Still not much of a stimulus

What's the unemployment rate?

Nationally, 9.7 percent. But Nevada's statewide rate for February climbed to 13.2 percent.

That's a jump of 7.5 points since 2006, the worst of any state.

The official February rate for the Las Vegas Valley jumped to 13.9 percent. But everyone knows the official rates -- based largely on a survey of those in the workforce -- understate the problem. Add previously full-time workers now settling for part-time work, and "discouraged workers" who've given up looking and are therefore no longer in the "workforce," and we could be talking more than a 20 percent job loss, as the half-empty mini-malls and restaurant rows attest.

Blame the general economy, mostly. Vacation travel is easier to cut back than groceries.

But don't underestimate the impact of the "treat-'em-like criminals" approach now taken by our airline security with tourists from overseas, many of whom vow not to return till they and their money are again treated with some respect.

And all this after 14 months of this administration squandering more billions of dollars on "stimulus" and "jobs" bills than any government in the history of the world.

They haven't worked. They were never anything but pork grab-bags. Only the free market can create lasting jobs, and free market entrepreneurs respond primarily to lower taxes, less job-killing regulation and a predictable economic environment.

That's the dead opposite of, "Guess which walnut shell the new tax is under? Nothing up my sleeve. But look! Behind your ear! Cap-and-tax! Card check! A new Value Added Tax! And how about a big bouquet of alien amnesty, wrapped around a new multi-trillion-dollar federal health care bureaucracy, guaranteed to double your private premiums in two years, starting with 16,500 new IRS agents?"

So this is "change."