Friday, February 26, 2010

Crooked and corrupt Red Lake Nation Chairman Floyd "Buck" Jourdain cries about lack of law enforcement funding from tax-payers...


Jourdain leads one of the most violent, crooked and corrupt drug dealing operations in the world working in conjunction with Red Lake Gaming Enterprises' three Seven Clans Casinos in Red Lake, Thief River Falls and Warroad, Minnesota--- none of which pay one single dime in taxes in spite of reaping profits head-over-heels and he has the nerve to complain tax-payers aren't putting enough money into a law enforcement outfit that employs police officers who sell the drugs they confiscate on other reservations, rape young women in the parking lot of casinos and tell drug dealers when and where drug raids will be taking place.

The BIA shouldn't waste one more dollar financing any part of Jourdain's corrupt feudal empire. 

There is a crime problem on the Red Lake Indian Reservation because Floyd Jourdain is the biggest criminal of them all. 


Published February 20 2010
Jourdain: BIA shows uppity Indians who’s in charge
After six years as elected Red Lake chairman, I thought I’d seen everything there is to see about the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
By: Floyd “Buck” Jourdain Jr., Bemidji Pioneer
After six years as elected Red Lake chairman, I thought I’d seen everything there is to see about the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Red Lake recently obtained a spreadsheet made by the agency that shows how it distributed its substantial increases in law enforcement funding in recent years.
I was shocked. This BIA spreadsheet is proof that when a tribe like Red Lake stands up for its own interests, the BIA will try to slap it down. If we take on self-governance authority to help ourselves, the BIA will punish us. Beware the vengeance of BIA bureaucrats against uppity Indians.
While overall BIA law enforcement operations funding went up 41.7 percent in the five years preceding fiscal year 2010, the BIA spreadsheet shows that it allocated only a 6.8 percent increase to Red Lake, a self-governance tribe, over those same years, and the 230 self-governance tribes collectively got a 10 percent increase, compared to a 26 percent increase for 638 tribes in the same period.
What’s worse, year after year, increase after increase, the BIA kept the lion’s share of the law enforcement increases for its own operations (BIA District Commands up more than 50 percent; BIA Direct Service operations up more than 40 percent; BIA Central Office-controlled up 280 percent).
It appears the BIA is trying to teach self-governance tribes like Red Lake a lesson — if we want to share in funding increases, we should abandon self-governance.
For the current FY 2010, Congress gave the BIA another relatively huge 26.7 percent law enforcement increase. Will this administration finally bring Red Lake law enforcement funding up to an equitable level, or will the BIA again flat-line our law enforcement funding like the Bush administration allowed it to do during the past four years because we wanted to govern ourselves? Stay tuned.
For the past half decade, Congress thought it was increasing Indian law enforcement spending in an equitable fashion. And the BIA insisted in meeting after meeting that it was not short-changing Red Lake. They said, in effect — “How dare you think otherwise!” Not only were the BIA officials adamant, some were rude and disrespectful to Red Lake representatives, sometimes shouting us down when we questioned their claims in tribal budget advisory meetings.
Now we know for a fact what we have long suspected; BIA law enforcement funding decisions have favored some direct service and 638 contracting tribes and penalized “uppity” self-governance tribes who are so rash as to think we can run our own programs better. I guess the old Bossing Indians Around agency has shown us a thing or two about who’s who and what’s what.
It’s been a year since President Obama was elected to change things in Washington. While I recognize that progress has been made on a few issues, we continue to await the sort of change that we can believe in with the staff at the BIA.
Have things changed at all when it comes to controlling the BIA and the career staff down the line? Are the people at the top — in the secretary and assistant secretary’s offices — letting the bureaucrats continue to run the BIA unchallenged and unquestioned? Their inattention and indecision are grinding us down.
Red Lake has a real youth crisis on our hands. Gangs, violence, drugs, alcohol
and school truancy among some, not all, but some, of our youth are real challenges for our families and our tribal government.
My predecessors at Red Lake saw this youth crisis coming more than a decade ago and secured a U.S. Department of Justice grant to build a new juvenile jail to house 24 girls and boys and provide them with comprehensive treatment services.
This was done under a policy set in place by President Clinton: If the Justice Department built a tribal jail the Interior Department agreed it would fund its operation.
Our juvenile jail was finished and ready to open in 2005. BIA put $500,000 worth of furnishings in it. But after BIA law enforcement bureaucrats realized we were going to operate it under self-governance authority, BIA refused to fund its program operation. So our new juvenile jail sits empty to this day, five years later, and our kids lack basic juvenile justice services. After we sued, a federal judge found last year that the BIA breached its funding promise and still, the Interior Department won’t settle the case and pay up so we can open the jail.
Our new juvenile jail is an empty monument to the wasteful and vindictive attitudes of some BIA officials against tribal self-governance. I have begun to think we should take a cue from other national monuments and charge admission and give tours. Thus far, no one with the power and spine to change things has been to visit Red Lake to tour our empty jail and do something about it.
The promise of the federal policy in support of tribal self-governance was that the government closest to those served will be most efficient, most accountable and most closely reflective of the needs and priorities in the community to be served. It was supposed to mean a reduction in the federal workforce and a transfer of those resources to tribal control located in tribal communities.
That federal policy has failed at Red Lake. But our tribal policy of self-governance has succeeded. Today we at Red Lake can show we’ve maximized the bang we get for every federal dime we receive. Our tribal members, through our Tribal Council, have reprioritized how federal dollars are spent.
But some BIA bureaucrats continue to see us as a threat to their jobs. So they throw our crime statistic reports in the trash can and then claim we don’t report so we don’t get funding increases. They promise to find the money to operate our new juvenile jail facility and then breach that promise and make us sue them to get the money. They “lose” our pay cost data and won’t give us our fair share of pay cost increases, even though we sent copies to everyone up the ladder including the assistant secretary.
They hold back high crimes funding because they claim we don’t cooperate with the FBI on drug enforcement even though we maintain a good and active working relationship with the FBI and have reduced our drug offenses by 38 percent since 2007 despite the fact that BIA has flat-lined our law enforcement funding during that same period.
So why does this keep happening? Is it because the Office of Self-Governance has dropped the ball? Who is really in charge of the BIA — the political appointees with a mandate for change or the career bureaucrats? Is the new leadership willing to insist on discipline and fair treatment down the ladder? Is this assistant secretary, nice man that he is, tough enough to demand that BIA treat self-governance tribes fairly? And then follow through to make sure it is done?
I’m waiting to find out.
Floyd “Buck” Jourdain Jr. is the tribal chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Now hiring...



Red Lake Gaming Enterprises


New casino.

Opportunities galore!!!


Get to work in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casino.

Poverty wages guaranteed.

Enjoy working without any rights under state or federal labor laws.





Side jobs available to put a little extra cash in your pocket to tide you over between stops at the food shelf:

Prostitution.

Drug dealing.

Illegal gambling: sports betting, ponies.


Management gets extra sideline perks:

Booze sales.

Loan-sharking based upon profit-sharing.



Qualify for government funded programs while working:

Food stamps.

Welfare.



Great health benefits if you can find a doctor willing to take you.


Fabulous pension plan that will eat up your future as fast as any one-armed bandit courtesy of Alerus, the professionals in  Retirement Solutions... a company as honest as any slot machine.


Nice rural setting.

Close to Bemidji.



Rub elbows with top drug dealers in the world and your favorite politicians.


Apply today.

A lifetime of poverty guaranteed.

Police protection only a phone call away from the Red Lake Tribal Police--- world famous protectors of drug dealers and perpetrators of violent crimes from rape to home invasions.


Red Lake Gaming Enterprises...

Where democracy ends and a lifetime of misery begins.

An equal opportunity employer--- everyone, regardless of age, race, creed or color gets treated like crap.

For employment information---

Contact:

Raymond J. Brenny
Chief Operating Officer
Red Lake Gaming Enterprises

or,

Floyd "Buck" Jourdain
Red Lake Nation Tribal Chair & Feudal Lord


Note: Special employment applications available for reliable drug dealers. Must complete appilcation at Red Lake Police Department.


Floyd "Buck" Jourdain teaches parenting classes every Monday evening.

State Representative Brita Sailer trains all employees in customer relations with her award-winning smile. 

Special training sessions by Minnesota State Attorney General Lori Swanson held for female employees: How and where to file sexual harassment complaints in Minnesota... using the circular file.

Special political action classes available to all employees of Red Lake Gaming Enterprises taught by John McCarthy and Stanely Crooks. Certificates suitable for framing available upon completion. Limited supply of brown paper shopping bags to first ten enrollees. Learn how to bribe a politician and get away with it.

We are experiencing high employee turn-over so come on in for a job and start having fun now.




Fun pop quizz for new hires:

Should you vote for Mark Dayton for Governor?


Special notice:

No union organizing on casino premises. Report presence of union organizers immediately.


World-class security provided by: USIS


Red Lake Gaming Enterprises...


All new---


Seven Clans Casino - Red Lake



You haven't experienced the enjoyment of employment until you have worked for us--- everyday working is like a vacation on us :)



New hires: Ask about special rates for Wayne Newton approved AFLAC health insurance... rated #1 in the business by the world's leading health insurance salesman, Barack Hussein Obama... quack, quack!


Red Lake... a northern paradise of poverty hidden in the northwoods of Minnesota courtesy of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party... every casino worker is guaranteed a poverty wage... heart and lung diseases a special bonus.

Watch for our advertising in the Bemidji Pioneer, Lakeland Public Television, KAXE... never a bad word about the way we treat our employees.




"Smut" Fairbanks says:

"No lazy fuckers need apply here."

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Casino Workers Form New Gaming Council

Casino Workers Form New Gaming Council

March 19th, 2009 · No Comments

Casino workers from Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Detroit and Connecticut joined together today to carry out a broad organizing, bargaining and communications agenda.

The new Gaming Workers Council, which includes the UAW, Transport Workers (TWU) Gaming Division, the AFL-CIO and SEIU, also will reach out to other partners to support a common agenda on behalf of workers in the casino industry.

The group’s first order of business will be support for ongoing contract campaigns for casino dealers in Atlantic City. Says Sharon Masino, a casino dealer at Caesars in Atlantic City and a member of the UAW/AC Dealers Union:

With everybody joining together, we’ll be stronger than ever. We’re going to win good contracts in Atlantic City and move on to help casino workers all over the country.

The council also will assist in bargaining efforts on behalf of casino workers in Las Vegas, Indiana, Connecticut and elsewhere who have voted to form their own unions and are fighting to win first contracts. The council members also plan to reach out to hundreds of thousands of unorganized casino workers and communicate about working conditions in the gaming industry to union members, the public, elected officials, casino regulators and investors.

UAW Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn says:

[The struggle for justice at the casinos] is about workers who have had their hours reduced, who are paying more for health care, who have lost their seniority rights and who have been shut out at the bargaining table by casino executives who make millions of dollars a year.

Two years ago, 80 percent of casino dealers at Caesars Atlantic City voted in favor of UAW representation. Full- and part-time dealers and slot techs at Tropicana Casino and Resort, Trump Plaza and Bally’s also have voted to form their own unions, but casino operators have either refused to bargain or stalled the negotiating process.

The same situation exists in Las Vegas, where casino dealers at Wynn and Caesars Palace voted for TWU by an overwhelming margin within the past two years after management tried to grab their tip money and cut their pensions and other benefits, but casino executives there also have failed to meet their responsibilities to bargain fairly with workers.

Here’s TWU Executive Vice President Harry Lombardo:

The casinos we are dealing with were once Nevada-only businesses but today are national and multinational in their reach. If we are to best represent workers in the gaming industry, unions need to take a national, and perhaps global, approach and that is exactly what we are doing today.

The unity of the unions will add new power to gaming workers “who are courageously pursuing their dreams,” says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Construction to begin on Red Lake casino

Mobsters continue to plunge Red Lake Nation further into debt... another new casino... another smoke-filled casino... more poverty wages... workers will have no rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws.

Former Red Lake Nation Chairman Roger Jourdain always explained to people that "debt equals poverty."

Roger Jourdain understood that the only way most Native Americans would get anything out of casinos is if casino workers are organized into unions.

It is no coincidence that casino building plans are in the works for this new casino which will plunge the Red Lake Nation into further debt... and there are plans to build a new casino in Warroad.

More debt.

More poverty.

More poverty wages.

More denial of human rights.

The entire ecosystem, a massive freshwater aquifer, that sustains the life of the Red Lake Nation now hangs in the balance with peat mining in the Big Bog set to begin this winter (2008-2009); the entire ecosystem known as the Big Bog along with the sovereignty of the Red Lake Nation traded-off in a dirty, racist back-room deal behind the backs of the people of the Red Lake Nation in exchange for consideration of the right to build a huge new casino/convention center in International Falls, Minnesota... a deal orchestrated by Democrats; led by Democratic United States Congressman James Oberstar.


The mobsters in charge of Red Lake Gaming Enterprises will see to it that debt always exceeds incoming revenues; thus assuring continued and increasing poverty for the people of the Red Lake Nation; turning a proud people into beggars before a corrupt, racist, anti-human state government owned by the banks and corporations.

Make no mistake, poverty, more than anything else, jeopardizes the sovereignty the Red Lake Nation.

There is one big problem: Red Lake Nation Chair Floyd Jourdain and the Tribal Council has told the people of the Red Lake Nation nothing but lies about this new casino so people had no real chance to discuss this project.



Construction to begin on Red Lake casino

Posted: July 23, 2008

by: Greg Peterson



RED LAKE, Minn. - The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians will soon begin construction on its new $20 million Seven Clans Casino Red Lake, restaurant and hotel about 15 miles from the humanities center where it began a decade ago, planners said.

Tribal officials hope several banks will offer bids to loan the tribe money for the new casino that's scheduled to open Sept. 1, 2009, said Raymond J. Brenny, COO for Red Lake Gaming Enterprises Inc. Financing bids for the casino were due July 11.

The casino construction will be funded by a ''straight fixed-term mortgage by borrowing from a bank.''

''Revenues it would generate would easily pay mortgage payment and have excess cash flow,'' said Brenny, who declined to release detailed financial information.

The new Seven Clans Casino Red Lake is expected to compete with the Palace Casino and Hotel in Cass Lake, which is operated by the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe just south of Bemidji.

''From an economic point, it makes sense and from a business point it makes sense,'' Brenny said. ''We will be targeting the Bemidji market and the new casino will be closer to that highly populated area.''

Once the financing is complete, the tribe will issue a request for proposals so bids will be submitted for the prime contractor that will build the casino, hotel and restaurant.

The pre-construction site preparation contract was awarded to Northern Engineering & Consulting of Bemidji, an American Indian contractor. Brenny declined to release the amount that Northern Engineering bid.

Construction is expected to start in August with plans to have the complex enclosed before the snow flies and winter construction will continue on the inside.

On July 24, a computer rendition with a 360-degree view of the new casino will be shown at the Red Lake Gaming offices by DSGW Architects of Duluth.

''You will be able to walk in and do a virtual tour,'' said Brenny, adding that the casino will move into its new facilities in August 2009, followed by a soft opening and a grand opening.

The new casino will be located just east of Minnesota State Highway 89 near some small lakes on the south reservation boundary.

Excluding the parking lot, the complex will be 65,840 square feet but won't be as large as the tribe's casino in Thief River Falls. The Red Lake operation is the tribe's third ''Seven Clans Casino''; however, the other two are not on the reservation. The Thief River Falls casino, hotel and indoor waterpark is located about 75 miles to the west, and the Warroad Casino is about 120 miles northwest and four miles from the Canadian border.

''We are hoping to draw more people to northwest Minnesota,'' said Red Lake Chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr. ''We're one of the northernmost tribes and we are remote.''

The tribe wants the casino and hotel to attract people visiting the border town of Bemidji, which has huge expansion plans. A $20 million regional events center that's under construction will feature a 4,000-seat arena for hockey and other sports and have an annual economic impact of $13 million. A new convention facility and hotel are also planned in Bemidji.

''There is a huge push there for expansion in Bemidji and we're trying to draw more of those people to the reservation,'' Jourdain said.

Designed to be ''community-oriented and not just for gaming,'' the facility has separate entrances for the casino, restaurant, and hotel so visitors can walk through other areas of the complex without being exposed to gaming activities.

''Not everyone who comes there has to gamble,'' he said.

About 6,000 of the tribe's 10,000 members live on the reservation and about 3,300 live in the St. Paul area. The casino hotel will be convenient for tribal members who don't live on the reservation.

''Times have changed - it's not like it used to be when family members come home and relatives open their doors,'' Jourdain said.

''Many members left home in the 1950s and '60s and moved to cities for employment. Some have not been back to the reservation in 30 to 40 years and have lost touch with relatives.''

The nearest motel to Red Lake is 30 minutes away, so the new hotel is important for casino visitors and for people visiting the reservation for business, weddings, funerals, and other reasons, he said.

The Red Lake casino and hotel design includes a casino floor with 300 - 500 slot machines, a full-service restaurant seating 60, a 40-room hotel with a pool, a small convention center for banquets/meetings that will seat 300, meeting space for tribal workshops or retreats, a 375-space parking lot, a staff parking area for 100 cars and corporate office space for Red Lake Gaming. The complex will employ 168 people, an increase of 50 employees.

The main entrance resembles a longhouse, Brenny said. Entertainment will be hired for the banquet area; however, the tribe has not decided to what extent, he said, adding that a bingo hall for the casino is under consideration.

The old casino ''provided lots of employment - 100 percent of the employees are members of the tribe or family members,'' he said.

Comprised of tribal council members and hereditary chiefs, the 18-member Red Lake Gaming Enterprises Inc. board of directors unanimously approved the casino move and expansion May 29, Brenny said.

''The gaming board did not take the decision lightly,'' seeking input and approval from Red Lake members through community meetings in all Red Lake reservation communities (Red Lake, Ponemah, Little Rock and Redby), Brenny said.