Clark County Commissioners vote to eliminate 7,000 small businesses

Clark County Commissioners vote to eliminate 7,000 small businesses

BCC only care about the millions they receive from Wall St. corporations

By Ed Uehling

Las Vegas Tribune

On Tuesday, June 7, 2022, the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) chose: 1) to ignore 200 pages of opposing comments from citizens; 2) to violate Nevada State law which encourages private business; 3) to extinguish 7,000 small privately-owned businesses (as short-term rentals are officially labeled by Clark County), while 4) saying nothing about the program of Governor Sisolak to subsidize with taxpayer funds out-of-state businesses he wants to move to Clark County, and 5) to lie blatantly about what those 7,000 businesses actually contribute to the well-being of Las Vegas and its tourist industry.

What are the benefits gained from this travesty? There is only one: The Commissioners guaranteed their personal flood of campaign funds from the corporate vultures on the Strip.

The BCC has a recent history of inflicting pain on small business and each of us — their two million serfs struggling to pay their own bills AND keep up with the demands of our predatory industry. This industry, which includes some of the wealthiest corporations on Planet Earth, is hell-bent on making sure every visitor dollar passes through its hands FIRST. But that’s not enough to satisfy these barbarians: They use OUR relative handful of pitifully weak elected leaders to compel all of US to subsidize the sugar daddies of our “leaders.”

Direct giveaways like this to our State’s biggest industry do not end there. Its corollary union — the extremely politicized (to elect its Democratic Party thugs), wealthy and typically corrupt Culinary Union — is handed millions of dollars of OUR tax money by the members of the BCC to re-elect members of the BCC!

All four parties in this circle of corruption — the Resorts, the Culinary Union, the Democratic Party and the BCC commissioners themselves — have (perhaps unwittingly) bought into the same pattern of economic destruction that was pioneered by the corporations, unions and politicians of countless Midwestern US cities in the 1970’s. Today, these drug-addled, corruption-ridden, poverty-stricken rust belt communities can’t even raise sufficient tax monies to be able to demolish the abandoned houses and other buildings barely standing.

Is that what our commissioners want for future commissioners and residents of Clark County? The answer appears to be a resounding “yes” as they choose to vote exclusively for their own pocketbooks. Unfortunately, they have sent clear messages that:

—Independent thinking and financial initiative are bad and must be discouraged

—They have no compunction about destroying 7000 businesses and putting their owners and thousands of other employees out of work

—They don’t care if dozens of elderly and handicapped operators might end up living on the streets of Las Vegas

—It really matters to them that the Wall Street corporate interests be protected so that MGM and Caesars be allowed to grab undeserved billions from Las Vegas to construct competing resorts all over the world

—Neither they nor the resorts care about creating a divide between the citizens of Las Vegas and its biggest industry after 70 years of mutual support

—The commissioners do not care about creating an environment in which no property or property owner is safe

Is this the Las Vegas you dreamed of living in?

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