Vegas Inc

Anything that legitimately could be construed as harassment aside, what is wrong about giving preference to US citizens in hiring for jobs? Have we gone too far and created a problem for unemployed American citizens?

Twelve step programs organized to treat addictions are usually self funded by their members. Gamblers can participate and appropriate programs are available locally. Outreach is possible, but the primary recruitment is by attraction. The addicted individual needs to recognize that they have a problem and seek help. Their are such addiction treatment programs in prisons too. A person can not remain completely passive or blame their problem on others and expect to recover.
My personal view is that a person who steals hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then blows it on gambling, must have a clue about what they are doing. Their failure to seek help, and persistence in committing criminal acts hardly persuades me that they need help without the consequences, such as incarceration for their behavior. If a person robs a bank, do we really care what they plan to do with the ill gotten gains?
There is a difference between sympathy and empathy. That difference gets obscured when someone advocates taking away the judicial consequences from an action by someone who is committing major criminal acts.

Wasteful nonsense, not deserving of a tax subsidy. The Las Vegas monorail should serve as an example of this cockeyed thinking. Conventional train service directly to Los Angeles from Las Vegas would be a worthy test of the market, at a fraction of the cost. What you see is what you get, and a high speed train to Victorville is a joke.

The best short term solution might be to reopen a conventional rail service from Las Vegas to LA. The tracks and equipment are currently available with some arrangements.

Longer term, Desert Express is what it is, an inadequate solution that is costly at an unpopular moment. To make tracks in the right direction, a major rethink is needed.

The Las Vegas Valley is decimated by the recession. A quick look around beyond the Strip shows failing businesses, commercial vacancies and deteriorated neighborhoods. It all spells lack of opportunity and the root causes include a lack of economic diversity. This has gone on for so long it is not just a NDA matter, it seems to be in the DNA.

We already have high speed travel to LA, it is call air travel. Who is in a hurry to get to Victorville, and is that worth billions? I don't buy the argument that the Desert Express would eventually be extended to LA, it remains an elusive goal in financially difficult times. If you want a partial rail ride to LA, why not extend the monorail to the airport, as should have been done in the first place.

Personally, I would be happy to take a conventional rail ride to LA from Las Vegas, by reestablishing a train terminal near the Plaza Hotel, as was available decades ago. Now you have to travel miles outside of Las Vegas, just to catch a train to anywhere. Without simple, more affordable solutions, these travel ideas are going nowhere.

There is a real ethical problem when a person enters into a contract to purchase a home by financing, terms clearly laid out, and then later decides to voluntarily violate the contract by failing to comply with terms they agreed to at closing. There apparently is nothing in most mortgage agreements to allow for the supposed impact of government lender bailouts or the effects of a prolonged recession, driving prices down. So the defaulting purchaser is on shaky ground, and is subject to lawsuit to enable the lender to recover damages for non performance of the contract.There is no mandate for the government to bail people out of contracts they entered into voluntarily.

Whatever the individual borrower thinks of banks, much criticism, after the fact, is just a smoke screen for not accepting responsibility. The bank is just an intermediary, neither buyer nor seller. They provide financing at the request of a qualified purchaser. In default, they get stuck with possession of property they never intended to acquire, often because the borrower decides to walk away, even when they continue to have the funds to make mortgage payments. It is illogical but convenient to blame the lender for the loss of equity due to property price deflation.

Banks are so overwhelmed by defaults that they are unlikely to pursue all collection remedies to protect their financial interests. The "strategic defaulter" is hardly on high moral ground, he is demonstrating the same kind of lack of business ethics of which companies are often accused.

Religion or lunatic fringe cult? The culpability of these parents should not be overlooked.

After ten years residence, I feel Las Vegas disappoints. The lack of economic diversity and civic pride, the low quality of local schools and even medical facilities does little to attract new business, and move toward a goal of creating a more stable economy, not singularly dependent on gaming. The will to change seems limited to the feeble speeches of politicians too busy cow towing to the gaming industry. An expanding residential construction industry was self defeating, creating more capacity than made sense, driving down home prices and leaving many newer neighborhoods in disarray as the economy contracted. Retail business offers little promise without other primary business to generate jobs and income.
An interest in changing this is not self evident, as demonstrated by a movement to downgrade public education with still more funding cuts, but let's not blame it all on that. Aside from the difference in size and scale, Las Vegas could pass for an impoverished Appalachian community where folks have just given up, now that the mine is depleted, and grimly hang on, accepting the status quo.

From this standpoint, a recovery is something you actually have to see. I am hopeful but see few signs of positive change in the Las Vegas economy. So much has to do with the high unemployment numbers. We do not have a diversified economy. Retail sales and services sector businesses rely on improvement in the gaming industry. Housing is dependent on having a workforce that can afford to own or rent homes and apartments. We may be years away from a sustainable, real recovery. I would like to see a real push to attract non gaming industry here, but I don't see much evidence of that happening. Without industrial and business diversification, we may have already reached a critical mass, with only limited room for improvement.