Quality of Life

According to the Commerce Department sales of new homes dropped by 8.3 percent in August from July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 795,000 homes, the lowest level since June 2000.

With the credit problems, the sub-prime lending fiasco, loss of jobs in the construction market, plummeting value of the dollar fueled by a bailout of the largest financial institutions coupled with a seemingly reckless half point drop by the Federal Reserve which seems designed only to bolster the stock market, record crude oil prices, and a plethora of presidential candidates already bought by special interests, 2008 looks like a good year for a recession. It also looks like a good year for Democrats to win the White House. They don’t fix recessions; they ride them out and then take credit, but that’s just good politics.

Posted by Zounds Off at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Clark County School District lost $2 million in funding because a federal survey underestimated the number of Nevada students whose primary language isn’t English.

Local and state education officials say the Las Vegas district will receive slightly more than $4.4 million from the federal government this school year, down from $6.4 million last school year.

Is it the fault of the Feds that the estimate is low or did our state and local education officials forget something? When students are enrolled, officials know the ethnic background of the students and the language spoken at home, so that information would be available if local officials passed it on to the appropriate Federal level. My guess…the mistake was at the local level.

Posted by Zounds Off at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While the Las Vegas Sands Corp. opened the Venetian Macao hotel and resort, the Macau casino plans of Australian billionaire media mogul James Parker have been hit by a tight debt market.

Melco PBL Entertainment (Macau) Ltd. (MPEL) – a Nasdaq-listed joint venture between the Sydney-based Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd. and Hong Kong’s Melco International Development Ltd. – said this week it had borrowed $1 billion less than the $2.75 billion it had planned to use to develop and then build its “City of Dreams” underwater casino and entertainment resort in Macau. One of the key features will be a hall of baccarat tables encircled by swimming sharks.

It must be a sad day in the life of a billionaire when you have to shave a billion dollars from your casino plans; I would almost have to blame daddy for dying with only a couple of billion in assets leaving Parker in such financial straits.

On the local level a judge rejected indicted former Clark County commissioner, Lynette Boggs’ bid Wednesday to be declared indigent and have the county public defender handle her criminal ethics case.

“By no stretch of the imagination do you qualify as indigent,” Clark County Hearing Master Kevin Williams stated. Her attorney, Bill Terry, was allowed to withdraw from the case because he hasn’t been paid.

From 1994 to 1997, Lynette Boggs served as assistant city manager for the city of Las Vegas. She served on the Las Vegas City Council from 1999 to 2004. She was also at one time on the Board of Directors for Station Casinos, Inc. If she would just sell some of the investment properties she collected or perhaps that house that happened to be in the wrong district, she could easily pay some attorney bills but for some reason our public officials past and present seem to think that public service means the public serves them and should pay for their alleged crimes.

Another “public servant” is also costing Nevadans more money than is usual.

From KRNV.com.

Nevada taxpayers will be paying more than normal this year for the governor’s travel tab.

Governor Jim Gibbons asked the Nevada Legislature this year for $25,000 to cover his travel on official business outside the state.

That’s more than double what former Governor Kenny Guinn spent his last year in office.

What’s more… it turns out Gibbons failed to ask for an additional $37,000 he says he needs for security on those trips.

Posted by Zounds Off at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Capital One Financial Corp. said Monday it will cut 1,900 jobs and close its wholesale mortgage banking business.

The company will close 31 GreenPoint locations in 19 states, after just acquiring them last December when it paid $13.2 billion for North Fork Bancorp Inc. For more go to Capital One slashes jobs, mortgage industry swoons.

Another financial coup by the wizards of high finance. Obviously, they majored in beer drinking during college and not sound investment. What I hope is that Capital stops sending me applications for credit cards every week. I would consider telling them to stop but I figure they would double their attempts just because I noticed the previous attempts. Along with HSBC, these credit card companies are wearing out my shredder. If every telemarketer, unsolicited mailer, and spammer went out of business, do you suppose unemployment would exceed ten percent? Hey companies, the only thing I can’t seem to say no to is a good book. How about sending some free samples for reviewing?

Posted by Zounds Off at 3:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In Yahoo News First Magnus Financial Corp. has laid off 99 percent of its nearly 6,000 employees nationwide and closed all of its more than 300 offices.

According to a notice filed with the state Friday, the Tucson-based company that originated home loans and then sold bundled loans into the secondary loan market expects to retain only about 60 of its employees.

First Magnus officials said a bankruptcy filing was possible.

Several mortgage companies down and more to come while the Federal Reserve bails out the big boys like Bear Stearns, involved in the subprime mortgage hedge fund investment crisis, and ordinary people lose their homes

Posted by Zounds Off at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Las Vegas Sun reports Nevada’s unemployment rate rose for the fourth consecutive month, hitting 4.9 percent in July as the housing slump continued and private-sector employers weren’t able to provide a lot of temporary summer jobs.

The state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation reported Friday that the seasonally adjusted rate was the highest since January 2004, and exceeded the national rate of 4.6 percent.

Everything that Las Vegas promised a few years ago has vanished. Jobs, affordable housing, water. The Las Vegas area has now made the top ten for least affordable housing in the country, only behind cities like Los Angeles, New York City, and Boston.

Posted by Zounds Off at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The federal government decided last year to drop out of an international study that would compare U.S. high-school students who take advanced science and math courses with their international counterparts?

The study, called TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) Advanced 2008, measures how high-school seniors are doing in algebra, geometry, calculus and physics with students taking similar subjects around the globe. In the past, the American results have been shockingly poor. In the last survey, taken in 1995, students from only two countries–Cyprus and South Africa–scored lower than U.S. school kids.

Yeah, and we keep voting in politicians from our “one party” system, who mostly mouth education platitudes, suffer the dumbing down of our schools by teachers, administrators, teacher’s unions, school boards, state school boards, our teaching universities which allow as many as 90 percent of teaching graduates to be certified physical education teachers. In a society which has so glorified the professional athlete, we have a plethora of “certified” teachers who simply used college as a way to continue in the area of sports, even though they haven’t the skill or talent beyond their high school “glory days.”

Another problem is our high schools hand out so many high grades to keep parents happy that B students have to take remedial English their first year of college. Twenty years ago no one even knew what a college remedial class was and by 1996 40 percent of all college freshmen were taking some sort of remedial class.

In the late ’90’s 40 percent of all eduction majors tested in the bottom 20 perccent of all college students, and the problem just seems to have gotten worse. We have the least talented college graduates teaching the most important component of our future, run by the least talented administrators, and the measure of their ineptitude–and ours–is that we refuse to allow ourselves to be measured against the world, rather than take a real look at how we have failed our students.

Easy grades for self-esteem is not the answer. Having standards and giving out F’s when they are earned is a picture of the real world that students should have to learn. But the more A’s that public school teachers hand out the better the teachers look, the happier administrators are, and the more disservice is done to our students who have never had to face failure and learn to overcome it.

But don’t worry, colleges are so worried about allowing students in, since they love to collect tuition, that they also are willing to dumb down classes so students don’t leave for an easier school and take their tuition money elsewhere. The last step in the process has already been suggested by some universities, including the University of Illinois, that as students can be compared to consumers and degrees as products, college degrees should be freely handed out when they are paid for.

The bottom line is that somewhere else in the world are better educated workers who will work for less than we expect, so expect to see the U.S. as a third world power in the next twenty years or so. We certainly don’t have the will to improve education with the same enthusiasm as we watch and absorb sports, and we won’t. And that’s a RANT!

Posted by Zounds Off at 4:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

American Home Mortgage Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, the latest casualty of a mortgage industry that has plunged into distress.

The New York-based real estate investment trust, one of the largest independent U.S. home loan providers, filed for protection from creditors with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

The filing came after American Home closed most operations on Friday, laying off all but about 750 workers. The company started the year with more than 7,400 employees.

Another casualty in the home loan market is Bear Stearns Cos co-president and co-chief operating officer Warren Spector, who resigned on Sunday, amid a credit risk crisis at the investment bank. (Yahoo News)

Bear Stearns said that, effective immediately, Alan Schwartz has been named the company’s sole president.

Spector’s departure follows Bear Stearns’ assertion on Friday that it is weathering the worst storm in financial markets in more than 20 years after a major rating company warned mortgage credit problems could hurt the investment bank’s profits.

Standard & Poor’s warned that the recent collapse of two Bear Stearns-managed mortgage funds could hurt the company’s performance and reputation for an extended period.

The collapse of the funds triggered a downturn across credit markets, put a damper on corporate buyout financing and sparked fears about Wall Street’s trading and banking profits.

One day you’re up and the next day you’re out. At one time Spector was regarded as a possible successor to Chairman and Chief Executive James Cayne and now he probably just has a measly multi-million dollar parachute package to console him in his fall from grace. But just think, if this credit crisis gets bad enough, our government might just step in and bail out the “big boys” like it has for Lockheed (1970), First Pennsylvania Bank (1980), Penn Central Railroad (1970), Chrysler (1978), Continental Illinois (1984), and even New York City in 1975; because we wouldn’t want corporate officers to suffer just because they don’t know how to manage a company, unlike small business owners who don’t donate tens of thousands of dollars to our “two party” system.

Posted by Zounds Off at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Yahoo News: Shares of American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. plunged 90 percent Tuesday after the company raised fears it may become insolvent, renewing concern about worsening credit quality in the mortgage market and killing a Wall Street rally.

The struggling mortgage lender said its financial backers have essentially pulled the plug. The Wall Street banks that lend American Home Mortgage money for home loans — which include firms like UBS AG, Bear Stearns Cos., and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — will not extend the company any more money, and some have demanded back the money they have lent.

And about our neighbors in California, the source of Las Vegas’ housing woes…this article called Golden dream or foreclosures by the sea?a>

Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics in Los Angeles says California’s economic outlook will darken as a growing number of households slash consumer spending to meet rising mortgage payments, especially on adjustable-rate and subprime loans that became popular for those with weak credit.

“We have a lot more of these shady mortgages out here, so that doesn’t bode well,” he said. “We’re due for a very traditional consumer-led downturn.”

Analysts had expected California’s economy to cool because its housing market has slowed from the torrid pace of recent years. Prices, long far above the national average, are flat or slipping as sales decline.

A report last week by DataQuick Information Systems pointed to additional trouble. The real estate trend tracking service tallied a record 17,408 homes in the state falling to foreclosure in the second quarter.

The foreclosures marked a jump of nearly 800 percent from a year earlier.

But what I find interesting is that this fall was in the works for months at the very least and it took until now for the Dow to react and on every Internet article page that I have read for the past several months on these issues are … you guessed it–I hope–advertisements for home mortgages with incredible rates and guaranteed approval and…isn’t this exactly what caused the problem to begin with?

Posted by Zounds Off at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times from Georgia: “Despite a vibrant local economy, Atlanta homeowners are falling behind on mortgage payments and losing their homes at one of the highest rates in the nation, offering a troubling glimpse of what experts fear may be in store for other parts of the country.”

“The real estate slump here and elsewhere is likely to worsen, given that most of the adjustable rate mortgages written in the last three years will be reset with higher interest rates,” said Christopher F. Thornberg, an economist in Los Angeles.

A zip code-by-zip code analysis reported on lasvegasnow.com found that an area of North Las Vegas has one of the nation’s 10 worst rates of home foreclosure. For the rest of the valley there are 8 in the top 100, and, according to the numbers from Realty Trac, there also are 24 zip codes in the top 500.

The largest number of foreclosures in this area have occurred in the North Las Vegas zip code 89031 — the 8th worst in the nation. 89131, 89148, and 89129 also ranked in the top 50.

Other cities hit hard by foreclosures are Cleveland, Detroit, Denver–which never seems to have completely recovered from the days of the Savings & Loan debacle–and Sacramento.

Add credit card debt, leverage buyouts, hedge funds, money market manipulation, enormous debt owed to foreign nations, rising oil prices–the Iraq war will end when our econony collapses, not because politicians finally bring troops home.

Posted by Zounds Off at 7:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The former Clark County School District superintendent is the only finalist for the position in San Francisco, and the school board is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to offer him the job and on the terms of a contract.

Garcia spent five years as superintendent in Clark County, the fifth largest school district in the nation, and six years combined as superintendent for Fresno Unified and Sanger Unified districts in Fresno County. He also was a social studies teacher and a principal, running San Francisco’s Horace Mann Middle School for three years until 1991. During his his five years in Clark County, test scores were stagnant or declined and dropouts increased.

Garcia left Clark County in 2005 to become vice president of urban markets of the educational services company McGraw-Hill.

Through Garcia’s efforts the Clark County School Board approved hiring a McGraw-Hill consultant to score tests for the district’s English Language Learner program in January of 2005

At the time Garcia said there is no conflict of interest in his switching to the private company.

“This was not an easy decision to make but it was the right one for me and for my family,” Garcia told the Las Vegas Sun. “It’s an opportunity to try something completely different after three decades in education.”

I guess it wasn’t the right decision after all. Notice how each time one of our public officials bail out of a position, they use the “it’s for my family” reason. (See Las Vegas quotes including “I’m not going to jail.” for Yvonne Atkinson Gates take on family.) In Clark County his major contribution appears to have been staying just long enough to allow his pension to vest. Good choice, San Francisco? I doubt it. Good luck, though, you’ll need it!

Posted by Zounds Off at 6:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Scipps News reported that the emerging racial generation divide, as sociologists and demographers call it, is more obvious in Nevada than most states, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data released this month.

Nevada State Demographer Jeff Hardcastle says non-whites under voting age in Nevada have increased by more than 116,500 since 2000 and now make up 51 percent of the younger-than-18 population, compared with 44 percent in 2000.

The trend raises a host of questions affecting public policy issues and political agendas.
Will an older, white electorate be sympathetic to a large population of Hispanic, black and Asian-American non-voting teens over such issues as, say, the need for new schools?
(Most likely, if they would actually demonstrate they value education and learn something.)

The racial generation gaps are widest in California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, according to one analysis by The New York Times of the government’s data.

Note also that four of those states listed– California, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico–now rank at the bottom in education supplanting such traditional bottom dwelling states as Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Funny how Asians soon excel in the classrooms without our help after entering this country and Hispanics continue to languish at the bottom despite all the attention and resources they are getting.

Fernando Romero, president of Hispanics in Politics in Las Vegas, said Hispanic activists struggle for political support from older whites.

“We’ve already seen how it has hurt in recent years when highly qualified Hispanics ran in county wide races and lost,” he said. “We’ve seen white voters with little knowledge of either candidate vote for the opponent of the Hispanic candidate based on name alone.”

I think we also saw what Dario Herrera accomplished while a Clark County Commissioner–taking bribes and getting free lap dances.

Posted by Zounds Off at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada Power is preparing for rate increases that would send residential bills through the roof. If state regulators approve this increase, it will go into effect beginning June 1.

UNLV’s Rebel Yell reports the increase can widely be attributed to programs initiated in the early 1990s that failed to take the long-term electrical needs of Nevada into account.

Record untility bills, gasoline prices, beef and pork prices, home foreclosures, personal debt, and the list goes on. While the top one percent of this country are getting extremely rich, most of us are getting less each year. If we put the “volatiles” back into the equation, we are suffering higher inflation than we have in decades and for almost all wage earners we fall farther behind. Exxon-Mobile record profits are not going to benefit the U.S. population–any dividends will most likely be invested in markets overseas at this time. And although the Iraq war is forefront on everyone’s mind (And how can it not since, along with several months of Anna Nicole Smith stories, it has been the media’s primary story. But if we look back to before the war started, though, the media pushed as hard for this war as did George Bush, apparently all for ratings.) what we really have is two sides–Democrats and Republicans–posturing for position and votes for 2008. If a Democrat is in the White House in 2009, and the Iraq war is still being fought, the likely outcome will be the new Democrat President will find it’s suddenly irresponsible or dangerous to abandon Iraq just yet. Lucky for our politicians, the American public doesn’t pay attention except to sound bites and most don’t vote. Give ’em their SUV, a credit card, cable TV, and a drug of choice be it tranquilizers, alcohol, or illegal, and many will treat tomorrow the same as today. Problems other than Iraq are mentioned, sometimes discussed, put in committee, and eventually anaethesized. It’s time for voters to stop returning incumbents to office, thinking “oh, my Senator has been there so long he is now a “Very Important Person.” Your Senator is now a “Very Rich Person,” having parleyed position and votes that reward the Senator and his friends, not the rest of his constituents, because today is just like yesterday.

Posted by Zounds Off at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The one good thing about being in Las Vegas traffic is that at least you’re in Las Vegas.Ever want to pretend you’re a traffic controller, or just want to take a peek into Vegas traffic?

FAST Traffic Cameras gives you access to nine Regional Transport Commission of Southern Nevada cameras at various intersections, including I-215/I-15, The Strip/Flamingo, The Strip/Convention Center, I-15/Charleston, the Spaghetti Bowl, and more.

These are the FAST (Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation) cameras, which show traffic in a live feed.

You can also view traffic flow patterns as PowerPoints, animated GIFs, and PDFs.

The next best thing to not being there!

Posted by <mailto:rclark@lasvegasvegas.com”>R.C. Clark at 5:24 PM</mailto:rclark@lasvegasvegas.com”> | Permalink | Comments (0)

With a few new “concessions” to appease Democrats (damn the consumer), AT&T;’s acquisition of BellSouth draws ever closer and is nigh unstoppable at this point given that the deal may be approved as early as today.

(Reuters)” The No. 1 U.S. telephone carrier said it would sell off certain wireless airwaves in the 2.5 gigahertz band, offer a $19.95 per month stand-alone basic high-speed Internet service and for up to 24 months would not charge content providers like Google Inc.[…] to speed their services to consumers.”

Continue reading “”AT&T;’s New Warhammer Nearly Complete,” say FCC blacksmiths.” »

Posted by Human Head at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to announce a change in the departure path out of the Las Vegas McCarran Airport, a move required to continue support the rapid growth of the Las Vegas metropolis by allowing more flights to service Las Vegas. The route has become a major issue with those neighborhoods that will be located within the audio foot print of the jet airliners passing overhead.

The flight change proposals created considerable controversy between the homeowners in the affected northwest Vegas neighborhoods and the FAA. Even though most of the affected home owners lobbied hard against the flight path change, at the end of the day the Federal airport people opted for higher passenger numbers, therefore the “right turn” departure out of McCarran International.

I’ll be watching the North West Vegas real estate trends watching for the noticeable decline in property values predicted by the homeowners if the change was adopted. Combine this noise huisance with the national economy fueled downturn in the real estate market and we could see northwest homeowners getting hit with a double whammy. Not only will the airplanes be flying by, they’ll be flying by in record numbers. Of course, altitude filters out sound, so hope they’re high.

Posted by flipchipro at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

‘3 Square’ Aims to Eliminate Hunger in Las Vegas. From News 8:

Some major Las Vegas gaming corporations and business leaders have gotten together and are taking a new approach in helping the homeless and hungry in the area.

The major gaming corporations are MGM Mirage, Station Casinos, Harrah’s Entertainment and Boyd Gaming.

I have a plan which will eliminate homelessness in Las Vegas and reduce corruption at the same time. All we do is bus all the local politicians and committee members to California and Arizona, and then we put the homeless into all the vacant offices and let them run the show, or at least sleep in peace. I bet there will be an immediate improvement all around.

Posted by Zounds Off at 1:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Review Journal Editorial

Democrats love to tell voters that Nevada is at the “bottom of every list ranking all 50 states.”

In fact, though, they exhibit selective amnesia — Nevada is not the cellar-dweller Democrats have made it out to be. A study released Wednesday by the Tax Foundation says Nevada has the fourth-best business tax climate in the country. By comparison, Nevada neighbors Arizona and California ranked 28th and 45th, respectively.

Plaudits for Nevada industry go on and on. In May, Inc. magazine named Las Vegas the nation’s hottest “boom town” for entrepreneurs. In February, the Milken Institute put Las Vegas among its 20 Best Performing Cities, rating its economic performance and ability to create and sustain jobs in the top tier of 379 metropolitan areas surveyed. Entrepreneur magazine recently ranked Las Vegas the nation’s fourth-best big city for new business.

Wow! I guess it doesn’t matter that Nevada ranks at the bottom of the list for education as long as businesses keep springing up. What this editorial doesn’t address is, while applauding the number of new businesses forming, is how many businesses fail after a year or two. And some areas where Las Vegas does top the “list” now is in violent crimes and car theft, identity theft and prescription drug use. (And while alcohol and prescription drug use is rampant, there is an initiative to legalize marijuana use in Nevada. I guess if you give the public cheaper dope and movies on demand, they won’t notice the stink of corruption and the theft of their future.) I personally would rather be at the bottom of those lists.
The editorial also fails to mention that from 2001 to 2005 home prices rose about 30 percent a year while wages only rose 26 percent for the whole five years. (And I bet if you take out the wage raises of the top one percent in Vegas, including casino owners, developers, and the like, that 26 percent would fall.) With 7,000 new residents coming here a month, businesses don’t have to use higher wages to attract workers. The truth is that quality of life, strength of the infrastructure, and the future of our children are at the bottom of the list; paving the Las Vegas valley is at the top of the list.

Posted by Zounds Off at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Lahontan Valley News:

Q: Nevada has the highest gas prices in the continental U.S., why?A: That’s new. We’re usually lower than California, but not this time around. I don’t have a definite answer for that. If we went six months with Nevada being the highest in the country there might be some alarm, but I think that’ll probably go down to normal next month. Our gas prices have fallen substantially in the last two months, about 43 cents statewide. That’s not as large as the national average, which has been a 75 cent decrease in the last two months.

When I was paying $2.85 a gallon a couple weeks ago and found that gasoline was $2.38 in Keokuk, IA (You just have to write Keokuk once in a life time for fun.), the only answer that comes to mind is gouging. I wonder if it has to do with Las Vegas as hostage to the two maxed out lines coming in from California. The fuel meetings seem to go round and round but will anyone want to invest in another line when the new line will get only ten percent capacity or new and old share only using fifty percent of the capacity of each. The dance continues while the distributor gets richer.

Posted by Zounds Off at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s groundwater project is the biggest ever proposed in the United States, and will require installing up to 195 pumps over a nearly 8,000-square-mile area of eastern Nevada near the town of Ely.

If No One Is There Will There Be a Sucking Sound? I am reminded of a Texas town which sank eight feet because water was removed from an aquifer. Surprise!

Posted by Zounds Off at 4:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)