It Didn’t Stay Here: New Jersey jail guard fired after phoning in sick from Las Vegas

Posted on by June 22, 2018
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It Didn't Stay Here

Camden County Correctional Facility, Camden, N.J. (courtesy Camden County Board of Chosen Freeholders)

The title of the 40-page document is hardly a grabber: “State of New Jersey, Final Administrative Action of the Civil Service Commission. In the Matter of Tia Smith, Camden County Correctional Facility, Department of Corrections.” But for several reasons its contents spoke loudly to me.

Smith, a correction officer with two college degrees and six years on the job, flew with friends to celebrate her birthday in Las Vegas last year. But according to the decision, rather than getting back in time to Camden for her next assigned shift, she falsely phoned in sick while still in Las Vegas. Partly because this was not her first offense as an employee, Smith was fired. The dismissal was upheld this month by the independent New Jersey state agency charged with protecting governmental workers against arbitrary employment actions.

This more than makes Smith a candidate for my list, It Didn’t Stay Here. The roster consists of folks in trouble somewhere else for something that happened in Vegas. It’s a refutation of “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the famous marketing slogan of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau. My ever-lengthening list of nominees can be found elsewhere on this page. Smith has some prominent company, including Bill Cosby, Donald J. Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron.

But there’s another reason this case drew my attention. Long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I was New To Camden, which is just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. I was born and raised in Camden County, then and now a place full of governmental mischief. For most of the 1970s and into the 1980s I worked there as a reporter for several newspapers. One of them was the Camden Courier-Post, whose reporter, Jim Walsh, recounted today the sad story of Smith’s dismissal, for which I am indebted. My account is drawn from the aforementioned Civil Service Commission decision, incorporating and ratifying the written opinion of Administrative Law Judge Dorothy Incarvito-Garrabrant. Continue reading →

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A charity fundraising pitch in Las Vegas for the dogs

Posted on by June 18, 2018
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Dogs for Law EnforcementUpdated on June 18, 2018.   See end of post

The recent telephone caller to the New To Las Vegas world headquarters said his name was Sam. He was cold-calling on behalf of Dogs for Law Enforcement. Sam described this as a national charitable organization based in the Houston area providing police agencies with trained dogs that cost $20,000 to $50,000 each. The agencies, Sam said, get the pooches “at no cost to the taxpayer.” He asked for a pledge that he said would be tax-deductible.

I sniffed the air. A tax-deductible contribution would cost taxpayers somewhere the value of any tax savings I might get, even if not where the dogs were furnished.

I sniffed the air again. Since Sam volunteered nothing, I asked him directly how much of the donations received actually went to the stated mission of providing and training dogs.

There was a pause. Ten percent, he replied.

So that meant 90% of cash gifts went for fundraising and other stuff rather than dogs, I suggested. Sam had a reply I didn’t understand.

But with for-profit middlemen getting such a rake-off, I knew by then the essence of what I needed to know. After Sam and I ended our conversation, I did some more sniffing around. It’s actually worse than I thought, including the fact that DLE never has been registered to solicit in Nevada. That makes very illegal the pitch to me on behalf of, ironically, dogs helping the law. Continue reading →

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Far from Las Vegas, thoughts on the Abscam sting of conman Mel Weinberg

Posted on by June 12, 2018
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Mel Weinberg

Christian Bale playing the Mel Weinberg character in “American Hustle” (courtesy Sony Pictures)

The New York Times just published an obituary of Mel Weinberg. Can’t place him? He was the convicted conman-turned-FBI-informant who brought down a slew of bribe-taking politicians in the Abscam scandal, which surfaced in 1980 along the East Coast in such places as Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, New York City, Long Island, Camden, N.J. and Atlantic City.

You might remember the 2013 movie “American Hustle,” which is somewhat based on Abscam. The Weinberg character, renamed Irv Rosenfeld, is played by Christian Bale. His girlfriend is played by Jennifer Lawrence.

Weinberg died in Florida at age 93, having outlived just about everyone he plotted with or swindled. The Times for some reason afforded him an honor normally reserved for the high and mighty: a pre-death interview for the obituary. “I’ve had a good life, a charmed life,” he said in 2017. “I should have been dead a long time ago.”

As a newspaper reporter long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I covered Abscam when it broke. I never met Weinberg. But after “American Hustle” was released in 2013, I wrote an essay about the film’s connection with reality for NewToSeattle.com, a previous blog of mine, and discussed Weinberg. Below is my lightly re-edited account. Continue reading →

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Far from Las Vegas, the racist cant of the National Anthem and its lyricist

Posted on by June 12, 2018
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racist cant of the National Anthem

Francis Scott Key

You might think that President Donald J. Trump, who demands that pro football players stand for the National Anthem, would at least know its words himself and sing them with hearty gusto. Alas, it was painfully clear from his White House event yesterday, rebranded as a patriotic “Celebration of America” function after most players on the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles signaled they would skip the visit, that he doesn’t and can’t. Per the video,Trump seemed to have trouble remembering and vocalizing all the lyrics.

But overall that may not be such a bad thing. As I have pointed out before, “The Star-Spangled Banner” contains lyrics–mercifully, rarely sung–that welcomes the killing of fleeing slaves. Moreover, lawyer Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), the man who wrote those words as a poem in 1814, was a slaveowner himself who opposed abolition and who as a government prosecutor once tried to jail a writer who truthfully wrote that the nation’s capital was a stinking, lousy place for blacks to live.

Growing up in the Philadelphia area long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I rooted for the Eagles. The forthright position now of the team’s players, who unlike some on other NFL teams never failed to stand for the anthem (contrary to what Trumpeter Fox News reported for a time) but respected those who didn’t, makes me think I should repeat some of the bad history.  Continue reading →

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A snapshot of Las Vegas

Posted on by June 12, 2018
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Among the most important stories right now on a Saturday afternoon around the New To Las Vegas headquarters, according to the home page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: four suspicious deaths in three incidents and an Army deserter running in a GOP primary (considered the least significant of the four stories). Welcome to Sin City.snapshot of Las vegas

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Unique execution of Las Vegas killer would not be Nevada’s first

Posted on by June 12, 2018
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execution of Las Vegas killer

Scott Dozier (courtesy Nevada Department of Corrections)

Scott Dozier sits on death row in Nevada awaiting execution for the 2002 murder in a Las Vegas Strip motel of a fellow drug dealer, who was then sawed into multiple pieces, stuffed (mostly) into a suitcase and discarded. Dozier, 47, who also has been convicted of murder in Arizona, acknowledges guilt and says he wants to die. The State of Nevada is quite willing to accommodate him.

But for the prescribed method of lethal injection, the Nevada Department of Corrections has proposed using a three-drug combination that has never been used before, in Nevada or elsewhere. Even though Dozier now says he doesn’t much care how he dies, the case has been bouncing around Nevada courts. One issue is whether the specific mix–the paralytic drug cisatracurium, the anti-anxiety drug diazepam and the pain reliever fentanyl–violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment,” if not for Dozier, then for future condemned inmates.

Now, as someone New To Las Vegas, I think it can be fairly debated whether a thinly populated, minimal government desert state like Nevada has the expertise and competence to pull off a humane execution using an untested process, in this case the specific drug combo. But astonishingly, this wouldn’t be the first time that Nevada has ventured down this Brave New World path.

You see, it was Nevada that became the first jurisdiction in the entire world to execute a condemned prisoner in a gas chamber. That was nearly a century ago in 1924. The state somewhat botched the first attempt. There are lessons here. Continue reading →

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Las Vegas as observed by Tom Wolfe in 1964

Posted on by June 1, 2018
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Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe (via National Endowment for the Humanities)

Some of the tributes to Tom Wolfe, the famously cutting New Journalism wordsmith who died last week at age 88, made reference to one of his earliest magazine efforts, a 1964 article for Esquire about a town arising in the Nevada desert called Las Vegas. As his obituary in The New York Times quoted–high up–one literary critic, “His prose style is normally shotgun baroque, sometimes edging over into machine-gun rococo, as in his article on Las Vegas which begins by repeating the word ‘hernia’ 57 times.”

I read that article years before becoming New To Las Vegas. After locating a copy this week, I counted. Indeed, the word “hernia” does appear exactly 57 times at the start.

Wolfe’s work is entitled “Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can’t Hear You! Too Noisy) Las Vegas!!!!” That might give you a sense of Wolfe’s overall take, which isn’t too complimentary. But his piece sure is a great read.

Continue reading →

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In Las Vegas, Nevada Secretary of State’s Office proves its incompetence yet again

Posted on by May 19, 2018
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An expose put online today by the Las Vegas Review-Journal describes how the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office does little to nothing to stop scamsters from making fake corporation filings with the agency to swindle folks out of property in Las Vegas and elsewhere. Even worse, the agency disclaims any responsibility. The story, by reporter Brian Joseph, says this lack of due diligence by the office has been a problem “for years.”

I’ll say. Way back in 1991, long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I wrote in Forbes about how the very same office accepted incorporation papers from a nonexistent company in a nonexistent country, both established by a sketchy, mysterious character who turned out to be a repeat conman still on parole. Even worse, agency officials said they were under no obligation to check anything–even after they got a warning from another Nevada agency.

It sounds like nothing has changed. Continue reading →

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As feds ponder nuke dump near Las Vegas: Payback for decades of dirty dealings?

Posted on by May 15, 2018
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nuke dump near Las Vegas

Mushroom cloud from 1951 nuclear test within sight of Las Vegas casinos (via Wikipedia)

Much of the Las Vegas and Nevada political establishment is up in arms over legislation moving through Congress that would jump-start plans to store power plant nuclear waste from 39 states at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. By an overwhelming vote a bill to resume the licensing process after an eight-year delay just passed the House of Representatives. The Senate Republican leadership won’t consider it until after the November elections to give Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller, in a tough re-election campaign, some breathing room. Even though he opposes Yucca Mountain, it wouldn’t look too good if the legislation passed on his party’s watch.

The Yucca Mountain proposal has been around since 1987; the feds already have spent something like $9 billion in research and test tunnel costs. When he was the Senate majority leader, long-time Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) saw to it that plans went nowhere. But then the Senate turned Republican. Reid retired. Ergo, the Yucca renaissance.

As someone still New To Las Vegas, I have a theory here. To me, the potential siting of a nuclear waste dump in Nevada smacks of payback for all the years the state profited mightily from stuff illegal for the longest time in the rest of the country: casino and other forms of gambling, prostitution, quicky marriage and divorce, tolerance for organized crime, and super-secret incorporation laws.

Then there’s the state’s tax structure (no state income tax and modest property taxes), which attracts new residents from other states struggling to hold on to their tax bases. Add to that Nevada’s still-modest population of barely 3 million, its remoteness and its wide open spaces. It’s not hard to see why Nevada would be an inviting prospect (to non-Nevadans) for a nuclear storage facility that would have to last at least 10,000 years. Continue reading →

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It Didn’t Stay Here: 15% of all accusations against Bill Cosby cited Las Vegas

Posted on by May 1, 2018
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It Didn't Stay Here

Bill Cosby (2015 booking photo courtesy Montgomery County [Pa.] district attorney’s office)

There already were some famous nominees for my list It Didn’t Stay Here. The roster features folks in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas, disproving the cheeky local marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here.” President Donald J. Trump is one, thanks to a videotaped 2013 party that involved a whole lot of Russians. Another is Emmanuel Macron, who, before he became president of France, presided over an out-of-budget-control marketing event at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. The entire list is displayed nearby.

To these luminaries I now add another–Bill Cosby. Last week, the 80-year-old comedian was convicted in a Norristown, Pa., courtroom of all three felony aggravated indecent assault counts against him. Five women, plus Andrea Constand, whose situation led to that prosecution, described in court a long-standing pattern of using drugs to overcome their lack of consent. More to my point, two of those five recounted attacks in Las Vegas at what was then the Las Vegas Hilton, previously the International Hotel and now the Westgate Las Vegas, where Cosby frequently performed.

By my count from news reports, at least another seven of the 60 or so women who have come forward publicly in the past 15 years to accuse Cosby of crimes said their incidents took place in Las Vegas. That makes Vegas with that anything-goes-but-keep-it-quiet imprimatur the crime venue of 15% of all known allegations against Cosby.

Cosby faces a prison sentence in Pennsylvania of up to 30 years. That certainly meets my New To Las Vegas definition of being in trouble elsewhere.

None of the claims emanating from Las Vegas, which are in the time period 1970 to 1989, has resulted in criminal or civil cases in Nevada against Cosby, who generally has denied all allegations everywhere. That is partly because Nevada’s statute of limitation for criminal prosecution of rape was only four years until 2015, when it was extended to 20 years at the urging of Lisa Lotte-Lublin, who testified at the Cosby trial. I’m also thinking that overall societal support for the national #MeToo movement might be a little thinner here. Continue reading →

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