General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLas Vegas is a good example of a town created by a government project.
If it wasn't for Hoover Dam, Vegas would not exist. Just another small down in the desert. Cheap hydroelectric power and Lake Meade are the reason Vegas can exist. The Hoover Dam workers would go to Vegas to gamble, drink, and hook up with hookers. The government housing for the workers did not allow such activities.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)I'm not sure you chose the best example to make your case.
MindPilot
(12,693 posts)Vegas is not all that popular in DU-ville.
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)the dark side and might (doubtful) show them that government projects work for them too.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Arizona was a solidly Democratic state, and territory before that, mostly because Washington kept appointing republican governors. They sent people like Carl Hayden and Richard McCormick to bring home the bacon, and they did.
Boulder Dam, Roosevelt Dam, and the Central Arizona projects are why 5+M people can live there. Without huge government expense there would be nothing but an atrophied mining industry and some subsistence farming.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Still, prohibition, and then the end of prohibition, actually had far more to do with it, especially in terms of longevity. Yeah, I know. Still government acts. Got it.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)I vouch for your story.
Cerridwen
(13,260 posts)a mormon banker convinces the banking industry that it's okay to do banking business with the mob and how greed, the LOVE of money, can be manipulated into creating a town in the fucking desert.
All the rest is just a rendition of water, grazing, and mining interests manipulating the government lands offices in the US southwest.
Signed,
A native Las Vegan.
doohnibor
(97 posts)Look on the WEST side of Mt. Charleston to see what is possible without abundant water and electricity. Pahrump is a good size town, but it's never going to be able to support one high-rise resort, let alone dozens. Without big government projects, Las Vegas and Phoenix would be more like Pahrump and Kingman, more than just jackrabbits, but NOT big cities.
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*If you are an FDR New Dealer type, you will refer to it by its proper name, Boulder Dam, just as nowadays we refer to the DC airport as Washington National instead of humoring the Republican fetish of naming stuff after their disasters.
bhikkhu
(10,725 posts)The dam provided the power to smelt the aluminum and build the planes with which we won WWII. And transformed the economy of the whole NW... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Coulee_Dam
Igel
(35,383 posts)After all, if not for the ban on drinking and gambling in government housing ...
So if we want to help things, we should prohibit more things?
Still, the entire argument misses the main point. Idee fixe to the point of monomania on both sides. (Can somebody please help produce a corpus callosum in the body politic?)