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By J. Patrick Coolican (contact) 
Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.
J. Patrick Coolican
A message to the assembled national press corps here for the Republican debate:
Welcome to Las Vegas. If at all possible, avoid the following clichés in your debate stories: Sin City, “What happens in Vegas” and any and all poker and gambling references.
More important, while I realize the voracious consumers of horse-race political coverage back in Washington and New York demand that you tell us every last bit of irrelevancy about this horrid campaign, you should know there’s an incredible story here in Las Vegas. Please, spend an extra day here and see it for yourselves.
Here’s the primer:
Just as Las Vegas was the adrenaline- and booze-fueled emblem of the economic expansion that began in the 1980s and continued almost unabated until 2007, we are now the epicenter of the Great Recession.
Soon we’ll be entering our fifth year of misery. The Las Vegas unemployment rate is 14.2 percent, which doesn’t include people working part time or those who have quit looking; the real unemployment rate is above 20 percent. We have nearly 100,000 unemployed construction workers, although no doubt many have left to find work elsewhere, like steel workers leaving Cleveland.
We have the highest foreclosure rate in the nation: One in every 39 housing units received a foreclosure filing initiating the process during the third quarter; last year, one in every nine housing units received a foreclosure filing, for a total of 88,198. Read that again. We were supposed to be encouraged because there were fewer in 2010 than in 2009.
In September, home prices were off another 8.6 percent from a year prior, as the fire sale continues. Prices in Adams Morgan and SoHo may be back on the rise, but our home prices are now back to November 1998 levels. More than 80 percent of our homeowners are underwater.
Although the Las Vegas Strip is still a vibrant and busy place and we’re the top convention city in America, there’s been no recovery to speak of here.
So you can imagine that we find it a little baffling when all the talk in Washington is about deficits and fiscal austerity measures like spending cuts and payroll tax increases, as well as the most bizarre of all — a demand for tighter money at the Fed.
I guess I can understand it. I’m from back East, and when I go home, it’s fairly apparent that the recession has ended, at least when it comes to New York and Washington. (Or just as likely: You never really had a recession.)
What with all the great restaurants filled with banksters and lobbyists, I can see why you’d join the sensible centrists and call for an end to all the emergency measures to get the economy moving.
We here in Las Vegas, not unlike broad swaths of the country, are still in a state of emergency.
To some extent, this is our own fault: We got caught up in the frenzy and didn’t pay enough attention to diversifying our economy or educating our future workers. But you people who ride the Acela played a part, too: Unregulated thrifts handing out shoddy mortgage loans that were then securitized by the banksters and given sham AAA ratings; then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan leaving rates too low for too long; mismanagement at government-backed firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and a general attitude in Washington that financial markets needed little oversight.
But back to Las Vegas. We implore you: Go to Nevada JobConnect, which is our unemployment office, and talk to people about trying to find work.
Take a tour of the city with a Realtor to see all the neighborhoods with for-sale signs.
Talk to a kindergarten teacher with 45 students. Or a police officer who has seen domestic violence and suicide rates rise. Go to a food bank and talk to the families and ask yourself what that does to a child and his ability to thrive.
Or, if your editors aren’t interested, and they’re probably not, at least do us the favor of getting drunk and losing a pile at the tables.
Also, maybe you want to buy a vacation property: We have many going for the price of a decent Mercedes.
I'd like to extend Big C's request to ask that you don't claim the Occupy Las Vegas folks don't seem to know what they are after. In fact, they printed this on the backs of T-shirts many wore at the Fremont march:
The OCCUPY LAS VEGAS WhoWhat
Occupy Las Vegas stands in solidarity with, though independent of, Occupy Wall Street with the understanding that the commonality of the breadth of grievances that need redress fill such a broad spectrum of issues that they are best addressed by a 28th Constitutional amendment along lines that prohibit any person, corporation or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, to contribute money, goods or services directly or indirectly, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. No corporation or other business entity shall be granted personhood in regards to the election process.
Our peaceful occupation is based on the proven premise that:
...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
...[E]xperience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they have become accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and [injustices], pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their Security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these [peoples who comprise the OCCUPY Movement]; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Sytems of Government.
OCCUPYLasVegas.org
This is "some great writing"
Thank-you
Coolican -- sobering article. You did good this time, too.
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace..." -- Thomas Paine "The Crisis" first printed in the Pennsylvania Journal, December 19, 1776 (it opens with that famous sentence "These are the times that try men's souls")
Good article.
Too bad the dude in the White House can't shift out of campaign mode. He should use this dose of reality instead of his talking points.
"Too bad the dude in the White House can't shift out of campaign mode."
Heretic -- good observation. It seems whoever occupies the White House is more of a cheerleader for his own party than the leader We so badly need.
"WAR IS PEACE
"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" -- the three slogans of the Party from Orwell's "1984."
Isn't the legislature the main reason we are in this mess? How long has the legislature had a majority of dems in nevada?
Does anyone remember how 3 years ago Obama was in Las Vegas at the drop of a hat and said we are bring HOPE AND CHANGE. Let's make sure this time they have a real plan to help Las Vegas and the country.
"...let's not forget the generosity of the Las Vegas downtrodden taxpayers homeowners in paying PUBLIC EMPLOYEES here THE HIGHEST PAY AND BENEFITS in the country."
ethamilton9 -- your post raised an excellent point, but your anti-union spin is unfortunate . All contracts are an agreement between at least two parties, and you neglected to pin a good share of the fault to those "taxpayers homeowners" in whose name those labor contracts were awarded. All municipalities merely represent their residents who seem to be too busy to perform their own civic duties, supervising what government does in their names.
If We the people act like livestock that's exactly how We should expect to be treated.
"The foundation of the freedoms we enjoy as Americans is the U.S. Constitution, the longest surviving constitution of any nation in history. To be civically unaware is to diminish our freedom..." -- George Nethercutt Jr., former Congressman in his book "In Tune with America"