SallyDenton and Roger Morris make clear how and why Las Vegas became the greatest 'business success story' of the twentieth century, and how the rest of America ensured this success by contributing capital as well as customers. Headquarters of a trillion-dollar worldwide empire, the site of unprecedented political and economic power, Las Vegas is by no means an aberrant sin city.

3Money triangle on palm. If a triangle gets formed between the fate line and the headline as shown indicates the person will earn substantial amount of money through his or her profession or business. It is also known as money triangle. Size of the triangle denotes the magnitude of money retained by the person.

Most of the time, what you pay for electricity or water or gas depends on how much you use. Leave the air conditioner and the lights on all night, and your electricity bill will spike. Take long, relaxing bubble baths every day, and your water bill will California is about to challenge that basic logic, in an attempt to curb rising rates and help electrify the state’s approximately 14 million homes. A new state law will require its three investor-owned utilities to charge customers fees for electricity based not only on how much electricity they use, but also on how much money they on the proposal the state ultimately adopts, Californians making more than $180,000 a year could end up paying an average of $500 more on their annual electricity bills, while the lowest-income residents would save around $300 per proposed changes are sparking argue that the plan will help the state electrify by lowering costs for residents that might not otherwise afford it. Critics, including many California residents, say that it will eat into progress on energy efficiency and that it is unfair to those who are conserving Dawson, a retired data manager who lives in Eureka, Calif., said he and his wife have always been careful to save energy only running the washer during off-peak hours and living without air conditioning. The new fixed charge alone, he said, would be more than his typical monthly electricity bill. “It’s a bait-and-switch,” he debate beginning in California touches on the question that all states will have to face sooner or later Who should pay for the damage climate change is doing to the electricity grid?For the past decade or so, California has been stuck in a vicious cycle when it comes to climate change. The Golden State embraced wind and solar far earlier than many other states, with enthusiastic homeowners slapping solar panels on around million homes; the state now generates around a quarter of its electricity from even as California has hustled to move away from fossil fuels, the effects of a warming planet are transforming the sunny state — and threatening how nearly 40 million people get their power. California is becoming hotter and drier, raising the risk of wildfires sparked by aging, failing power lines. The state’s three largest investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric — need to upgrade their infrastructure to shore it up against rising temperatures and fire that work means California’s electricity prices have gone sky-high. California’s average retail electricity price is around 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, almost double the national average. And some customers see prices much higher than that Pacific Gas & Electric offers rates that start at $ per kilowatt-hour and climb to as high as $ per kilowatt-hour depending on the time of day.“In the last decade, electricity prices in California have skyrocketed,” said Matthew Freedman, a staff attorney for The Utility Reform Network, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization headquartered in San Francisco. In the past 10 years, Freedman explained, non-discounted electricity rates at PG&E have increased 84 percent; SDG&E rates have gone up 137 high prices could deter Californians who want to electrify their homes and vehicles to cut carbon emissions. In general, switching out gas heating for an electric heat pump or a gas-powered car for an electric car saves money and helps the planet. But high electricity prices change the calculus. In some cases, people who electrify their homes might end up paying where the new law, which passed last summer as part of a larger energy bill, comes in. First proposed by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the nonprofit Next 10, the plan would split utility costs into two buckets Fixed charges, which everyone has to pay just to be connected to the grid, and variable charges, which depend on how much electricity you use. Proponents say that the creation of fixed charges would cover things like wildfire preparedness and grid updates — and would also lower electricity costs based on usage. In theory, that would make it easier to convince Californians to in a twist from how many other utilities do it, the fixed charge would be based on how much money the electricity user makes.“A flat fixed charge is still pretty regressive,” said Meredith Fowlie, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley who helped write the initial proposal. “If you can mimic an income tax, it’s less regressive.”The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates private utilities in the state, hasn’t decided what those income-based rates will look like yet. The commission has until next July to sort it out. But the proposals that have been put forward thus far by nonprofits and the utilities themselves have sparked concern among example, the proposal from the three largest utilities in the state starts fixed charges at $15 for the lowest-income residents of the state and raises them to a whopping $128 for customers of San Diego Gas & Electric who earn more than $180,000. In turn, use-based rates would drop by 10 to 20 cents per kilowatt-hour. Other groups have suggested more moderate fixed charges The Utility Reform Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council, for example, have suggested fixed charges that vary from $5 to $ points out that the system will help low- and middle-income households that spend a lot of cash on electricity bills. “It would really reduce impacts on lower-income households,” she said. She also notes that the utilities aren’t getting any more cash from the proposal — they’re just rejigging the rates from entirely use-based to a mix that includes fixed many Californians are not convinced. Hundreds of angry comments from residents have flooded into the utilities’ commission’s website. Most worry that the high fixed charges will turn customers away from energy efficiency; others say it will disincentivize installation of rooftop solar.“This proposal actually discourages conservation,” Dawson, the retired data manager, wrote to the commission. “Those that live without air conditioning and conserve electricity or who use solar energy ... will still be required to pay the monthly fees.”Curtis Benz from Vista, Calif., wrote “I am scheduled to have solar installed on my home next month but after finding out about this proposal I will be canceling the install. It is unfortunate that people who are spending tens of thousands of dollars to provide energy to the grid are not being rewarded.” Rooftop solar has been another source of controversy in California; the utilities recently changed the amount they reimburse homeowners for the solar they deliver to the grid.The question is whether lower prices for using electricity will spur more electrification. Higher-income Californians are more likely to spend money on electric cars, heat pumps and energy efficiency improvements. But if the majority of those residents’ bills are taken up by a large fixed charge, the relative benefit of those changes is much smaller. Lower-income Californians, by contrast, will have a higher proportion of their bills from the power they use — but they are also less likely to own their homes and be able to make efficiency Lazar, a utility rate expert, also has serious doubts about whether the law can be enforced. “It’s extremely difficult to get income information, and extremely easy to game,” he said. He points to shared housing situations, where multiple young people, all in different income brackets, might be living together — or to older, retired Californians who have zero income but high levels of wealth. “What if you just let your nine-year-old be the utility customer?” he said. “They don’t have any income.”Rich customers could also simply exit the grid. With rooftop solar and a battery, some wealthy Californians could separate themselves from grid costs entirely. Some households are disconnecting in Hawaii, where electricity rates are even higher than in California. And if high-income residents leave the grid, they will leave behind low-income consumers who will continue to struggle to pay higher and higher electricity is also the question of whether the cost of the grid infrastructure and wildfire resilience should be looped into utility bills at all. “We would prefer that these costs be paid for through income taxes,” Freedman said. But historically, the California legislature has been hesitant to take on that responsibility — and in the meantime, funds are desperately experts have suggested alternatives. Lazar said a better way to boost electrification is to offer special rates for consumers who get rid of natural gas. “Someone puts in a heat pump, they get 400 kilowatt-hours a month cheap in the winter,” he said as an example. “If you can target the cheap power, you can solve the electrification challenge.”For the moment though, California is pressing ahead with its plan, and other states could follow. The Golden State was one of the first states to quickly embrace renewables; it’s also one of the states most affected by the rising cost of climate change.“This is a uniquely California problem now,” Fowlie said. “But I think we’re a leading indicator of where other states could be headed.”

Newspapers’ front pages displayed in a newsstand on June 9, 2023, in Bedminster, Photo Eduardo Munoz Alvarez I may have let out a weird animalistic hoot of joy when the news broke that former President Donald Trump had been indicted on federal charges. There’s something about Trump’s essence that maddens all former children who long ago always did the assigned reading, only to see their lazy bully classmate bloviate their way into the Ivy League thanks to their rich dad. “At long last he’s paying the price for not following the rules,” we think. And yet, there’s something discordant about hearing from the New York Times that this is “the first time a former president has faced federal charges.” The Washington Post made the same point, with a subheadline saying, “Political earthquake as GOP frontrunner is now first ex-president indicted by the DOJ.” Your disquiet may grow if you truly consider that no president has ever been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. Richard Nixon was not even impeached; he resigned before the House could vote after the Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment. Bill Clinton was impeached, and Trump was impeached twice, but both were acquitted in their Senate trials. How can this be? Trump is extremely bad, and honestly, I’m still smiling today as I imagine him screaming, “UNFAIR!” at the squirrels on his New Jersey golf course. But it makes no sense to believe he’s the only president in American history who’s ever acted so maliciously that he deserves to face potential consequences. To understand this, you might want to read “Murder on the Orient Express,” the 1934 mystery by Agatha Christie. In the novel, detective Hercule Poirot boards the famous train in Istanbul. There are only 14 other passengers in first and second class. On the second night, the train is forced to stop in Croatia due to a huge snowdrift, and the next morning, a businessperson named Samuel Ratchett is discovered dead in his cabin, indicating that the killer must still be on board. The evidence is peculiar. Ratchett has been stabbed 12 times, but some of the wounds appear to have been inflicted by someone who’s right-handed, and some appear to be from someone left-handed. Some came from someone extremely strong, some from someone weak. And a fusillade of other clues all point to different suspects on the train. Poirot considers it all and then gathers all the possible suspects together, along with his friend who’s a top executive of the railroad line. He suggests two theories of the case 1. The victim was murdered by someone who’s no longer on the train, who somehow got on board and then escaped unnoticed. 2. Ratchett was murdered by everyone. All the passengers had a motive to kill him, each one stabbed him, and no individual can rationally be held responsible separate from the others. Poirot says he’ll let his friend decide which theory makes the most sense. After pondering it briefly, his friend says it must have been the unknown stranger and that’s what he’ll tell the police. This is American politics — and politics generally — in miniature and why it’s nearly impossible for societies to punish the perpetrators of great crimes Anything terrible on a large scale demands broad elite endorsement and participation. When it comes to major evils, most people at the top must be guilty for it to happen in the first place. And so everyone gets away with it. Think about the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson and Nixon were most responsible for it, murdering perhaps two to four million people across Indochina. We don’t have a more exact number because we’ve never cared enough to make a serious effort to find out. But achieving this body count, far greater than any serial killer could ever dream of, obviously required buy-in from far more people than just these two presidents. How could any legitimate justice process convict just Johnson and Nixon? The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed in the House of Representatives 416-0 and in the Senate 88-2. Congress affirmatively voted to fund the war for years. Or take the war on terror, which appears to have caused million deaths. The post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force flew through Congress with only a lone House member voting against it. Even Bernie Sanders voted yes. 296 members of the House and 77 senators voted for war with Iraq. As in “Murder on the Orient Express,” there was a lot of stabbing by a lot of people. This dynamic holds true to an extent even when a society is conquered. The Nuremberg trial process included prosecutions beyond the most famous Nazi officials. But of over 3,000 potential cases, most were dropped, and by the 1950s, those sentenced to prison had almost all been released — because the needed German elites to help us run Germany. The trials of Japanese war criminals were even less consequential for the same reasons, with Emperor Hirohito explicitly excluded from any responsibility. However, it is occasionally possible for societies to address minor crimes that major figures commit by themselves or with a small circle of cronies. Probably Trump’s most significant crime was his support for the Saudi war on Yemen, which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. But Trump shares his guilt with a large chunk of the political system, so that’s fine. It’s the hush money for Stormy Daniels and mishandling of classified documents that have tripped him up. I hate taking away from anyone’s enjoyment of Trump’s troubles, especially given the shameless delight that they’ve brought me. I understand the temptation to look at what’s happening and believe that the system works. The problem is that this is correct The system is working — it’s just not anything resembling a system of justice. Correction June 9, 2023, 316 ET A previous version of this article misstated the circumstances of Richard Nixon’s resignation.

read money and the power