Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Scott Dickensheets:

Whole lot of hoping going on in Vegas

“Hope is the thing with feathers,” the poet Emily Dickinson once wrote. She probably meant that to be inspirational, but then, she didn’t spend much time in Nevada.

“This can work. I just hope they give it a chance.” That’s County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani (quoted in the Sun), pushing, perhaps in vain, for a new trash-recycling program. But it easily could have been Harry Reid, pushing, perhaps in vain, for a new Internet poker law in this lame-duck Congress, or Las Vegans hoping for foreclosure relief, or (by now, of course you can fill in the blank).

These days, it seems, hope sags eternal. Just two years after its heyday (don’t those Obama “HOPE” posters seem quaint now?), hope mostly shows up limping, timid, ready to take its beating — a lame-duck sentiment for this lame-duck moment. Have you maxed out your 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, but were hoping the new compromise between Obama and congressional Republicans will extend them just a little longer? Nope. Yours and 26,000 others’ hopes: extinguished. Are you a businessman hoping the state won’t raise your unemployment tax? Too bad. It will.

For her part, Giunchigliani wants Republic Services to agree to single-stream recycling — in which you put all your recyclable junk into a single bin instead of sorting it — while maintaining twice-weekly trash pickup.

It certainly sounds like a good, modest, achievable idea — the best kind in 2010 — but her hopes may be doomed anyway. Apparently, having a monopoly on a lucrative public service doesn’t mean you actually have any money. Republic says it can’t afford the necessary new trucks and twice-weekly service, and some commissioners agree.

(Meanwhile, all hope abandon ye who thought we could get through this issue without corn pone from folksy Commissioner Tom Collins, who described his recycling plan: “If I have biodegradables, I just throw them in the yard and let the chickens or the bugs get at it.” I wonder what the property values are like in his rural neighborhood.)

“I was hoping for a breakthrough. But it looks like it’s going to be confrontational.” That’s Bruce Woodbury (quoted in the Review-Journal), pushing for a partially tax-funded, 18,000-seat arena on the Strip. A coalition of the unwilling, anchored by MGM Resorts International, has formed against the proposal, not wanting the public to subsidize a competing facility.

Woodbury’s group has enough signatures to, at least, get the measure on the 2012 ballot (hope lives!) and thus put the measure to the people (maybe not!). “I am cautiously optimistic that one way or the other this will get approved,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mayor Oscar Goodman says that whatever happens on the Strip won’t affect his hopes for a grandiose legacy … that is, for a completely necessary downtown arena. Two arenas? This will remind many of us of yet another unrequited hope: for consolidation of city and county into just one irritating government.

Internet poker: This can work, Harry Reid is saying. I just hope they give it a chance. Alas, it looks like it’s going to be confrontational. He’s pushing a measure to legalize and tax certain online gaming (in a way, perhaps not coincidentally, favorable to casino companies).

Republicans, as champions of free markets and entrepreneurial vigor, naturally oppose the measure. They’ve let Reid know he’s in for a fight. This “require(s) careful deliberation, not backroom deals or earmarks or special interests,” reads a letter apparently written by GOP lawmakers new to politics.

Reid wants to get it done before Congress adjourns — lame duck: another thing with feathers — but his hopes, like so many others, may be slim and getting slimmer:

“Even though the Democrats still have the majority,” one gaming expert told the Sun, “the perception is that the Republicans are in charge.” All hope abandon, indeed.

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