Because Obama is the president — and a Democrat — this means he gets to tell us how to spend our money. Or this is how he feels, apparently. He’s now lecturing business owners about being irresponsible, and calling out Las Vegas in the process.
Mayor Oscar Goodman said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon that he was “hotter than fish grease” when he heard President Barack Obama recently contend that corporations using federal bailout money should stop visiting Las Vegas.
… Goodman backtracked on his demand that Obama apologize for his remarks, but said that he still needed to “straighten out the record.”
At a town hall meeting Monday in Elkhart, Ind., to gain support for the stimulus bill, Obama said that “you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime.”
The statement was in line with other remarks the president has made admonishing high-paid executives of failing financial institutions to use the federal bailout money responsibly.
Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs Group, which received $25 billion and $10 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money respectively, both recently scrapped highly publicized conferences at swank Strip hotels.
In his letter to Obama, an outraged Goodman took offense at what he claimed was the unjustified stereotype that trips to Las Vegas are “junkets.”
“The assumption that all meetings, events, and incentive travel (to Las Vegas) are wasteful is wrong,” Goodman wrote. “Now more than ever, we need businesses to travel and hold meetings and events.”
Rep. Shelley Berkley agreed. “There is no question that as a result of the criticism leveled against business travel to Las Vegas by the President and others,” she said in a written statement, “the community I represent has seen the loss of millions of dollars in revenue, which threatens even more job cuts at a time when we cannot afford the loss of a single visitor.”
Harry Reid must be furious right now — not because of the insult to a city in his home state, but because this is the last thing he needs. This is the second time Obama has taken a shot at Las Vegas.
Besides Harry Reid’s hurt feelings, these remarks were incredibly irresponsible. Whether it is because of the president’s remarks or not, there are plenty of high-profile companies that have pulled out of having their meetings in Las Vegas, such as Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs. Las Vegas is feeling the effects of the recessions just like the rest of the country, and Obama telling businesses to stop frequenting Vegas is not going to help their economy. Two businessmen explain:
“We’ve had layoffs. We’ve had days off without pay. Reductions in work force,” said Phillip Cooper of Encore Productions. He employs about 200 people in Las Vegas and relies on the meetings to pay his employees. He agrees with the convention authority that these meetings can provide direct stimulus to Las Vegas.
“Meetings last year were worth $244 billion. That is a lot of jobs. That is billions of dollars of tax revenue,” said Rossi Ralenkotter, LVCVA president and CEO.
So Obama’s position is basically that these people, these businessmen, shouldn’t be making money, apparently because of the fact that Las Vegas has a reputation for being a party town. But does that reputation mean that the people that live and work there don’t deserve to earn a living?
On top of all this idiocy, these digs at Las Vegas absolutely reek of hypocrisy. Obama has turned the White House into some kind of night club, hosting weekly parties for celebrities and DC insiders. He jets back and forth to Copenhagen on the taxpayers’ dime. He takes his wife and family out to Broadway shows and and concerts. He uses taxpayer dollars to fly to New York for dinner and a play, for Chrissakes. And other Democrats are no better. Nancy Pelosi is the best example, as she’s apparently been using the Air Force as a personal chaffeur for herself and her family. Not too long ago, the House Appropriations Committee was ordering another round of Gulfstream jets for politicians to use. There was an 11-day trip a group of politicians took to New Zealand “to study climate change”, featuring fireworks, snorkeling, reef dives, and a trip to the South Pole. It ended with a stay in a luxury hotel in Hawaii. The government wastes money in a million different ways, yet Obama wants to lecture us about how to spend money responsibly? This from the man who has quadrupled our deficit in just one year?
Robert Gibbs was the real loser in this one, though. He had to somehow figure out a way to excuse this latest gaffe of Obama’s, saying that Obama really was trying to target banks… or something. The truth is, Obama doesn’t want us to be able to spend our money how we want to spend it. Obama wants to be able to dictate how all of us live, and spending our money on trips to Vegas, whether for business or pleasure, is just not “allowed” anymore.
Cross-posted at Hot Air.
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Like it or not, the president was right. Gambling is unChristian and immoral anyway; only a fake conservative would think it should not be discouraged by our leaders.
Jose, you may feel that gaming is unchristian, but there is much more to do here in Vegas than gamble.
Jose, there are hundreds of place to go to gamble besides Los Vegas, and one can enjoy the heck out of the town without gambling a dime. It’s a fine city for large gatherings of ANY type.
I’m sick of this new ‘Blame it on the Banks’ symdrom that has raised its head of late. Sure the industry has seem it’s share of abuse, but in reality the problems there occured because of a system forced upon the industry by government regulation and threats of coatly lawsuits by groups seeking to force them to make ricky loans to people that neither needed nor could afford such. President Obama himself was once legal representation for one such group that brought this on. The banks only tried to take a bad situation and find a way to make money for their stockholders out of it. And while housing prices continuied to rise they did make that money too. The risk was in the inevitable happening, and that inevitability WAS warned against by the Bush administration and others. It was the democrats that fought the regulations that might have mitgated or prevented this collapse. The banking industry was just playing the game as it was handed to them. Like they say, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Jose,
You’re making a pretty stupid assumption that every conservative is a Christian. I’m not, so what you just said has no application to me whatsoever. I’ve been to Vegas and I would agree with the others here that there is a lot more to do there than just gamble.
The argument over gambling is irrevelant, that’s a whole other issue. How about all the people employed in Las Vegas?
This idiot we have in charge has me so steamed I can’t see straight. The rules are changed while they are being made, the politicians and now our military(I would limit this to Gates) are lying about the lies they told 2 minutes before. Also media stories are being pulled down because of political pressure.
*Update*: Hmmm…and more on the Reuters retraction here.
This President will not be happy until Capitalism is dead and buried. To do this Dingy Reid is just amazing. Barry is Saul Alinsky in action, or Cloward and Piven, take your pick.
Ever since the SOTU he’s been flying around like he’s on the campaign trail. Is anyone tracking this jerk’s carbon footprint?
For the very first bill he signed – an energy bill – he flew all the way to Colorado via Chicago and Phoenix on his 747. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi flew separately to the same venue.
I just spent a week in Vegas with my wife while I was attending a conference. In my spare time I played poker, but we also enjoyed shows, shopping, buffets, and spas every day.
There is so much more to Vegas than gambling, drinking, and smut. The funny thing is that we stayed on our own dime at a Hotel/Casino until the day I was on “official” travel. Then I had to transfer to a hotel that didn’t have “Casino” in its name. I couldn’t even stay at the conference venue because it was a Casino/Spa. The non-casino hotel cost more than the casino hotel. It was ridiculous – $80 in cab fares and $20 a night simply to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Talk about waste!
A small part of me thinks Obama WANTS Dingy Harry to lose his seat. He’s certainly not counting on keeping Nevada in his column in the next election!
Harry Reid Is Doomed…
Obama put the Big Trounce on Reid’s last hold out…Las Vegas. From Cassy Fiano, that nice “little girl” that carries a side arm…< ……
From another story on this (at http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=11922024O):
“When times are tough, you tighten your belts,” the president said. “You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.”
Maybe times wouldn’t be to tough if the government “tightened its belt” and stopped “blowing a bunch of cash” — MY CASH — on socialistic boondoggles and payoffs for cronies.
Isn’t this story based on an article from one year ago? (the link for “calling out Las Vegas in the process” leads to a story from one year ago). Has the president called out Las Vegas twice now, or is this just one occurance?
There are only two other cities that have as much convention space square footage as available in Las Vegas, they are Orlando and Chicago. Throw in the fact that ALL labor done in Chicago’s McCormick Place MUST be union labor, and I don’t think its an accident that Las Vegas keeps getting called out by 0bama.
Allison — this is the second time he’s called out Las Vegas. There are also stories about this most recent incident on the Hill.