From Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak’s coronavirus order that nonessential businesses in the state must close for 30 days (emphasis added at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters): In case you wonder, prostitution is legal in much of Nevada, although not in Clark County, where Las Vegas is; Washoe County, home of Reno; or Carson City, the capital, which is an independent city.
In 2018, voters in Nye County, immediately to the west of Clark County where prostitution is legal, elected Republican Dennis Hof to the State Assembly in a landslide. This was noteworthy for two reasons: (1) Hof, a TV personality who wrote an autobiography entitled The Art of the Pimp, was the owner of seven brothels in Nevada, which he said would be good experience for working with other lawmakers, and (2) he had died three weeks before the election, found deceased in his bed the morning after his 72d birthday party.
Nothing says Nevada quite like a dead pimp elected to the Legislature.
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A mandatory stop for many tourists to Las Vegas is the famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. Since 1959, it has sat in the median at the southern tip of the Las Vegas Strip next to the airport. In a normal 24-hour period, thousands of tourists line up at all hours of the day and night to have their photos taken in front of the icon, a free background offering absolute proof of a Vegas visit. Since becoming New to Las Vegas, I often have taken visiting guests over for a keepsake shot.
Of course, thanks to the coronavirus crisis, these are not normal times. Vegas is essentially shut down and likely will remain that way well into April at a minimum. With all casinos and many hotels with their fancy shows closed, tourism is down to a trickle.
This afternoon, I drove the 2½ miles between Flamingo Road and the sign, a stretch through the heart of the Strip that passes the famous Bellagio Fountains where folks like to gawk. Normally, there would be maybe 10,000 people on foot along both sides of the famous road.
Today, I counted exactly 49.
But not every tourist has disappeared, just 99.99% of them. So Clark County, which maintains the area around the Vegas sign (which is more than four miles outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper), has posted a small sign. It asks tourists to observe social distancing guidelines and stay six feet apart.
When I passed by today, there were tourists at the sign. As you can see by my nearby photo, the social distancing guidance was ignored.
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Ever since becoming New To Las Vegas in 2016, I’ve heard plenty of local claims the Las Vegas area is successfully diversifying its economy away from reliance on the sin stuff that long made the Strip famous (or infamous): gambling, entertainment and lodging. Building a knowledge-based, tech-driven economy for the 21st Century, local leaders proclaimed. It’s no longer like 2008, they said, when the Great Recession abruptly dried up tourism and all the sectors associated with it. The Las Vegas Valley was one of the country’s hardest-hit area, and recovery took a long time.
But to my mind, the coronavirus pandemic already is giving the lie to those economic diversification claims hereabouts.
The Las Vegas Valley is reeling and had been even before Gov. Steve Sisolak last night ordered a minimum 30-day statewide closure of all casinos, restaurants, bars and other non-essential businesses. World-famous Las Vegas Strip resorts–Encore, Wynn, Cosmopolitan, Venetian, Palazzo, all eight MGM properties–were already shutting down their operations. Famous entertainment acts–Cirque du Soleil, David Copperfield, Penn & Teller–went dark. Cascading layoffs are accelerating, although many of the casinos say they will keep workers on the payroll for varying lengths of time or at least cover health care premiums.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal announced it was suspending a number of sections, including its weekly entertainment guide. “With Vegas headliners going dark, resorts suspending operations, movie theaters closing, concerts canceling and social events being discouraged, there is not much left in this city to advertise or list,” the paper wrote.
For days the Strip has looked like more of a ghost town than video I’ve seen of other famous tourist venues around the country like Times Square in New York, a city that has a lot of other industries. Leaders like Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman are blaming the distress on media publicity about coronavirus rather than the resulting illness itself. Her comments by themselves–she pushed strongly for casinos to stay open–might be evidence of non-diversification.
New Rochelle, N.Y., a leafy New York City suburb where I have relatives, is in the news as a U.S. hotspot for cornoavirus. The New York State National Guard today started enforcing a one-mile-in-radius “containment zone” around a synagogue on North Avenue where a member came down with the illness that then infected any number of contacts. Residents can come and go as they like, although large gatherings are prohibited.
As it happens, within that zone a few blocks down North Avenue sits one of the strangest and most bogus shrines to political action in America that I know of–strange and bogus mainly because nothing political ever happened there. Before becoming New To Las Vegas, I wrote about this for another blog in 2013, from which this account is drawn. Cornoavirus gives me a fresh hook to resurrect the curious tale.
I am referring to what is now called the Thomas Paine Cottage Museum. The structure is perhaps the last tangible vestige of Paine (1737-1809), the English philosopher and revolutionary who came to America in late 1774 and within 14 months published “Common Sense.” That was the best-selling manifesto for freedom so persuasive and fiery the Second Continental Congress borrowed large chunks of its logic when fashioning the Declaration of Independence just a few months later.
Why am I so down on this tribute to a man listed among the country’s Founding Fathers? Keep reading to see some reasons. Continue reading →
At the New to Las Vegas world headquarters recently, Mary Newton was on the line, cold-calling me and soliciting a cash donation for the American Breast Cancer Support Association. It was the usual pitch: Commit to a specific-dollar pledge before seeing any paperwork.
I asked where the charity is located. The voice on the other end said she was with a fundraiser named Innovative Teleservices in Port Huron, Mich. That’s fine, I said, but repeated, where is the charity located?
Mary–who wasn’t a real person but a computer-generated voice using artificial intelligence–eventually said she would get someone else on the line. That someone–a real person–said the charity was headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn. I pressed for the formal name of the charity rather than the trade name used in soliciting funds. United Cancer Support Foundation. I was told.
Now–especially if you’ve been writing about charities like I have for a long time–being asked for money by a cancer charity based in Knoxville sets off more alarms than the Great Chicago Fire, or an email plea from Nigeria. Especially this one. For as it turns out, I was personally solicited before by this very organization–a long time ago and under one of its previous names.
But what hasn’t changed very much is the m.o. By my reading of UCSF’s latest tax filing, maybe 4 cents of each donated dollar went to something I might call good works, like grants to individuals and organizations. The other 96 cents of each dollar was gobbled up by fundraising costs and overhead. These are truly dreadful financial efficiencies.
This data is not volunteered to would-be donors. Nor is the charity’s recent banning from soliciting in two states. But it all sort of makes a mockery of UCSF’s printed motto, “United we care, united we share.” Continue reading →
A national study released today says the Las Vegas area economy remains one of the country’s best, but not quite as good as it used to be–and not even the best in Nevada.
The report from the Milken Institute, a California economic think tank that periodically evaluates regional economies, ranks the Las Vegas metropolitan area No. 44 among the country’s 200 largest metros. But in the last report, two years ago, Las Vegas ranked a lot higher–No. 23. The 21-click drop was the biggest among the 50 highest-ranked large metros.
The new report, “Best Performing Cities 2020,” ranks Las Vegas’s cross-state arch-rival, Reno, as No. 4, higher by a click, even, than Silicon Valley capital San Jose. In 2018, Reno ranked No 11.
And in a separate evaluation of the country’s 200 next largest metropolitan areas, Carson City ranks No. 21, also better than Las Vegas when measured against peers. Last year, the state capital ranked No. 63.
The main reason for the gap between Las Vegas and Reno is more rapid job and wage growth in Reno and the fact that technology there is a bigger chunk of the local economy. In the view of the Milken Institute report’s authors, knowledge-based industries are better, perhaps because they are more sustainable. Continue reading →
On a day that Las Vegas was full of presidential caucus and debate excitement, as well as presence of President Trump, the Las Vegas Sun this morning stripped this all-caps headline across the top of the front page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, obliged by a joint operating agreement to print: “R-J ORDERED TO PAY SUN FOR IMPROPER ACCOUNTING PRACTICES.”
The story in the Sun, which is distributed as a section inside the RJ, said that state District Judge Timothy C. Williams had upheld an arbitration ruling ordering the RJ to pay the Sun $1.9 million. The Sun had claimed, among other things, that the RJ, which collects all advertising and circulation revenue for the two papers, improperly included its own editorial expenses from 2015 to 2018 before calculating how much cash flow should go to the Sun under a formula in a JOA agreement revised in 2005. That agreement, a revision of one originally negotiated in 1989, runs until 2040.
For some reason, the RJ, owned since 2015 by conservative Republican billionaire casino magnate and Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson, did not publish a story about this. But if it had, the paper might have pointed out what to me when I looked at the court file today was a rather glaring omission in the account in the Sun, founded in 1950 by the liberal Democratic and anti-Trump Greenspun family. In his order, based on a January 28 filing, Williams also upheld a finding by the unnamed arbitrator that the RJ did not engage in bad faith or unfair dealings in its relationship with the Sun. Continue reading →
With the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary out of the way, attention is now turning in a big way to the next contest—Nevada’s own presidential caucuses on Saturday, February 22. Candidates, their handlers and the national media are pouring into the state and mainly Las Vegas, since almost all the state’s Democratic voters are here and it’s a lot more fun when on an expense account.
Here’s what they will see: giant billboards promoting excessive drinking, human sexuality (some in rather crude terms, to boot) and law firms making over-the-top claims.
Where else across the fruited plain can one experience a cityscape festooned with billboards openly lauding drunkenness, like the one displayed nearby from Lee’s Discount Liquor: “Booze is the answer. I don’t remember the question.”? Another from Lee’s reads, ” ‘Trust Me, You Look Great’–Alcohol.”
Or erectile dysfunction billboards loudly beseeching, “Don’t Let Your Meat Loaf.” Or a strip club billboard on a major freeway prominently displaying the image of a pussycat? Or giant ads promoting “The Love Store,” which sells sex toys?
Or billboards unjudiciously advertising “Guard Dog Law,” “Battleborn Injury Lawyers” “Powerhouse Injury Attorney,” “More Lawyer, Less Fee,” “Lowest Priced Lawyers,” and “Half Price Lawyers”? (The last two appear to be somewhat mutually exclusive.)
Yes, Las Vegas definitely is a different place. The city’s image makers clearly were on to a universal truth when they recently changed their famous marketing slogan to, “What Happens Here, Only Happens Here.” Continue reading →
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority finally has gotten rid of the catchy, wildly successful marketing slogan that made up in cheekiness what it lacked in truth. I am referring, of course, to “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” which the taxpayer-funded promotional agency rolled out in 2003 to emphasize, I suppose, the adult freedom found in Sin City.
In its place, formally unveiled last month and touted in a network ad before yesterday’s Super Bowl LIV, is a subtle modification: “What Happens Here, Only Happens Here.” Frankly, I don’t know if this will be as successful. But at least it will have the advantage of being more true.
However, that could be a double-edged sword. It might emphasize events occurring here that other places wouldn’t want at all, like Britney Spears’ 55-hour marriage in 2004. Or, tragically, the 2017 massacre along the Las Vegas Strip that killed 58 and injured more than 500–most of them tourists–the deadliest mass shooting by one person in U.S. history.
As visitors to this space know, I have been spoofing the former slogan for years since becoming New To Las Vegas. Under the running title, “It Didn’t Stay Here,” I recounted story after story of folks getting in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas. You can see a list elsewhere on this page. In my view Las Vegas is quite the bug light for mischief. Continue reading →
Readers of my blogs know well my view of John C. Frémont. He’s the 19th century military adventurer and politician for whom Fremont Street in Las Vegas is named, as well as a great number of other places around the country. Long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I considered him a rank war criminal, guilty of massacring Indians and Latinos in the run-up to the Mexican War to open the American West to greedy East Coast gringos.
The previous telephone call to the New To Las Vegas world headquarters came from Eddie. The latest a few days ago came from Andrew. But the message was the same. Police Officers Support Association, part of something called Law Enforcement for a Safer America PAC, needed my money for law and order and wanted me to pledge a specific amount before mailing me any literature.
I couldn’t pin down Andrew on whether I legally could back out of a purported pledge if I found problems with the mailing. So I asked to speak with his supervisor. Here was Andrew’s complete response:
“I understand.” Pause. “Goodbye.” Click.
Andrew, of course, was not a real person but a computer-controlled voice imperfectly using artificial intelligence to simulate a meaningful conversation with me. I got the impression that Andrew was used to abruptly hanging up on people who asked too many questions. But maybe not often enough.
According to federal filings I just consulted, in its latest six-month reporting period, Law Enforcement for a Safer America, or LEFASA, raised nearly $3½ million from folks like you and me. And how much was spent on the stated mission of supporting law enforcement?
Zero. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
I wrote about this in detail last spring after Eddie called and also hung up on me. And because of that, I’m nominating LEFASA and its d/b/a, Police Officers Support Association, for my list of America’s Stupidest Charities. The criteria is pretty simple: nonprofits that call asking for money despite a previous critical post by me. I mean, can it get any dumber that that? You can find the list nearby. Now, strictly speaking, LEFASA is not a charity but a political action committee intended to support or oppose causes and candidates for public office. But in its pitches LEFASA sounds like a charity as it portrayed itself as acting in the public interest. Continue reading →
Lisa M. Moore (courtesy Chester County PA District Attorney’s Office)
Ah, the lure of Las Vegas. The gambling. The entertainment. The allegedly embezzled loot.
The latest drawn-to-that-bug-light-known-as-Sin-City tale is that of Lisa M. Moore, 46. She was the appointed manager of Kennett Township, a rural municipality of 8,000 people 40 miles west of Philadelphia where she worked for more than 20 years. If the Chester County District Attorney’s Office is to be believed, despite Kennett Township’s small population, Moore embezzled $3.2 million over six years. Some of that was spent, in the words of the official press release issued last month, “on travel to Las Vegas.”
Her lawyer has told reporters he will be “fully defending” against the charges. Moore was fired last year after the supposed fraud was discovered. She is out on $500,000 bail facing a preliminary hearing next month on 140 counts of theft, forgery, computer offenses and tampering with public records.
While I have no idea where the criminal case will go, the charges alone are more than enough to make Moore a candidate for my list, It Didn’t Stay Here. This is a roster of folks who have gotten into trouble somewhere else for something that happened in Las Vegas. My list is a direct rebuff of “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the celebrated marketing slogan of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. You can see all the names elsewhere on this page. Continue reading →
Once again, the less-than-transparent Injured Police Officers Fund spent far more on overhead than the charity’s sole stated mission of aiding southern Nevada law enforcement families in the event of line-of-duty injury or death.
In its recently filed tax return for calendar year 2018, the 37-year-old Las Vegas-based IPOF said it made grants of $67,886 to 15 individual cases, while spending another $9,269 in office expense classified as in direct furtherance of the charitable mission, for a total of $77,155. But the nonprofit spent nearly double that–$121,699–in management and general expenses. These included accounting, payroll, travel, promotion, rent and insurance.
Under normal charity evaluation metrics, this would generate a charitable commitment ratio–the proportion of expenses in direct mission support to total expenses–of 39%. That’s way under the 65% minimum set for reputable charities by such charity watchdogs as the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance. A low charitable commitment ratio has been characteristic of the IPOF since its beginning. Continue reading →
Need evidence the news-consuming public needs more than one source to help sort out the truth in a given contentious matter? Look no further than the December 5 editions of Las Vegas’s two suing-each-other daily newspapers, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Las Vegas Sun.
The papers were reporting on a hearing the day before in state court on litigation concerning contract issues arising from the 30-year-old joint operating agreement under which the Sun is published as an ad-free section of the RJ. In the RJ, the headline was “RJ-Sun JOA lawsuit stayed.” The Sun‘s headline was, “Judge affirms arbitrator’s decision favoring Sun in dispute with R-J.”
Were they even covering the same hearing?
The answer is yes–sort of.
In my view the Sun‘s headline and story far better captured the main news element–the RJ got caught in an arbitration cooking the books on miscalculating how cash flow is divided between the two papers under the JOA and is going to have to pay up big-time. But the RJ headline and story weren’t incorrect. District Judge Timothy Williams did halt the other parts of the litigation pending resolution of a somewhat similar lawsuit the Sun filed in federal court, which arguably has jurisdiction because JOAs operate under an exemption from federal antitrust laws. That lawsuit contends the RJ is unfairly trying to put the Sun out of business and silence a opposite viewpoint.
The RJ disclaims such motivation, saying that JOAs are obsolete and the Sun would be free to publish on its own–if it could. In effect, the RJ is arguing greed–not editorial differences–drives it. Not a good look.
Of course, the RJ story didn’t mention the arbitration matter until the sixth paragraph and never got around to fully explaining it. This is not surprising, since it also is not a terribly good look for the conservatively inclined paper owned since 2015 by conservative casino billionaire mogul Sheldon Adelson. The liberal-leaning Sun has been owned since its founding in 1950 by the Greenspun family.
Indeed, the sharp contrast in how the two papers covered the same hearing may well cut against the RJ and in favor of the Sun, which argues that the purpose of the federal law granting JOAs antitrust exemption was precisely to allow competing editorial voices. Were I a lawyer for the Sun, I would put both articles into the court record and say “See what I mean?” Continue reading →
Readers of my last post will find this one very familiar.
At the New To Las Vegas world headquarters recently, I received a telephone cold call from someone calling herself Christine soliciting in the name of Breast Cancer Health Council PAC, a d/b/a of Community Health Council PAC. “Can the women with breast cancer count on you to return a small donation?” she asked.
I politely said, “Where is your organization located?”
Christine: “Okay. Goodbye.” Click. She hung up.
As I wrote in my last post, about American Coalition for Injured Veterans PAC after a computer-built voice named Bob Malone hung up when I asked the same question, “Now that sure seems like a deal on the up-and-up, doesn’t it?”
Christine was another computer-generated voice working with artificial intelligence and a real person monitoring the call (although with the abrupt hang-up one might question the emotional intelligence part of this). But the similarities hardly stop there.
Both organizations are PACs–lightly regulated federally registered political action committees designed to support or oppose candidates and causes–posing as charities and soliciting nationally. Both route virtually no money to their stated areas of interest. Both have terrible financial efficiencies and little money in the bank for the upcoming federal election season in 2020. Both likely have no interest in making it easy for a would-be donor to check them out, hence the quick phone hang-ups at the first question. Both have misleading charitable-sounding names. Both have run into recent trouble with regulators. Both list as their address the same office suite in Washington, D.C.
And both have as their treasurer one Zachary Bass. He’s the mysterious Baltimore fellow who likely is paying himself more than is being spent on all political campaigns backed. I first encountered him last year after I was called on behalf of one of his other sketchy endeavors, Heroes United PAC d/b/a Association for Police and First Responders.
In my last post I detailed for you some disturbing things about American Coalition. Now let me detail for you some disturbing things about Community Health Council PAC d/b/a Breast Cancer Health Council PAC, which I’ll call BCHC for short. Continue reading →
At the New To Las Vegas world headquarters recently, I received a telephone cold call from one Bob Malone. He was calling on behalf of American Coalition for Injured Veterans PAC. “Our vets desperately need your help,” he declared in a light Southern accent as he asked for a contribution.
Great, I said. Where is the organization located?
The next sound I heard was a click. Malone hung up on me without uttering another word.
Now that sure seems like a deal on the up-and-up, doesn’t it?
I knew immediately Malone was not a real person, but rather a computer-generated voice working with artificial intelligence and a real human being monitoring calls ready to pull the plug at the first hint of an obstacle. American Coalition isn’t all that real, either, in the sense that virtually none of the money raised benefits ailing veterans. The outfit, ostensibly based in Washington, D.C., was founded by Zachary Bass, a fellow from Baltimore I know a little bit about, and who has gotten into trouble with regulators for other endeavors.
You might get a call from one of Bass’s enterprises. So read on and be warned. Continue reading →
On a wall at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters is a blown-up replica of arguably the most famous magazine cover ever. “View of the World from 9th Avenue” by illustrator Saul Steinberg, graced the March 29, 1976, issue of The New Yorker. Its careful distortion of diminishing detail and distance–still studied in art schools–perfectly captured the notion that elite New York City residents are haughty folks full of hubris wrapped up in their own surroundings and barely able to distinguish much of anything west of the Hudson River.
Take a close look at the cover, which I have reproduced elsewhere on this page. Past the thin band across the middle of my native “Jersey,” you can see Chicago, Texas, Los Angeles, something representing the Rockies, and in the far distance beyond the Pacific Ocean, China, Japan (as one island) and Russia.
The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan this morning announced an indictment of four men–including three born in the lands of the former Soviet Union–on campaign finance charges involving laundering of Russian-money contributions benefiting Donald Trump and Republican candidates to state office in Nevada. Among many other things, the indictment states that an alleged conspiracy involving the four included a 2018 meeting in Las Vegas and hints the goal of the Nevada contributions–which public records suggest were to the campaigns that year of Attorney General Adam Laxalt for governor and Wesley Duncan for attorney general–was to grease the skids to get a retail marijuana license.
I have no idea whatsoever about the merits of the allegations, and there is no public evidence now that Laxalt and Duncan, accused of nothing, knew anything about purported motives. But the four-count, 21-page indictment is more than enough to make the four named defendants–Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin–candidates for my list It Didn’t Stay Here. That roster consists of folks in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas, refuting “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the famous marketing slogan of the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority. I’d say an indictment brought by feared federal prosecutors in the Southern District Of New York qualifies as trouble elsewhere. You can see previous nominees nearby. (As it happens, they also include Trump for an earlier matter).
This indictment will get massive attention because two of the defendants, Parnas and Fruman, have been helping Trump attorney/fixer Rudy Giuliani gin up allegations concerning Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, over their dealings in Ukraine. But as someone New To Las Vegas, I prefer to focus on the sideshow of the local angle. Continue reading →
This morning, the 38th edition of the Forbes 400, the famous annual ranking of the richest Americans, was released, and again it was bad news for the Las Vegas area. Of the seven locals on last year’s list, two dropped off completely, and most showed a decline in their individual net worth.
From a ranking standpoint, the biggest losers were brothers Lorenzo FertittaandFrank Fertitta, casino owners who last year were tied at No. 388 with net worths of $2.1 billion each year. Thanks to a 30% decline in the share price of their Red Rock Casinos, their stash is now assessed at $1.9 billion each, a 9½% decline. That put them below this year’s cutoff of $2.1 billion, and likely ranked in a tie for No. 404. But that’s no cigar on a list of 400. Continue reading →
Imagine two thieves who, after a heist, can’t agree on the division of spoils, and one of them actually sues the other in court. Outrageous, eh?
That’s sort of how I see the newest lawsuit brought by the Las Vegas Sun against the owners of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The Sun and the RJ have been in an federally sanctioned agreement for 30 years that allows them carte blanche to violate antitrust laws. Yet after three decades of enjoying these benefits, the Sun now claims the RJ is–wait for it–violating antitrust laws.
In case you wonder, prostitution is legal in much of Nevada, although not in Clark County, where Las Vegas is; Washoe County, home of Reno; or Carson City, the capital, which is an independent city.
