Casino dafa

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  September 06 2008

  
  

  Indian Casinos

  When sleaze meets sleaze, magic happens. One glance across a crowded room, and they instantly recognize kinship. But when super sleaze teams up with super sleaze, a fusion-like chain reaction flashes to life, consuming everything in range. And that's what happened when Jack Abramoff met Indian gambling. Oh, I know the media is all atwitter over the political implications for ruling Republicans, but as usual, they are missing the soul of this saga -- the political correctness and hypocrisy that surrounds Indian gaming. Let me explain. I have no moral objections to most vices, including gambling, and when I can get away with it, I indulge in several vices myself. So the morality of gaming is not my beef with Indian casinos. It's what I learned way back in the 1980s about what's really going on behind all that helping the poor Indians blather. While working on our savings and loans book "Inside Job" in 1986, my co-author, Mary Fricker, and I followed one of our S&L crooks to a small Indian reservation outside Palm Springs. It was the home of the Cabazons, the very tribe that took their case for gambling rights to the U.S. Supreme Court and won -- sparking the Indian gaming revolution.

  What we found there was unnerving, to say the least. Sure, there were Indians -- about 25 of them -- but they weren't in charge. Instead, a group of Los Angeles-based mafioso were running the operations, people with names like Rocco. The gaming operations were run by a non-Indian "management" company. They would front the money to build, maintain and operate the various gaming operations, with the promise that the tribe would get a share of the "profits" as calculated by Rocco and friend. This is how Indian gaming began. After being chased out of Las Vegas and New Jersey by state and federal heat, the mob discovered Indian reservations. It was like a gift from the Mob Gods. One mobster testifying before Congress was asked how the mob viewed Indian reservations. He replied, "As our new Cuba." That's because Indian reservations are sovereign nations within a sovereign nation. The mob could set up casinos, pay off tribal leaders and skim casino proceeds with impunity. If the FBI showed up, they had tribal security usher them out the gate, because they had no jurisdiction on reservation property.