My Point of View/By Rolando Larraz
Before I start my column for this week I am going to make clear one very important point so readers can understand my point of view and my philosophy better this week: money does not control me, that is why I cannot be a County Commissioner; but for the record, I was not influenced in any way, shape, or form by Tony Hsieh; I never trusted him and always had the feeling that sooner or later he was going to show his true self; even when my managing editor went to lunch with him, I passed on that honor because I do not like to have to lunch with someone I do not trust.
Just about everybody looked at Tony Hsieh like God’s gift to the world except me; the more money a person has the less attention I pay to them and I like to believe that I am that way with everyone, even if I do believe that I like the person.
Sometime back, around the time Don Ahern was punished with heavy fines for supporting President Trump, The Las Vegas Tribune gifted him a full page for four weeks thanking him for being a good citizen and a loyal citizen working for a better future for this great nation. I don’t know if Don Ahern saw any of those pages and I never got a thank you note from him, but I did not care because I did not ask him if he wanted those four pages in his name; I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.
I didn’t do it because Don Ahern is a millionaire; I don’t care how many millions he may have because I cannot use any of his millions. I did it because he and I may be on a similar page as far as Donald Trump is concerned. He is lucky to have all that money to help the
best president we have had for a very long time, but all I can do is to write and talk to people about the quality and qualifications of
the forty-fifth president.
But I do not want to continue writing about Donald Trump or Don Ahern; I want to go back to Tony Hsieh and those people who were around him while he was alive and were able to enjoy all his money. His assistant was making more money than she ever made in her life, but now she is suing her former boss and everyone that knew him in one way or another sits there with their hands open waiting for the almighty dollars. Politicians most likely got campaign contributions and more.
As long as they knew that there was a Tony Hsieh and there was money to be made, everyone — like the controversial party-going millionaire himself and who knows how many others he may have split the baggie with — (you know the old saying: “friends last as long as the stash lasts”) and Tony Hsieh was no exception.
Tony Hsieh did not invest in downtown Las Vegas because he was “very generous”; he invested in downtown because it was the smart thing to do. If I had all that money I would have done the same thing. If I ever win the New York or Pennsylvania lottery I will come back to “my Las Vegas” and will do the same thing; the only difference will be that the politicians that I will donate money to will not have to worry about my bad habits because I am the most boring person that exists in this city; many people even think that I am a Mormon because I do not drink and do not smoke, but I cannot be a Mormon because I do drink coffee.
Many people gave him credit because they knew that he had a lot of “mules”; if someone else would have asked those creditors that now are suing Tony Hsieh for only one-tenth of what they gave Tony, they would have denied it to them. I learned that from a man that went to my good friend Jim Marsh asking for credit for a car, “just transportation,” to be able to take a relative with a deadly illness to healthcare and Jim Marsh flat out denied it because there was no type of publicity; the same thing happened with the man who owns Walker Furniture store; every year he gives lots of furniture away for Christmas and the local media gives him more in publicity than the furniture would cost for showing “his generosity,” but when someone wrote to him asking for one dining room set for a handicapped veteran, he never even answered that letter and five years later that family is still waiting for the “generous millionaire.”
As my late brother used to say, “Money talks and BS walks.” And our late father proved it; he used to have a one-hundred-dollar bill that lasted months if not years before he finally gave it away to someone, but because he held a very important and high-ranking position in the government, everywhere he went someone would pick up the tab or it would be on the house. He used to pull that hundred-dollar bill out, and soon he learned that his tab “was taken care of” by either someone in the room or by the house.
That’s money talking.
My name is Rolando Larraz, and as always, I approved this column.
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Rolando Larraz is Editor in Chief of the Las Vegas Tribune. His column appears weekly in this newspaper. To contact Rolando Larraz, email him at: Rlarraz@lasvegastribune.com or at 702-272-4634.
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