What Happens in Vegas
by David Atkins (thereisnospoon)
If you don't watch Fox News or read conservative blogs, you might just have missed it. But those who live in the echo chamber have been treated to a small media frenzy over an anti-Obama, anti-regulation rant made by Las Vegas casino don Steve Wynn a few days ago. For those unfamiliar with Steve Wynn, he's the most powerful man in Vegas, owner of multiple resorts, including one of the latest, poshest monstrosities. Wynn is basically the template for the villain in the modern Ocean's Eleven film series, the foil for George Clooney's irascible thief.
The rant goes on at length across a sprawling conference call transcript, but here's a small taste:
But I’m afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States. You watch television and see what’s going on on this debt ceiling issue...And I’m saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration...The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their [sic] holding too much money...And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.
You bet and until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it's not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President.
Now, there are so many things wrong with just this much of the tirade from a factual basis that it's hard to know where to start. First of all, as Steve of Veracity Stew notes, Mr. Wynn's company Wynn Resorts Limited boasted record profits in Q2 2011. The man himself increased his personal fortune from $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion this year. As with the rest of the corporate sector enjoying record-breaking profits, it's difficult to discern precisely what he has to complain about from the government that has enabled his larder to grow even as millions suffer in increasing desperation. If this is a time of dreaded Marxist wealth redistribution, it would be interesting to see what sort of horrific inequalities more "business-friendly" policies might create. Mr. Wynn's reaction to progressive objections that the "job creators" are sitting on record cash by not creating jobs is to...sit on record cash and not create jobs, apparently out of fear that someone might force them to create jobs in America? Come again? Mr. Wynn complains of escalating healthcare costs in his business, as if the ACA were not designed to mitigate precisely that problem, and as if any reasonable economist would not respond that the best way to mitigate healthcare costs is through the sort of single-payer program that President Obama rejected out of hand, so that Mr. Wynn could accuse him being a socialist with a "weird" political philosophy.
Meanwhile, Las Vegas itself is a paean to excess, made possible only by massive government-enabled irrigation projects, highways, and airports. The economic disaster that has consumed Las Vegas in recent years was a direct product of the housing boom and bust, itself caused by too little regulation of certain kinds of financial casinos that see Mr. Wynn's core business activities as illegitimate competition. More importantly, Mr. Wynn's fears over the debt ceiling are created entirely by Republicans holding hostage the (very slow for the rest of us, but very fast for Mr. Wynn) international recovery upon which Mr. Wynn's business interests depend. Later on in his rant, Mr. Wynn complains bitterly about overbearing homeland security procedures discouraging visits from wealthy Chinese nationals--a direct byproduct of the Republican Bush Administration's homeland security state, to which Barack Obama has simply given bipartisan cover. In short, most of Mr. Wynn's complaints, such as they are, should be directed squarely at Republicans.
But Mr. Wynn's wrongheadedness isn't really the point that needs making here. He's a very rich man doing much better than he ought compared to the rest of us. But he's afraid that his taxes might be raised marginally, which might prevent him from buying...who knows? A few more yachts and Picasso paintings to punch holes in? His ulterior motives are fairly obvious, so does the accuracy of his ravings really matter? Not much.
What is more interesting is the fact that the rant of a Las Vegas casino tycoon has been held up in right-wing circles as validation of their attacks on Obama, Keynesianism, and progressive economics in general. This only a couple of years after a similar but better-planned rant by yet another overprivileged tycoon from the more illustrious casinos in Manhattan set off the Tea Party crazies who are currently causing the default crisis nuttery the Vegas tycoon seems so afraid of.
Never has the disconnect of an entire political party from the mass of public opinion been so apparent as it is today, when the heroes who ride to the ideological rescue, the Paul Reveres who cry "the taxes are coming!", are as hated as a Wall St. mortgage-backed securities-dealing crook, and a Vegas casino mogul who makes such an easy Hollywood villain that we root without a second's thought for outright thieves of little redeeming character in and of themselves. Of course, the Republican calculus is that their lengthy distance from the electoral center won't matter so long as they can discredit the entire enterprise of government itself while ginning up the latest inconsequential outrage. And perhaps they're right. But we should still marvel at the sight of one of the nation's two major political parties elevating such blatantly unpopular, almost stereotypical villains as archetypal heroes.
But perhaps most importantly, never has the disconnect between the pillars that make up the Republican Party itself been so apparent. As we speak, a hardcore evangelical Christian from the Midwest is leading in the national polls for the GOP presidency. The most popular standard-bearer in today's GOP is a woman who wants to ban pornography and isn't exactly a big fan of the gaming industry, either. Let's be clear about this: if she were Emperor for a day, the GOP frontrunner would put all of Las Vegas out of work instantly by killing any and all business related to sex and gaming. She would redistribute that money to fund evangelical Christian schools and "charities." She would crack down on immigration and homeland security procedures, and scare off those Chinese visitors Mr. Wynn seems so eager to attract.
And yet Mr. Wynn himself, a man whose personal fortunes have risen dramatically under the Obama Administration, is freaked out not by Republicans, but by Democrats, at a time when Democrats are arguably more "business-friendly" than at any time since Woodrow Wilson if not the era of Reconstruction. Even as the same Republicans who have elevated a demonstrable Dominionist nutcase as their frontrunner cheer on the tirades of a businessman whose livelihood depends on sex tourism and gambling.
This is not a sustainable situation. This is not a political environment in which the normal rules of barter, argument and compromise apply. This is full-blown mania, a mirror on a broader national insanity. Sooner or later, something has to give.