President Obama does the right thing for Native Americans (where three presidents failed to)

[bigtree]

Native Americans Win Justice, at Last

By JIM MCTAGUE

____In this culture of caricature, President Barack Obama is sketched by his opponents as an enemy of free markets, fanner of the flames of class warfare and a hollow speechifyer. There is some truth to this, as are there truths in the left's barbed criticisms of the right. But in this season of joy, why not forgo being so blinded by ideology that you fail to see his positives? Most important among these, in my opinion, is Obama's unfeigned empathy for the poor.

The evidence for this not only is his doomed effort to provide almost everyone with "affordable" medical coverage (the bill's cost-savings are delusional, so it hardly will be affordable), but also his $3.4 billion settlement with 300,000 American Indians west of the Mississippi who, for 13 years, had been suing the Department of Interior in federal court for mismanaging their trust funds. They alleged losses of $10 billion to $40 billion over 75 years.

THEIRS IS AN OUTRAGEOUS TALE of the weak versus a callous, arrogant federal bureaucracy; the native Americans wouldn't have gotten satisfaction if President Obama hadn't interposed himself.

The Indians, whose communities are the most impoverished in the U.S., had been trying to obtain an administrative fix to the trust-fund problem for two decades. Money owed them for oil, mineral, timber and grazing rights on their lands was missing, and the accounting by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was so inadequate that no one could say if the funds had been lost, stolen or used as a slush fund by Interior Department officials.

The plaintiffs claimed all of the above.

Officials in President George Herbert Walker Bush's administration appreciated the grave injustice when Indian representatives brought it to their attention during that president's final year in office, but the clock ran out before they could act. Ironically, the Indians believed that President Bill "I Feel Your Pain" Clinton would pick up where the first Bush administration had left off. Instead, Clinton handed off the problem to bureaucrats at the departments of the Interior, Treasury and Justice, who scoffed at the claims and instinctively dug in their heels . . .

read more: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB126166900300804415.html

[newfie11]

1. Its about time! n/t

[NJmaverick]

2. Yes we can!

[BlooInBloo]

3. And the countdown until we hear about white folks whining about "reparations"...

a little bit louder than we usually do begins.....

NOW!

[jonnyblitz]

13. yeah, white people fucking SUCK.

:sarcasm:

[shadesofgray]

4. "Obama's unfeigned empathy for the poor"? Is that why they had to settle for a 1/10 of what they

were owed?

Oh, but they aren't a huge corporation. Just a group of impoverished people. They sure are lucky Obama had "empathy" for them.

[bigtree]

5. Did the Indians get justice?

"I think it was the best we could do," says Elouise Cobell (a Blackfeet Indian woman from Browning, Mont. who filed a class-action lawsuit in federal district court in the District of Columbia in 1996).

"The case may have dragged on for another 20 years." In which case, she adds, most of the plaintiffs would have died by the time it was concluded.

[liberalmuse]

7. OMG.

Are you fucking serious? Once again, we hear the bray of the 'all-or-nothing' crowd. I love fairy tales, too, where everyone gets everything they want and they live happily ever after, but this is REALITY.

[G_j]

6. K&R

[sendero]

8. There was no entrenched corporate interest..

.. here, just a few more taxpayer billions. I'll be impressed when he actually SIDES WITH THE PEOPLE OVER CORPORATIONS, and not before.

[KittyWampus]

12. Well, the recipients of that 3 billion dollars who currently are living in poverty are impresseed

[Rosa Luxemburg]

9. Who are the people who stole the money?

Abramoff?

[leftofcool]

14. Naw, goes way back to the Lincoln Administration

His secretary of interior, and the name escapes me, Simon someone stole money from the Indians and nothing was done except Lincoln fired him. Can't remember all the details.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. Just three ??

Oh, you mean on this SPECIFIC lawsuit ...

[azul]

11. Right right now is really good.

I dislike it intensly when Obama regularly sings his theme song and wickedly give us the wink.



"Yeah I wanna do right but not right now

Oh me oh my oh, look at Miss Ohio
She a-runnin’ around with her rag-top down
She says I wanna do right , but not right now
Oh I wanna do right but not right now"
-Gillian Welch

[EFerrari]

15. Here's a write up in Indian Country Today

Cobell settlement waits for Congress
Extension needed
By Rob Capriccioso

Story Published: Dec 24, 2009

Story Updated: Dec 24, 2009

WASHINGTON – Deadlines involving the Cobell v. Salazar settlement are fast approaching, with congressional action required by month’s end, or the Indian plaintiffs and the federal government will have to agree to an extension.

Congress and the court overseeing the case must accept the agreement, which was announced Dec. 8, for it to become final.

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs heard testimony Dec. 17 to determine whether it should support a federal government move toward settling the case.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., SCIA chairman, believes Congress might need an extension, but he expressed confidence at the hearing that the deal, which he supports, will ultimately be approved.

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/80056982.html