"Chief Allan has heard it all his life.

Why do you Indians get so much help? Free this, free that, a check every month. Why do you have it so good?

“My whole life, everywhere, going to elementary school, going to middle school, going to high school, going to college … I always heard, ‘Why do you guys get all that (funding)? Why do you get those monthly checks?’ ” said Allan, the chairman of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

And so, when Allan heard Fox News bloviator John Stossel’s piece, “Freeloading Doesn’t Help the Freeloaders” – about the negative effects on tribes of the government’s “help” for them – it chapped his hide. Stossel didn’t mention the fictional monthly checks, but he managed to drag out every other element of the arguments Allan’s heard all his life.

“It’s totally wrong,” said Allan – for whom Chief is a name, not a title. “It’s not freeloading. We have contracts with the U.S. government; we traded millions of acres of land.”

Allan fired off a letter to Fox, asking for an apology and trying to set Stossel straight – though Stossel, whose attacks on “freeloaders” often focus on the rapacious, conniving poor and not, say, G.E., likely isn’t all that interested in getting things straight."

Get the Story:
Shawn Vestal: Fox talking head short on facts about tribes (The Spokesman Review 4/1)

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John Stossel: Freeloading doesn't help the freeloader Indians (3/30)
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