Major Case of Deflectitis

Saturday 11 February 2012 - Filed under Uncategorized

A South Dakota tribe of Sioux American Continental first-comers has decided to come down with a major case of deflectitis, suing various domestic beer companies for the horrific crime of supplying beer. You know, because it was there, members of their tribe HAD to drink it. They couldn’t NOT buy the beer. Or something. ABC News:

An American Indian tribe sued some of the world’s largest beer makers Thursday, claiming they knowingly contributed to devastating alcohol-related problems on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota said it is demanding $500 million in damages for the cost of health care, social services and child rehabilitation caused by chronic alcoholism on the reservation, which encompasses some of the nation’s most impoverished counties.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court of Nebraska also targets four beer stores in Whiteclay, a Nebraska town near the reservation’s border that, despite having only about a dozen residents, sold nearly 5 million cans of beer in 2010.

Tribal leaders and activists blame the Whiteclay businesses for chronic alcohol abuse and bootlegging on the Pine Ridge reservation, where all alcohol is banned. They say most of the stores’ customers come from the reservation, which spans southwest South Dakota and dips into Nebraska.

“You cannot sell 4.9 million 12-ounce cans of beer and wash your hands like Pontius Pilate, and say we’ve got nothing to do with it being smuggled,” said Tom White, the tribe’s Omaha-based attorney.

Tribe members go outside the confines of the reservation where alcohol has been banned for 180 years¹ in order to purchase beer at stores in a place where alcohol is not banned, and somehow it’s the beer manufacturers and stores that sell it legally which are at fault for alcoholism on the reservation? Tribe members go out of their way to get alcohol, and tribal leaders want to deflect the blame on outside entities. I suggest that the Sioux tribe procure a dictionary and look up the words “personal” and “responsibility”.

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1. You see? Prohibition really does work. I mean, alcohol has been illegal on the reservation for 180 years yet the “reservation has struggled with alcoholism and poverty for generations, despite an alcohol ban in place since 1832” and “[o]ne in four children born on the reservation suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.” Success! If it weren’t for those pesky companies making and selling beer in accordance with the law, the Sioux wouldn’t have to worry about alcoholism.

2012-02-11  »  madlibertarianguy