Gambling on Tribal Lands. Legislative Constitutional Amendment.
	Rebuttal to Argument in Favor of Proposition 1A

Arguments on this page are the opinions of the authors and have not been checked for accuracy by any official agency.

Proposition 1A is not about keeping tribal casinos open. It's about slot machines. Up to 100,000 of them.

Federal law says Indian casinos can offer any game that's legal anywhere in their state. Bingo, poker, lotteries, betting on horses . . . all legal here. Defeat of Proposition 1A won't change that. But they want video slot machines, the "crack cocaine" of gambling, which our Constitution prohibits.

More slot machines than the whole Las Vegas Strip. And blackjack. Games that have always been illegal in California.

Some tribes violated state and Federal law and brought in illegal slot machines.

Those illegal machines have made a few small tribes extremely rich . . . and they poured over $75 million dollars into political campaigns in 1998! Over $21 million of that came from the three tribes that signed Proposition 1A's argument--with only 630 total members on their reservations!

Proposition 1A would let Indian casinos operate as many as 100,000 slot machines, according to California's independent Legislative Analyst. 107 tribes, each entitled to run two casinos, paying no state or Federal taxes on annual profits conservatively estimated between $3.9 billion and $8.2 billion--almost all from Californians.

Despite 1A's supporters' claims, Proposition 5 wasn't overturned by Nevada casinos on a "technicality." It was overturned by our Supreme Court because it violated California's CONSTITUTION. (So now they want to amend our Constitution!).

And Nevada? Nevada gambling companies are already being hired to run huge casinos that Proposition 1A will create.

Preserve our Constitution. VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 1A.

BRUCE THOMPSON
Member, California Assembly

LEO McCARTHY
Former Lieutenant Governor of California

MELANIE MORGAN
Recovering Gambling Addict

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