I wouldn't want to be the one to go tell the Shoshones and the Bannocks -- whose joint reservation is just a couple of miles away -- that they had to collect sales taxes and such. And YOU go tell that to the White Mountain Apache or the Navahoes or the Ojibway or the rest who are finally getting their own back. After years and years of being ripped off by the white man, finally the red man is doing the ripping.

As a Shoshone attorney said here recently, "It's not your scalp you have to worry about, it's your reputation, because you'll have to associate with paleface lawyers."

(I'm using the term "Indian," as it is used by members of every Nation I've been associated with.)

As for "point of use" taxes, I assume then that if I bought a bottle of wine in Idaho (and there are some fine vineyards here) and drank it in Washington state at a picnic, I'd have to pay taxes in Washington too? I don't think so, nope.

A national sales tax would solve the problem, but such would have less than a snowball's chance in Hell of passing this or any other Congress (unless there was a declared war).