Last week, Mayor Oscar Goodman of Las Vegas proposed that homeless people be picked off the street and put into an institution.
Mr. Mayor, former mobster lawyer and its well paid defender, is busy creating an artificial and virtual city that can loosely be called, “world class”. With its nicotine scented temples of high cuisine, blowing dust, infernal temperatures and year round prostitution, congestion, gambling, and lack of social services, Las Vegas truly does belong in a class by itself. Like Calcutta. Even post-Sadaam Baghdad is more humane.
No city in the world can compete with Sin City for the title of the wealthiest and most wretched. It is the fastest growing town in the country, ravenous in its environmental destructiveness. Water, open space, clean air….all in short supply and what little there is….is degraded.
If you aren’t winning at the craps tables, you are probably starving on the streets.
The question remains of Las Vegas: what is it growing into? And what kind of a nation applauds and celebrates a city like Vegas?
Here in Van Nuys 