Two of my Las Vegas predictions for 2024 from last December actually came true. This is amazing since the list was intended as satirical social commentary.
I’ll detail the pair at the end. But again I note that clearly labeled satire is protected free speech under the First Amendment, thanks to a unanimous 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving Larry Flynt and Jerry Falwell.
So from the New to Las Vegas world headquarters, here I go again for 2025.
–President Donald J. Trump suggests at a press conference that the Hoover Dam should be renamed for himself because “I don’t like losers.”
–Elon Musk’s project to connect Las Vegas attractions with miles of underground tunnels ferrying passengers in Teslas runs into problems when it turns out one tube was mistakenly started heading toward unfashionable East Las Vegas. “Sometimes you have to blow up rockets to get to Mars,” an unapologetic Musk says cryptically.
–Two more unidentified Mob-era bodies are found in Lake Mead barrels.
–Continuing a race with Delaware to be the most corporation-friendly state in the country, the Nevada legislature passes a law explicitly stating that boards of public companies are not required to take into account maximization of shareholder value or to avoid conflicts of interest.
–In mid-July Las Vegas hits a record 122 degrees, breaking by two degrees the all-time record set in 2024.
–The Republican minority in the Nevada legislature unsuccessfully pushes for a bill repealing the only-in-Nevada requirement that “None of These Candidates” be listed as a voting option for all statewide races. The line is credited with drawing enough voters to re-elect the last two incumbent Democratic U.S. Senators.
–The Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Las Vegas Sun spend nearly as much money on high-priced lawyers in their bitterly contested six-year-old antitrust and contract lawsuits against one another than they do on news reporters.
–Clark County Commissioner Richard L. “Tick” Sigerblom makes a list published by a German magazine entitled “20 Persönlichkeiten des öffentlichen Lebens auf der ganzen Welt, die einen Spitznamen mit einem Insekt teilen.” Translation: “20 Public Figures Around The World Sharing a Nickname with an Insect.”
–Republican Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo vetoes a record 451 bills passed by the Democrat-controlled Nevada Legislature, including one funding his own salary.
–Another Strip casino hotel gets hit with a critter lawsuit, this one alleging that a loose boa constrictor pet of one guest killed another guest’s Shih Tsu. The case gets insane worldwide publicity, including an newspaper headline in India reading, “What Squeezes in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.”
–Nevada public officials, especially Republicans angling for reelection, panic when Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, recommends eliminating the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That could open the way to the long-term storage of spent but still-radioactive material at the planned-but-mothballed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, just 100 miles from Las Vegas.
–Staunchly conservative and wacky Nye County, named for an early Nevada governor and U.S. senator who later became insane and whose voters a few years ago elected a dead pimp to the Nevada legislature, draws national attention again when the county commission proposes to erect a monument praising the January 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol.
–A bill in the Nevada Legislature to legalize red light cameras across the state is scuttled after a long-serving legislator receives five such tickets during a weekend jaunt to Los Angeles, where they have been legal for years.
And now, my two 2004 predictions that did come to pass:
–Nevada’s unemployment rate remains well above the national average. In fact, at 5.7%, it now not only tops the national average of 4.2% but is the highest state rate in the country.
–Nevada Secretary of State Francisco V. (Cisco) Aguilar continues the policy of not enforcing a 2021 state law requiring many telemarketers soliciting funds within Nevada for dubious causes to first register their cause with the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office, which he obviously heads. I write this because his agency has produced no evidence to the contrary, despite my written Nevada Public Records Act request dated August 2, 2024, asking for, among other things, a list of all disciplinary actions since that law took effect. The aptly acronymed SOSO has now missed four self-imposed deadlines–the latest was yesterday–to produce the information. Its new announced deadline is next month. I should note here SOSO is the very same agency that gave incorrect and ultimately fatal information to the Green Party about the correct petition form to use to get candidate Jill Stein on the 2024 presidential ballot in Nevada. By a split vote, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled against her. But one dissenting judge blasted “an egregious error by the Secretary of State’s office that will result in a significant injustice.”
Ticks are arachnids, not insects. I oughta know. —Tony Spilotro