With ‘Oppenheimer’ and radiation, Las Vegas stakes its claim to nuclear tourism

Posted on by July 2, 2024
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nuclear tourism

Movie poster for ‘Oppenheimer’

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I recently saw the movie “Oppenheimer,” about the rise, fall and rise again of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 to end World War II. Despite its three-hour length (preceded by a half-hour of utterly mindless ads and trailers), it’s a terrific flick. The movie is sure to be up for a bunch of Oscars with a clever screenplay by director Christopher Nolan, and riveting performances by Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer and especially Robert Downey Jr. He steals every single scene he’s in as the villainous arch-nemesis Lewis Strauss.

Much of the action in the movie takes place in the classrooms (and bedrooms) of Berkeley, where Oppenheimer taught; in New Mexico where the bomb was finally developed and test-fired, and in Washington, D.C., where Oppenheimer and Strauss both experienced professional rhapsody and ruin.

Nothing in the film took place in Nevada, where I live. But in many ways, Las Vegas stands to be the biggest beneficiary of what could be called a renewed interest in nuclear tourism. In fact, Sin City has been been feasting on dangerously unleashed atoms in odd and strange ways for more than 70 years, and, unsurprisingly, not always to its advantage. Continue reading →

It Didn’t Stay Here: Prosecutors in New York–not Nevada–indict Las Vegas faux charity fundraiser

Posted on by December 11, 2024
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Richard Zeitlin indictment in New York

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Richard Zeitlin is a Las Vegas resident who for years has been a telemarketing force behind what I call faux charities. These are political action committees soliciting nationally that sound like worthy causes but aren’t and spend almost nothing collected from clueless donors on the stated mission.

Zeitlin, 53, finally has been indicted criminally on fraud charges carrying a maximum 20-year prison sentence. But not by any prosecutor in Nevada, a state where consumer protection long has been an alien concept, regulators don’t enforcement fundraising disclosure laws and Zeitlin has operated questionable cold-call operations for decades.

Instead, Zeitlin was just charged by federal prosecutors in the far-away Southern District of New York, where these things are taken a little more seriously. The four counts include wire fraud and obstruction of justice charges, the latter for allegedly ordering cronies to delete electronic messages on the very day in May that federal authorities issued subpenas for them.

A separate federal indictment also in New York accuses one Richard Piaro, 73, of Fredonia, Wisc., with wire and mail fraud for serving as treasurer to four faux charity PACs that a different pending civil lawsuit suggests used Zeitlin’s operation for fundraising. They bear the names Americans for the Cure of Breast Cancer, Association for Emergency Responders & Firefighters, U.S. Veterans Assistance Foundation and Standing by Veterans. Piaro’s indictment says the four raised $28 million from donors over five years.

Because of his out-of-state legal difficulties, Zeitlin becomes the latest candidate for my long-running list, It Didn’t Stay Here. This is a roster of people who has been in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas. The list is my barbed refutation of “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the famous marketing slogan the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority used for many years to help draw mischief-makers to Sin City. Nearby is the list, which also includes Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr.. Continue reading →

New police-themed likely faux charity soliciting in Las Vegas is already being sued

Posted on by July 22, 2023
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police-themed faux charitySee same-day update at end of story.

It was a hot sweaty day at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters recently when the phone rang. Identifying himself as “Charles Anderson,” the cold-caller asked for a contribution to something called Police Officers Support Committee PAC. In response to my question, he said the political action committee was headquartered in Woodbridge, Va., a distant suburb of Washington, D.C.

I asked how old the organization was. “Anderson” replied, “That’s a really good question.” But instead of giving me a simple direct answer, I was provided with the URL of the organization’s website. Then without another word, “Anderson” hung up. Not even a good-bye. Totally non-suspicious, of course.

I’m using quotation marks around my caller’s stated name because “Anderson” is not a real person, but rather a computer operated by a human using what is known as soundboard technology. The website of Police Officers Support Committee PAC contained no information that I could see about when the group was formed. A Google Maps search suggests the stated headquarters is simply a mail drop at a Staples office supplies store just off Interstate 95.

Now, if you are a regular visitor to this blog, you probably already have a good sense of where I’m going here. But please read on. There’s actually a twist to this one. Continue reading →

How extreme heat helped make Las Vegas

Posted on by July 17, 2023
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See important update at end of story.

Las Vegas extreme heat

Official National Weather Service alert today for Las Vegas

We’re all waiting today, Sunday, July 16, 2023, in Las Vegas to see if the temperature will hit or exceed the all-time any-day-of-the-year official local record high of 117 degrees Fahrenheit. That mark has been touched four times in recorded history, twice since I became New To Las Vegas in 2016. We should know by 7:00 p.m. PT. Yesterday’s high was 113.

Accompanying this vigil is lots of moaning and groaning and swearing by locals about how unbearable it is to be hereabouts during the day and even at night, when the lows still hover around 90. All this is absolutely true. But there are plenty of other places around the country–like Death Valley barely two hours away by car (if it doesn’t overheat on the ride) and even the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles–and throughout the world that are frequently hotter.

However, for some reason Las Vegas during the summer seems to have become a national proxy for hot weather. Perhaps it’s the phenomenon I previously have described in which bad stuff that happens in Las Vegas gets insane publicity even though the same things happen elsewhere. In the case of hot weather maybe it has something to do with the satisfying notion to some of Sin City burning in hell. I even confess to playing that game a bit with a running box at the top of this blog listing the current temperature, automatically updated hourly. (My data comes from private OpenWeatherMap.com and sometimes varies a bit from the National Weather Service, the official record-keeper.)

Now I don’t want to make light of genuine suffering and deaths caused by heat, which certainly happen around Las Vegas, a place that has been called the country’s fastest-warming city. But having lived in a few other toasty climates–Houston, Albuquerque, the hot Santa Clarita Valley near Los Angeles and even Cairo, Egypt–me thinks many of the locals here doth protest a little too much. As I see it, it is the extreme heat–getting all the more extreme thanks to global warming–that helped give Las Vegas a viable economy in the first place. Hear me out on this. Continue reading →