L.I. Indians on Warpath

In yesterday's Newsday the paper is reporting on the effort by two Long Island Indian tribes to form a coalition to protect "a vital source of our economic activity..." The activity in question just happens to be the illegal avoidance of paying taxes on the sale of cigarettes sold to non-Indians.

The representatives of the two tribes in question argue that an "overwhelming majority" of New Yorkers "supprt our ability to become self sufficient..." We wonder what New Yorkers would say if they knew that this whole scam was costing tax payers in the state hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost revenue.