Cheat Seeking Missiles: Casinos Buy NAACP Support

Mandatory disclaimer: Nobody pays me to be against gambling; I just am.

I am particularly against the four Indian casino measures on the Feb. California ballot (Prop. 94, 95, 96, 97), in which four fabulously wealthy tribes will permission to vastly increase the number of slot machines they operate in return for a pittance of the new revenue the slots will generate as a payoff to the state.

Here's the opposition site -- funded, of course, not by anyone I like, but primarily the sleazy Vegas casino operators.

Update: Here's a better opposition site that lays out 14 strong, funny and maddening reasons to vote against the propositions. End update.

On the pro side, the tribes are pulling out the stops, all the stops ... call it their "black ops" --

The president of the California NAACP has been paid more than $40,000 in consulting fees – and the organization itself has received $60,000 – from a coalition of Indian tribes at the same time the civil rights group has endorsed four ballot measures pushed by its tribal benefactors.
The payments to Alice Huffman, who has served as president of the state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People since 1999, continue a three-year pattern in which Huffman's political firm has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by special interest groups.
Those same interests, including tobacco and pharmaceutical companies, have also donated tens of thousands of dollars directly to the state NAACP while receiving the organization's backing. (SacBee)

Huffman operates the NACCP out of the same office she runs her "political consulting" firm from. Now she might have spent hours on the phone with the reporter explaining exactly what she did for the tribes for her $40 K -- the meetings she held, the direct mail pieces she produced -- but there's nothing about it in the article ... probably because there was nothing to write about.

Huffman acknowledges that running a ~~shakedown shop~~ political consulting firm while running the Cal. NAACP has lead to many allegations of conflict of interest in the past, but:

She continues her consulting work because "campaigning and politics is my livelihood," she said. "That's how I make my money to buy my Gucci handbags and other things that enhance my standard of living."

And in that regard, she is cut from the same polyester as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton -- blacks who make a good, if immoral, living out of nothing more than being black.

Her support of the props, and the NAACP's support, are just one more good reason to vote against these propositions.

Note: There's also an interesting gambling-fired battle going on in Nevada, where Hillary is saying gambling is just terrific (whoring for the casino labor vote), and attacking Obama for his anti-gaming record in the Illinois statehouse, where his position was that gaming had a high "moral and social" cost that is devastating black communities. Read more in the LA Times.

Hillary, you are showing your true colors: chameleon ... no, more like ... Predator