Think, but only about one side

In my rambling over the web I recently encountered an internet I came across an article with an interesting title. Gambling Lobby Stacks the Deck, which came from a page about Indian gaming had all the appearances on another article about the powerful Nevada gaming lobby taking on the Native American interests in California.

A couple of parts of the article by Dr. James Dobson read:

The recent national elections paint a clear picture of how gambling money and influence are overrunning the democratic process...

In California, Indian tribes used $70 million of the billions they have earned from casino operations to end-run the political process and obtain voter sanction for their activities...

Certainly one could be concerned with the huge price tag of the California election. But, nowhere in his article does Dobson mention that most of the opposition to the Indian tribes was from Nevada gaming interests. In fact the opposition spent more than $100 million of the trillions they have earned from casino operations in an attempt to end-run around the rights of Native Americans.

Dobson, who heads Focus on the Family, seems to take a one-sided stand on this issue. As there are with most complex issues there are many sides that need to be considered in making a judgement about the merits of any industry.

Catching a Dream, an article in the Albuquerque Journal shares some of the merits of gaming. The Sandia Pueblo students get scholarships from it. Certainly I am too close to the issue as my wife is a member of a gaming California tribe. However, I don't clam, as Dobson does, to be an independent member of the National Gambling Impact Study.

Dobson's arguments have merit. Gambling is a problem in many regards. It preys on the less-fortunate to make an elite class richer, mostly. That is most of the money made in the gambling industry goes to making casino-owners richer than most of us will ever imagine.

However, some forms of gambling make large groups of people richer. In California, for example, the tribes distribute much of their revenue to the members of the tribe. Even if one falls on hard times or out of work, they are far from the welfare rolls of the state and are not costing the tax payers a dime. In fact many members of the tribes do not live on reservations and indeed pay state income tax as well as federal income tax on their take-home pay.

I'm close to the situation but I'm still an outsider. I've been on several gaming and non-gaming reservations in the past years. I've studied the effectiveness of the genocide of the Old World settlers and it is impressive. (1)

I choose not to get into the fray of pro- and anit-Columbus tiffs. The fact is if the new world hadn't been found I wouldn't be here. Prior to contact the Native American people were dynamic and would likely have remained so for hundreds or thousands of years to come. It is also evident that we, the settlers of all nationalities, saw this land as "ours" and chose to do some terrible things to the people who were here when we arrived.

What does all this have to do with the one-sidedness of Dobson's story? Dobson's article seems to portray gambling as a black mark on our country. In some regards he is right. But his article completely misses that there are many complex issues in the "Gambling Debate."

Who should determine what Native Americans do with their land? Is it legitimate to use gambling to pay for education? Is it different if its the state lottery or the Native American tribes doing it? Many questions that deserve a more complete examination.

References 1. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492