What we’re reading: Four Las Vegas tales, WTO rules in Airbus subsidies case, US considers $10 tourist fee

by Stephanus Surjaputra on September 7, 2009

lvs

Vegas dreamers go all in

During the boom in Las Vegas, four different people left a sure job in different parts of the country, hoping to make it big and land jobs in Las Vegas. For a while, everything was working out for them. Then the recession hit.

[Tracy] Bridges was able to build a life that made her a star at class reunions. Kami Bennett, with a $28-an-hour job at a home builder and a small inheritance, bought a black Mercedes S500, which she named Black Beauty. Craig Walsh, a union carpenter, got a tattoo on his upper right arm: a red phoenix soaring above the Luxor casino-hotel. Hope Camarena prided herself on showing her daughter that she could make it as a single mom.

They didn’t know it would all crumble, quickly and spectacularly, in the manner of a casino implosion.


WTO distributes ruling in airbus subsidies case

The World Trade Organization (WTO) issued a 1,000-plus page ruling on whether subsidies given by the European Union to Airbus were illegal.

The three-member WTO panel was widely expected to agree with complainant Washington that billions of euros of “launch aid” Airbus received to build the A380 and other top-selling planes was anti-competitive and broke trade laws.

Boeing says Airbus got a cumulative boost of USD$205 billion from advantageous loans and other perks from France, Germany, Spain and Britain over two decades, giving it an unfair edge.

United States considering $10 “tourist fee” to pay for promoting tourism

Congress is considering whether to pass a measure that would charge visitors to the United States a $10 entry fee. It will “go into a fund used to pay for promoting tourism.”

The $10 tourism sponsorship fee would be linked to the ESTA [Electronic System for Travel Authorization] pre-registration system currently required for all visitors from visa waiver countries. When ESTA was introduced, foreigners were told that it would always be free, and by hiding the new fee as a “tourism sponsorship fee”, the government obviously thinks they are keeping their word. The site currently says that there may be a fee in the future.

Photo: Roadside Pictures/Flickr Creative Commons

Print Friendly

Tagged as: airbus, Boeing, ESTA, fees, Las Vegas, Tourism

  • Graham Harrison

    I thought the US authorities were beginning to understand that tourism is a good thing and needs to be encouraged. Despite much ongoing negative publicity I find US immigration is much improved (but not perfect) compared with earlier times (I have an abiding memory of an unfriendly reception on the East Coast back in the early 80s).

    But it seems they don’t understand that getting people to pay so you can promote the country back to the people paying is a bit cock-eyed.

  • Hapgood

    Let’s see…. the left hand wants to charge tourists for promoting tourism. The right hand wants to do everything possible to discourage tourism with onerous “security” measures that treat every visitor like a convicted felon (perhaps because the officials are hard of hearing and “tourism” sounds too much like “terrorism”?). What’s wrong with this picture?

  • glorya

    Where has common sense gone? Charge a “tourist fee” when we need all the tourists we can get? But’ then again, who said Congress, those proposing this travesty and the powers to be had “common sense.” .

Previous post:

Next post: