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To lose weight, humans need to eat 100% Grass Fed organic ground beef at 93% lean. I know this is true because I lost 175 pounds by only eating Nature's Rancher 100% grass fed 93% lean organic ground beef.
Richard W. Lightowler has successfully lost 175 lbs. and has maintained a steady 22.5 BMI for over a year.
Grain fed cattle are obese. The grains are all GMOs. GMO corn and soy is so delicious to animals that they over eat. Farmers know this. They think a fatter cow is better than a healthy cow because fate tases better. We do not buy food for taste: we buy food for survival.
This is a follow up to an article written earlier this week. The Whole Foods Global Merchandising Team decided to change brands of 100% grass fed ground beef. The new brand is inferior to the old brand. We let corporate know. We have not heard a response yet.
We went back to the Whole Foods to see if the meat has been selling. This is what we found:
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The Weight Loss Force™️ are beef experts. We shop at 3 or 4 stores to find the best quality beef. That's how we know the butchers in New York that are advertising 100% organic grass fed lean beef are actually selling New Yorkers conventional beef instead. To make matter's worse Dellapietra's Ottomanelli's charged us nearly double what Whole Foods charges us; and they gave us for inferior meat. Pino's Prime Meats simply charged us $10 a pound but lied to us directly on camera that their beef was grass fed. In this video, we compared the beef from Dellapietras to Nature's Rancher. 93%. Dellapietras should be leaner, dryer and flakey. Weight Loss Force™️ may do a video comparison of Ottomanelli Bros. and Pino's Prime Meats if the viewer demand is high enough but we really do not like buying their beef because it is not edible for Weight Loss Force™️ consumption. But wait. Whole Foods in Manhattan just switch to local meat suppliers. The new meat from New York is either not 100% grass fed or it is not as lean as they claim. We know this because we compared the 100% grass fed 93% lean to the 100% grass fed from every butcher shop in New York who claims to sell grass fed ground beef. We thought New York farms supplied to have the best beef in the world to the kings and queens of Manhattan. Guess we were wrong. We visited 5 different butchers in New York City who claimed to carry 100% grass fed beef. It's not too difficult to distinguish conventional beef form grass fed. Conventional cattle are obese while grass fed cattle are lean. We thought this might be a mistake. That's why we visited each butcher at least 3 times before concluding they were false advertising. There is no way for a butcher who knows the difference between the two could make a mistake. #DeptOfAgricultureNY
 Last week, Whole Foods changed meat suppliers to an inferior brand. Organic Rancher's meat is too greasy to eat and smells like fish.
Last week, my wife and I discovered that Whole Foods in Manhattan decided to change meat suppliers from Nature's Ranchers (aka Pederson's Farms) to Organic Rancher. Both products are labeled 100% grass fed, USDA organic, 93% lean 7% fat, ground beef. However, when you watch our video, you can clearly see a dramatic difference in the products. To add to the dismay, Organic Rancher's branding was almost identical to Nature's Rancher. You can read about Nature's Ranchers commitment to grass fed here. "Organic Rancher" does not have a website.
Normally, when Whole Foods makes a change, the product would have been improved. However, this time the quality quite dramatically worsened.
A trained eye can tell the difference between grass fed organic and grain fed just by looking at it. We inspect our ground beef before buying. Sometimes, we must travel to three or even 4 butcher shops in order to find fresh 100% grass fed ground beef in New York because they sell out.
This is not the first time we asked the question, "Is this beef actually grass fed?" in Manhattan. In fact, we made a list of the butcher shops that claim to carrying organic grass fed ground beef in New York City and we only found one: Whole Foods. The other butchers sold us meat that was too greasy.
I was asked to be the C.E.O. of a multi-location True Value hardware franchise in West Linn, Ore. During my 5 year tenure, I increased revenues by 3x, became Traeger Grills #1 dealer in the Nation and created a retail sales website called the Pellet Grill Outlet (PGO). I used the success of PGO to design, manufacture and market a new line of wood pellet grills called the Royall Grill. I was setting my sites on Traeger's lucrative wood pellet grill market. To achieve my success, I designed a series of after-market parts designed to fit in a Traeger. I made PGO's parts superior to Traeger's parts to distinguish PGO from the other Traeger dealers.
PGO shipped over 100 boxes a day out of a tiny True Value Hardware Store in West Linn, Ore.
How I made PGO the #1 Traeger Dealer in the Nation -- by FAR!
I attended industry trade shows, purchased print & broadcast advertising and taught hardware store employees some good, old fashioned salesmanship skills. I created and marketed a new line of high-end, food grade wood pellets called American Broadleaf. American Broadleaf pellets had more flavor than Traeger's pellets. I have a background in computer software so I search optimized PGO's website to come in the #1 search result position when a person typed in "Traeger Grills" on Google.
PGO Dropped Traeger when Kieth Barrish Closed the Wilsonville Plant and moved Manufacturing to China The Royall Grill was my original design.
That's when I decided to take action. I contacted a small manufacturing plant in Wisconsin who said they could make a wood pellet grill to my specifications. We called it the Royall Grill. The number one reason to purchase a Royall Grill was because it was made in the U.S.A. I am not just a C.E.O. who sits behind a desk. In this case, by fielding sales calls is how I trained the hardware store employees to be an effective sales person. That's also how I learned that Traeger's main selling point was that it was "Made in the U.S.A."
Working the phones is how I came up with several after-market products, like the 180 degree digital controller. PGO's customers were asking if the grill would go down to 180 degrees. I did some research and found a temperature control board manufacturer in Chicago. I flew to Chicago the next day and designed a new controller. The 180 degree controller became another reason for PGO's enormous success. No one else had a wood pellet grill that could cook at 180 degrees except PGO.  No one could believe that a tiny hardware store in West Linn was behind the #1 wood pellet grill dealer in the nation.
I expanded the business to another location in downtown Portland across the street from the new M.L.S. soccer stadium. The new store was a hit with the soccer fans who drew a line around the block when I sold BBQ sandwiches from the meat that was cooked on the Traeger Grill. I used the new location to cross-market PGO's wood pellet grills. Things were going great until the manufacturing plant in Wisconsin started selling Royall Grill's to PGO's competitors. That was the year I learned a very hard lesson about contract negotiations.
Las Vegas' #2 business just behind tourism, is selling real estate.
Here are three reasons that Las Vegas is not back, yet:
The Las Vegas Review-Journal is owned by a casino that's not even in Las Vegas anymore
Here are the hard facts. that make me question the numbers that are coming out of Nevada' largest newspaper called The Review Journal. Full disclosure. The Las Vegas Review Journal was purchased by Sheldon Adelson in 2015, Sheldon bought the paper to manipulate the public into getting a football team in 2017 and using the RJ's reporters to pressure a judge to acquit the Venetian of a wrongful death suit. The deceased owner's family sold the Venetian and the Palazzio earlier this year. The only interest the Las Vegas Sands has in Nevada is the Las Vegas Review Journal.
The way the news media works in Las Vegas is the chambers of commerce, business leaders and politicians decide what news to send to the newswire. Everything else gets sand bagged, buried or just ignored. Yahoo News, MSN and other online news services pick up the misleading wire.
She's retweeting an opinion but her followers will think its fact.
Earlier, she told her followers that the Cosmopolitan sold for $5.65B when it merely switched over into a REIT with MGM being the new casino gaming license operator. MGM is now a renter owns nothing in Las Vegas. That cannot be better situation than when casinos owned the property they were operating.
 The New York Times called Richard W. Lightowler to discuss the impact of a slowing economy on small business
I know REIT's are favorable from a short-term accounting perspective, however, it is an indication that in the long run there is a problem with the underlying business, I was in a similar situation when I was the C.E.O. of a True Value franchise in West Linn, Ore, albeit for on a smaller scale. But the business principles are the same. The business needed cash to to a sluggish economy. My business was slowing in certain areas but growing in other areas. I wanted to buckle down and focus on the areas that were making the most profit. I sold one of the businesses inside the building and leased the space to the new owner. It gave me positive cash flow and cash up front that I used to buy more inventory in the area of my business that was booming.
Jim Murren, C.E.O. from MGM, was quoted as saying the reason they are selling their casinos in Las Vegas was because they wanted to focus on live events, sporting events and Japan. Of course, a C.E.O. would never tell the buyer the real reason they are selling. Can you imagine the conservation?
BUYER: "Why are you selling."
JIM MURREN, C.E.O.: "Because there was this shooting the killed 58 people outside one of my hotels. Ever since then, we've had to continually drop rates to keep rooms filled. But then, the pandemic hit... wait.... hello? Are you still there?" 
The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas
Blackstone Group (BX:NASDAQ) Down $8 per share
But no matter how you slice it, Blackstone's stock went down most likely because they bought high and sold low. That's called getting scammed in Vegas, just so you know. I've had it happen to me at a strip club more than once.
 The Cosmopolitan was purchased by Blackstone in 2014 for $1.73 billion and sold in 2021 for $1.625 billion.
This transaction is a good example of how the Las Vegas media has been spinning the news since the Las Vegas Review-Journal was founded in 1909.
Las Vegas Locally posted on Twitter that Blackstone Group sold the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas for $5.65 billion. She included a link from the Las Vegas Review-Journal the read with the headline, "Cosmo sold in $5.6B deal; MGM to take over resort operations."
This is a perfect example to show how Las Vegas Review-Journal spins the news.
I immediately checked my stock watch list. "BlackStone stock should go through the moon", I said out loud. But nope. It was down. What happened? I checked the Motely Fool.
Cosmo sells in a lease-back deal
That's a much different headline from what the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote and what was written by the local bloggers. Cosmo sells for $5.65 billion? If were true then Blackstone's stock would have gone to the moon. They only paid $1.73 billion. Instead, Blackstone sold the business for $1.625 billion when they were in the hole for $173.5 billion since. That's not a gain, that's a loss and that's why the stock dropped.
Las Vegas Bloggers on Twitter work in tangent with the Review-Journal to promote false news
 Richard Lightowler sold part of his business for $33K and a lease-back deal when the mortgage crisis hit in 2008.
A lease-back deal is very different than a normal real estate sale. I did a similar deal when I was the C.E.O. of a True Value Hardware franchise in West Linn, Ore. When the mortgage crisis hit in 2008, banks and vendors were calling their notes and shortening their credit terms. I needed to free up some cash fast. I put a portion of the hardware business that was not doing as well as as parts of the business up for sale on BizBuySell.com.
The Nursery sold plants. It was a huge business at the hardware store but competition from newer, larger nurseries and a recently opened Home Depot in the area had caused a dropped in revenues for the Nursery. I sold the nursery business and inventory for $33,000 and leased the space back to the new owner. That gave me some immediate cash plus additional cash flow each month. Later, the tenant turned out to be a real pain (as expected) but that's for another story.
A young, up and coming entrepreneur, Richard Lightowler took his pellet grill barbecues and put them online.
Full disclosure: The Las Vegas Review-Journal is owned by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. JEDIRICH.COM is owned by me.
Big Brother has been the subject of racism ever since it’s inception 20 years ago. The white houseguests have typically banded together and isolated the other non-white houseguests. They did not do it on purpose. That is the nature of the show. The show requires players to quickly form bonds with strangers. People who are of the same race, religion or culture already "know" each other. They bond together more easily.
Dereck Frazier is the first openly gay black man to ever be in the final 3 of Big Brother. Derek is also the son of the boxer Joe Frazier. Derek said he wanted to show the world that you do not have to be a broadway singer to be gay. He said shows like Big Brother type cast homosexual men. Derek wanted to be different than those stereotypes. After 23 seasons, It's good that we finally have some diversity in the Big Brother house.
Dereck Frazier is proud to be the first openly gay African-American to be in the final three of Big Brother.
A windstorm in Las Vegas knocked down several wooden telephone poles in 2018.
In June 2018, a windstorm brought down several telephone poles outside of Las Vegas, Nevada leaving residents without power for nearly a week.
The amazing power of the force.
Jedi Joy gets interviewed by News 8 Now.
Jedi Joy and Emma Hix at the 2020 AVN Expo in Las Vegas
The AVN Adult Entertainment Expo and Awards convention that was scheduled for January 18th-23rd 2022 was cancelled this week. For the past five years, the event had been held at the Hard Rock Hotel. The Hard Rock sold to Virgin Hotels in 2018. Virgin extended their agreement with the AVN / AEE for another 3 years. But due to the COVID variants, the event organizers of the AVNs decided to cancel the event.
Miguel Ferrara and Jedi Joy at the 2020 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo Awards show in Las Vegas, Nevada,
The Jedi attended the AVNs in 2020. We had a feeling that it might be one of the last AVN shows in Vegas when Virgin bought the Hard Rock. However, I will leave the sexual innuendos to the pros.
A really hot girl.
Las Vegas convention sales people pointed out that several conventions were happening but the event organizers said the AVNs was different. If you have ever been to an Adult Expo in Las Vegas then you will know what we are talking about. The sexual energy is charged throughout the air. The scantily clad women walking around are super friendly, super sexy and genuinely horny. There's a reason these women chose to be in the sex industry. They get turned on by the slightest touch. They love sex with anyone and everything. When you put 500 of these sexually charged women together at a convention in Las Vegas over a 3-day booze and cocaine filled weekend, then you will understand why the mask thing just won't be happening this year. We will have to wait until 2023.
New York City was back with a bang as tourists flocked to Times Square for the Lion King and several other Broadway shows.
UPDATE: Apple Pay working 9/18/2021
The Jedi use Apple Pay for public transit. Today, our Apple Pay stopped working. We contacted Apple. They did not know anything about it. It must be just our phones. They asked if we had updated our software to iOS 14.8. We did. It still did not work. I will log a call tomorrow but in the meant time, Apple needs to refund the charges they made to our account,
The Apple Pay system charged our card 6 times but never let us pass though the turnstile.
Payment not accepted but our account was still charged 6 times!
 Due to high demand, you must pre-order your pre-order to get an Apple iPhone 13. We placed our order for an Apple iPhone 13 today. It is a pre-order only. We will be able to place the order on 9.17
In 2018, the Jedi were the first bloggers on YouTube and Twitter in Las Vegas to begin photo documenting and video blogging the construction of the new Las Vegas Raiders stadium. Early on, someone started calling the Las Vegas stadium the Death Star on our YouTube channel. That made sense. We were the Jedi, the stadium was the Death Star. It was funny. Eventually, it caught on. Then one day, we heard the owner of the Raiders, Mark Davis, refer to the stadium as the Death Star. We knew the Jedi had succeeded in renaming the the Stadium! Of course, no one gave the Jedi credit.
Check out our Allegiant Stadium construction videos here. We made over 135 construction videos. This is an example of one of our construction videos after a major snow storm shut down Las Vegas for about a week in 2019.
The energy in New York City is buzzing as things begin to go back to normal.
Kids went back to school today in New York City for the first time since March 2020. The energy in New York is buzzing today. People are beginning to feel like things are returning to "normal" again.
Last night, Justin Bieber, Dojo Cat, Ed Sheeran and a plethora of other pop, rap and rock stars were in Brooklyn for the MTV Video Music Awards. Broadway shows begin opening later this month.
Liberty Park Memorial Closed today because President Biden, Former President Barack Obama and Former President Bill Clinton were at the ceremony. We heard three presidential helicopter fly overhead. Then, we heard some bagpipes up the street. We followed the music to Woodrow's Bar, named after Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson was a Democratic President who defeated Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. You can thank Woodrow Wilson for the invention of the Federal income tax.
Owner of Woodrow's Bar graciously thanks the member of the NYPD Bags and Pipes.
20 years in retroflection.
Jedi Rich and Jedi Joy at the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan.
I was moving to Manhattan. Here's what happenedafter 9/11/2001.
Michelle and Barack Obama initiated a campaign in 2008 called Let's Move. Let's Move was a public health program with the goal to reduce obesity rates from 33.7% in 2008 to 5% by 2030. In 2018, obesity rates skyrocketed from 33.7% when the program started to 42.4%. By any metric, this would indicate an epic fail. Instead of lowering rates, Michelle Obama's public health plan to make people lose weight resulted in Americans becoming more obese than ever before. What's worse is that African-American women are leading the nation in obesity. Should Michelle Obama admit that her program was a fail before the nation reaches 100% obesity?  As people exercise more, they are getting fatter. In 2008, only 36.7% of Americans were obese. by 2018 42.4% Here's what they did:
The damage has been done. People are now eating more carbohydrates, fruits, grains and vegetables than ever before. As a result, nearly 73.4% of all Americans are overweight or obese in 2018. There is not much room to go higher. Anyone who is overweight today will be obese tomorrow.  People have been getting fatter ever since the Government started giving nutrition recommendations. Telling fat people to move more resulted in fat people getting fatter. This is because when you over-exercise you get hungry. When you're hungry you eat. If you eat bread, fruits and vegetables then you will get fat, not thin. The more you work out, the more food you will want to eat. And that's not my opinion, look at the obesity charts! It's time for the Biden Administration to correct the errors of the Obama administration. The White House needs to undue what was done to promote eating more fruits, grains and vegetables before the entire nation reaches 100% obesity.  Left photo: Jedi Rich followed their nutrition advice. Right photo: He did his own thing. It really does not matter to this author if people learn about nutrition. I'm 53 and married. You are the ones left who will have to live in a society full of fat ass gluttons.
Background:
When a loan is forgiven (or written off) it's the same thing as if someone gave you the money. In this case, the loan was for $200 million. When Alameda County wrote off the loan because the Raiders did not pay them back, the Raiders needed to record to $200 million as income. You cannot have it both ways: either pay back the $200 million plus interest or pay the government taxes on $200 million.
Araxie Grant attended UNLV. She was working for the MOB Museum before she got hired by the Raiders in December 2019. She says that she would never do participate in anything illegal or unethical. The CFO, Ed Villanueva, has been at the Raiders for 18 years. He must have known about the bad debt. It looks as if Villanueva deliberately withheld valuable financial information from his own controller whom they hired and fired from Las Vegas.
Mick Ackers goes out of his way to try to discredit Las Vegas Locally
Las Vegas Locally has a huge following on Twitter. People look to her to share the scuttlebutt of what's happening in Las Vegas. She Tweets very positive reports about concerts, new projects, restaurants, weed dispensaries and casinos. But once in awhile she Tweets something controversial about a scandal. Last week was one of those scandals when 4 Raiders execs suddenly got fired. The President, the CFO, the Comptroller and the SVP of Strategic Development were let go when the company discovered the Raiders failed to report $200 million of income to the I.R.S.. That's a BIG EFFING "NO-NO".
These were the only two tweets from Mick Akers at the Las Vegas Review Journal regarding the departures or the accusations of unethical business practices. Mick uses his verified blue check mark on Twitter to squash any negative news about the Allegiant Stadium or the Las Vegas Raiders. This time, he literally called out Las Vegas Locally, Mike Ozakian from Forbes. MSN, Mike Fiorio, NBC Sports and Yahoo! Sports of spreading false information. Mick did not follow up to write a story for the reason for the departures. We can assume he's waiting for the Raiders' PR team to tell him what to publish in the Review Journal.
Here are the facts:
The Las Vegas Raiders attempted to hide $200 million worth of income from the I.R.S. They took out a loan from City of Oakland for $200M in 1995. They never paid it back. The City of Oakland filed suit but lost. In 2013, Alameda County declared the Raiders loan as an "unrecoverable debt" and wrote off the $200 million. The Raiders tried to hide that debt/income $200 million from the I.R.S. and presumably the Bank of America because they did not have enough money to build a stadium. They got a loan from BofA. Clark County (Las Vegas) had to loan the Raiders $750 million to build the stadium. In order to pay back the loan, Las Vegas locals voted to tax the tourists who stay in hotels on the strip or anywhere on Clark County. As a side note, the Jedi have paid more towards the Allegiant Stadium than Mick Akers or any other blogger, journalist, anchor or TV reporter in Las Vegas. They all voted to tax the tourists.
The story broke from Front Office Sports and Forbes. No journalist or news station in Las Vegas has covered the story as of yet.
The C.F.O. has been the Raiders CFO for nearly 19 years. Araxie Grant resigned last month as the Raiders' comptroller. Ms. Grant stated, "I am someone who lives by high standards of ethics and integrity,” she said. “As a CPA, I have never, and would never, participate in unethical accounting practices, or compromise my professional responsibilities in any way."
My father was a C.P.A. He taught me the same thing. You cannot do anything unethical, especially in business. But a President and a VP of Strategic Development do not operate under those same principles. And the C.F.O., Ed Villanueva should have known better. This is basic tax stuff. Ed could have been a whistleblower but he chose to accept a paycheck from Mark Davis instead. Now, Mark Davis made Ed the fall guy.
Las Vegas has a media machine to lure investors, tourists and home buyers to Las Vegas. Here's how it works:
The Jedi first learned the viciousness of this ,machine when they tried to hide a $200 mistake that was made at Allegiant Stadium. The original budget for the stadium was $1.8 billion. But when 1/2 the trusses were mounted with parts built upside down, they had to bring in another million dollar crane while they figured out a solution. They worked overtime to catch up. But instead of reporting that a roof truss had to be unmounted, the Review-Journal said the Raiders were adding new luxury suites. Casino.org picks up the story and the public forgets about the $200 million in overruns. The new budget was suddenly $2 billion with NO EXPLANATION from the Review Journal.
Here's how the Raiders tried to hide $200 million from the I.R.S.
In 1995, the Raiders took out a loan for $200 million from the City of Oakland / Alameda County. They stiffed them. After nearly 20 years, Alameda County wrote off the loan as an "unrecoverable debt" in 2013. Then, Mark Davis starts talking to Steve Sisolak about moving to Las Vegas. Steve said, "If the Raiders move to Vegas, then you won't have to pay that high California income tax anymore plus we will give you contraction loan of $750,000,000!".
Like a casino, Steve didn't do a thorough credit check otherwise he would have found out that the Oakland Raiders stiffed the City of Oakland and Alameda County for $200 million. They got the $750 million from the tax payers and they built the stadium,.
That's must have been the deal Steve Sisolak made with Mark Davis. Davis thought hey- if we move to Vegas, we won't have to pay back the City of Oakland and we can get the City of Las Vegas (Clark County) to loan us $750 million for a new stadium.
How did Steve Sisolak get the voters to approve of $750 million tax on the casinos?
Sheldon Adelson, owner of the Venetian, also bought the Review Journal. Instead of using the Review-Journal to investigate the Raiders, the Review-Journal convinced the taxpayers to add a .88% tax to every hotel guest
The reason investors constantly lose their ass in Las Vegas is because one casino owns the local newspaper; the Las Vegas Sands. The Review-Journal is a tool that has been used by the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce (now called the Vegas Chamber) since the 1930s. Anything favorable about Las Vegas is sent through the wire to be published by Yahoo! News and retweeted by the local bloggers. Anything unfavorable is squashed. In 2015, Las Vegas took it one step further. The Nevada AG allowed Sheldon Adelson to purchase the Review-Journal . But he had to do it secretly. So his son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, travelled to Conneticut to set up a shell company under a fictitious name. No one knew who really owned the Las Vegas Review-Journal until the investigative reporters from the Review-Journal spent 6 months uncovering the owner’s true identity: The Las Vegas Sands, which was owned by Sheldon Adelson. Sheldon responded by having all 3 reporters fired. Google it. It should be a movie.
The reason you cannot get real numbers out of Las Vegas is because everyone, and I mean everyone, is in on the scam. This is because Las Vegas is a single industry town; tourism. Sure, Las Vegas has a core industry of being a rail road stop, however, Las Vegans have become comfortable living beyond their cities means. Las Vegas has always had the worst education system in the nation. The public transit system is essentially useless, unless you live on Flamingo or Tropicana and you work at a casino. Las Vegas has broken mental health system. Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas has been investigated by federal investigators for the mistreatment of psychiatric patients. It got so bad, the feds actually closed one of their clinic in 2014. The way it works in Las Vegas is there is no health care for mental patients. That's why there are so many homeless people roaming the streets. It got so bad, that the Las Vegas City Council voted to approve a law that would ban homelessness. To circumvent the U.S. Constitution's 8th Amendment, the city council constructed a bill that would make an exception if there are no beds in the shelters available. The shelters in Las Vegas will not house anyone who is visibly intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. Therefore, when the mentally ill get kicked onto the streets by the the hospitals they almost immediately get arrested, unless they can get into a shelter. The problem is that 99% of the mentally ill in Las Vegas also suffer from substance abuse, This impossible contingency was constructed by Mayor Goodman and passed but by city council in 2019. Clark County is on the hook for $750,000,000 stadium is the casinos cannot pay the minimum hotel tax. Anyone working for the government in Clark County; cops, teachers, fire fighters, DMV employees, road workers, DOT, etc; will be affected by the casinos not meeting the minimum reserve payments of $16 million every six months for 25 years or so. The last two times, the County needed to dip into the Allegiant stadium reserves. Those are just three items of infrastructure off the top of my head that no one in the county is concerned about. The metrics the local use to determine is their city is thriving are:
I mention Ikea and Dave & Busters because Las Vegas did not have those when the Jedi first moved to Las Vegas in 2013. I remember seeing John Heck on Fox-5 Las Vegas doing report after report on the new Dave & Busters before the Dave & Busters was built. He said. "Now that Las Vegas has exceeding 2 million people, we can get our very Dave & Busters and maybe even an Ikea next." Sure enough, in 2016, Las Vegas got their first Ikea. Oh, the new locals were so pleased. About the locals... There Are Two Types of Locals: Las Vegas locals and California Transplants.There are two type
Las Vegas was where everyone would go to party. When we say party, we mean get laid. That's what most people mean when they say they want to "party". It's usually sex or cocaine, or both. The theme in 2014 was "What happens here, stays here." The ads suggested that women (and men) could travel to Las Vegas and transform into someone else for a weekend. She could have random sexual encounters with a variety of men (and women) and then go back home where no-one would ever know. They basically played on the Suzy Favor Hamilton story where a former olympian travelled to Las Vegas and was secretly a hooker without her family knowing. Times have changed since 2014. MGM, Caesars, and the LV Sands is no more. The MGM Grand is now owned by VICI. VICI now ownsthe majority of Las Vegas resorts and casinos. They lease their space to gaming companies, hotels and restaurants. It's several layers of ownership. Jon Gray is the Chief Operating Officer at Blackstone in New York City*. Jon is an operational man. They refer to Jon as the Gordon Gecko of REIT’s. Jon Gray buys troubled properties, reduces overhead, turns a profit then dumps the property. Blackstone & VICI own the majority of properties in Las Vegas and most people do not even know the transaction occurred. Unless you watch the new ads The new ad has no people. In 2021, Vegas casinos started replacing their dealer table games with computer automated table games. They started replacing bartenders with service bars robots. The ad suggests sports and electronic computer gaming are the theme instead parties, concerts and gambling. The 2014 ad was mostly white people. The 2021 ad has an urban vibe to it. They use an African-American as the lead instead of a skinny white female. The new ad focuses on sports. Sports & families are a very different demographic than the party demographic. Families are cost conscious; the party demographic will spend anything to party. They released a couple other ads before the summer. These ads showed single when coming to Las Vegas to party. I do not know any woman who has ever traveled to Las Vegas by themselves just for fun, except Suzy Favor Hamilton. Maybe it's not that Las Vegas has changed their theme but rather, the World has changed it's values. *Jon Gray is no relation to Jon Gray, the former GM of the Palms.
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