kinda smells like Made in the GOP to me, though.
January 4th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Speaking from a MN perspective, it is currenty the Democratic party (the DFL) defending Indian gaming rights against all challenges, whcih usually come from the Republican side looking for revenue so they can keep their stupid promise not to raise taxes. (Minnesota Republicans are at this poitn not the best of their breed; they’re captured still by an absurd anti-tax creed that is about to lead to their electoral downfall, I believe.)
But any kind of challenge to gaming and revenue monopolies is usually met by “here we go again, the white man breaking his word to the Indians.”
January 4th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Paul: Some of your assertions aren’t accurate. This is in direct response to those claims and not to the usefulness or wisdom of Indian gambling. It’s not true that there has been no dramatic change in the economic fortunes of Native populations. A couple of the tribes in MN are hauling in huge amounts of money and this money is widely distributed amongst the tribe. We could quibble over the fairness of that distribution, but it’s a fact that widespread poverty has turned into widespread upper-middle-classdom. The real problem, is that a handful of tribes benefit from their gaming monopoly while other tribes, in the far north for example, get almost nothing and have not had their fortunes improved in the slightest.
And there was an interesting study by the Department of Economic Development that I don’t have the time to track down, which examined the effects of the Casino in Mille Lacs and found, among other benefits, that welfare payments had gone down significantly (in addition to an expanded tax base and so on).
As for this being a “classic…liberal” program, I’ve always thought that the beauty of it is that it is entirely voluntary. None of my conservative friend’s precious tax money goes to the tribes for the support of this program. The people that are helping the few tribes that do benefit, walk in there under their own power, and voluntarily drop their own money into those machines. That ought to be a conservative’s dream program.
January 4th, 2006 at 10:44 am
Okay.
Where I work, in south Minneapolis, the prevalence of hopeless Native Americans seems undiminished. That’s just perception.
I’d be interested in exactly how widespread the upper-middle-classdom is. But yes, it may well be more than I was saying. And upon reflection, of course it woud be the case that for those couple of tribes really cashign in, there woul dbe that effect. Is it spreading further via non-gambling entrepreneurialism? I’d be interested in that, too. My guess is it probably is in some cases.
January 4th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Marc: A few tens of millions handed out to primarily Democratic officials has created, and protects, a booming and lightly-regulated $20 billion a year industry
Is the reference here just to California? If not, could you clarify ‘handed out to primarily Democratic officials’?
January 4th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Some necessary context on Abramoff…
http://tinyurl.com/d49va
January 4th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
A note on Indian casinos and political contributions…I haven’t done the research, but I would bet from what I’ve read here and elsewhere that wherever they thrive you’ll find that their closest ties are to the dominant political establishment. I would bet that in Mississippi Haley Barbour’s boys are beneficiary, in California it’s the Dems because they can be counted on to control the legislature, in the Dakotas it’s Dorgan or whoever, and so on.
My shock at this state of affairs would have to be couched in the same terms as Claude Rains’ concerns about vice within the environs of Casablanca…
Also, I’d like to hear – off-topic though it may be from the political context – what Marc’s views are on legalized gambling, since he enjoys it. I have no problem with people who enjoy gambling money they can afford for recreational purposes (I do it on a very small scale myself at a monthly poker game that would drive a guy with Marc’s skills nuts or have him rolling on the floor, but it’s a neighborhood thing that everyone enjoys enormously), but I don’t like the commercialized gambling culture and get nervous when I see gambling interests making inroads outside of a handful of enclaves. Myself, I’d be no more inclined to allow Indian gambling under some notion of psuedo-sovereignty than I’d allow them a dope concession. (If the can’t dispense peyote and pot legally on their lands (neither of which I see as significant societal evils I want to go out of my way to quash) why the hell can they do an end run around restrictions on gambling ? It’s total hyocrisy, and I believe it’s a smokescreen for something or other, although I’m not sure what it is. Any thoughts on this stuff, Marc ???
January 4th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Reg.. In Mississippi, gambling money is bi-partisan. Democrats, along with Haley’s boys, are recipients and advocates.
In general, we can see two historic phases in Tribal funds. The first wash favored Democrats as they were the vehicle to carry out the initial legalization and expansion under the bogus slogan of “tribal sovereignty and rightss.” In other words, the push to establish the casinos was given a civil rights cover.
Now we’re into the second historic phase. With the casinos well established and highly profitable, the Indian lobbying strategy is focused on shutting others out, evading taxation, and evading regulation. Abramoff may have played the Tribes like a fiddle, but the tribal leadership was quite conscious in going in with Republicans — the natural allies of all wealthy elites (Indians included). Remember that the head of the national gambling lobby is former RNC Chair and Bush 41 Buddy Frank Fahrenkopf.
In California, the Democrats remain the favortite repository of funding because they were bought off, run the state, and are totally reliable tribe lackeys.
Anyway, both parties love the Indian casinos as they are bottomless fonts of funding.
My personal view: I like to gamble. I oppose its widespread legalization. Im in favor of confining it to “destination resorts” like Vegas — a place you have to travel to and can only stay a few days.
The idea of giving casinos to Indians is going eventually mean their cultural extinction. It will enrich a small percentage only — and meantime will corrupt those who do “benefit.” As collateral damage, taking care of Indians is now forvever removed from the national agenda; most Americans assume the’yre now fixed for life with dice and cards.
January 4th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Originally the exception allowing ‘gaming’ was soveriegnty of the federally controlled reservations preventing State anti-gaming laws from being enforced.
Officially recognized by Congress in 1986 I think.
So when did that evolve into ‘Red skin=Casino’ preferencial ‘rights’?
Here in Oregon a number of ‘tribes’ have been created and given permission to setup Casinos without being on reservations.
I’m not for… or against… gambling.
But I’m not very comfortable with a race-based preference.
January 4th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Speaking of Indian money in California politics… Lt. Gov Busta-MEChA:
He was ordered to give back $3.8 million to the Indian tribes… the donation limit is $21,200… I guess they were planning to get a pass on the MEChA plan to toss all the non-latinos from CaliAztlan? Or are they just ‘gambling’ on better treatment by the Bronze-supremacists.
The Busta-Dodge? Funneling new money through old accounts… and this is presented as some sort of ‘excuse’ proving bias by the press and the overseers… I mean really… would this excuse work for you? Picture it… Sorry judge, I didn’t think I had to pay taxes on it because I put the money in an ‘old’ account?
Just in case you think the ‘Latino Caucus’ play fair, look to the muzzling of Daniel Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee. The ‘Latino Caucus’ ( think MEChA-lite ) didn’t like his criticism of Bronze-supremacist BustaMEChA so they complained and the Latino owner of the ‘Bee’ put him under editorial review… Mrs SaranDumb! Calling Mrs SaranDumb! Supression of free-speech alert! Oh? Sorry… it’s a nationally renown conservative voice… the only one on this paper… and he’s actually being censored… unlike you crybaby Hollywood-elites who call press conferences to announce how suppressed you are…
so never mind.
January 4th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Michael, your choice of Jews as an example for your theory might not have been the best choice. The genetic studies that have been done on Jews indicate that most Jews around the world are indeed genetically related. Ashkenazim and Sephardim are closer to each other genetically than they are to Europeans and Arabs. The so-called Kohanim gene has been found in Jewish males from over 100 different geographical communities, and has even been found in the priestly clan of one south African tribe that claims Jewish descent.
“There were no native speakers of Hebrew at the beginning of the 20th century.”
That’s not entirely true. Hebrew was not a dead language – it was just not used conversationally. It was still taught to Jewish children and used in both the Jewish liturgy (which is almost entirely Hebrew) and religious Jewish writings. Though some great works originated in Arabic or Yiddish, the vast majority of major Jewish works over the centuries, including in the 19th, were written in Hebrew. Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who is generally credited with reviving Hebrew as a spoken language essentially based it on the Hebrew of the Mishna. FWIW, Ben Yehuda’s own children and those of others in the Zionist movement were speaking Hebrew natively before 1900. In any case, the writings of R. Moshe Luzzatto in the early 1700s read very much like modern Hebrew. Hebrew is a special case.
“Stand a red-headed, blue-eyed ashkenazim next to a black guy whose parents immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia under right-of-return, and you still have to call both of them Jewish, under the Israeli understanding of such matters. Race shouldn’t have anything to do with it.”
Geez, I wish you goyim would learn about Hebrew plurals. That would more properly be a red-headed blue eyed Ashkenazi. Speaking as a red-headed hazel/grey eyed Ashkenazi, though, your choice of red hair was unlucky since Jews actually have about the highest percentage of redheads of any ethnic group, perhaps even higher than the Irish. Besides genuine redheads, many Jewish men have red in their beards, hence the names Roth and Rothbart. The Talmud says that King David was a redhead.
Your point about culture, though, is important. Unquestionably there have been many converts to Judaism with obvious diversity in the Jewish genome. Until the most recent modern era, converting to Judaism meant accepting that culture and embracing its beliefs and values.
January 4th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Marc your point about removing Indian needs from the national agenda is a good one I hadn’t considered. And you are right, the perception is now that the economies of the reservations are a non-issue while this is far from true for most of the tirbes I know of in MN and SD. Rosebud is as bad as it ever was.
And, on the tribes leading the anti-gaming forces, the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association has a link titled “Join the Fight Against Gambling Expansion” right ont he front page. Not exactly subtle.
January 4th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Gaming on Indian reservations has yet to significantly lower the high levels of poverty endemic to Indian people nationwide. In fact, poverty among Indians has actually risen during the past decade of the gaming boom, and now more than half of all reservations Indians live below the poverty level-more than four times the national average.
In 1988, there were approximately 70 Indian gaming facilities nationwide. The majority of federally recognized tribes – 330 out of 558 – own casinos. The average per capita income for Indians was $12,893 according to the 2000 census, well below the national average of $21,587.
While Indian gambling proponents acknowledge that some tribes have become wealthy, they counter that most tribes need the money for basic infrastructure. Of the 300 tribes that operate gaming operations, they argue, it is only a handful that has struck it rich.
Gross revenues from tribal casinos jumped from $212 million in 1988 to approximately $6.7 billion in 1997. Today the industry generates about $14.5 billion in annual revenues. And commercial casinos make about 27 billion dollars a year.
THERE IS A HELL’UV LOT OF GAMBLING GOING ON, SOME ARE WINNING BUT MOST NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS ARE LOSERS!
More than 60 percent of all recognized tribes operate casinos; but these tribes seem more like private gaming clubs. The statistics seem to indicate that 40 percent of Indians are living in poverty. It would seem that instead of feeding the political machine, revenues from gambling should aid the Indians who are living in poverty.
Political corruption is unavoidable, if it is an accepted part of our democracy that lobbyists can stuff millions of dollars into a politician’s hand. Let’s not be totally naïve—they are not greasing congressmen and senators’ palms just because they LIKE those guys—they have to fork over some favors.
January 4th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Casino Jack Abramoff a conservative Jew, is in deep Aqua Caliente. For those who are not aware; three tribes gave him 2 million dollars as a donation to an athletic charity which was created by Abramoff. However, this pay-off ended-up funding an anti-Palestinian group in Israel.
It is reported that $140,000 was used for camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night vision binoculars and other “security†equipment.
Abramoff told the tribes that the donations would impress House Majority Leader Tom Delay.
Mazel tov! Is there anything that we won’t do to protect our interests in the Middle East?
January 4th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
ronnie: “Ashkenazim and Sephardim are closer to each other genetically than they are to Europeans and Arabs.”
Sephardim and Mizrahim are probably a little closer genetically to Arabs, then they are to Ashkenazim. Which isn’t to say that they are different people entirely from the Ashkenazim. But merely that there are reasons why Sephardim and Mizrahim are derided as “Kushis”, herded into the worst living quarters in Israel, and why there has been such .. umm … “concern” over the election of Amir Peretz in certain quarters.
ronnie: “Speaking as a red-headed hazel/grey eyed Ashkenazi, though, your choice of red hair was unlucky since Jews actually have about the highest percentage of redheads of any ethnic group, perhaps even higher than the Irish. Besides genuine redheads, many Jewish men have red in their beards, hence the names Roth and Rothbart. The Talmud says that King David was a redhead.”
Yeah, very much true. Even in Iran, among the Kalimi (Iranian Jews) red hair is not that uncommon.
January 4th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Great notes about the intial impetus for gambling from the Dems, followed by success, followed by the most successful elite going for Rep protection.
Corruption is a cursed part of most democracy — more so with a Republic (those represtatives of either party), and more so with size. Dems want the BIG size of gov’t; when anti-gov’t Reps get control, they use it to protect the elites.
But Marc, “As collateral damage, taking care of Indians is now forvever removed from the national agenda; most Americans assume the’yre now fixed for life with dice and cards.” puhhhleeezzzeee.
Americans are supposed to be taking care of themselves.
The failure of the Dems to take care of the blacks in the ghettos should be a lesson — or do Dems consider it a success? Taking care of blacs is always on the agenda, ’cause they are too (???), and are unable to take care of themselves. W-I-T-E folk have to do it. The Dems have some formula: blame those rich elites, but never push to change behavior — get the poor black vote, but never help them get real jobs.
Dems have been getting solid black support for 40 years now; and blacks who are Reps are called Uncle Toms and/or race traitors.
I don’t like Indian gambling so much, but what the Dems have done for blacks the last 40 years should cause anybody to be distrustful of their ability to support working poor moving up.
January 4th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Oh pleeeeze….
January 4th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Timely related story snipped from Kevin Drum’s latest at Washington Monthly:
…after George Bush took office in 2001 the Mine Safety and Health Administration was stocked with coal mining executives who were distinctly less interested in mine safety than they should have been. Clara Bingham told the story in “Under Mined,” in the January 2005 issue of the Washington Monthly:
Coal executives, threatened by Vice President Al Gore’s green background and his pledge to increase taxes on fossil fuels, thought they could get a better deal with the Republicans — when they raised a record $3.8 million dollars for the 2000 federal election, 88 percent went to the GOP. At the annual meeting of the West Virginia Coal Association a few months after Bush’s inauguration, the group’s director told 150 industry executives, “You did everything you could to elect a Republican president. [Now] you are already seeing in his actions the payback.â€
….Bush also demonstrated his friendship to industry leaders when he awarded the top job at MSHA to an executive with Utah’s Energy West Mining Company, David Lauriski, whose top two deputies would also be recruited from mining companies. The woman who would become their boss, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, is the wife of Kentucky’s Republican senator Mitch McConnell, a long time political ally of coal companies.
Bingham’s story is primarily about Jack Spadaro, who was hounded out of his job as superintendent of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy after he became a whistleblower on an investigation into a coal waste leak in Kentucky.
( link to the whole story is on kevin’s blog)
January 4th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Abramoff Pleads Guilty
Now that lobbyist Jack Abramoff has cut a deal with prosecutors, the pundits will be scribbling furiously trying to tell us what it all means. There will be tons of political dirt thrown and fingers pointing in all directions.
The Dallas …
January 4th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Mainstream news very rarely mentions Peretz but he is someone that deserves a closer look.
Amir Peretz as leader of the Jewish labor organization Histadrut was uncompromising leader, often starting general strikes. He changed this course after a few years, becoming more willing to strike deals.
As politician he has been concerned about promoting socialist ideas, yet with a market economy. Among his main concerns has been politics to eradicate child poverty in Israel. He has also been in clear opposition to the coalition between the Labor Party and Likud.
Peretz is noted for being willing to try achieving peace –he is a member of the Peace Now movement. He has remarked that the conflict with the Palestinians has caused a strange division in Israeli politics, where the classes with lower income has supported right-wing parties for nationalist causes, while the Labor Party has become the party of the classes with higher income.
Peretz is by many perceived as a possible correction to this He himself is from the Labor Party and a working-class background. He is also non-Ashkenazi, unlike all prime ministers in Israeli history.
He is married to Ahlama, with 4 children. He was born in Boujad, Morocco as the son of the local head of the Jewish community. He does not have red hair; but he appears to be a refreshing change to the current status quo.
Reg,
I agree mine safety is a disaster. At the beginning of the Bush administration it was decided that the country needed more energy — and less regulation of energy companies.
An example of this is, was an investigation that was cut short into Massey Energy, a generous contributor to the Republican Party. In October of 2000, 300 million gallons of coal slurry – thick pudding-like waste from mining operations – flooded land, polluted rivers and destroyed property in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. The slurry contained hazardous chemicals, including arsenic and mercury.
It polluted 100 miles of stream, killed everything in the streams, all the way to the Ohio River. The slurry had been contained in an enormous reservoir, called an impoundment, which is owned by the Massey Energy Company. It gets back to what I said about pay-offs—greased palms has its charms!
January 4th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Tribal sovereignty is a fact and predates the U.S. government. Tribal governments are on an equal footing with states and territories (Puerto Rico, etc.) No Indian gaming is allowed unless it already exists in some legal form in the surrounding state. Indian people just want to be left alone to live their cultures and organize their governments as they see fit. Indians have always gambled and don’t necessarily have the same bible-based taboo mechanism you folks have. If you don’t like it, stay away … or just come and enjoy dinner at our casinos.
California and Connecticut are very different from real Indian Country. White people and Malaysian financiers have created those “reservations” from desperate tribal remnants and control them. Lobbyists buy the politicians to make this possible, from both parties.
Remember, these politicians can’t be bought with
GAMBLING money – that’s against the law. Tribal councils have to scrape the cash together from normal tribal govt. owned businesses; mineral rights, timber, pencil manufacturing, whatever. Maybe folks should be looking at whether all this bribe money came from.
Tribal councils will fight to protect the culture any way they can. That means buying what they hope is the best American advice (lawyers) they can. What are told to do? Play the game various American interests play – hire connected lobbyists.
Some folks say we’re trying to avoid taxation. Are states taxed by the feds? Is DC taxed by the surrounding states? Is Nevada taxed by California? America signed treaties with us when we were strong and you were a growing power. Now that you have us boxed in, you see us as a resource to be tapped.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
” former RNC Chair and Bush 41 Buddy Frank Fahrenkopf.”
Jesus, I really don’t know anything about this. Good info marc and correct about the cultural dilution. Damn shame that seems to be the only thing they can do to make a living on the res.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
“Tribal sovereignty is a fact and predates the U.S. government.”
You bet it is and does. I just thought of the cultural betting games as tradition. This is different.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Tom on the Rez:
That’s all a nice idea. But you can’t have it both ways. If tribes are going to insist on sovereignty and therefore exemption from U.S. taxes and regulation then they have no right intervening financially into U.S. elections.
The unbridled hubris of the Agua Caliente Tribe led them into a position where they gave more money than any other tribe to political candidates, but then went to court arguing that sovereignty excluded them from U.S. and Calif. campaign finance laws.
That doesn’t pass the giggle test.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
I just realized why the name “Agua Caliente” was making me chuckle.
Anyone remember that scene in “A Few Dollars More” where the banditos tell Eastwood to go into a certain lawless town by himself — to see how he’d handle himself.
Anyone remember the name of the town?
January 4th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Marc:
Sorry I wasn’t clear. “Tribes” (A term which probably doesn’t accurately describe any entity in California) pay the same US taxes and follow the same federal regulations as everone else. We’re not exempt in any way. (I assumed you were aware of the that; my mistake.) I meant states that allow gambling and surround reservations, that then demand a portion of the revenue when a reservation does the same thing.
Reservations are small places, but states were carved off of us when we were big. We should be equal before the law. As far as the giggle test, folks in California must out of breath and turning blue by now.
Thanks for letting me vent.
January 4th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
SECRET WORLD OF 9.11
June 21, 2005 -Venice, FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker
The MadCowMorningNews has learned exclusive new details about the gangland-style hit in Florida of Gus Boulis, whose murder figures prominently in lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s rise to power.
The ‘secret world’ of Jack Abramoff being probed by investigators today has definite connections and unmistakable links to the one inhabited during their final year in the U.S by Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers.
So as the scandal embroiling House Major Domo Tom Delay and Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff grows hotter, there may be new revelations about the 9.11 attack.
One of the most amazing thing about this most amazing scandal—hundreds of millions in slush funds beats Oval Office blowjobs by a mile—is that some of the same names in the Abramoff scandal also surface in connection with Mohamed Atta’s.
Less than a week before the 9.11 attack, for example, Atta and several other hijackers made a still-unexplained visit onboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats.
What were they doing there? No one knows.
Wrestling with alligators
There remains a strong suspicion that Atta’s terrorist cadre—supposedly unknown and friendless and burrowing into the woodwork—was able to call on the assistance, when necessary, of a friendly global network.
Could it be that this network is the same one being probed so gingerly today by investigators looking into Jack Abramoff?
What could a scandal involving Indian casinos and gambling boat “cruises to nowhere†& pay-for-play government officials have to do with the story of 19 hijackers planning a mass murder in supposed isolation in Florida?
Let’s take a look.
(continued below)
A soupcon of secret history
While Abramoff’s Indian gaming troubles may be getting the most publicity, his other major ‘area of concern’ is where the real scandal resides. Involvement with Mob-run casino boats may turn out to be a faux pas, even for Republicans.
The casino boat ‘industry’ can be traced back to a few seemingly inconsequential sentences buried in a 1992 federal law called ”An Act to provide for the designation of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.”
(The “Flower Garden Banks†are the northernmost coral reefs in the United States, located off Texas and Louisiana.)
The obscure bill offered the perfect place to slip in a few sentences, which, deciphered, added ships of U.S. registry to vessels already covered under the Johnson Act of 1951, which regulated the transportation of gambling devices, and allowed ships of foreign registry, which often offered gambling, to dock at U.S. ports as long as no one used or repaired gambling equipment while in U.S. territorial waters.
The amendment was a Trojan horse which extended this privilege to U.S. ships…
And the result was a burgeoning new industry in Florida, and the state was soon encircled by almost thirty casino boats swarming the peninsula’s ports like the bloodthirsty pirates of yore. The booty these pirates were plundering was the mad money of bored retirees.
They were called “cruises to nowhere.†And in short order the boats were generating hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues. Hundreds of million of dollars of unregulated revenue…
While not getting ahead of ourselves, we still note that this was more than enough money to help tip the balance in the last two Presidential elections. At a minimum, for the casino operators it provided instant access to anything and anybody worth being accessed.
Thanks to the Johnson Act, we’re protecting our coral reefs. But we may have lost our democracy.
Vegas without rules
What the Abramoff scandal is about at the core can be simply stated as: Vegas without rules. And what the politicians are arguing over is the biggest slush fund in the history of the world. Democrats don’t want to eliminate it. They just want in on the action.
Who owns Florida’s gambling boats? No one is certain. There is virtually no state or federal oversight. No one licenses the operators. No one ensures that the games aren’t rigged. No one ensures that the boats aren’t used to launder money. No one investigates whether organized crime is involved.
And while ex-felons can’t vote in Florida—as many became aware during the memorable presidential election in 2000—this disadvantage is more than offset, for some, by the fact that an ex-felon can run a gambling boat in the state with no fear at all of flunking the background check.
The reason? There is none.
This situation clearly suits some people just fine…. While Governor Jeb Bush may be minutely concerned with what happened to Terry Schiavo fifteen years ago, on this issue of real interest—massive corruption—he phones in his regrets.
Just why might that be?
Florida’s cruises-to-nowhere represent “the largest unregulated gambling industry in the United States,” said Bill Thompson, a professor of gambling at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and nationally recognized expert on the industry, in an interview in the Miami Herald.
They gross at least $170 million a year. And that’s just the number they report voluntarily. No one knows the true ‘take.’ Everyone assumes there’s a ‘skim.’
The Miami Herald cited the example of Joseph Polidore, who listed himself as the sole owner of Boca Casinos in Pompano Beach but said he received money for his investment from a “personal friend.” Polidore admitted he had silent partners, but insisted they were “nobody illegal.â€
What would happen if an applicant gave such vague information to the Nevada Gaming Control Board? The lack of regulation, officials elsewhere say, should concern Florida authorities.
“A casino is a cash business. You could have money laundering and skimming,” Keith Copher, chief of enforcement for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, told the Miami Herald. “When you obtain money illegally through drug sales and other methods. You need to find a way to launder it, to make it look like a legal source. Regulation is needed to prevent this.”
While “Florida authorities†piously oppose gambling, their inaction speaks for itself, and may even have been exploited by the 9.11 hijackers.
Betting Red All the Way
“There is a weird report just a day or two after 9/11 that someone reported to the FBI that three or four of the hijackers were seen gambling on a SunCruz boat,†wrote a source in Miami. “The FBI interviewed everyone who might have seen them, that very day by all reports.â€
Sure enough. We found an Associated Press story on Sept 26, 2001 headlined “SunCruz Casinos turns over documents in terrorist probe.â€
“SunCruz Casinos has turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as customers.… Names on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise matched those of some of the hijackers… Two or three men linked to the Sept. 11 hijackings may have been customers on a ship that sailed from Madeira Beach on Florida’s gulf coast.â€
Less than a week before the 9.11 attack, Atta and several other hijackers were aboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats. What no one seems able to answer is this:
What possible thrill could gambling offer men getting ready to die in less than a week? To this date, their Sept 5 visit to a gambling vessel overrun with retirees remains unexplained.
The gambling motif in the terrorist’s timeline doesn’t end there. The hijackers had no apparent reason to visit Las Vegas… so why did they?
On June 28 at Boston’s Logan Airport, Mohamed Atta boarded a United Airlines flight and flew first class nonstop to San Francisco. He bypassed the bohemian North Beach district, and didn’t take the cruise to Alcatraz…
Atta headed for Vegas.
On Aug. 10, Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi used first-class tickets for a United flight from Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles International Airport, then on to Las Vegas. The story of the terrorists Las Vegas connection may never be known, admitted the Las Vegas FBI.
Murder will out
‘Islamic fundamentalist’ Atta may have felt right at home in the world of fast cash and unlicensed gambling boat ‘cruises to nowhere’ of Republican lobbyist (and observant Jew) Jack Abramoff. He would almost certainly have been comfortable with the “gangland-style hit straight out of ‘Goodfellas†that cemented Abramoff’s prominent position in that industry.
At the time of the Sept 11 attack one of Abramoff’s chief claims to fame was as the proud owner of the SunCruz line: a dozen unlicensed gambling boats plying the waters off the Florida coast in a fashion which in any other state would have been considered criminal.
How did Jack Abramoff get lucky enough to be the guy passing out all that long green? Where did Jack Abramoff get his ‘juice?’
Short answer: Not everyone is savvy to opportunities presented by riders in obscure legislation. Not so the connected, the covert, the—dare we say “blessed?â€
“Elite deviance†is a sociological term for a condition in a society in which the elite in the society come to believe that the rules no longer apply to them.
Casino boats turned out to be a elite deviant’s dream.
One time-honored way to get rich is to marry money. Another is to kill someone that has it… In Abramoff’s case, it appears that Gus Boulis, the owner of the lion’s share of the casino boats in Florida, had to die first.
Three men formed an ownership group that apparently made Boulis the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse. They bought SunCruz from him, even though it wasn’t for sale.
When Greek tycoon Gus Boulis was gunned down in his BMW on February 6, 2001 Fort Lauderdale police investigators immediately began scrutinizing SunCruz Casinos. Suspicion focused on the recent sale of the fleet. Boulis and one of the three men had been carrying on a very public feud.
“We certainly aren’t lacking in suspects,†said a homicide detective drolly.
Less than two months later, Sun Cruz announced plans to move a 150-foot, $10-million floating casino to the Northern Marianas.
Almost every article we’d read cites Abramoff & Delay’s interest in the Marianas being sweat-shop related. Meaning they’re in favor of them. Their primary focus wasn’t sweatshops. It was gambling.
A Bebe Rebozo Memorial Hit
“Read about SunCruz and it sounds like a South Florida version of “The Sopranos,†reported the South Florida Business Journal. “ Feds go after owner Gus Boulis. Former Miami Subs kingpin forced to sell. New SunCruz chairman says Boulis threatened him. Boulis whacked.â€
As if to confirm the account, other newspaper reports mentioned a climate of fear after the Boulis murder.
“The shooting death… cast a pall of fear over the people who knew him, with some of his closest associates admitting concern at being connected with a man targeted by hit men,†the local Sun-Sentinel reported the day after the hit.
“There are a lot of people who aren’t talking for reasons of personal safety,” said Fort Lauderdale Police Detective Mike Reed.
Another associate declined to discuss anything about Boulis with the paper…
“I’ve got my family to worry about,” he said, on condition of anonymity.
Even a cursory look at the executive management of the cruise-to-nowhere company that Boulis founded turns up violent thugs and organized crime figures. But that’s pretty typical of South Florida…What is unusual are that in with Sun Cruz’s mobbed-up crew are prominent Republican Party members with long-standing, deep ties to the religious right.
Two SunCruz executives, Jack Abramoff and Ben Waldman, are walking examples of the strange alliance between the family-values party and the gambling industry. Both men have strong ties to Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, which is adamantly opposed to gambling; Waldman was Robertson top aide in the televangelist’s run for the presidency.
Abramoff, who perhaps wisely only took the title of vice president (less heat) has been connected to the Christian right since a student at Brandeis University, where as head of the College Republicans he enlisted Top Christian Ralph Reed as his top deputy. The two have remained close friends ever since.
A man named Adam Kidan became Sun Cruz’s new chairman. Kidan’s mother had been murdered in a gangland-style hit in New York. Madonna’s one-time boyfriend and South Beach restaurateur Chris Paciello, was eventually convicted in the case.
Today he is in Federal Witness Protection, and word is there are several movies about him in development.
Just another American success story.
The Seminal Seminoles
The Seminole Tribe of Florida led the way in parlaying mom-and-pop bingo parlors into today’s $19 billion a year Indian casino industry. Along with legendary Chief James Billie (Wrestles with Alligators) Rob Tiller was a seminal figure in this growth.
Tiller is also a South Florida aviation insider and former business partner of terror flight school owner and secretive financier Wally Hilliard. He even met Atta and Marwan one day after a meeting with Hilliard, he says, with whom he was working on an airline start-up called Havana Air.
Small world.
A week before Gus Boulis was murdered, Tiller was called to take a meeting with him. Tiller says Boulis was scared. Boulis hadn’t wanted to sell.
Now he was worried he’d be whacked.
“He called me to a meeting at the Ocean Reef Club. Very snooty. You cant even land there without permission. I flew my airplane down to meet him,†Tiller recalled.
“He said, ‘I want out. People think I make a lot more money than I really do. I don’t need the headache anymore. I want to sell my casino boats to the Seminoles.’â€
What was Tiller’s response? “I said, ‘Gus you’re sure rocking a lot of people’s boats here.’â€
â€A couple days later, I hear he’s been blown apart dead. See, Gus wanted to muscle his way into the casino business in a real bad way. His Miami subs were everywhere. He was using them to launder money, big-time, for somebody.â€
Who might that be? Even asking the question brings a shiver.
He wrote a check?
At the time Boulis was murdered, suspicion focused on company chairman Adam Kidan, also an active Republican and campaign contributor. He had been in Israel at the time of the murder. His alibi held.
But then news surfaced that just before Boulis’ death Kidan had written at least $30,000 in checks to a reputed Mob enforcer named Anthony Moscatiello, a one-time associate of crime boss John Gotti.
Moscatiello is apparently what is known in criminal parlance as a “torpedo.†(We’re not quite sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.)
This is a paper trail some U.S. Attorney’s (in Manhattan, perhaps) would describe as “to die for.” But things work differently in South Florida. To date no one has been charged in the murder of Gus Boulis.
The official back-story on Boulis is he left his native Greece as a teenager and came to North America, bought a Toronto sandwich shop and turned it into a successful company with franchises all across Canada.
After his Canadian success, he moved to Florida in the early 1980’s (to retire to the Keys, he said). But Florida’s money-making opportunities overrode his desire for shuffleboard, and soon he was building another successful fast-food chain, Miami Subs, and then building and deploying the crown jewels in his empire, his SunCruz Casino fleet.
What explained Boulis’ success in a restaurant business where failure is far more common? The question strikes some as naive.
“Miami subs was the first take out place ever to serve Dom Perignon through the takeout window,†snickered Tiller. “Word was he had made his money in Canada in the sub business. But I learned later it was nothing but a Laundromat.â€
We were once more back in the precincts of money laundering, which seems more and more like one of Florida’s major industries. We pictured dollar bills drying in the sun all over the state, after being washed through the Everglades.
No doubt this is all just freak coincidence. Still, even with our suspicious minds, when we learned who Tiller thought was responsible for Boulis’ death, we were shocked.
Tiller referred us to the manner of the Boulis hit…
Setting an example
A man in a BMW was driving down a quiet side street after an evening meeting at his Fort Lauderdale office when a car slowed to a stop in front of him. A second car boxed the BMW in from behind, then a dark Mustang appeared from the opposite direction. The Mustang’s driver pulled alongside and pumped three hollow-point bullets into the BMW driver’s chest.
“Boulis was murdered in the exact same way as Don Aronow, Bush’s other partner,†he stated.
Bush’s other partner? The question hung in the air.
“Something is really going down bad here,†Tiller stated. “Don Aronow. Gus. Jim Shore…All tied in to Bush.â€
When NBC’s Dateline did a story recently about sources of terrorist funding right here in the U.S., they made bold to announce “the emerging threat of a new alliance between al Qaeda and common criminals.â€
But it was hardly time to stop the presses.
Over three years ago—within a month of the 9.11 attack—British Prime Minister Tony Blair had presented the case against Bin Laden. He sketched out the Cliff Notes version of the evidence. It wasn’t much, but it was the only explanation we ever received.
“Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization with ties to a global network,†Blair said.
In truth, the idea that Mohamed Atta and his henchmen needed help from an outside organization while they were in the U.S. was easy to understand… Logistical support is difficult to arrange from caves.
Still, the FBI stepped in and quickly put a kibosh on that kind of talk… “Government sources now say that the investigation so far suggests the 19 had ‘no major help’ in the United States,” said a story in the Washington Post which came out soon after Blair’s alarming faux pas.
“The 19 hijackers who carried out the worst act of terror ever to occur on U.S. soil worked with little outside help as a single, integrated group,†the Post reported.
PBS’s Frontline documentary on 9.11 supported this ‘lone cadre theory.’ Correspondent Hedrick Smith, to his everlasting discredit, opened the show with this lie: “19 hijackers slipped through Europe and America unnoticed.â€
Like lone gunmen, lone cadres are easier to explain.
Even in the seemingly-unrelated Heaven’s Gate mass suicide in the posh enclave of Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, which we will learn is not so far afield from 9.11 as might appear, the cultists were quickly dubbed a lone cadre.
“We have absolutely nothing… that would indicate that this is anything but a sole group of 40 people,†stated the chief investigator on the case.
Although a cache of weapons was found in a storage locker of the (supposedly) nonviolent cult, and the Heaven’s Gate leader left a videotape conspicuously praising the Order of the Solar Temple, whose members had been found dead in a mass suicide just days earlier…
Well, you know the story by now. Almost everyone does. In the gap between what happens every day and what gets reported lies the secret history…
“There’s a secret world all around us,†a legendary CIA agent informs a young recruit in “Overworld,†L.J.. Kolb’s eye-opening account of growing up as the son of an American spy. “You just don’t see it unless you know where to look.â€
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
SECRET WORLD OF 9.11
June 21, 2005 -Venice, FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker
The MadCowMorningNews has learned exclusive new details about the gangland-style hit in Florida of Gus Boulis, whose murder figures prominently in lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s rise to power.
The ‘secret world’ of Jack Abramoff being probed by investigators today has definite connections and unmistakable links to the one inhabited during their final year in the U.S by Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers.
So as the scandal embroiling House Major Domo Tom Delay and Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff grows hotter, there may be new revelations about the 9.11 attack.
One of the most amazing thing about this most amazing scandal—hundreds of millions in slush funds beats Oval Office blowjobs by a mile—is that some of the same names in the Abramoff scandal also surface in connection with Mohamed Atta’s.
Less than a week before the 9.11 attack, for example, Atta and several other hijackers made a still-unexplained visit onboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats.
What were they doing there? No one knows.
Wrestling with alligators
There remains a strong suspicion that Atta’s terrorist cadre—supposedly unknown and friendless and burrowing into the woodwork—was able to call on the assistance, when necessary, of a friendly global network.
Could it be that this network is the same one being probed so gingerly today by investigators looking into Jack Abramoff?
What could a scandal involving Indian casinos and gambling boat “cruises to nowhere†& pay-for-play government officials have to do with the story of 19 hijackers planning a mass murder in supposed isolation in Florida?
Let’s take a look.
(continued below)
I just stumbled onto this story about Abramoff–Truth is stranger than fiction!
A soupcon of secret history
While Abramoff’s Indian gaming troubles may be getting the most publicity, his other major ‘area of concern’ is where the real scandal resides. Involvement with Mob-run casino boats may turn out to be a faux pas, even for Republicans.
The casino boat ‘industry’ can be traced back to a few seemingly inconsequential sentences buried in a 1992 federal law called ”An Act to provide for the designation of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.”
(The “Flower Garden Banks†are the northernmost coral reefs in the United States, located off Texas and Louisiana.)
The obscure bill offered the perfect place to slip in a few sentences, which, deciphered, added ships of U.S. registry to vessels already covered under the Johnson Act of 1951, which regulated the transportation of gambling devices, and allowed ships of foreign registry, which often offered gambling, to dock at U.S. ports as long as no one used or repaired gambling equipment while in U.S. territorial waters.
The amendment was a Trojan horse which extended this privilege to U.S. ships…
And the result was a burgeoning new industry in Florida, and the state was soon encircled by almost thirty casino boats swarming the peninsula’s ports like the bloodthirsty pirates of yore. The booty these pirates were plundering was the mad money of bored retirees.
They were called “cruises to nowhere.†And in short order the boats were generating hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues. Hundreds of million of dollars of unregulated revenue…
While not getting ahead of ourselves, we still note that this was more than enough money to help tip the balance in the last two Presidential elections. At a minimum, for the casino operators it provided instant access to anything and anybody worth being accessed.
Thanks to the Johnson Act, we’re protecting our coral reefs. But we may have lost our democracy.
Vegas without rules
What the Abramoff scandal is about at the core can be simply stated as: Vegas without rules. And what the politicians are arguing over is the biggest slush fund in the history of the world. Democrats don’t want to eliminate it. They just want in on the action.
Who owns Florida’s gambling boats? No one is certain. There is virtually no state or federal oversight. No one licenses the operators. No one ensures that the games aren’t rigged. No one ensures that the boats aren’t used to launder money. No one investigates whether organized crime is involved.
And while ex-felons can’t vote in Florida—as many became aware during the memorable presidential election in 2000—this disadvantage is more than offset, for some, by the fact that an ex-felon can run a gambling boat in the state with no fear at all of flunking the background check.
The reason? There is none.
This situation clearly suits some people just fine…. While Governor Jeb Bush may be minutely concerned with what happened to Terry Schiavo fifteen years ago, on this issue of real interest—massive corruption—he phones in his regrets.
Just why might that be?
Florida’s cruises-to-nowhere represent “the largest unregulated gambling industry in the United States,” said Bill Thompson, a professor of gambling at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and nationally recognized expert on the industry, in an interview in the Miami Herald.
They gross at least $170 million a year. And that’s just the number they report voluntarily. No one knows the true ‘take.’ Everyone assumes there’s a ‘skim.’
The Miami Herald cited the example of Joseph Polidore, who listed himself as the sole owner of Boca Casinos in Pompano Beach but said he received money for his investment from a “personal friend.” Polidore admitted he had silent partners, but insisted they were “nobody illegal.â€
What would happen if an applicant gave such vague information to the Nevada Gaming Control Board? The lack of regulation, officials elsewhere say, should concern Florida authorities.
“A casino is a cash business. You could have money laundering and skimming,” Keith Copher, chief of enforcement for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, told the Miami Herald. “When you obtain money illegally through drug sales and other methods. You need to find a way to launder it, to make it look like a legal source. Regulation is needed to prevent this.”
While “Florida authorities†piously oppose gambling, their inaction speaks for itself, and may even have been exploited by the 9.11 hijackers.
Betting Red All the Way
“There is a weird report just a day or two after 9/11 that someone reported to the FBI that three or four of the hijackers were seen gambling on a SunCruz boat,†wrote a source in Miami. “The FBI interviewed everyone who might have seen them, that very day by all reports.â€
Sure enough. We found an Associated Press story on Sept 26, 2001 headlined “SunCruz Casinos turns over documents in terrorist probe.â€
“SunCruz Casinos has turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as customers.… Names on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise matched those of some of the hijackers… Two or three men linked to the Sept. 11 hijackings may have been customers on a ship that sailed from Madeira Beach on Florida’s gulf coast.â€
Less than a week before the 9.11 attack, Atta and several other hijackers were aboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats. What no one seems able to answer is this:
What possible thrill could gambling offer men getting ready to die in less than a week? To this date, their Sept 5 visit to a gambling vessel overrun with retirees remains unexplained.
The gambling motif in the terrorist’s timeline doesn’t end there. The hijackers had no apparent reason to visit Las Vegas… so why did they?
On June 28 at Boston’s Logan Airport, Mohamed Atta boarded a United Airlines flight and flew first class nonstop to San Francisco. He bypassed the bohemian North Beach district, and didn’t take the cruise to Alcatraz…
Atta headed for Vegas.
On Aug. 10, Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi used first-class tickets for a United flight from Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles International Airport, then on to Las Vegas. The story of the terrorists Las Vegas connection may never be known, admitted the Las Vegas FBI.
Murder will out
‘Islamic fundamentalist’ Atta may have felt right at home in the world of fast cash and unlicensed gambling boat ‘cruises to nowhere’ of Republican lobbyist (and observant Jew) Jack Abramoff. He would almost certainly have been comfortable with the “gangland-style hit straight out of ‘Goodfellas†that cemented Abramoff’s prominent position in that industry.
At the time of the Sept 11 attack one of Abramoff’s chief claims to fame was as the proud owner of the SunCruz line: a dozen unlicensed gambling boats plying the waters off the Florida coast in a fashion which in any other state would have been considered criminal.
How did Jack Abramoff get lucky enough to be the guy passing out all that long green? Where did Jack Abramoff get his ‘juice?’
Short answer: Not everyone is savvy to opportunities presented by riders in obscure legislation. Not so the connected, the covert, the—dare we say “blessed?â€
“Elite deviance†is a sociological term for a condition in a society in which the elite in the society come to believe that the rules no longer apply to them.
Casino boats turned out to be a elite deviant’s dream.
One time-honored way to get rich is to marry money. Another is to kill someone that has it… In Abramoff’s case, it appears that Gus Boulis, the owner of the lion’s share of the casino boats in Florida, had to die first.
Three men formed an ownership group that apparently made Boulis the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse. They bought SunCruz from him, even though it wasn’t for sale.
When Greek tycoon Gus Boulis was gunned down in his BMW on February 6, 2001 Fort Lauderdale police investigators immediately began scrutinizing SunCruz Casinos. Suspicion focused on the recent sale of the fleet. Boulis and one of the three men had been carrying on a very public feud.
“We certainly aren’t lacking in suspects,†said a homicide detective drolly.
Less than two months later, Sun Cruz announced plans to move a 150-foot, $10-million floating casino to the Northern Marianas.
Almost every article we’d read cites Abramoff & Delay’s interest in the Marianas being sweat-shop related. Meaning they’re in favor of them. Their primary focus wasn’t sweatshops. It was gambling.
A Bebe Rebozo Memorial Hit
“Read about SunCruz and it sounds like a South Florida version of “The Sopranos,†reported the South Florida Business Journal. “ Feds go after owner Gus Boulis. Former Miami Subs kingpin forced to sell. New SunCruz chairman says Boulis threatened him. Boulis whacked.â€
As if to confirm the account, other newspaper reports mentioned a climate of fear after the Boulis murder.
“The shooting death… cast a pall of fear over the people who knew him, with some of his closest associates admitting concern at being connected with a man targeted by hit men,†the local Sun-Sentinel reported the day after the hit.
“There are a lot of people who aren’t talking for reasons of personal safety,” said Fort Lauderdale Police Detective Mike Reed.
Another associate declined to discuss anything about Boulis with the paper…
“I’ve got my family to worry about,” he said, on condition of anonymity.
Even a cursory look at the executive management of the cruise-to-nowhere company that Boulis founded turns up violent thugs and organized crime figures. But that’s pretty typical of South Florida…What is unusual are that in with Sun Cruz’s mobbed-up crew are prominent Republican Party members with long-standing, deep ties to the religious right.
Two SunCruz executives, Jack Abramoff and Ben Waldman, are walking examples of the strange alliance between the family-values party and the gambling industry. Both men have strong ties to Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, which is adamantly opposed to gambling; Waldman was Robertson top aide in the televangelist’s run for the presidency.
Abramoff, who perhaps wisely only took the title of vice president (less heat) has been connected to the Christian right since a student at Brandeis University, where as head of the College Republicans he enlisted Top Christian Ralph Reed as his top deputy. The two have remained close friends ever since.
A man named Adam Kidan became Sun Cruz’s new chairman. Kidan’s mother had been murdered in a gangland-style hit in New York. Madonna’s one-time boyfriend and South Beach restaurateur Chris Paciello, was eventually convicted in the case.
Today he is in Federal Witness Protection, and word is there are several movies about him in development.
Just another American success story.
The Seminal Seminoles
The Seminole Tribe of Florida led the way in parlaying mom-and-pop bingo parlors into today’s $19 billion a year Indian casino industry. Along with legendary Chief James Billie (Wrestles with Alligators) Rob Tiller was a seminal figure in this growth.
Tiller is also a South Florida aviation insider and former business partner of terror flight school owner and secretive financier Wally Hilliard. He even met Atta and Marwan one day after a meeting with Hilliard, he says, with whom he was working on an airline start-up called Havana Air.
Small world.
A week before Gus Boulis was murdered, Tiller was called to take a meeting with him. Tiller says Boulis was scared. Boulis hadn’t wanted to sell.
Now he was worried he’d be whacked.
“He called me to a meeting at the Ocean Reef Club. Very snooty. You cant even land there without permission. I flew my airplane down to meet him,†Tiller recalled.
“He said, ‘I want out. People think I make a lot more money than I really do. I don’t need the headache anymore. I want to sell my casino boats to the Seminoles.’â€
What was Tiller’s response? “I said, ‘Gus you’re sure rocking a lot of people’s boats here.’â€
â€A couple days later, I hear he’s been blown apart dead. See, Gus wanted to muscle his way into the casino business in a real bad way. His Miami subs were everywhere. He was using them to launder money, big-time, for somebody.â€
Who might that be? Even asking the question brings a shiver.
He wrote a check?
At the time Boulis was murdered, suspicion focused on company chairman Adam Kidan, also an active Republican and campaign contributor. He had been in Israel at the time of the murder. His alibi held.
But then news surfaced that just before Boulis’ death Kidan had written at least $30,000 in checks to a reputed Mob enforcer named Anthony Moscatiello, a one-time associate of crime boss John Gotti.
Moscatiello is apparently what is known in criminal parlance as a “torpedo.†(We’re not quite sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.)
This is a paper trail some U.S. Attorney’s (in Manhattan, perhaps) would describe as “to die for.” But things work differently in South Florida. To date no one has been charged in the murder of Gus Boulis.
The official back-story on Boulis is he left his native Greece as a teenager and came to North America, bought a Toronto sandwich shop and turned it into a successful company with franchises all across Canada.
After his Canadian success, he moved to Florida in the early 1980’s (to retire to the Keys, he said). But Florida’s money-making opportunities overrode his desire for shuffleboard, and soon he was building another successful fast-food chain, Miami Subs, and then building and deploying the crown jewels in his empire, his SunCruz Casino fleet.
What explained Boulis’ success in a restaurant business where failure is far more common? The question strikes some as naive.
“Miami subs was the first take out place ever to serve Dom Perignon through the takeout window,†snickered Tiller. “Word was he had made his money in Canada in the sub business. But I learned later it was nothing but a Laundromat.â€
We were once more back in the precincts of money laundering, which seems more and more like one of Florida’s major industries. We pictured dollar bills drying in the sun all over the state, after being washed through the Everglades.
No doubt this is all just freak coincidence. Still, even with our suspicious minds, when we learned who Tiller thought was responsible for Boulis’ death, we were shocked.
Tiller referred us to the manner of the Boulis hit…
Setting an example
A man in a BMW was driving down a quiet side street after an evening meeting at his Fort Lauderdale office when a car slowed to a stop in front of him. A second car boxed the BMW in from behind, then a dark Mustang appeared from the opposite direction. The Mustang’s driver pulled alongside and pumped three hollow-point bullets into the BMW driver’s chest.
“Boulis was murdered in the exact same way as Don Aronow, Bush’s other partner,†he stated.
Bush’s other partner? The question hung in the air.
“Something is really going down bad here,†Tiller stated. “Don Aronow. Gus. Jim Shore…All tied in to Bush.â€
When NBC’s Dateline did a story recently about sources of terrorist funding right here in the U.S., they made bold to announce “the emerging threat of a new alliance between al Qaeda and common criminals.â€
But it was hardly time to stop the presses.
Over three years ago—within a month of the 9.11 attack—British Prime Minister Tony Blair had presented the case against Bin Laden. He sketched out the Cliff Notes version of the evidence. It wasn’t much, but it was the only explanation we ever received.
“Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization with ties to a global network,†Blair said.
In truth, the idea that Mohamed Atta and his henchmen needed help from an outside organization while they were in the U.S. was easy to understand… Logistical support is difficult to arrange from caves.
Still, the FBI stepped in and quickly put a kibosh on that kind of talk… “Government sources now say that the investigation so far suggests the 19 had ‘no major help’ in the United States,” said a story in the Washington Post which came out soon after Blair’s alarming faux pas.
“The 19 hijackers who carried out the worst act of terror ever to occur on U.S. soil worked with little outside help as a single, integrated group,†the Post reported.
PBS’s Frontline documentary on 9.11 supported this ‘lone cadre theory.’ Correspondent Hedrick Smith, to his everlasting discredit, opened the show with this lie: “19 hijackers slipped through Europe and America unnoticed.â€
Like lone gunmen, lone cadres are easier to explain.
Even in the seemingly-unrelated Heaven’s Gate mass suicide in the posh enclave of Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, which we will learn is not so far afield from 9.11 as might appear, the cultists were quickly dubbed a lone cadre.
“We have absolutely nothing… that would indicate that this is anything but a sole group of 40 people,†stated the chief investigator on the case.
Although a cache of weapons was found in a storage locker of the (supposedly) nonviolent cult, and the Heaven’s Gate leader left a videotape conspicuously praising the Order of the Solar Temple, whose members had been found dead in a mass suicide just days earlier…
Well, you know the story by now. Almost everyone does. In the gap between what happens every day and what gets reported lies the secret history…
“There’s a secret world all around us,†a legendary CIA agent informs a young recruit in “Overworld,†L.J.. Kolb’s eye-opening account of growing up as the son of an American spy. “You just don’t see it unless you know where to look.â€
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
January 4th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Okay, that’s it. I’ve transferred my entire IRA into investments in tin-foil…
January 5th, 2006 at 1:22 am
Re: SECRET WORLD OF 9.11
Nice try at obfuscating the truth. Everyone knows Canada was behind 9/11.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:05 am
I stand corrected, Ronnie, except for where you say “Hebrew was not a dead language – it was just not used conversationally. ”
In linguistics, if it isn’t conversational, it’s dead. I’ve heard that there are some who claim to be conversational in Latin, but until one their kids bounds into the room chattering in Latin, I’m not sure I’ll believe it. Living languages change — they add new words, drop old ones, change grammatically, branch into dialects. Dead languages might be the subject of recitation, but you can also hang a dead animal from puppet strings and make it “move”.
That’s not to say that dead languages aren’t worthy of study, or that they don’t have their uses. And as I point out, they can be revived, if there’s some serious movement to generate new native speakers. If “dead” doesn’t work for you, try “suspended animation.” But technically, Hebrew was dead.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:57 am
Hey, just the latest example of the lack of leadership on the GOP side, particularly as it relates to the Senate leader. This is an outstanding opportunity to be a leader, to seize the day, and what we get is something along the lines of “well, everyone does it”.
And I’m a conservative supporting and voting kind of guy. But have been concerned about this sort of thing (lack of leadership) for a long time.
The Dems aren’t clean on this, and Pelosi, Reid, and Dean are dunderheads, but I give them a significant edge when it comes to recognizing a strong, positive, political opportunity.
January 5th, 2006 at 8:15 am
Michael Turner -
Not to nitpick, but Hebrew did evolve to a degree during the centuries when it was raely spoken. It remained a language of prayer and religious study. Countless of books of law, philosophy and even poetry continued to be written in Hebrew or some Hebrew-Aramaic amalgam. It evolved slowly as literary languages evolve, as Latin itself evolved for a period of time till it truly died. It also burrrowed into living Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Ladino, influencing their syntax and vocabulary. Because it was still an organic part of the culture, it could be used occassionally for fairly mundane forms of communication, in commercial transactions which crossed linguitic borders, for instance. Reviving it was therefore easier than reviving Latin would be today.
January 5th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
What I like is that she double-copied the endless article. Still, it reads well.
January 5th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
The_DC_Sniper has been eating too much Canadian Bacon!
January 6th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
This is good…I’m not a big fan of Joe Scarborough, but he can be counted on as a fairly straight shooter when he sees total bullshit. I give him even more props on this since he was at least ankle-deep in the muck himself…
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hardball-Scarbor.mov
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