Vegas mob museum: Your tax dollars could be wasted

Harry Reid (D-NV) is the majority leader of the US Senate. While appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Reid said that there were no earmarks in the $775 billion stimulus package.

However Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is asking for cash for a Vegas mob museum, you know, organized crime. If the museum sees the light of day, it will end up in an old post office.

When a Reid spokesmen was asked about it yesterday, he said "There will be no earmarks in the stimulus. Nada. Zero. Zilch."

Fine. But why can't Reid and his staff explicitly say, "No money for a mob museum."

I've only been to Las Vegas once, but I can assure you that not only are there plenty of things to do there, and a lot of museums, including one dedicated to Liberace (the Las Vegas Marathon used to end near it), people will still flock to Vegas whether there is a mob museum or not.

One more thing: Chicago mayors over the decades have gone out of their way to eliminate any vestige of the city's unfortunate history of organized crime. Which is why the site of the St. Valentine's Day massacre was demolished in the 1960s, and Al Capone's headquarters, the Lexington Hotel, was torn down thirty years later.

Vegas: Fuged-about-it.

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