Kyle Alspach writes in The Enterprise:
Clyde Barrow of UMass-Dartmouth said the Bureau of Indian Affairs will definitely take the claims into consideration.
At the very least, this will add extra time to the approval process, he said.
“The BIA will have to determine whether or not [the claims] are accurate,” said Barrow, who studies casinos through his Center for Policy Analysis.
So what about it? Do the Pokanoket and Mashpee lands overlap? Here is David Kibbe, writing in The Standard-Times:
Last year, legislation was filed in the Rhode Island General Assembly supporting their [the Pokanokets’] recognition. The bill said the tribal community “has existed in the vicinity of their ancestral lands in North-Central and Eastern Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts since prior to the first European contact…. The Pokanoket Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation entered into treaties and warred with the colonial governments, in particular the Great New England War of 1675-1676 aka the King Philips War.”
Middleborough, in case you didn’t know, was a major battleground in King Philip’s War.
My standard disclosure: I’ll be making an unpaid speaking appearance at a fundraiser this fall for Casinofacts.org, an anti-casino group based in Middleborough.
that Governor Patrick puts the final nail in this coffin.
I can’t imagine most Deval supporters wanted a casino.
That the Womponoags just bought a few months ago? Somehow I think the King Phillip war is a little past the statute of limitations, but that’s just me =p
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In any event, the more roadblocks to a casino in Massachusetts, the merrier! Let em slug it out.
The Wampanoag tribe is something of a corporate body. Maybe not a business corporate body, but regardless (more on this later).
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The Wampanoag tribe corporate body at some point in time bought some land. The tribe might not have actually occupied the land at any time during the tribe’s existence, but they bought it.
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Some of the leadership of the Wampanoag tribe corporate body negotiated a contract with the town of Mittleboro to do–something–it’s not clear what. A rather informal town meeting agreed by ballot vote to the contract. Sometime later, there was an even less formal vote to agree to a Casino.
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Now others vying for the management of the Wampanoag tribe corporate body want to rescind the contract and pretend that it didn’t exist.
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Sorry, but that does not compute.
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Regarding the “more on this later,” I’ll tell you another of my little stories. When I was in Tel Aviv about a dozen years ago, I was talking to some very intelligent people who happened to live on a kibbutz. We started talking about who owns what on the kibbutz, and they didn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about. It appears that nobody owns anything on the kibbutz, but everybody on the kibbutz has a part of it. And interesting introduction to socialism, Israeli style.
I mean the “rather informal” stuff.
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Or maybe I just don’t see your point about that vote, sorry.
Raj — You usually make sense. I don’t understand how you got off on this matter of the town meeting vote being “informal.” As has already been explained, town meeting is a town’s highest legislative body. A vote by town meeting is as “informal” as a vote by Congress.
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Yes, the way this particular town meeting was put together was a disgrace — a brutally hot day in the middle of the summer, a ban on children, anti-casino literature confiscated while pro-casino T-shirts and ballcaps were allowed, casino backers bringing in their voters in buses, etc., etc. But there was nothing informal about the vote.
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There was also nothing informal about the follow-up vote, in which those attending said that, all things considered, they’d really rather not have a casino come to town at all.
I’m at eight explainations and counting…maybe YOU he’ll believe!
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Show of hands, guy in foreground raising both of his.
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Ok, so maybe there was a little something informal about the final vote.
I again ask WHY it ws advisory, unless the proponents were concerned they would be defeated, but they do get legit bragging rights from it.
Surely you know that the proponents have publicly stated they would have made Article 3 a binding measure if town officials had allowed them to.
…by “informal” I am denigrating (i) the way that the vote was held, (ii) where it was held, and (iii) why it was held at that particular time. It is an opinion piece; unlike you, I am not a reporter.
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If the vote had been held at a regular town meeting (I presume that Middleboro has them every once in a while; Wellesley certainly does) and at a usual place at which town meetings are held (do they usually hold them lakeside during a time at which many people are on vacation?) I would not use “informal.” Surely this was hardly an emergency measure requiring a vote at the beginning of August (or so) when many people were going on vacation, and on the lakeside, no less.
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I have enough objections to Welleley holding its town elections at the beginning of March instead of November, but at least they are regular elections. But this in Middleboro was ridiculous.
implies it was not a real binding meeting. Or that people wore flip-flops or something. (Maybe some did wear flip-flops, but if so it is a bit of local color orthogonal to any issues of the legitimacy or appropriateness of the meeting.)
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Heaven forbid I should put words in the mouth of someone who is as articulate as Raj, but it seems to me that characterizing the Town meeting as unusual or irregular or (to be technically correct) special, or disgraceful if that is what you mean, would convey some sense of your criticism.
…if some persons want to hold a town meeting in the middle of a town swamp in the middle of winter, I frankly don’t care. I don’t live anywhere Middleboro. But that is the import of this meeting: we’ll hold it whenever and wherever we want it to be held. (Who is the “we” by the way? If they don’t have a town council, who is calling the meeting?)
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As far as I’m concerned, that’s a travesty. But apparently, to the Middleboroans, it’s not. Less power to them.
Nothing was done “lakeside”…we don’t have a lake here, I’ve told you a few times.
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There’s no such thing as a town council in Massachusetts, anywhere. We have boards and committees, but no councils. We do have town counsels — the lawyer who serve the incorporated town.
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Middleboro, like many towns, is governed by Open Town Meeting, and managed by a Town Manager under the supervision of a Board of Selectmen.
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The responsibility of planning and managing Open Town Meeting (annual or special) falls to the Moderator, which is an elected position.
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I know you think it’s really cute to use “informal meeting” and sHillary and pResident and all your other Easterbrookesque nomenclature. Maybe it gives you a tickle, but communicating by way of inside joke isn’t really that productive or even worthwhile.
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You clearly have no familiarity with local governance in Massachusetts, so I’m unsure why you enjoy throwing around half-baked opinions about it.
…if the meeting was not held lakeside, why was the original post accompanied by a picture of people by a lake?
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In point of fact, I have been involved in town government, over there in Wellesley. That is where I discovered how corrupt and useless town government was. They did not have an open town meeting–town meeting members are elected in March(!) and the selectmen are primarily real estate brokers and so forth. I used the general term “council” instead of “selectmen” because I did not know what they might have called the gremium in Middleboro.
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As to your distress regarding my commenting style, I will let you know that I will continue to use the phrases that you don’t like to express sarcasm. Get used to it. I’m not going to use “mir wuerst” every time I want to say “I don’t give a sh!t” because virtually nobody here would understand what I had written. Capiche? (“Mir egal”–it’s all the same to me–is the more elegant phrase)
I just re-examined the photos. There’s no lake, and nothing similar to a lake in them. Either you were confused by the white canopy, or the sky.
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Perhaps you’re versed in Wellesley politics (the device you’re trying to describe is called a “representative town meeting”), but clearly out of your depth anywhere else. The fact that town government is either a selectmen/town meeting combo or a mayoral structure is basic knowledge in Massachusetts.
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And as for your commenting style, you can stick to any crotchedy devices you want, doesn’t bother or distress me at all. If you don’t want to be taken seriously, that’s your business — you’re not the only one who knows how to use a scroll bar.
The Cape Cod Times reports today that one of the Big Money guys behind the casino was accused of bribing a South African official in 1996. And Steve Bailey has a can’t-miss commentary in the Boston Globe.
I hope he decides on the merits. I hope he is not swayed solely by the cash the casinos wave at the state or the “field people” that are on these blogs and were making the calls and knocking on doors last year.
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We elected him to lead and believe in him to make the best decision for the state. Not the best decision his supporters agree with.
I’ve made it clear what I think the merits are, but your point is taken.
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My concern is that Patrick’s inner circle is casino-friendly, so therefore I hope he hears from the people.
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Especially people who agree with me. :-!
I have not read everything you have written. Your point is clear now.
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Regardless, we can trust him. Right? đŸ˜‰