Political Quotes

“To respond to a couple of my friend's points. Let me begin by disagreeing respectfully with my friend's assertion that people are having their rights stripped away. The only people losing their rights here are Indian Tribes. That is what happened when the NLRB did what it did. Without the direction of Congress or the administration, it decided on its own it would treat Indian Tribal governments different than it treated other governments. So it is those rights to the Tribal governments that we are busy trying to restore. My friend, who, again, is very good on Indian issues, as a rule, and I understand the competing claims here. So I recognize the tension that is involved in that. But it is not as if Tribal governments don't have their own labor codes and their own standards. Frankly, those have to comply with American law. Under the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1965, there is absolutely nothing that a Tribal government can do that would contravene the guaranteed rights in the United States Constitution for all Americans. So to suggest that they are somehow violating the rights of American workers, I think, is to mischaracterize who they are and how they have acted. What they have said is, if we are sovereign, if the Federal Government says that State governments and local governments are allowed to regulate their own workforces, then Tribal governments are allowed to do the same. I want to disagree also with my friend.…”