Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has issued a new report (PDF) asserting that the Early Asian Immigrants (incorrectly referred to as “Native” Americans) are hit the hardest by “climate-induced weather extremes”. I’ll leave aside the obvious problems with that fanciful claim, and the oddity of the idea of “climate-induced weather” whatever that means, to look at the NWF’s proposed solution to their imaginary problem.
Their solution? Well, their brilliant plan is that everyone but the Immigrants should pony up some money to give to the Immigrants.
Now, the history of the Early Asian Immigrants is a sad and tragic one. They were cheated, lied to, killed indiscriminately, and their culture and ways were denigrated and often destroyed.
The response of the US Government, after many years, was to give the remaining tribes of Immigrants their own nations. These are sovereign areas with their own leaders, where many US laws do not apply. Me, I’d give just about anything to be able to write my own laws, and not have to obey some US laws. But I don’t get to.
Now, however, the NWF wants to change the rules. They want to alter the laws so that the separate Immigrant nations can not only be sovereign and independent and run casinos and not be subject to various state laws, but they can also suck up tax money paid by people who live in my nation. As an example of what they want to change, they say:
Indian [sic] Tribes are also excluded —– because of statutes, regulations, or practice —– from dozens of federal natural resource programs that provide assistance to states, local governments, and other entities.
Well … yes indeed, they are excluded from using my tax money for a host of things, and for very good reasons. That’s the price they pay for independence and sovereignty, that they don’t get treated the same as other US citizens, or like a State, or like a local government—because they aren’t any of those things, they are a sovereign nation with all that implies. For example, I can’t go on the reservation and do what I want, that’s the Immigrant national land. Immigrants don’t have to follow a variety of laws, and rightly so. And I don’t get any money from tribal funds that they are getting from Immigrant casinos, casinos that are illegal for me to operate.
So while I definitely feel for the Immigrants, who historically have suffered unimaginably, they can’t have it both ways. If they want to be full participants in the American rush to have the US government reimburse them for every imaginary problem, they can’t also be exempt from various laws and State taxes and some even from Federal taxes and get to have their own nations. If they want the full panoply of dubious benefits that the rest of the citizens get, sorry, they’ve got to become just like me, subject to all of the nonsense which us Late European Immigrants have to put up with.
Or they could just pay for the things that they need from their casino takings … which were $7,300,000,000 ($7.3 billion with a “b”) just in California alone in 2009, and $26,400,000,000 nationally, and on which in many states they paid no state taxes. I say they should use their own money for that kind of quixotic quest. If they want to use my taxes to fight imaginary menaces, well, they should have to pay taxes just like I do and be subject to the same idiotic rules that constrain me.
In any case, if the Immigrants are entitled to my tax money, it seems only fair that in return I should be able to open my own casino. But I don’t need to make billions. If I can only make a few million dollars from my casino, I assure you that I can protect myself against the worst that man-made warming can do, and save the Government a pile of money in the process … plus I’ll pay all applicable taxes on my takings.
It’s a win-win kind of deal.
w.
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UPDATE:
Willis has free reign to publish here, however this is not an article (in its present form) I would have published if consulted. Once published, I can’t put the cat back in the bag. – Anthony
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A note from the author. Anthony has most graciously given me the room to write here without censorship or interference or suggestions of any type,and has my great thanks for the freedom. As such, I ask that everyone be clear that what I write is mine, and what Anthony writes is his. He is passionate about his causes, as am I about mine. I thought long and hard about this before I posted it, as I do with all of my posts, but even more so because it is a touchy subject. I re-wrote it several times to try to make it clearer and clearer.
Now, I could have just said “Ooooh, too hot to handle” and picked a less controversial subject … but if Anthony and I and all the guest posters did that, this would be the most boring blog on the planet.
All I ask is that people quote my words when they object, because most people are treating this subject like a web-based Rorschach test, and reading into it all of their hopes, fears, and prejudices.
Again, my thanks to Anthony for his marvelous blog,
w.
With all those zeros, shouldn’t the b be a t?
Chris Smith says:
And now you want them to pay taxes into your crappy economic system too? What, it is not enough what happened to them already? You want more?!
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Reading comprehension isn’t your long suit is it ?
The article was commenting on the native Americans getting money WITHOUT paying taxes..
They don’t pay taxes, so fine …………………….. they don’t get benefits.
We are all immigrants, if we look back far enough. More trendy left wing hand wringing, no doubt funded by the taxpayer. But that’s what they are good at, creating false us and them scenarios so that they can tax us to pay them. As for historical injustices, get over it and stop using it as an excuse for deficiancies in your own societies.
It’s really funny to see commercials in California asking people to support indian casino rights. You see these guys all dressed up like they’re part of a show about indians, and they’re asking you to feel sorry for the tragic position their in and how they need indian gaming to help people out.
LOL.
I still laugh thinking about it. These are nations of people who lived off the land for centuries, and now they’re lobbying the public for rights to cold hard cash. Any true native-americans should lose their lunch of the existence of such commercials. lol.
It’s like they refuse to assimilate over and over and over… until you hand them wealth, and then of course its “Hell pardner, pass the real-estate and let’s get cozy with the politicians!”
Thank goodness Columbus didn’t think he had landed in Turkey.
Dave Springer says:
August 8, 2011 at 6:15 am
. Religious beliefs notwithstanding if wolves could talk I’m sure they’d consider you and I both as foreign invaders because they were here before any of our ancestors arrived.
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Canis lupus is a new comer also. Probably reached the central US less then 15000 years ago. Though the traditional date of the arrival on this continent is often given as 1 M years ago, there is really little evidence to support it. Wolves are immigrants too. Now the Coyote on the other hand is a true native.
DesertYote (2011/08/08 at 8:27 am)
Sounds like the rural area where I live – if your grandparents weren’t born there you are considered ‘a blow-in’.
Why is it that the answer to everything is handing out money? I’ve come to the realization that if you get money changing hands, then someone else has an opportunity to grab some of it, either legally (taxes) or illegally.
Typical of organizations like the NWF. Pick something they feel is sacrosanct, which can’t be disagreed with without giving them an opening to cry racism or such. First it was “cute, cuddly” polar bears, now the Noble Savage, standing on a mound of garbage with a tear running down his cheek. They always look for someone/something they can claim has victimhood status and turn that to whatever ends they want.
Hey, I know. My ancestors were enslaved by the Romans in great numbers. Nevermind that same ancestors also contributed greatly to the fall of the Roman Empire, at least in the west, where’s my reparations? I think the Italians should be taxed and the money given to me, after the noble bureaucrats at the UN manage and collect it and take their cut of course. I still have nightmares every time I see the ship scene in Ben Hur! Ain’t I entitled to something?
Notice how the end always justifies some unelected bureaucrat managing the money transfer and running the system? Climate justice for everyone!
So the lefties, who were behind all of the terrible miss treatment of the Indians to begin with, now claim they what to help them yet again? Sounds more like they want to insure they stay on the reservation, just like they want all of the other lefty subjugated “victim groups” to stay on their reservations, and to destroy the economy while doing it. For them its win-win.
@ur momisugly David says:
August 8, 2011 at 7:23 am
Explain to me how he was “demeaning” native americans. I don’t see it at all. In addition, I don’t see the point of showing “respect” towards an entire race. Some people are deserving of respect and others are not. Demanding that an entire race be respected is just plain racist.
Examination of DNA evidence has shown four waves of ‘immigration’ to the Americas from Asia. And then surprise, surprise a fifth wave was found and it was European! No, not the post Columbus conquests but from way back during the ice age. The ancestry of ancient Americans is not quite as clear as one might think. But does this really matter? The United States has often fallen far short of the vision of its founding fathers but their words must surely ring down the ages: ‘We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal….’ And this must apply to the whole of the Republic from sea to shining sea. Stop wringing your hands and live the vision.
It’s just another instance of the politics of division.
Is there anyplace in the world where the “natives” are the true original population of the area? Anyplace settled once and only once? Even “Native American’s” came from somewhere else.
Fascinating, but I think one lesson to be learned here is not to include side issues, like ethnicity or religion, in posts about AGW-related subjects. It just clutters up the thread with off-topic opinion. Unity, coherence, emphasis, students!
I sometimes assuage my guilt for Custer’s sin by making offerings at Indian casinos, which, interestingly, are not mentioned anywhere in the NWF report. Note, however, the ludicrous mention of “declining mountain snowpack,” The report is high-priced, slick proctoganda.
I suggest a raid on the BIA. Run off their Mercedes’ and steal the money back.
Maybe every American should have their genetic code deciphered and genealogy completed to determine the correct percentage of blame that should be apportioned to each, and then have wages garnished appropriately to pay for their ancestral wrongdoings. This includes all possible previous wrongdoings, including atrocities to Native Americans, African American slavery, Japanese internment, women’s rights violations, and modern immigrant intolerances, just to name a few. Now I’ll grant you that some will not do well with this, but really they should have to pay for their ancestors sins. Besides, just think of all the productive government jobs that would be created in this endeavor!
The world is made up of special people and the others. In times past, the special people were the majority who then, being special, abused and took the stuff the non-special people had. In the current times, the minorities are special and the majority, non-special. The minorities take from the majority … you get the idea.
Political correctness is also political correction. But still we have the “specials” and the “non-specials”. In the left-right, socialist-capitalist, humanist-technocratist dichotomy of thinking there are always the specials and the non-specials. May one day we all be either special, deserving respect and recognition, or non-special and deserving to get on the best way we can! Whichever way, as long as we are all the same.
Give up this romantic notion of the noble american aboriginal from Asia traversing the Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age, living in harmony with Nature. They weren’t all so peaceful and kind. They not only drove many mammals to extinction, they murdered each other. But they weren’t the first to arrive. The real first immigrants were more african, not asian, the same people known as the aborigines in Australia or melanesians. They were nearly exterminated by the wave of asian immigrants from the north, surviving at the tip of South America.
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter54/text-Fuego/Genetics/text-FuegianGenetics.htm
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Chumash/EntryDate.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luzia_Woman
Chris Smith says:
August 8, 2011 at 3:31 am
You seem to have missed the point entirely, and gotten everything backwords. I don’t want more, not one bit. They want more.
I don’t want them to pay more taxes, I’m perfectly OK with what they pay. They, on the other hand, want to increase my taxes to pay them for a totally imaginary problem.
Shoe is on the other foot, Chris …
w.
polistra says:
August 8, 2011 at 3:54 am
Look up the history of why they started calling them “Native Americans” … because in fact “Indian” didn’t convey the meaning of that ethnic group.
w.
Dave Stephens says:
August 8, 2011 at 4:33 am
Sorry, Dave, but there are lots of animals that are native to the Americans. That’s the meaning of the word, that the animal originated here.
And no, humans are not among them.
w.
Jason Joice M.D. says:
August 8, 2011 at 5:02 am
Thank, Jason. No, you are not a native American, you are not one more whit native to this continent than I am, and I am quite tired of people like you pretending that you are native to this continent. Your ancestors immigrated to American from Asia just as surely as mine immigrated to America from Europe.
w.
Roger Sowell says:
August 8, 2011 at 5:07 am
Gosh, Roger, thanks for the clarity. You claim I’m “ignorant” of Native American history, but you don’t say where I went wrong. You say their current status and problems are appalling, and we have no disagreement there.
In other words, your post is content free and contains only emotion. Heck, from the terms you use it seems you think they’re actually natives of America, rather than interlopers like the rest of us.
w.
Dave Springer says:
August 8, 2011 at 5:45 am
If so, then that’s the only res I ever heard of where that is true, because the rest all have plenty of internal dissension. The idea that Early Asian Immigrants all live in pastoral harmony is a joke. They have the same problems and disagreements that the rest of us have. Heck, the corruption of tribal governments in many places is a running sore. So no, you can’t sell me any of that “noble savages living in domestic harmony” nonsense, it’s way past its use-by date.
w.
As someone from Europe who worked with first nations peoples in Canada I find this posting distasteful and not up to the usual high standards set by Mr.Watts. I trust he will do the right thing and remove it. It is silly to say first nations will be affected more others by climate change, but it is not an excuse to post this sort of nonsense. If you knew what life is like in such areas for many native people you would never write such tosh. You’ll be saying all white people are rich next or that all Welsh people can sing and Scots people all wear kilts.