Until the GOP learns to distinguish opinion from arithmetic, unemployment will coexist with failing infrastructure. We still use public works built by the WPA and the CCC for the New Deal, when the major objective was to put people to work. Since President Reagan, the major objective has been to shrink the government, which Mr. Reagan said is the problem, not the solution.

Reagan’s acolyte, Grover Nordquist, said it best: “Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.”

This nonsense is seductive to some Indians because they are used to a corrupt tribal government being the only substantial employer and then only for the relatives and cronies of those running the government. From here in the cheap seats, it appears to me that the tribal governments most likely to avoid that mire are those that use income from extractive industries or casinos to diversify.

Resource extraction is temporary because of depletion. Casino money is temporary because of market saturation and a limited supply of suckers that state government will become less willing to share. Tribal governments can “share the wealth” with voters by per capita payments or maintain the wealth for coming generations by capitalizing businesses and training tribal citizens to run them. It’s a stark choice between short-term political gain and long term prosperity.

Let’s not get started on the kind of basic research that leads to new technologies. It’s a symptom of Indian country’s problems that even mentioning these things is to invite ridicule. How do we make basic research real in Indian country when it’s fading in the country generally?