|
|
 |
|
Parlato: We should cancel Seneca preferences now
“Equality with Seneca” is our motto |
By Frank Parlato Jr.
March 22, 2006 (Niagara Gazette)
March 27, 2006 (PoliticsNY.net and Tonawanda News)
They’re going great guns. Astonished, the locals ask, “How do they do it, these Seneca gods?”
“Without taxes,” — that’s the answer.
The casino and their complex, and the infrastructure leading to it, were paid for, directly or indirectly, by tax-paying Americans — while Seneca pays none. With 50 acres, and the ability to open any business, the casino is merely the tip of the iceberg.
“The casino?” dumbfounded, the locals ask. “I thought that was all they got.”
It displaced a convention center where out-of-town people convened, then went to hotels and restaurants. It became a foreign casino, but tourists hardly come. The gamblers — by Seneca design — are mainly middle and low-income locals. Ironic: The Convention Center made money for locals from out of town people; the Foreign Casino (which displaced it) made money for out of town people (Seneca and Albany) from locals.
Here’s their formula: Win from a large number of petty gamblers, $50 to 100 at a clip; it’s called “the grind.” More lucrative and easier than attracting the big-time ‘gold-tooth’ gamblers — as are believed to be flocking to Las Vegas, the “grind” attracts the tinsel puff version: Shabbily dressed, unglamorously inelegant, grotesquely unlearned, often unshaved, sometimes unwashed, always sans suit and tie — these, who know nothing of the laws of probability. You can scan the whole place and not find anyone smiling, 4 million a year — on average $85 poorer.
A gold-tooth player loses a million and smiles. A bumpkin loses $50 and blames the gods, and curses his girlfriend. But that’s who they got at Seneca Niagara: Mr. Shabby. Nine times out of 10, he’s local born and bred.
In three years, $900 million of local’s monies lost, the ice skating rink, the convention center, seven restaurants, six taverns — closed. Two hotels foreclosed. Population dropped. Crime rising. Bankruptcy rising. Locals are pouring their entertainment money into slots, not spending it at cinemas or sporting events, local taverns or restaurants. Sometimes, if they spend too much — it comes out of groceries or rent.
However, Seneca, like Oliver Twist, wanted more: It opened a buffet, a pub, a “high-end” steak house, an Italian restaurant, an Asian restaurant, a glamour spa, a conference center, a bistro, a coffee shop, a nightclub, a 26-story, 604-room hotel, and gift shops galore.
While Americans pay sales tax, income tax and property tax, Seneca pays nothing while selling sweat shirts, baseball caps, T-shirts, sweaters, jackets, golf wear, costume jewelry, plush toys, jewelry, blankets, sculptures, TVs, high-end electronics, DVDs, golf clubs, cameras, diamonds and more.
If people drive miles to rural reservations to save a few dollars on cigarettes and gasoline, imagine how far they’ll drive when Seneca has as many stores as the Galleria Mall. A smoke shop, a gas station, a car dealership next? On a $20,000 car, $1,600 saved in sales tax.
How will the Galleria mall compete when they pay $3 million a year in property taxes and upwards of $20 million in sales tax? Or the Sheraton Millennium — which accommodates overnight Galleria shoppers — and pays another $2 million. But Seneca has its own hotel, so if tourists come, they can stay at the Seneca hotel bed-tax free.
“How did we let them take over the town?”
“Albany,” is the answer.
“But can we fight back?” The locals ask. “We haven’t the pluck.”
We could burn tires and blockade roads. We could charge tolls into Seneca, or sue Albany on the faultiness of a compact that left locals on an insurmountably uneven playing field. If opposition were vigorous, Seneca might opt to pay taxes on their retail operations in order to keep the monopoly on their million-per-day casino.
But the stumbling block is not the law: It’s the politically-correct apologists who claim we owe Seneca because they’re “our” victims.
Bewildered, Americans ask, “Why does a person, because of his race — and tribe — have an advantage over other Americans?”
The politically-correct answer is “because of what Columbus and Custer did. And how the white man savaged the Indian.”
The apologists secretly smile for Seneca. They publish erudite tomes on reparations. Sometimes, the liberal press joins in with the pejorative assumption that anyone who doesn’t agree is a bigot. The apologists, referring to people long-dead with similar skin hues, say “’we’ savaged the red man.”
Was it my ancestors? Wait — they were in Italy at the time.
Logically, the whole argument falls to pieces — unless, of course, they’re referring to reincarnation.
"We people in Niagara Falls really cheated the Indians in 1794,” I can imagine a person saying, perhaps remembering his past life. “It's about time we did something to make it up to them."
But, as one politically-incorrect American said, “I can’t work up enough guilt, since I wasn’t around in 1794.”
The whole argument that someone living in the 21st century owes someone else for what someone did to someone else in the 18th century is logically a fraud.
For those strong enough to understand it: It’s time to demand “equality with Seneca” now!
Frank R. Parlato Jr. is a Niagara Falls businessman.
Below are responses by some readers (of the Gazette and PoliticsNY.net) to the above article.
Seneca hotels and bed tax
By Ms. Margarita Castillo
March 31, 2006
Email: "In reference to Frank R. Parlato Jr. remarks about the Seneca. I can't say they do not pay a bed tax. We stayed at the hotel on Feb 19th. We were charged a bed tax. Also, if you were to buy a car from the Seneca, you still have to register it. That is when you will pay the sales tax, as with any item that has to be registered in New York State. So, Mr. Frank R. Parlato Jr., you may want to be sure of all your facts before you write about things that are not true." Margarita Castillo
Click here to read the response to this letter
Disagreeing with Parlato’s views
John M. Antone
Tuscarora Indian Reservation
April 04, 2006
I read Mr. Parlato's commentary (on March 22) pertaining to the "unfair advantages" the Senecas have at their Casinos and in their smoke shops. After reading it the first time, I got the impression that Mr. Parlato was just another hate spewing, whites-only racist. As soon as my initial appall over his rambling diatribe subsided, I realized that his views are just those of a small, ignorant man.
What racial or ethnic groups deserve different rules than others in the United States? How about those that have treaties with the federal government? African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Jews or Muslims don't have treaties with Uncle Sam, but we do. All of them broken, too. We’re not looking for reparations, handouts, or pity from the government, but upholding their end of countless treaties would be nice.
The casino is taking away business from mall-type stores (electronics, clothing, jewelry, etc.) because of their tax-free advantage? Apparently, Mr. Parlato has never set foot inside Seneca Niagara Casino, or he would know that all goods are marked up extremely high, sold almost entirely to players club members cashing in their comp dollars. Then again, it sounds like Mr. Parlato wouldn't care to sit at the blackjack table with any common man dressed in a T-shirt and blue jeans.
Mr. Parlato suggests a protest by burning tires on the roads leading to the casino. More power to you! Throughout American history, people have used protests of action when peaceful assembly has not worked.
Of course, these protests are only used as a last resort, when those backed into a corner feel actions speak louder than words. Ever hear of the Boston Tea Party, Whiskey Rebellion, or Harper’s Ferry?
What about the convention center being taken over by the Senecas? Please, that dump was heading nowhere fast! Any convention-goers would immediately head to Niagara Falls, Ontario, to spend their entertainment dollar. Now, as the casino grows and grows, local politicians fight over who gets the millions and millions in slot revenue (Unless they're in front of a camera, then it’s all smiles and hugs).
Forgive me, Frank, if I don’t shed a tear over your borderline racist, self-serving commentary. To me, it just sounds like the babbling of an ignorant man.
Click here to read the response to this letter
GUESTVIEW: Taking Parlato to task
By Carol Crown
April 08, 2006
This letter is in reference to the March 22 editorial: “We should cancel the Seneca preferences now.”
Frank Parlato Jr., a businessman, thinks the Seneca nation has obtained an unfair advantage over him and other “taxpaying” businessmen. He blames two things primarily: Albany and the Liberals for promoting the idea of “reparations” for past wrongdoings to minorities.
I blame businessmen, promoters of capitalism and the “American way.” Why? Do yo think that these “taxpaying” businessmen would have said one word about bringing gambling to this city if they, in the end, were the final benefactors? As a matter of fact, much of the pro-gambling rhetoric that finally convinced Albany to bring gambling to Niagara Falls was from people promoting the idea of an enhanced business environment for them or at least a trickle down (Republican, Conservative concept) to them.
I disagreed with that at the time. I was probably doing some of that “obnoxious” thinking Liberals do about the poor and “stupid” people who would pay the price ultimately, no matter if the benefactor was an Indian or a “taxpaying” businessman. They pushed that kind of Liberal “crap” out of the way, telling us we wee standing in the way of progress.
Please notice Parlato’s embrace of the Liberal concern that the poor and “stupid” would be paying the biggest price now. That’s new to the businessman’s agenda now that he seems to be reaping no benefit from the poor and “stupid” himself. They have modified it a bit from the Liberals by thoroughly describing them as the degenerates that they think they are as in Parlato’s description of the people targeted by “the grind” as being “grotesquely unlearned,” i.e., “stupid,” which I will forever put in quotes when speaking about this stereotype.
The Liberal defense of the poor is now a Republican defense in which they, at once, denigrate the poor for washing over this city in unholy masses and defend them as the ultimate losers of gambling.
Is Albany (our elected officials, not the Indians) to blame as Parlato says? Yes, but the idea was brought to Albany by Hisilk with the thought they, too, would benefit. In fact, the only reason this “cash cow” was presented to the Indians and not the “taxpaying” businessman directly was because they could not find a way to circumvent the good people of New York who would not hand over the right to gamble to them in the first place. They tried, oh they tried!
In the back door comes the Indian on a legislator’s training leash to get around the will of the people of New York, offering what they thought of as the equivalent of beads for the Island of Manhattan. Done deal. We would have our thriving gambling town with the precious milk of greed going down everyone’s throat. Oops! Somebody didn’t make it to the old milk bottle.
Yes, Albany is responsible. No, the Liberals and Reparations are not. No, the Indian is not. Yes, you are, Mr. Businessman.
By the way, I don’t care how it got there, but that new building downtown is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen rise from the doings of man on the good earth of Niagara Falls.
Carol Crown is a Niagara Falls resident.
Click here to read the response to this letter
GUESTVIEW: Weighing in on the Seneca debate
By Kristin Gansworth
Niagara Gazette
April 11, 2006
What a gravely embarrassing, misinformed and downright ignorant opinion was offered in the name of commentary by Frank R. Parlato Jr. on the Gazette’s March 22 opinion page. In failing to recognize the obvious weakness of his argument, Parlato exemplifies his idiosyncratically circular mindset regarding the local economic situation.
Here is a circumstance that is primarily and solely about that one thing that no one can get enough of — money — and it is magnified to become an issue of racism, spite and dissent. Unfortunately, opinions of this sort are available in abundance in this area, and it’s time that people took the initiative to digest the magnitude of what they are saying and what they truly know and understand about the United States.
For anyone living in reality and taking an honest look around this area, it is clear that Niagara Falls, as a whole, has continued to wane for the past 50-plus years, far before the casinos every crystallized into a concrete enterprise on which to blame every local problem from debt to crime to slovenly, undereducated citizenry.
Foremost, the debate over pros and cons of Indian-owned casinos is consistent with gambling in any area. Statistics exhibit that gambling does affect local economies in many ways, both good and bad.
Not a person around can deny the number of jobs created and expanded since the casino opened, doing more to boost local incomes than the previously underused convention center had ever accomplished.
Similarly, the casino has created its own share of problems as well. Whether or not casino gambling falls in line with “traditional” native ways is not only dubious, but almost debasing and hypocritical to the concept of indigenous culture as a whole. While it is true that simple gambling games were common in indigenous re-colonization societies, foreshadowing of large massive corporate enterprises is something that cannot be considered appropriate.
But that’s not their fault, is it? Whose idea was it to stampede into North America, claiming it as a new world of endless opportunity, vast availability and hundreds of thousands of uninhabited territories, not paying any mind to the well-developed cultures that survived off the land without destroying it since time immemorial?
I hardly believe the treaties currently upholding the Iroquois’ right to tax-free status were created so that cheap cigarettes, gambling venues, big screen televisions and other odd goods could be made available in abundance.
That, however, is the hand dealt to Senecas and other tribes as well — tax-free reservations, typically remote plots of land unsuitable for anything other than rotting away in the name of accepted genocide, in exchanged for exploitation of the land, which in traditional believe cannot be owned by anyone for any purpose.
They are taking that hand and educating themselves, exercising their fundamental right to that precious thing, that one precious thing warned about in traditional teachings: money. An Ojibway proverb states: “Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that your money cannot be eaten.”
The Seneca Gaming Corp. does not represent the “red man” wholly, nor does anything about their operation, practices or values.
If Parlato wants to discuss ancestors and their placement, perhaps he would like to consider the ancestors of the Senecas and countless other tribes who are likely rolling over in their graves, watching their people lose sight of ancient wisdoms and practices in the name of monetary gain, the warnings and premonitions of Seneca prophet Handsome Lake thrown aside.
But that’s not his concern. He and many others are interested in placing blame on someone, anyone, for their failures and difficulties, both personal and non-personal.
Unfortunately, this blame game is what forces little businesses out and big ready-to-conquer machines, well-oiled and well-equipped, to outrun others in a system of glorified Darwinism.
That system is called capitalism and is the way of this society, regardless of tax rights, George Custer, or the “unlearned, unsmiling” legions of automatons exercising their free will by pulling improbably cranks on slot machines in downtown Niagara Falls.
This occurs anywhere local citizens are outrun by mass enterprises that generate more money, more perpetuation of the ruthless manifest destiny-inspired idea that economic development, at whatever cost, is the key to success in this world.
Parlato and those like him merely have an obvious minority in which to base their scorn, envy and time-wasting editorial articles. If there’s anything to blame in this situation, it is the all-too-common, human inability to move past injury into recovery the tendency to dwell on what is wrong rather than how to fix it.
The solution is neither immediate nor simple and starts with the individual — not a faceless mass of business people simply dubbed “the red man.”
Kristin Gansworth is a resident of Sanborn.
The following letters are responses to the letters by the readers
Seneca Nation - a tax free nation
By Dr. Chitra Selvaraj
March 31, 2006
Email: "Margarita Castillo’s email intended to correct the record regarding Frank Parlato’s article about the Senecas urged me to call the new Seneca- Niagara hotel to see if Ms. Castillo or Mr. Parlato was right. It turns out Mr. Parlato is correct. There is no bed tax paid at the Seneca Hotel.
Ms. Castillo, who once stayed overnight there and paid a fee of some kind, was probably referring to the $10 occupancy fee they charge, which is NOT a tax. American owned hotels, of course, pay an 8% sales tax plus a 4% occupancy tax on hotel room sales. But the Senecas do not have to pay sales or occupancy tax. The occupancy fee the Senecas charge is their own fee and is certainly not mandatory- like it is for American owned hotels. I also learned that one does NOT have to pay sales tax or any other kind of tax when you buy anything in the Seneca Nation."
Dr. Chitra Selvaraj
Racism or reverse racism?
(Guest view - Niagara Gazette)
By Angela Castiglione
April 24, 2006
This is in response to a letter written by John Antone of the Tuscarora Indian Reservation defending the Seneca legal preferences. Mr Antone calls writer Frank Parlato’s demand for “equality under law” for the average American in Niagara Falls with the wealthy Seneca as “borderline racist.”
Demanding equality is racist? Since when?
I wonder, if Mr Antone is even aware that Seneca has legal rights superior to his own tribe- the Tuscarora.
The Seneca alone, not the Tuscarora, is permitted to open gambling casinos and tax-free hotels in Niagara Falls. However, in my mind, all men and women in the US are supposed to be equal. Mr. Antone, as an Indian, apparently believes he deserves legal preference.
But let me ask, why should one ethnic group deserve laws different than others while living in the US? Why should the Indians be privileged over other Americans? My ancestors came from Italy and faced degrading humiliation and constant prejudice -- but they became Americans. Upon becoming so, they became equal to every other American. The “Native American,” however live in a world apart, on and off their reservations. They have had complete tax-free advantages in the US for more than a century.
Are Americans supposed to atone to them for eternity? Still, what irks me is that many “Native Americans” call themselves American citizens only when it’s to their advantage. While using American roads, police protection, and other benefits and protections of our society, including the right to vote, they are equal to Americans. When it's time to pay for those privileges and services which they benefit from, they immediately cease to be an American. Now they are “Native American,” members of a sovereign nation who deserve privileges and legal preferences over other Americans.
Mr. Antone writes, “We're not looking for reparations, handouts, or pity from the government, but upholding their end of countless treaties.”
But where, Mr Antone, in those treaties, does it say Indians get free land for gambling casinos? Which treaty mentions Senecas should own casinos while Americans may not? Where does it say Albany can take land from the city of Niagara Falls to give it to a sovereign nation to make a gambling casino, when it is otherwise illegal to gamble in this state? We have a treaty in America too. It's called The Bill of Rights. It proclaims all Americans are equal and have the same rights as any other.
I would say this to all who are of Indian ancestry: if you believe you are an American, then become one. Stop looking for privileges over other Americans. On the other hand, if you are a foreigner to this nation -- the United States Of America, then I expect you should have less rights, not more than Americans.
But, it seems today some people are a Sovereign national when it suits them and an American citizen when that benefits them. That sounds a little like racism in reverse.
Angela Castiglione
Niagara Falls
But the good earth now belongs to Seneca
(Letters to the Editor - Niagara Gazette)
By Shellene Reich
April 25, 2006
This is in response to a guestview dated April 8 by Carol Crown.
In her op-ed, Crown is apparently in awe of the new Seneca Niagara hotel and lavishly praises the Seneca’s accomplishment.
She criticizes Frank Parlato’s opinion that the new 26-story, 604-room Seneca hotel building and the profit coming from it should have gone to the local American people of Niagara Falls. It should be paying taxes. It should be American-owned. Not owned by a foreign nation, because we have such poor leadership in Albany.
Crown, however, disagrees vehemently.
She writes referring to the Seneca hotel: “By the way, I don't care how it got there, but that new building downtown is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen rise from the doings of man on the good earth of Niagara Falls.”
Ms. Crown is awfully pleased when foreigners build grandiose structures. Very good. She should then be fairly agog at the goings on in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
However, I wish to remind her that, like the many new buildings in Niagara Falls, Ontario, the new Seneca-Niagara Hotel, which Ms. Crown calls a “new building downtown” is not located on the “good earth of Niagara Falls.”
True enough, that “good earth" upon which it sits used to be a part of Niagara Falls, N.Y., USA, but today it is on foreign soil, as Albany gave it away to a sovereign nation. Perhaps the correct way of saying it would be "the good earth of Seneca."
Albany, is the problem, Crown, and perhaps you should care how it got to be that only foreigners can build grandiose structures in our midst while the people in Niagara Falls N.Y. are virtually broke.
Shellene Reich
Niagara Falls
|
|
|
Contact Frank Parlato Jr. |
|
