4flush.com - Santa Ysabel Gambit Complicates California Online Poker Scene
by Haley Hintze on July 15, 2014
Excerpt:
It’s interesting to note, however, that lawyers for the Pechanga-led coalition now trying to push through SB1366 and AB2291 did a flip-flop on this very same issue within the past three years, just in time to craft a favorable viewpoint favoring their tribal-only legislative efforts. These same tribes declared a few years that online poker couldn’t be regulated via state-level compact because it was Class II, not Class III, then simply switched their collective interpretation when popular support for the regulation of California online poker began to grow.
If it sounds like hypocrisy, well, it is.
There’s also the question of some of these news reports quickly slapping a “rogue” label on the Santa Ysabels while utterly ignoring some of the other already established business connections. The Pala tribe, one of the major components of the Pechanga-led faction, has already created a new entity called Pala Interactive, in which it partners with former Excapsa (UltimateBet) CEO James Ryan. Pala Interactive also has some shared rights to the extant UB software, which means that years after UB itself failed amid scandal and tens of millions of dollars of internal theft and fraud, the old UB software could reemerge again, via Pala Interactive.
One could also note that the Pala tribe itself is also mired in major legal controversy over the forced disenfranchising of hundreds of former tribal members, many of whom are political opponents of the group currently in power. The net effect is to distribute the massive proceeds from the Palas’ profitable gaming operations to a smaller group of official tribal members.
It’s hard to look at the sum of what the Pala nation would bring to online poker, and not toss in the word “rogue” somewhere. Even if it doesn’t have quite the same meaning.
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***WARNING***
Chairman
Robert Smith, Chairman of the Pala Band of Mission Indians, Pala Band of Luiseno
Indians, Pala Band of Luiseno Mission Indians of the Pala Reservation, is
monitoring your comments. He is going to track your IP address and "take
action" against any tribal member posting comments he does not like.