So you now see what I was talking about.

Socialist governments own many of the larger industries and provide education, health and welfare services while allowing citizens some economic choices

The key word is "some".

If you abuse their rules, you will pay the consequences.

Socialism here would be the example of the Gov. owning the major portion of GM.

Technically, all Citizens, legal, are shareholders without a voice in how it's run.

The Chumash resort in Santa Ynez is one of the 32 tribal casinos in California with ATMs that accept welfare recipients' debit cards.

After a thirteen year-long legal battle with the US departments of Interior and Treasury, a settlement of more than $3.4 billion has been reached, the biggest ever against the federal government,

ince 1887, the U.S. government has been entitled to lease Indian lands and utilize their natural resources for everything from logging and mining to grazing cattle to pumping oil.

Today, the government does a brisk business in leasing, as royalties from the use of the land add up to more than $1 billion annually.
According to the Interior Department's own figures, 56 million acres of Indian land are now held in "trust" by the U.S. government, which is charged with redistributing most of those royalties to the individuals and tribes whose lands are being leased. Altogether, the Department of the Interior manages over 100,000 leases for approximately 236,000 Individual Indian Money (IIM) account holders—in addition to 1,400 tribal accounts.

Individuals and tribes alike depend on these trust fund disbursements for rent, food, and the basic operation of social services in Indian Country.

The problem: Sometimes those checks arrive, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the checks might arrive for hundreds or thousands of dollars, and sometimes those checks might only amount to pennies on the dollar. On Indian reservations, the problem has reached crisis levels; a check written out for a smaller amount than expected—or no check at all—can mean the difference between housing and homelessness. ….

….

The Great White Society
ad faith has attended every chapter in U.S.-Indian relations.
The fiduciary trust relationship between the U.S. government and Indian tribes was created well over one hundred years ago with The Dawes Act. With this act, the U.S. government ushered in a new phase of its genocidal relationship to Indians by allotting parcels of land ranging from 40 to 160 acres to the heads of Indian households, couching the move in terms of introducing a more stationary, farming lifestyle to native peoples.

Key to the successful passage of The Dawes Act in 1887 was a provision that allowed the U.S. government to purchase "surplus" portions of these allotted lands for the purposes of mining, grazing, timber and irrigation projects, and then to hold the money paid to Indians for the use of that land in trust. ….

….. As an incentive, Indians who agreed to receive their parcels of land were granted U.S. citizenship by the Secretary of the Interior: a measured step toward cultural, political and economic assimilation.

"This is, indeed, the only hope of salvation for the aborigines of this continent. If they stand up against the progress of civilization and industry, they must be relentlessly crushed," declared the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in November, 1872.

Decade by decade, the land holdings of Indian peoples decreased dramatically. In 1891, hoping to further reduce the amount of land held by Indians, Congress passed a law making the leasing of allotted lands possible. After 1891. in the purchase of surplus lands and in the granting of leases, the U.S. government moved decisively toward guaranteeing as much land for Euro-American settlers and industrial interests as possible. ….

….Deforestation was but one of the serious problems becoming more apparent with each passing year. As the government set about leasing surplus land to loggers, miners, farmers and, later, to oil companies, it collected monies only sporadically. Even when such monies were collected, Indians knew that they were getting only a fraction of what they were owed. Even as tribes watched their lands disappear, to be used for all manner of profit-making purposes, their own income levels diminished year by year. …..

….. By 1948, a capricious shift in official U.S. policy toward Indians was again underway, with the findings and recommendations of the Hoover Commission that Indian assimilation must be the goal of policy toward the native population. "The basis for historic Indian culture has been swept away," stated the findings of the special task force. "Traditional tribal organization was smashed a generation ago ... Assimilation cannot be prevented. The only questions are: What kind of assimilation, and how fast?" …..

….One might conclude from the actions of the government in the years since the 1948 Hoover Commission Report that extinction would be their preferred method of assimilation. In fact, it would be easy to make the argument that the overall impact of systemic poverty, disease, lack of education and environmental racism on the nation's first peoples has had much the same effect as the more overtly confrontational and aggressive policies of the BIA's institutional predecessor, the War Department’s Office of Indian Affairs.

One saving grace was to have been the trust revenue Indians have received or were supposed to receive for the use of their lands.
Instead, Indian nations began to face the reality that their funds were being systematically misallocated, misplaced, and stolen.

Largest Ever Govt Settlement on American Indian Land Rights in US History
Published 10 Dec 2009, 10:56 am - No Comments -
Filed under Feature Stories, Selected Transcripts

http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=11445
An historic settlement has been reached in a case of Native American land rights against the US government this week. After a thirteen year-long legal battle with the US departments of Interior and Treasury, a settlement of more than $3.4 billion has been reached, the biggest ever against the federal government, and bigger than all previous settlements and judgments on Native American issues combined.

The US Department of Interior manages more than 50 million acres of Indian land which is leased out to various enterprises for mining, grazing, and even drilling for oil and gas. The money from those leases is then supposed to be distributed to American Indians across the nations who hold the trust accounts. In June 1996, Elouise Cobbel, a member of the Blackfeet Indian Nation, and four other American Indians, filed suit on behalf of all Indian trust beneficiaries, accusing the government of mismanaging the revenues of those trust funds.

The terms of the historic settlement include $1.4 billion distributed to the Indian trust beneficiaries, and a $2 billion trust land consolidation fund. Sixty million dollars are also to be set aside for federal Indian education scholarship funds. According to the New York Times, “Specialists in federal tribal law described the lawsuit as one of the most important in the history of legal disputes involving the government’s treatment of American Indians.”

because they worked for it and someone else didn't means that they should give it away freely?? The more program we start/institute and the more the constitutional rights we begin to lose, thefurther we slip from captitalism towards socialism and them into the final stage of communism per the Marx theory. Would you care to lose freedom of speech, religion, bare arms, or civil rights. We each have paths in life, we chose and must reap the repercussions of responsibilty. Entitlement programs create a mindset that there is bail out so I can just screw my life up and everything will be fine, why work my way out of it?

I don't think 'most' people have the mindset that I can screw my life up and someone will bail me out....
While people are 'screwing' their lives up, generally the mindset is self-destructive.
Everyone deserves a second chance..a hand up, not a hand out.

I don't think 'most' people have the mindset that I can screw my life up and someone will bail me out....
While people are 'screwing' their lives up, generally the mindset is self-destructive.
Everyone deserves a second chance..a hand up, not a hand out.

By the way here is the lawsuit outcome: But keep in mind that this is not the end. Currently other battles are being fought as current uranium mining poisons Native Americans. Not to mention the small fact that no consideration was given to the environment as mining continued for over well over 100 years to allow toxins to poison the land Native Americans were “given” to live on. Considering how Native Indians viewed nature this is crime beyond reparation.


I'd say our Indian Americans were well within their rights to utilze money that was so FREELY given to others over themselves. I think of it as an irony that tilts the scales toward a little more balance.

I don't think 'most' people have the mindset that I can screw my life up and someone will bail me out....
While people are 'screwing' their lives up, generally the mindset is self-destructive.
Everyone deserves a second chance..a hand up, not a hand out.

We want our freedom in this country but only for those we deem worthy of freedom, right?