{"id":12916,"date":"2014-03-05T13:04:54","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T21:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=12916"},"modified":"2021-07-19T06:27:32","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T14:27:32","slug":"tribal-casinos-good-for-your-health-bet-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/tribal-casinos-good-for-your-health-bet-on-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Tribal casinos good for your health? Bet on it"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Reservation shopping” used to be Us versus Them language, as the private sector sought to hold back tribal casinos. Now it’s been added to the arsenal of tribe-on-tribe verbal violence<\/a>. Writes the New York Times<\/em>, “casino-owning Indian tribes have emerged as some of the most powerful and dogged opponents of new Indian casinos.”<\/p>\n

Groups like the North Fork Band of Mono Indians<\/strong>, in California<\/strong>, or the Menominee Tribe<\/strong>, in Wisconsin<\/strong>, live in conditions of grinding poverty. Between successful lobbying and a sympathetic administration in the White House<\/strong>, they’re making the most headway in years in terms of getting off-reservation land taken into trust for eventual casino development. That chaps casino-owning tribes like the Chukchansi Indians<\/strong> something fierce. The latter has a strong Wall Street<\/strong> ally in Brigade Capital Management<\/strong>. They’re not going to let the Mono Indians horn in on their Fresno<\/strong>-area market without a fight. In fact, they’re taking it to the voters with a November ballot question. With 60-odd casinos generating $7 billion a year in profits, this is a high-stakes game for California’s 109 indigenous tribes.<\/p>\n

(It’s not a California-only phenomenon either. An epic struggle continues to evolve\u00a0[devolve?] between several Phoenix<\/strong>-area bands.)<\/p>\n

One tribal lobbyist goes so far as to use tribes as bogeymen against one another, evoking the spectacle of tribal casinos next to Disneyland<\/strong>. And\u00a0Steven Light<\/strong>, co-director of the University of North Dakota<\/strong>\u2019s Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law & Policy<\/strong> predicts that if the Chukchansi prevail at the ballot box, “it will be a definitive statement from the people of California that enough is enough and they don\u2019t want the continued expansion of tribal gaming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Definitive? I wouldn’t bet on it.<\/p>\n

Tribal casinos are getting<\/strong> some good press today. The\u00a0Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health<\/strong> has found a link<\/a> between casino-enabled tribes and lower rates of childhood obesity<\/a>. Employing “cross-sectional anthropometric measurements,” tribes in California were surveyed and “researchers reported a 0.19% decrease in overweight or obesity for every slot machine per capita gained.” Annual income was also shown to grow $541 per capita per slot added. Endocrine Today<\/em> writes, “researchers concede that additional research is needed to identify the mechanisms underlying the association,” although it’s pretty clear-cut that poverty isn’t conducive to good health.<\/p>\n

There was some pro forma tut-tutting: “They found that, although casinos may increase income and lower BMI, they also bring with them a range of other issues.” Of how many industries might that not<\/em> be said? Personally, I’d rather live down the street from a casino (well, I sort of do) than near a petroleum refinery or a steel mill. Of course, with 48% of respondents being classified as overweight or obese, it goes without saying that more still needs to be done.<\/p>\n

What a relief<\/strong>. Sabotage has been ruled out<\/a> in the sinking of Wayne Newton<\/strong>‘s yacht. Considering the number of people to whom Newton is in hock, I doubt they’d scuttle a fungible asset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Reservation shopping” used to be Us versus Them language, as the private sector sought to hold back tribal casinos. Now it’s been added to the arsenal of tribe-on-tribe verbal violence. Writes the New York Times, “casino-owning Indian tribes have emerged … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[109,34,117,33,20,138,170],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12916"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29859,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12916\/revisions\/29859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}