Susan Bradford on: Deja Vu: Ietan Takes Aim at the Next Abramoff

Susan has a greatly detailed story on IETAN CONSULTING, a lobbying firm run by Holly Cook Macarro, the wife of Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro, to which that tribe pays $250,000 per year. That led to Macarro being the subject of a recall attempt.

Tribal attorney Howard Dickstein is facing accusations eerily similar to those which dogged Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The complaint the Rumsey Indian Rancheria filed against Dickstein in 2007 in the U.S. Superior Court in Yolo County, California can be found here:

http://lesliebrodie.blog.co.uk/2011/06/28/rumsey-indian-rancheria-vs-howard-dickstein-57-pages-complaint-with-14-causes-of-action-for-greed-betrayal-against-spouse-of-bog-member-jeannine–11389017/

Of particular note is that a year after the case was filed, Rumsey was picked up Ietan Consulting, whose lobbyists gaslit Abramoff and staged the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings where the Republican super-lobbyist was set up for criminal indictment on trumped up charges. Ietan’s lobbyists and its partners coached dissidents among Abramoff’s casino-rich clients to lodge false allegations against Abramoff in the media and before Congress.

Once Abramoff was removed from power, Ietan and its partners immediately commenced representation of his casino-rich clients and cashed in. The allegations could easily have been refuted, but the accusers were banking on the fact that paperwork would be difficult to secure, ensuring that their false narrative prevailed.

Ietan’s representation of the Rumsey in 2008 is documented here:

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientlbs.php?id=D000037284&year=2008

The complaint against Dickstein trots out the tired narrative that this tribal attorney exploited the poor hapless Indians, who are always cast as victims in Ietan’s manufactured scandals. “The lawsuit is about greed and betrayal,” the complaint alleges, taking its cue from McCain’s Final Report on Abramoff’s tribal lobbying. “The Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians…has discovered that its long-time (and now former) legal counsel and financial advisor breached their trust obligations and violated duties of the most basic and indeed, sacred, kind.”

The discoveries were made “after terminating” the attorney at which time the tribe retained Kroll & Associates to review his work. Upon further review, the complaint alleges that Dickestein “placed his own interests and the interests of others ahead of the tribe’s in order to enrich (himself) at the tribe’s expense.”

According to the complaint, Dickstein allegedly betrayed the tribe’s trust by involving the financially unsophisticated Rumsey in “complicated investments and transactions in which the business arrangements were more favorable to others than the tribe and which were allegedly fraught with self-dealing and conflicts of interests (he) failed to disclose.”

Dickstein also was alleged to have used tribal assets for personal purposes without having sought permission or informed the Tribal Council the full extent of his compensation.

In a similar vein, during the Abramoff scandal, Ietan-backed dissidents accused the lobbyist and his partner, Michael Scanlon, of having hidden their financial arrangements from tribal leaders who were fully knowledgeable and agreeable to them.

Read the full story at Susan Bradford’s site

Sen. John McCain's Complaint Against Tribal Attorney Belies His Cronyism: Susan Bradford

Susan Bradford has a hard-hitting post on John McCain. McCain apparently doesn't like Howard Dickstein.

Any official actions Sen. John McCain undertakes must be evaluated within the context of what the Senator and/or his fundraisers and cronies stand to benefit politically or financially from those decisions. Bereft of any principles beyond self-interest, McCain has established a long pattern of accusing rivals of corruption in order to eliminate them from markets so that his allies can cash in.

Most recently, McCain wrote a letter to the National Indian Gaming Commission to complain about fees billed by tribal attorney Howard Dickstein, the lawyer for the Thunder Valley Casino, which is owned by the United Auburn Indian Community. Dickstein earned a reported $26 million during a six-year period ending in 2009. The contract, which incorporated a two percentage cut of the casino’s profits, amounted to a “lapse in oversight authority,” the Senator wrote in his letter. OP: Interesting that McCain is concerned about high fees, yet, remarkably is UNCONCERNED about the $500 MILLION that tribes have stolen from Indians via disenrollment

In response, Dickstein remarked on McCain’s longstanding desire to enhance the power of the NIGC, which the Senator’s allies control, to oversee and approve tribal contracts with business partners. “He’s trying to resurrect something that died an early death,” the attorney said, conceding that the Senator “has no idea the value of the services our firm rendered” to the tribe and casino.

On the contrary, the Senator understands the value quite well. However, McCain is intent upon securing lucrative contracts for his fundraisers and allies in Indian Country by sponsoring legislation he can then selectively enforce, or twist, to his own ends.

Reflecting the hypocrisy and hollowness of McCain’s latest allegations, according to the Village Voice, Roger Stone, a fundraiser for the Senator who helped set up Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff for wrongful conviction, earned both flat fees and percentages of future casino revenues through deals he negotiated with tribes and developers. McCain has yet to challenge Stone over these practices.

The Senator also has a longstanding interest in this United Auburn Indian Community, a tribe that allegedly consists of Miwuk and Maidu Indians indigenous to the Sacramento Valley region.

Most legitimate tribes were established through the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which provided a mechanism through which Natives could organize themselves into self-governing tribal communities that were recognized by the federal government. Given the opportunity, however, the Auburn Indians rejected federal recognition

Read more at Susan Bradford’s Investigative Reports

Corruption of California's Government by Indian Gaming Dollars

Jim Marino has a five part series on Indian Gaming in CA. This weeks entry was stinging enough to give him a 'moron-alert' status on a tribal gaming website operated by the cousin of the corrupt Pechanga Band of Lusieno Indians' Chairman, Mark Macarro, last's week it must have missed the mark. This series points out the need for oversight hearings, which have been requested by Rep. Mike Thompson to Rep. Nick Rahall.

In a 5-part series, I outlined what led up to the advent of the Indian Gaming and Regulatory Act of 1988. How Congress engaged in a feeble attempt to wean Indian tribes from total federal dependence and at the same time clarify the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Cabazon Tribe versus California. How Congress completely failed to take into account the complex and confusing body of Indian law, including the court-created doctrine of Indian tribal immunity from lawsuit.

Then I discussed the tortured history of how Indian gambling found its way into California illegally and the attempts to legalize it by corrupt politicians and Gov. Gray Davis, who executed 59 tribal-state compacts for casinos with several tiny bands of questionable Indian descent, and who had no legally eligible lands on which to build and operate a gambling casino and even allow questionable “tribes” to purchase land near perceived gambling markets in a practice that came to be known as “reservation shopping.”

These often ridiculous policies and events led to the rapid expansion of Indian gambling casinos all over California being thrust into many communities who didn’t want them and which provided no benefit despite the creation of “jobs.” That was because of the many negative impacts of such a casino and the demands placed on public services and infrastructure, which the Indian casinos and businesses used regularly while paying no taxes.

This continuing article is to demonstrate how pervasive the corruption from Indian gambling dollars has become. Although there are many examples, this limited space only allows for the recounting of some of the typical and more outrageous examples of it.

As set out in the earlier series, Gov. Davis owed his election to the massive contributions from Indian casinos operating illegally in California at the time and the massive campaign instituted by those tribes, many of which had only a handful of members, and fractional and often questionable claims to being “Indian” at all. A campaign to enact a tribal initiative to amend the California Government Code known as Proposition 5 was circulated in an attempt to legalize the illegal Indian gambling casinos operating in California at the time.

To repay this largesse, once elected, Gov. Davis negotiated 59 tribal-state compacts through the summer of 1999 with these illegal existing casino tribes and many other questionable groups, several with no eligible land upon which gambling would be allowed under federal law. These compacts had been negotiated behind closed doors under the authority of Proposition 5 enacted in November 1998 at the same time Davis was elected.

These secretive negotiations took place behind closed doors, away from all of the major public forces that usually shape laws, such as city and county governments, unions, law enforcement, women’s rights groups, environmental protection groups, local and consumer rights groups and lawyers’ organizations. Even though the California Supreme Court had struck down Proposition 5 in August 1999, undaunted, Gov. Davis executed these give-away “sweetheart” compacts in September 1999 and had the democratically controlled legislature approve them in October 1999. To overcome the fact there was no statutory authority to execute and approve those compacts after the August 1999 Supreme Court decision, Gov. Davis and the Legislature put a “legislative initiative” on the March 2000 ballot called Proposition 1A. Although this initiative amended the State Constitution to authorize the Governor to negotiate future tribal-state compacts, it was, in effect, an initiative designed to retroactively ratify the 59 compacts signed earlier without lawful authority and without informing the voters.

As if this corrupted set of events was not enough, it was but the opening bell in a bruising round of corrupt practices that followed at both the state and federal level.

Proposition 1A established two funds: The Revenue Sharing Trust Fund and the Special Distribution Fund. The former was a fund established by the state into which those tribes with casinos would pay money. That fund would then make annual payments to “Indian tribes” in California that did not have casinos, or had casinos with fewer than 300 slot machines. Each “tribe” would receive an annual distribution of $1,100,000 over and above the hundreds of thousands they receive in federal welfare and grant monies.

Some of these “tribes” had only one or two members, like the Valley Miwoks and the Buena Vista MeWuks and Mary Ann Martin’s Augustine Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians. She was the only member of that “tribe” and not only entitled to receive a $1.1 million dollar distribution but also hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in federal welfare and grant money for “tribal government,” “tribal economic development,” “tribal housing,” and so forth. Many other bands or tribes had perhaps a handful of members.

The first thing that happened once Indian gambling became openly legal was that these casino tribes began contributing monies large and small to various politicians at the state and local level.

Many of you may recall how Jack Abramoff, (OP: whom Mark Macarro and his wife had dinner with.) the now imprisoned and disgraced lobbyist, got $80 million from one “poor” Indian tribe in Alabama with orders to spread it around Washington politicians, in order to block another Indian tribe’s attempt to open a competing casino. When the scandal finally broke, the Indian tribal governments and liberal media castigated Abramoff and his partner Scanlon for his activities, but carefully concealed the fact it was the Indian tribal governments, lawyers and lobbyists that furnished the tribal ‘pay-off” monies and that Abramoff was just the bag man delivering the tribal gambling monies to the many corrupt politicians he knew and who willingly took it.

One tribal government operating a gambling casino near Palm Springs gave Abramoff $10 million and then later refused to disclose what it was for, even to the tribal membership. State Senator Jim Battin from Palm Springs received tens of thousands of dollars in Indian casino contributions deposited into committees mostly called “The Friends of Jim Battin.” These committees were very generous in handing out tens of thousands of those casino dollars to other Sacramento politicians, lending a new meaning to the expression “it pays to have friends.” When he finally got in trouble with the state F.P.P.C. and they filed complaints against him, he and these Indian casinos set up the “Jim Battin Defense Fund.”

Senator Battin, (now termed out), was a champion of Indian gambling causes of all kinds. A year or two ago, the former chairman of the Indian Gaming Commission, Phillip Hogen, had been trying to change the federal rules defining more clearly what a slot machine was. Casino Indians and slot machine manufacturers had designed machines they called Bingo machines. Bingo under the IGRA is a class II gambling game that can be operated by a tribe without needing a tribal-state compact. Such a tribal-state compact is required for class III casino gambling, including the use of slot machines.

The compact requirement is the only way states can require tribes to pay money for all of the public services and infrastructure they use at the taxpayers’ expense. The compacts are also the way states can impose rules and regulations on gambling tribes. Commissioner Hogen had been trying to change the rules for years and reclassify these “Bingo machines” as facsimile slot machines subject to state control and the tribal-state compact requirements.

Sen. Battin wrote a letter, at the time, to Commissioner Hogen urging him not to change the rule, and he had 20 other Senators sign it. So, here we have fully one-half of our state’s Senators opposing a federal rule change that would be a direct benefit to the State of California, the state that they are supposed to be representing.

As I wrote in an article last year for this Valley Journal titled “Pay to Play,” this Indian casino corruption is rampant. Locally the Chumash and other tribes pushed for a bill early on in the gambling casino saga. They urged adoption of a bill in the Legislature that required local communities to come hat in hand for monies from the special distribution fund that were paid into it by gambling tribes. This money was originally intended to mitigate the negative impacts of casinos on local communities. That bill established local committees, controlled by the very Indian tribes causing the negative impacts who would then either approve or disprove any requests for grants by local governments to be made from the monies that were originally in that fund to mitigate those impacts.

On another occasion when the IRS refused to allow Indian tribes to issue tax-free bonds for gambling casino construction, arguing that such bonds were for public works projects, the tribes went to their friends in Sacramento – and introduced a bill to have the State of California issue tax-free bonds on their behalf.

When the gambling tribes wanted to eliminate any competition, they went to Sacramento again and had a bill introduced to place a long moratorium on the issuance of any more private non-Indian card room licenses that is still in effect. In fact, they just got their buddies in the Legislature to extend it.

When they wanted to eliminate competition from charities conducting Bingo games for charitable purposes, they got their Legislative friends to pass a bill banning the use of these Bingo machines by charities. You remember, the same machines they argued to the federal government were not slot machines at all, but then when they wanted to block their use by charities in California, they claimed that the state should not allow this use because it infringed on their exclusive right to operate “slot machines,” as provided for in the tribal-state compacts and in Art. 4, section 19 of the State Constitution.

Even locally, you may recall, when the Chumash wanted to rename San Marcos Pass/Highway 154 “The Chumash Highway,” they went to another friend of the Indian casino tribes, Assemblyman Coto, who has taken thousand of dollars from casino tribes and is now doing so for a run for the State Senate. Assemblyman Coto represents a San Jose District some 300 miles from here.

After receiving a generous political contribution of several thousand dollars from the Chumash, he introduced a resolution to rename Highway 154 as the Chumash Highway.

This was done without any local notice or knowledge and/or a resolution from the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, which resolution was required by a section of the California Streets and Highways Code. It was then shepherded quietly through the legislature by a number of elected officials in record time, many of whom had received thousands of dollars from the Chumash and tens of thousands from other casino tribes. The community only learned of the resolution when the tribe issued a press release after the fact.

Read the remainder of the article HERE