Honey, I shrunk the city

You want five sure-fire topics to spice up the conversation at your next Las Vegas coffee klatch? Try any one of these this week:

Got Detroit?

Should we roll the dice on the economy snapping back soon, or would it be better to proactively bulldoze stressed neighborhoods and empty commercial buildings, returning them to the open desert from whence they came to conserve government services and shore up real estate prices?

Whew, that's a mouthful. While the temporary woes of Las Vegas are a far cry from the generations of despair in Detroit, consider new Detroit Mayor Dave Bing (yes, the former NBA great):

Let's raze desolate Detroit neighborhoods and relocate residents.

"If we don't do it," he says, "you know this whole city is going to go down. You can't support every community across this city. Those communities that are stable, we can't allow them to go down the tubes."

Again, we ain't Detroit. But even in bright and shiny Las Vegas, empty buildings and neighborhoods, left too long without private ownership and caring residents, will devolve.

Is the Detroit option viable for us? Doable?

Bribe me, baby!

The latest whisper in the wind has the busy bees inside the Harry Reid campaign preparing the senator to make a big employment announcement for Southern Nevada. Can't verify it, hence the coffee klatch relegation.

It's been a hard year for many Reid supporters watching the longtime senator slip to the bottom of the polls, all the while sticking to his "I'm too big to fail" campaign mantra. His supporters could use something tangible to point to, and a big jobs project would be just the ticket.

Hope it's not a chicken-feed futuristic announcement, but an immediate big job driver -- several thousand jobs at least.

Would it be an election-year conversion? A bribe, if you will? Sure. To which I add: Bribe me, baby!

Ensign (sigh)

Watching Republicans and Democrats on tee-vee talk health care with the president last week reminded me of how much national recognition Sen. John Ensign's affair cost him and Nevada. John would have swung a big bat at that table. Instead, he's relegated to the shadows, a disgraced senator who doesn't matter much.

Assuming there's not a legal shoe to drop in the form of an indictment for the way he stupidly handled the exit of his lover's husband from his staff (and I don't make that assumption, by the way), I'm not sure where John goes from here. Is there redemption for poking your wife's best friend?

Wynn-isms

"The policies in Washington, the policies of government have taken a terrible toll on the working people in America that come to Las Vegas. I'm excited for 2010 and beyond for Macau. I wish I could say the same thing about Las Vegas."

So sayeth Steve Wynn.

He's right with this one proviso: In November, Americans can (and will) peacefully change political course. How often does that happen in communist China? And when it does, how's it usually work out for profit-making companies?

Again, Wayne?

Looks like favorite son Wayne Newton is once again in the news for fumbling his personal finances. He ought to run for the Legislature. He'd be a financial genius there.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@ reviewjournal.com) is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media.