User profile: Incredulous

All of the information in this story is old news. The two key points not mentioned:

The new "owner" is an entity created for UBS, a financially troubled Swiss bank, which held the majority of the interests in the huge loan to Transcontinental which was handed over, in lieu of foreclosure, in January 2008. The identity of the parent company of this new owner was reported in the RJ in January 2008

Going back through The Sun's archives, you can see that the former owner, who let UBS take back the project, involved some of the Bass family of Texas as investors. When you see some of the richest people in America walk away from an investment you know that the real estate market here is Las Vegas is screwed up and will be for a long time.

My heart would not break to see "venerable" Bruce Woodbury pushed out of office right now. There's a tradition among the County Commissioners that if the "local guy" supports a residential development project, variances and all, the other Commissioners are not going to oppose him.

So "venerable" Bruce Woodbury filled the area of Clark County south of the 215 and west of the 15 with houses on incredibly undersized lots, wedged together, cheek by jowl. Some of them have back yards only 3' deep. Those "slums of the future" have no parks or playgrounds, and not enough room to park the cars of their occupants. Thousands of those homes are in foreclosure. Hundreds of them sit unsold, both before and after foreclosure, because no one really wants to own and live in one.

Ten years from now, when the "New Southwest" is a 100% gang infested combat zone, with a massive burglary and car theft rate, we can all thank Bruce Woodbury for his "service" to his district.

Even though it is in Bruce Woodbury's district, the creation of "slums of the future" didn't happen in Henderson, because they did not reduce their development standards. And of course Bruce Woodbury lives in Boulder City, which has the toughest development standards in Southern Nevada.

Perhaps in contemplating re-election, Bruce Woodbury would consider joining us, by buying a 2,000 square foot home on a 3,500 square foot lot, actually living in it, and parking his car in his undersized driveway so his "neighbors" can break into it. And perhaps Bruce Woodbury would like to walk the streets of "his district" near Warm Springs and Jones around midnight, trying to stroll to his neighborhood Albertson's without being mugged. And perhaps he'd like to help his neighbors by maintaining the front lawns and bushes of all of the houses he approved which are now vacant and in foreclosure.

No, I think Bruce Woodbury is too cozy and safe down in Boulder City. I am absolutely convinced that this "last minute" discovery that he cannot run for re-election is a trick which has been arranged by the political powers that be, to put another stooge in Bruce Woodbury's seat without leaving ANY opportunity for ANY legitimate candidates to file to run for the vacant seat.

Just a polite warning to home owners in North Las Vegas who may, in the future, choose to oppose Pardee's exercising its "contractual rights" to build apartment complexes in Eldorado.

I have close friends in California, simple homeowners who spoke out against Pardee's illegal bulldozing of hillsides not even owned by Pardee, and which were to be maintained in their natural state as part of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Rim of the Valley open space.

Pardee's supervisory employees who have not yet been laid off due to the downturn in the home building business are a bunch of neurotic, self serving, vicious [nasty adjective in plural].
In order to look good in the eyes of their supervisors, and save their careers, they will instruct Pardee's outside lawyers to file lawsuits against outspoken homeowners for "interference with contractual advantage". The Pardee project managers will freely state that their goal is to bankrupt and terrorize any member of the public who opposes them.

We here in Nevada do not have ANY meaningful laws to protect us from lawsuits by developers who do not like lobbying against their projects, and who do not like public insistance that local laws be enforced against their projects. The "anti-SLAPP" laws here in Nevada are a joke, written by lawyers for the big homebuilders.

Pardee's outside law firms are now hurting for legal work, and cash flow from Pardee's payment of legal fees. So Pardee's lawyers are all the more anxious to encourage neurotic Pardee employees to "sue the universe" at the drop of the hat. "Enforcing Pardee's rights" lines Pardee's lawyers pockets with cash, now, when they are desparate to get it.

Pardee builds a great house physically, but their senior management are ruthless [unflattering adjective]. If they've got the cojones to bulldoze park land they don't own in California, and then sue people who complain about it, they are certainly going to burn all of you innocent complainers in North Las Vegas when they decide to "enforce their contractual rights". They just aren't building now because they think the market isn't right.

So if you don't like what Pardee plans to build near your house, sell it and move away. Don't buy a Pardee house unless you carefully check the zoning entitlements and development agreements for their projects. These are very nasty, dangerous people who have no scruples in terms of economically and psychologically beating up the average citizen who thinks they have a First Amendment right to complain about a Pardee project.

The "study" described in todays Sun is profoundly flawed. California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Florida are not going to "lose" tens of thousands of jobs because illegal aliens are leaving. Some of the jobs are disappearing because of the bad economy. Other jobs are now "open" to American citizens and others legally residing in the state.

I'd much prefer to rely on the statistically accurate study which the State of California prepared, and America's most famous immigrant Arnold Schwartznegger acknowledged was fair and accurate: Illegal aliens are paid under the table. They do not pay Federal income tax. They do not pay California income tax. They do not pay Federal social security tax. The do not pay Federal medicare tax. They do not pay state disability tax. They do not pay child support for the thousands of children they father, and who go on the AFDC rolls of our states. The employers of illegal aliens do not pay State Disability insurance premiums for illegal aliens who get hurt on the job and whose medical bills are paid by the state disability fund and who receive disability checks despite their illegal status. The illegal aliens' employers do not pay the employers' share of social security taxes. Its likely that the illegal aliens employers may not even pay income tax on the revenue generated by their labor. And, of course, there are the millions of dollars of emergency room bills that are uncollectible from illegal aliens whose costs are passed through to American insurance companies and people who do pay their own hospital bills.

The State of California has calculated that the presence of working illegal aliens in California COSTS the taxpayers of the State ONE BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR.

Frankly, on such a politically charged issue, in a state with such a huge Hispanic American population, I suspect California's calculations understate the true cost of illegal alien employment to California taxpayers. I bet it's more than ONE BILLION DOLLARS a year.

I'm sure the State of California would be glad to share its academically proper method of statistical calculation with any other state which would like to calculate the cost of illegal aliens in their own state.

As to the "money the illegal aliens contribute to our economy", if those jobs were held by Americans or legal residents, I'm sure those people would spend 100% of it here, and not be shipping billions of dollars to Mexico and other countries.

The study quoted by the Sun is simply a self-serving fairy tale created by a consultant hired by companies who profit from paying illegal aliens "under the table" or in a very few cases paying them less than a living wage.