Las Vegas Sun

Kudos for John Ensign in doing the right thing. As a life long democrat I have now shifted to independent and will be voting against Harry Reid with pride. You took out a loan you couldn't afford, you pay for it. Don't expect welfare on other taxpayers behalf.

Thanks Harry, I'll be looking forward to voting against you and your comrades!

"Just "let(ting) the market start correcting the problems" is exactly the kind of faulty laissez-faire thinking that got us into this disaster."

The governments job was to properly regulate the mortgage markets and too prevent bad loans form originating. They failed at this or were sidelined by powers currently in office. That was their responsibility as "regulators" and they just let their buddies on wall st do whatever they wanted.

It is not the governments job to encourage people who can barely afford rent to get into owning houses in markets because (see above) the government failed at its first task; i.e. regulating speculation, loose money, and bad loans. This is akin to closing the barn door after the horse has been let out.

Governments task is to be a regulator not to hand out more welfare.

Trying to get anyone and everyone into a house is what created the housing bubble in the first place. So called "affordability" programs do nothing more than artificially increase demand. Subprime loans were used to address "affodability" issues.

Not everyone is meant to be an owner of a house. Thats the cold hard truth. Maybe you have to rent for a few years and learn to save, then you can buy. The markets will only truly become "affordable" when the government quits meddling in the natural market forces with their inane socialist programs.

The prices of homes will come down more when demand slackens further because of "unaffodability". But the RE complex doesn't wanna hear anything about prices coming down further(which they will anyways). They'd rather try and get the government to try to prop up unsustainable prices.

Quit trying to socialize the housing market!

A couple of observations:

"Boosters point to the opening of new resorts on the Strip, which will create more than 50,000 jobs through 2010. About 27,000 rooms will be added to an existing inventory of 136,000."

First off, creation of rooms doesn't create jobs. People staying in rooms and spending money creates jobs. "Boosters" don't know wtf their talking about. Creation of rooms = creation of jobs if demand is slackening or non-existent.

Someone in the comments wrote:

"1. Las Vegas is too dependent on McCarran Airport and the bankrupt Airline industry. Airlines have no future, start rebuilding and improving railroads now."

Thats exactly right. Dependency on that airport is nothing but trouble for the city. They need to start planning and building railways(maglev, high speed train, w/e) stations, and everything that goes along with it to California. This will create jobs and good ones at that. Not the lousy strip jobs where those at the top make all the green.

Desalination plants in Socal will not fly with the residents there I'm sorry. The plants themselves create massive dead zones surrounding them as they disrupt the local aquatic ecosytems. I'm sure people in LA don't want they're beaches turned to dead zones so that LV can have water.

The ultimate solution to all this is an mass exodus out of las vegas, whether in 5 years or 50. There isn't meant to be this many people living in this desert in the first place and its only going to be sustainable through a slowdown in growth and a retro-fitting of the economy into other industries aside from construction and "gaming".

I think its preposterous that our government officials would even be proposing this idea of bailing out home owners - which is really nothing more than another bailout for the banks and speculators.

Where was my parents bailout when they lost 50-75% of their portfolio value during the dot.com crash? Where is my handout that I and others have acted responsibly while we watched the insanity go on around us. Only now are we asked to clean up the party now its over?

I have the perfect story to sum up these cry baby "homeowners" that our so-called representatives seek to help. I was at the GVR at that Drop bar about 2 weeks ago just enjoying a drink the lady next to me was furiously pouring money into the video poker machine. Well I get talking to her a bit and somehow the conversation led onto housing. She was a speculator who owned 3 homes here at one time. I think she had sold everything and broke even or lost some and her current home was getting ready to reset to much higher payments. Her comment to me was that "the government isn't gonna let us go into forclosure, the government won't let us lose our houses". Something to that effect. All the while she's irresponsibly pour money down the drain of this machine.

This is the exact mentality out there in this welfare nation. She, by ever right, should most definately lose her "home". It is not my job or anyone else's to prop up bubble economies and for my tax dollars to go to such an endeavor sickens me.

"How Clinton hit pay dirt
The keys to her Nevada victory: a huge wave of new voters.... IT SHOULD READ: A HUGE WAVE OF ILLEGAL VOTERS.

Now Hitlary is beholding to the illegals she pandered to in Las Vegas. Licenses, handouts, and more welfare in the form of healthcare."

Thats exactly what Hitlery is about. More state welfare for people who have acted irresponsibly at the sake of those who haven't(i.e. the housing market). More rewarding and cajoling of illegal immigrants at the sake of legal citizens.

As a life long Democrat my tide has shifted this year. My vote would is for Ron Paul but beyond that I cannot say. I can say I will not support Hillary and her welfare state.