{"id":3240,"date":"2010-05-20T15:18:15","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T23:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3240"},"modified":"2010-05-20T15:18:56","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T23:18:56","slug":"thatll-show-em","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/thatll-show-em\/","title":{"rendered":"That’ll show ’em!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>! That ought to work wonders for Sheldon Adelson<\/strong>‘s convention traffic. (True, the lawyers sued first … but does Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> really benefit by throwing more fuel on the fire?)
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Premature exuberance?<\/strong> If were noon and the thermometer read 120 degrees, were R&R Partners<\/strong> CEO Billy Vassiliadis<\/strong> 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<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/a> 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<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n

But while Billy V. was chatting up focus groups, Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority<\/strong> Vice President Brenda Siddall<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

(All this being said<\/strong>, if the LVCVA went to the trouble of commissioning a new R&R campaign to promote Sin City [above<\/em>], why turn right around and cut ad expenditures<\/a>? “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.)<\/p>\n

Vassiliadis is Aristotle<\/strong> reincarnate, however, compared to incoming Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce<\/strong> CEO Matthew T. Crosson<\/strong>, who spewed meaningless feel-good platitudes<\/a> in his inaugural address. “This is where prosperity is going to happen again<\/em>,” 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<\/em>.” Oh, we believe it. It’s just not going to be rapid or pretty.<\/p>\n

Sounding like he just got off the train from Long Island<\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\n

Progress is doubtful<\/strong>, 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<\/em>.” 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.<\/p>\n

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

Can we be sure the Chamber of Commerce wasn’t just replaying an episode of The Office<\/em> by mistake? Crosson’s rhetoric is pure Dunder-Mifflin<\/strong> boilerplate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,75,53,33,25,12,108,31,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3242,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions\/3242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}