We’re now paying for the price of greed

To the editor:

As Las Vegas homeowners, investors, second homeowners, lenders, brokers and others ponder the current state of the real estate market in the valley, many shake their heads, wondering how a city built on dreams of riches and one of the fastest-growing areas in the country could have ended up in the predicament it did.

For one very good reason: It is a city built on the dreams of riches; a city which has and always will pay homage to greed, the very thing that brings it its life blood.

Starting in 2004, everyone jumped on the bandwagon of greed, including homeowners, lenders, brokers, investors and real estate agents.

The list goes on. Everyone wanted their chunk of the payout.

Buyers scrambled for properties that would increase tens of thousands of dollars in days or even hours. Some sellers left houses looking like the day after a drunken block party, knowing someone would walk through the door wanting to buy it and paying $100,000 more than what it was worth the month before.

Builders sat behind desks at developments reading newspapers, ignoring interested buyers and pointing at waiting lists that could be signed only if the buyers used their lender, were willing to pay an unknown amount for the house and wait for months.

Fast forward to 2007.

We sit on a nine-month supply of resale homes, more than 40 percent of them empty. Builders have discounted their new home inventory by offering incentives in order to bring their supply to a now-reasonable two months, while at the same time leaving earlier purchasers of their product possibly tens of thousands of dollars underwater, unable to refinance or sell for years.

Lenders are laying off employees, as are residential construction companies. Sellers who need to move discount their homes to compete with the foreclosures on the market, and buyers now want houses so cheap that they stand on the side thinking sellers will eventually give up their homes for less than what they owe on their mortgages.

It will all balance out in the future. That is a fact — what can be debated is when. But in the end, some will still make money, some will lose their homes, some builders will be gone, some lenders out of business and many real estate agents who never really knew the business in the first place will have moved on to other careers. And we have one thing to thank for it all: the price of greed.

R. Gill

LAS VEGAS

Ballot box

To the editor:

In reference to David R. Lloyd’s Tuesday letter, I have one question: How do you deny or abridge something that doesn’t exist? Simple logic suggests that one couldn’t deny or abridge the "right to vote" if such a right didn’t exist.

Mr. Lloyd may be correct in his assessment that neither the 15th Amendment, 19th Amendment nor the 24th Amendment grants the right to vote. Yet all three acknowledge the existence of such a right. They began with the words: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote." And all contain the phrase: "shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State."

Even the Ninth Amendment comes into play here. "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Though a "right to vote" is not enumerated in the body of the Constitution, the framers of these three amendments believed such a right existed.

Mr. Lloyd is correct in his reference to Article I, Section 4. This section does give state legislatures the power to determine "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections." Amendments, however, are for the purpose of correcting or explaining something. The three above-mentioned amendments establish voting as a right, not a privilege, and restrict the ability of Congress and state legislatures to interfere with that right.

Terry E. Peele

LAS VEGAS

Speech issue?

To the editor:

In his Tuesday commentary, Tim Rutten suggests that the controversy over Rush Limbaugh and the congressional censure of MoveOn.org are both simply "free speech" issues and so much hoopla. They are not.

Rush Limbaugh’s explanation of his statement is not "baroque." He states simply that when he said "phony soldiers," he was referring to one person, Jesse Macbeth, who had a blog in which he claimed to be a soldier in Iraq, which was not true.

Mr. Limbaugh is an entertainer whose forum is radio and whose humor is directed mainly at liberals and Democrats. His program is very popular and has many sponsors and listeners.

MoveOn.org, on the other hand, is a political organization, which took out an ad, at a discount, in The New York Times libeling a serving general in the U.S. Army.

Mr. Limbaugh is no Gen. Petraeus, and to compare the two is a disservice to both.

John Hinchliffe

LAS VEGAS

Numbers game

To the editor:

The teachers union should ask the casinos to push for a lottery, with all the profits going to education. This would be cheaper than the union’s proposal to raise the gaming tax by 45 percent.

The majority of Nevadans want a lottery.

STANLEY JACOBSON

LAS VEGAS

Trust us

To the editor:

I see that Bill Raggio, the illustrious majority leader of the state Senate, is "cool" on raising the gaming tax (Review-Journal, Wednesday). What a surprise.

He states that he’s against a ballot initiative raising the gaming tax like the one proposed by the teachers union. He says that raising such a tax should be left up to the Legislature. In other words, he doesn’t want to lose his power to the people — which is where it belongs in the first place.

The problem, though, is that Mr. Raggio and his fellow lawmakers don’t have the backbone to defy their casino masters and raise the gaming tax, which is the lowest in the country.

During the 28 years in which I’ve lived in Las Vegas, the gaming tax has been raised a paltry 1 percentage point, give or take. In 28 years! How much did our property taxes climb? Or how about our sales tax? A lot more than 1 percentage point, I’ll wager.

A June 19, 2000, Review-Journal article reported that 63 percent of voters supported a petition by then-Democratic state Sen. Joe Neal that would have increased the gaming tax rate to 11.25 percent.

Since then, there have been many other calls for increasing the gaming tax that have also fallen on deaf ears because our elected officials fear not being re-elected if they try to defy the casinos.

I believe that most Nevadans would prefer a ballot initiative to trusting Mr. Raggio and Legislature to do the right thing.

PAUL W. TROJAN

LAS VEGAS