An interesting article on Senator McCaskill’s retro plan for Indian tribes and the Washington Post’s anti-8(a) stance. The Washington Post has been publishing a lot of anti-8(a) articles lately, though the idea of Sen. McCaskill using them to push her own bizarre plan is an interesting connection. If the Democratic party is trying to stay away from the “socialism” tag (which is, we know, ridiculous, but still), maybe not switching from a successful 8(a) program to a program paying individual Indians directly out of federal coffers and federal pity would be a good plan. As usual, the power interests are looking to take away any successful tribal enterprise. After all, in the 1950’s after the Menominee Tribe created one of the first (if not the first) sustainable timber industry in the world, they were promptly terminated.
Here is the whole article.
Thanks to Ho-Chunk, Inc., tribal members participate in the American dream in ways not imagined a generation ago, with blue- and white-collar jobs, home ownership, and retirement accounts. Along the way, Morgan has been lauded by the Small Business Administration, the State Department, and business magazines. However, his achievement may soon fade, and fewer tribal members may be receiving paychecks.
Instead, they may be expecting “direct payments” from the federal government — presumably a new form of welfare — that Senator Claire McCaskill (D.-Mo.) suggested to the Washington Post as an alternative to tribally owned businesses. McCaskill is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with authority over Defense Department spending. If she has her way, Morgan said, hundreds of Ho-Chunk, Inc. employees will be laid off, kids’ college scholarships will be put on hold, and tribal housing-assistance programs will be cut.
McCaskill fielded the direct-payments idea in a series of Washington Post articles that sometimes anticipate and sometimes shadow the senator’s activities, with policy creating news, and news creating policy. McCaskill, and the newspaper, are sharply critical of Alaska Native Corporations (or ANCs), created to settle indigenous land claims, with Native people as individual shareholders. In July 2009, the Post, also referred to as WaPo, got in an early shot at the highly successful corporations, warning that “long overdue scrutiny of ANCs is about to get intense.” In late September and early October of this year, the paper published a rapid-fire succession of pieces, then announced on Oct. 7 that McCaskill would soon introduce legislation to “target” the Small Business Administration’s tribal 8(a) program. When McCaskill’s press release appeared the next day, Oct. 8, it noted that the newspaper had confirmed her findings and she would move on the legislation.
Turtle Talk 