I wonder how much will be left after the money has been filtered through his 5 legal-beagle Nevada sons.
Harry Reid's Real Estate Investing Plan
by Mac Johnson
Posted: 10/17/2006
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Are you stuck in a dead end job so boring that you spend all day at work surfing the web reading witty political commentary? Are you tired of investments that depend on unreliable market forces for their returns? Havent you always dreamed of a way to make money that was as automatic as the creeping bureaucracy that afflicts our nations cash flow like fiscal atherosclerosis?
Well dream no more, friend, because today I am going to let you in on one of the great secrets of American business (and the mainstream media): The Harry Reid Do-Nothing Miracle Investment System! Through this system, you can sit back and watch the cash roll in from questionable desert real estate investments with the sort of reliability that only government can provide. The system is as simple as it is hidden through shell corporations, nepotism and political contributions. Yes, there are just three easy steps to mogul-like millions in Las Vegas real estate:
Find a parcel of land made undesirable by government environmental regulation, utility leases, or simple pesky zoning!
Hire a Reid, invest with a Reid, contribute to a Reid, but above all, know a Reid!
Be patient while Sen. Harry Papa Reid does NOTHING UNUSUAL on your behalf and watch those government barriers to wealth melt away! Got a stupid endangered tortoise on your worthless land? Let Harry Reid show the BLM a real shell game as that value-killing protected habitat is inexplicably moved miles away!
Want to build a primo strip mall in a residential area? Just have a Casino Lawyer drop Papa Reids name like a severed horses head into the silk sheets of local government. Bada-bing! The zoning changes almost as fast as the value of the land!
Bought thousands of acres of land ruined by a pre-existing government power line lease? Just pick up your personal power line to Harry Reid and watch with glee as he does NOT use his influence to push a special bill through Congress. ZAP! The federal right-of-way is moved right out of your way instant millions!
Think these are just hypothetical sales hype scenarios? No, these are these real life Reid Estate transactions.
Real Life Example No. 1: In the early 1990s a helpless corporation, Del Webb, wanted to realize its personal dream and develop some land outside Las Vegas. There was just one problem: the government owned much of it and it wasnt for sale! Employing the simple Reid Estate wealth building system, Del Webb hired a former Reid aide, donated $18,000 to Harry Reids campaign fund and then did the obvious next thing: it purchased environmentally sensitive lands 400 miles away near Lake Tahoe. After two letters to the Interior Department from Sen. Reid and a personal meeting organized by him, at which a government employee said he felt pressured by Reid, the Interior Department allowed Del Webb and its partners to swap that environmentally valuable land near Lake Tahoe for the environmentally worthless (but commercially valuable) land in Las Vegas. Reid claims to have done nothing unusual.
BAM! Instant value. ITS JUST THAT EASY TO MAKE MONEY IN REID ESTATE!
Real Life Example No. 2: In a remarkable coincidence, land adjoining the above swapped land was then sold by a Del Webb partner to Sen. Harry Reid and his partner, Jay Brown. The transaction was at fair market value, Reid later stated. Mr. Brown, described by the Associated Press as a casino lawyer whose name has surfaced in federal investigations involving organized crime, casinos and political bribery, and Sen. Reid wished to develop the land as a strip mallwhich would have a much fairer market value than the land they bought, which was zoned strictly residential. A Reid Estate rezoning was called for!
But first Sen. Reid sold his land (for the exact price he had paid for it) to Patrick Lane, a limited liability corporation created by Mr. Brown, in exchange for a share of that limited liability corporation. This move created no net value, but coincidentally resulted in Reids name being removed from the deed before Mr. Brown went publicly before the zoning board to represent Patrick Lane LLC, a corporation that somehow omitted Mr. Reids name from any of its public corporate filings.
When the first board rejected the rezoning as inconsistent with Clark Countys Master Development Plan, Brown appealed and the Clark County Zoning Board and the Clark County Commission overruled the decision. Coincidentally, Mr. Browns agent had stated to commissioners during the appeal, "Mr. Brown's partner is Harry Reid, so I think we have people in this community who you can trust to go forward and put a quality project before you." Strangethat Reids name was so carefully removed from legal documents and then dropped casually in the halls of governmentand right before the commission overruled the previous decision. Well, the important thing is that the residential land Reid bought for $400,000 was soon sold for $1.1 million (Reids part) as a commercial property. And all because Sen. Reid did nothing unusual. Thats the power of the Reid Estate system! Let the wheels of government grind away your financial worries!
Real Life Example No. 3: But even the first two examples are nothing compared to the experience of one Harvey Whittemore, a simple lobbyist and long-time practitioner of the Reid Estate system. Whittemore inadvertently got a great deal on a 42,832-acre property once intended as a missile test range. The land was a development nightmare, because it was infested with the endangered Desert Tortoise and the entire road frontage along U.S. 93 was blocked by a mile-wide power line corridor leased to the federal government. Either one of these problems alone might take an act of Congress to solve. But Harvey Whittemore had that in mind all along! Whittemore understood the importance of Step 2 of the system: Hire a Reid, invest with a Reid, contribute to a Reid, but above all know a Reid!and he had all the bases covered.
"You have to understand how close the Whittemore and Reid families are," Whittemore told the Los Angeles Times. "My relationship with Sen. Reid goes back decades." In addition, Whittemores personal attorney is Leif Reid, the senators son. Rory Reid, another of the senators sons and head of the Nevada Democrat Party during the Clark County Commissions decision to rezone his fathers property, was made a partner in Whittemores law firm. In fact, all four of Reids sons (Rory, Leif, Josh and Key) have worked for the firm during their careers. Whittemore has given tens of thousands of dollars to Harry Reids campaigns, thousands to Rory Reids successful campaign to be elected to the Clark County Commission, and thousands to Josh Reids unsuccessful bid to be elected to the city council of Cottonwood Heights, Utah.
Although neither Sen. Reid nor Leif Reid intervened on his behalf, according to Sen. Reid, the Bureau of Land Management gave Whittemore clear title to 10,000-acre rent-free lease constituting the Desert Tortoise Preserve in the middle of the site, in exchange for 10,000 acres on the eastern edge of the 5-mile by 13-mile tract. Local officials of the Interior Department objected to this minor boundary adjustment of the preserve, but were overruled by Washington. The Desert Tortoises, it turns out, were willing to move to the Mormon Mountains.
The federal power corridor was a bigger problem. But after Sen. Reid inserted a measure into a federal land bill opening up the property across the highway for the corridor, then repeatedly inserted a provision into bills to move the corridor across the highway, that pesky 15-square-mile corridor just disappeared. At first, this was to be a gift from the government to Mr. Whittemore, but after a minor stink was raised, Whittemore offered to pay $160,000 for the 15-square-mile improvement. Eventually, he was forced to pay the $10.4 million that government appraisers said the change was actually worth.
But that was still a bargain, since together the federal changes to the corridor and the Desert (and Mountain) Tortoise habitat freed up more than 20,000 acres of highway-accessible Reid Estate for a development that will eventually include 159,000 homes, 16 golf courses (several by Jack Nicklaus), and all the associated strip malls this new city will require. I suggest they call it Tortuga Hills.
But there was one last obstacle to clear. The EPA suddenly decided that bulldozing desert streambeds, as proposed, might be bad for the streambed environment. A flurry of calls from Sen. Reid arranged meetings between the EPA, Whittemore and Leif Reid. Nevadas junior senator, Republican John Ensign, was enlisted in the cause, clearing the way for the senior senator, Harry Reid, to also become more directly involved in talking to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. Can you guess what the outcome was? Thats rightthe system worked. The Harry Reid Real Estate Investment System, that is. The project proceeded with minimal changes.
There are other examples, as well. But you can see how this simple investment system, accessible by every citizen (no mater how unconnected), works to create millions and millions of dollars of new government-unleashed wealth for its practitioners
How successful is the system for its inventor, Sen. Harry Reid? So successful he doesnt even remember how much land he owns anymore! Hes constantly remembering old parcels just before the ethics committee asks about them. Such oversight is often the result of clerical errorsjust like Sen. Reid accidentally paying personal obligations with campaign funds was the result of clerical errors. Clerical errors are soon to be added as Step 4 of the system: What to claim upon getting caught using the system.
In fact, the system is so successful that Harry Reid, that beacon of morality from Searchlight, Nev., can now stop worrying about money altogether, and concentrate on his true calling: fighting the culture of corruption in Republican Washington.
Get with the system! It works for Harry, Harrys friends, Harrys sons, and even Harrys son-in-lawbut thats a whole other (998 acre) story. The system can work for you, too.
Hey we need to talk. You know some Reid land stuff. I know a lot. There are others.