Feb. 15, 2002 - 20:44 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

The Same Old

What do we owe the Indians ? It seems to me that our system has been obscurely mishandling Indian Affairs money while handling things in absolute secret. More or less from the beginning I guess. Igrunt Savages (Paleface thought - even today I think) in the very beginning were cheated, disrespected and shoved from pillar to post, from one reservation to another as precious gold or oil was discovered on their reservations where they were trying to survive. And then the promised money for the use of their lands, what little of it our people will possiblly own up to owing to the Indians is being investigated. Yeah right.

Heh. So who got tapped to straighten this mess out ? A (oh yes) a Republican, one of the group that is messing us up, all of us, in the facts coming to light of what has been happening to allow the Enron mess and who now want to try for voluntary Corporate supervision. Fox guarding the hen house ? Who loused up the finances seems to have been long hidden and I doubt that much will ever be found out for sure. How much is owed (and I am sure is owed) will be up to the Great White Republican Father to condescend to seeing that it is used to put the affair to rights after the necessary deductions of course.

I for one would much rather see some of my tax dollars going to a group we truly owe, to try to pay a long overdue debt.

So, where are we now ? We seem to be in a situation of a broken circle. The usual action with our government is for all the bigwigs to stand in a circle and point the finger of blame to the one on their right and mouthing, "It didn't happen on my shift." The beginning of the circle is in the graveyards of course. I doubt that Interior Secretary Norton will ever arrive at the notion of saying, "Okay, lets look at the items we can verify and figure out how much we owe of that and add a large percentage penalty on that - - - - and then immediately pay up cash in hand to the injured parties.

Too much cover up in the past but it seems to me that there has been cheating going on from the beginning, on up to today. Going by the record of Government mistreatment of the Indians in all matters it would seem so to me. And while delaying the reckoning as long as possible we save any interest and / or penalties.

I am proud to be an American and proud to be one of the family of USA citizens, but am willing to admit we have erred and our government should immediately try to rectify any injustice done to anyone of the members of our USA family. And by golly, the Indians are truly one of the family.

Maybe the best thing we can do is to put to work that vast group of Gummint Guesstimators who come up with these figures that have cost us huge tax money in the past to such little effect. You know the ones I mean, the ones who figure, "A billion here and a billion there if repeated an infinitum can result in big money. But, we have to have these billions now or else we will have a catastrophe." Heh.

Why is it that I expect that the refrain of this will be the Indians singing, "We got screwed again," they know the words and music you know. I guess it will be The Same Old . . . . . . . . .

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