"It's not one of Dante's circles of hell, but it could be a distant suburb. The Coushatta Casino Resort in Kinder, La., is not kind to the elderly people�yes, with walkers, or balancing on canes, or in wheelchairs or electric carts�who move almost like zombies from one slot machine to the next. In Norman Rockwell's world they would be surrounded by grandchildren, maybe with steam rising from a turkey; here, the smoke rises from the cigarettes some hold in the left hand as they pull on a one-armed bandit with the right.

The rural area surrounding the casino looks run-down and poor. If there is a nicer part of Kinder it is well hidden, and even the casino falls far short of Las Vegas glitz. It all makes a reporter wonder about the destination of the $300 million per year that the casino brings in�and then the Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed memos come to mind, with their notation of tens of millions of dollars spent by the Coushatta tribe to stop the emergence of competitors who could attract the addicts who would otherwise come to Kinder.

If you're not familiar with this scandal, take a look at WORLD issues of Nov. 19, 2005, and Jan. 14 and Feb. 4, 2006. Essentially, Mr. Reed received millions of dollars from Mr. Abramoff for getting anti-gambling evangelicals to act (mostly unknowingly) to keep hundreds of millions rolling to the Coushatta tribe. Whether Mr. Reed, now running for lieutenant governor of Georgia, actually did what he said he was doing and was paid to do�such as getting Focus on the Family to energize its listeners to contact government officials�is still unclear. "

Get the Story:
Coushatta chronicle (The World Magazine 3/4)
Abramoff/Reed scandal (The World Magazine 2/17)

Relevant Links:
Read About Reed - http://www.readaboutreed.com
Stop Ralph Reed - http://www.stopralphreed.com
Ralph Reed - http://www.ralphreed.com
Century Strategies - http://www.censtrat.com

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