Indian Casino Farmers

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Yolo-tribe-adds-farms-to-casino-neighbors-unhappy-3654203.php

This is a very weird article about an Indian casino in California that is turning their vast land holding into farms. Capay Valley is a very pretty valley about an hours drive from San Francisco.  A two lane highway runs through the valley.  In the middle of the valley is a huge resort casino.  The traffic congestion can be very bad, but the casino itself is a financial boon to the locals who embrace the traffic and the Indian tribe itself.
For fun, let's look at some of the quotes.

Marshall McKay, the tribal chairman, sits at a board table looking serious and presidential as he contemplates the question. (Referring to farming and gambling.)
"They're both gambling," he deadpans.

Next is the strangest quote from the article

"Selling the idea to the rest of the tribe in the beginning was problematic. We are not farmers," McKay says, adding that for thousands of years his people were hunters, gatherers and fishermen.
I think he should have said "...hunters, gatherers, fishermen and casino operators."

It is strange how so often a person who represents a group can make such racist comments about the group they represent. Imagine what McKay would say if someone else wrote. "Indians cannot farm, they are hunters and gatherers."

Let's read from the opposition.

"It's sort of like someone coming from New York to Napa and throwing tons of money into planting vineyards," says Tom Frederick, who along with his wife, Pam Welch, owns Capay Valley Vineyards. Welch is president of Capay Valley Coalition, an organization of about 100 residents dedicated to keeping the area zoned mostly for farming. "I think they're using the farming to distance themselves from the casino," he says.

"It's like having a super developer with unlimited funds and no rules and accountability living alongside us dirt farmers," Frederick says. "They'll always have the biggest and best tractors."

It always comes down to size doesn't it?

By the way, if you go over the hill behind the casino, they have one of the prettiest golf courses I have ever seen.