That’ll show ’em!

What do you do if a group of conventioneers is discomfited during their stay at your brand-new, “grand slam home run,” unfinished $5.7 billion megaresort? Sue the bastards! That ought to work wonders for Sheldon Adelson‘s convention traffic. (True, the lawyers sued first … but does Las Vegas Sands really benefit by throwing more fuel on the fire?)

Premature exuberance? If were noon and the thermometer read 120 degrees, were R&R Partners CEO Billy Vassiliadis to proclaim, “The sun is shining,” I’d still glance out the window just to be sure. When it comes to bringing the B.S., there’s nobody like Billy V. Just a few months back, he wrung his hands before the Legislature, saying a $32 million (or 0.3%) tax increase on the casino industry to bolster Nevada Gaming Control Board funding would be a back-breaking financial burden. What’s more, he darkly imputed, there was something unseemly about the casino industry bearing the cost of its own regulation.

Speed forward to mid-May and there’s old Billy, going on about how it’s nigh upon a year since the Las Vegas economy bottomed out and it’s now in “rebound.” People who live in the reality-based community have a word for that — one not polite to utter in mixed company. Yes, the last six months have seen indicators “heading north,” as Vassiliadis puts it, from the hellacious 2008-09 period. However, the increases have been incremental and predominantly at the top end. The current pattern of “visit more (than last year) but spend less” is moving Vegas from Dead-Cat Bounce status to tentative stabilization but, to hear Vassiliadis tell it, he’s been hanging out in an alternate-reality Vegas.

But while Billy V. was chatting up focus groups, Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority Vice President Brenda Siddall was crunching numbers and her analysis reaffirms what we’ve been hearing for a while: Vegas’ recovery won’t take hold until 2011. Nobody wants to hear “Wait ’til next year,” but it takes more than a few cherry-picked stats to constitute a recovery.

(All this being said, if the LVCVA went to the trouble of commissioning a new R&R campaign to promote Sin City [above], why turn right around and cut ad expenditures? “Yeah, I’ve just bought this new high-performance car and I plan to spend 18% less on maintenance.” The “Vegas Camp” ads are minimally imaginative and certain not guilty of excessive subtlety. But, having purchased them, the LVCVA picked a helluva moment to throttle back on marketing.)

Vassiliadis is Aristotle reincarnate, however, compared to incoming Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce CEO Matthew T. Crosson, who spewed meaningless feel-good platitudes in his inaugural address. “This is where prosperity is going to happen again,” he intoned, adding that the problem is all in our heads: “It’s all about attitude. The community needs to believe that we are coming back from this recession.” Oh, we believe it. It’s just not going to be rapid or pretty.

Sounding like he just got off the train from Long Island, Crosson’s Big Idea is — wait for it — economic diversification. No s**t, Sherlock. Any person on the street can tell you that. Business and political leaders have been paying lip service to the notion since before the 9/11 economic crisis and Southern Nevada is still a casino/retail-based economy. Oh, and Crosson wants better schools … but damned if Chamber members are going to pay one thin dime more in taxes. This is typical LV Chamber of Commerce: bitch endlessly about how things should be better, then play obstructionist every time the Legislature convenes. If we’re speaking of attitudes, the Chamber’s isn’t so much can’t-do as won’t-do.

Progress is doubtful, given Crosson’s illogical strategy for bringing business, labor, education, etc. into dialogue: “You start with the premise when you get everybody together … we’re going to disagree about things, but let’s set the disagreements outside the door.” Um, so how does one make progress only by discussing issues on which you already agree? Crosson explains that disagreements “derail” all-important “process.” Oh dear me, we can’t have that.

“That doesn’t mean we’re not open to discussing everything,” he added nonsensically. “We should be open to discussing everything.” Everything except the stuff about which people disagree, right?

Can we be sure the Chamber of Commerce wasn’t just replaying an episode of The Office by mistake? Crosson’s rhetoric is pure Dunder-Mifflin boilerplate.