National media are mum on why President Barack Obama keeps going back to Las Vegas, as he will tomorrow for a speech, in a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate, now 12 percent, notes Grumpy Editor.
Las Vegas also leads in home foreclosures
It will mark Obama’s sixth visit to the Silver State since January and second visit to Sin City in three weeks.
All this follows shots the president took at Las Vegas, a city highly dependent on tourist travel and conventions.
In a Sept. 9 column for Stevens Media, Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, noted Nevada is now among the toss-up states after leaning toward Obama.
He pointed out Las Vegas “is ground zero for the recession” with high unemployment, especially among Hispanics and minorities. He mentioned “the construction industry was destroyed” and “net wealth for all Las Vegans was cut in half (or more) by the collapsed real estate market.”
Frederick said “the president won’t take ownership of the mess. He still blames George W. Bush.”
Added Frederick: “But the president can’t blame Bush for his own actions. Not once, but twice President Obama took shots at the people who dare to visit Las Vegas during the recession.”
As pointed out earlier by Grumpy Editor, the first blast, in February, 2009, was directed at business meetings when the president declared: “You can’t take a trip to Las Vegas or down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers dime.” He followed this a year later with: “You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.”
Las Vegas’ economy then turned south, with thousands of casino industry workers losing jobs, sending the area’s unemployment soaring to the nation’s highest.
In his Las Vegas speech tomorrow, prior to traveling for a campaign event Thursday in the Denver area, Obama was expected to tell his audience the choice in the upcoming election will be between moving forward with his vision for continuing to create an economy that’s built to last, or going back to economic policies that hit the economy and punished the middle class.
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