Far from Las Vegas, fitting venues for GOP speeches

Posted on by August 28, 2020
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Francis Scott Key

fitting venue for GOP speeches

Andrew W. Mellon

For me, still New to Las Vegas, part of the fun watching the convention-less Republican National Convention that wrapped up last night was not only the speakers, but where they spoke.

I am referring in particular to two of the venues, the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., and Fort McHenry in Baltimore. In this time of economic distress and racial strife, they both have compelling back stories that are especially fitting—although perhaps not in ways calculated to win over uncommitted voters that Donald Trump needs to overcome his current deficit in the polls. Continue reading →

In a Las Vegas suburb, store blames government for the masks

Posted on by August 26, 2020
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blame for the masksThis sign–outside a Home Depot store today on Marks St. in the upscale Las Vegas suburb of Henderson–helps to show why the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. is going to last for awhile.

Rather than simply stating masks are required for entry, this Home Depot management decided to blame it all on government. “Mandated by the Governor,” the crudely hand-lettered sign says in a way calculated to stir up even more mask opposition.There already is an anti-mask group in Las Vegas.

It’s worth noting that Home Depot’s lead founder, Bernard Marcus, is a prominent Republican who was one of anti-mask Donald Trump’s biggest financial supporters in 2016, while Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak is a Democrat.

I’ll leave it to others to explain how the age-old and proven technique of wearing a mask in a pandemic has become a political issue. Meanwhile, my home improvement patronage will go elsewhere.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

In Las Vegas, Trump tries to rig Nevada election outcome–like Abe Lincoln did

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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Nevada election

Donald J. Trump

See update at end of story

For a man who owns half of the Las Vegas Strip hotel that is the state’s tallest non-casino building, you’d think President Donald J. Trump would know more about Nevada. He mispronounces the state’s name at every opportunity–saying “nev-AH-da” (schwa A in the middle) when those of us who live here say “nev-ADD-a” (short A in the middle). During a 2016 presidential campaign rally in Reno, he actually lectured the locals on their pronunciation. So maybe it wasn’t all that surprising that he lost the state’s six electoral votes to Hillary Clinton.

Nevada election

Abraham Lincoln

Although he still mispronounces Nevada, Trump is trying to avoid the same electoral result this year. He says Democrats are working to rig the state’s election results by passing a law temporarily turning Nevada into a vote-by-mail jurisdiction. This would be similar to the long-standing practice of a number of other Western states (including adjoining liberal Oregon and conservative Utah). The stated motivation in Nevada is the coronavirus pandemic and the avoidance of long lines outside polls on Election Day.

Trump’s campaign just filed a lawsuit in federal court in Las Vegas challenging the Nevada changes. His operatives clearly believe a broader franchise would work against him, so Trump is simply trying to rig it his way. Democrats now hold a statewide registration edge. But it is also a fact that Nevada as a whole has gone Republican in eight of the past 13 presidential elections and hasn’t voted against an incumbent since 1992.

I am still New To Las Vegas. But as far as I know, there is no sweeping history here of election fraud. (That’s assuming you don’t include the time in 1940 when Democrats covered up the fact that incumbent U.S. Sen. Key Pittman was on his deathbed until after Election Day so the governor, a fellow Democrat, could appoint Pittman’s replacement upon his death five days following his “re-election.”) Certainly there is nothing like the Republican operative in North Carolina now under indictment for election shenanigans that forced a Congressional election to be rerun.

But it is historically fascinating to me that Team Trump is obsessed with election rigging in, of all places, Nevada. Why? Because, as I wrote in this space four years ago and repeat below, Nevada actually became a state to rig an election for Abraham Lincoln. As it turns out, he is a man with whom Trump regularly compares himself and apparently would like to join on Mount Rushmore.

Fake news, you think? Read on.

Continue reading →

Faux volunteer firefighter cause trolls Las Vegas and nationally

Posted on by September 18, 2020
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The recent cold caller to the New To Las Vegas world headquarters used the name Shawn (or maybe Sean). He said he was soliciting a donation for something called National Committee for Volunteer Firefighters.

In my view, he made it sound like a charity and pressed real hard for me to commit to a specific dollar pledge before mailing me written materials. Shawn was also not a real person, but a voice generated by a computer, most likely with an actual human monitoring the conversation and hitting keys to provide canned responses.

All this is a common m.o. for what I call a faux charity–a purported cause that spends almost all the money raised on fundraising and overhead and virtually nothing on the stated cause, while implying it operates with charitable motives. They are hoping that would-be donors won’t ask up front about financial efficiencies or won’t know how to find the answers for themselves.

In this case NCVF, ostensibly based in Boston, is a political action committee. That’s not a charity at all, of course, but a so-called 527 organization–named after a provision of federal tax law–that says it takes contributions to support candidates for public office who will support its goals. Here, this presumably would have something to do with volunteer firefighters. 527 outfits are lightly regulated, to say the least.

I just dug up NCVF’s public record financial filings with the Internal Revenue Service from its creation last December 18 through June 30, just a few weeks ago. Some $241,027 was listed as donated from across the country, and $220,627 listed as spent. By my reckoning, here is how much of that $220,627 was spent supporting volunteer firefighters:

$0.

Here’s how much of that $220,627 was spent in fundraising and overhead expense:

$220,627.

The $20,400 difference between donations and expenditures–only 8% of the amount donated–isn’t going to help very many political candidates and is hardly commensurate with the amount contributed. And I imagine many donors would not be happy to know that 92% of their gifts have no chance of benefiting even a single volunteer firefighter. Continue reading →

Hey, Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine, proof-read your ad!

Posted on by July 17, 2020
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Since becoming New to Las Vegas four years ago this week, I have come to the conclusion that the Nevada state government is not a fountain of extreme competence.

For me, the latest example appeared today in a half-page advertisement placed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal by the office of Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine. The ad in the state’s leading newspaper concerned changes to the state’s unclaimed property law. (Yes, I do read boring stuff like that.)

Here is the bottom of the ad. The annotated yellow arrow was added by yours truly.

Now I imagine that most everyone in that agency is working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. That would include the grammatically challenged–as well as folks whose job it should be to proof-read material in its entirety before publication.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Far from Las Vegas: How a 1980s management book explains Trump

Posted on by June 25, 2020
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As the November 2020 presidential election nears, we’ve all watched Donald J. Trump run the White House and the Federal Government for 3½ years. As he lurches from crisis to crisis, gaffe to gaffe, false statement to false statement and high-level firing to high-level firing, Trump has provided grist for a million pundits commenting on his, ah, unusual management style.

Or maybe not all that unusual.

For my money, the best analysis of Trump’s m.o. comes from a book I read in the 1980s–long before becoming New to Las Vegas–that doesn’t even mention him and isn’t really about politics.

I am referring to Unstable at the Top: Inside the Troubled Organization, by prominent international management consultants/academics Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries and Danny Miller. The pair combed through case histories of organizations both public and private run by clearly wacko leaders to define five varieties of neurotic, dysfunctional management: dramatic, suspicious, detached, depressive and compulsive.

Trump fits their description of the dramatic leader to a T, not unlike the delightfully off-balance letter on the cover, displayed nearby.

“The dramatic management style mixes aspects of two primary psychological orientations: the histrionic (theatrical, seductive, and showy) and the narcissistic (egotistical and grandiose),” Kets de Vries and Miller write. Continue reading →