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 →

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

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

Posted on by December 23, 2019
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See update at end of story.

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Far from Las Vegas, Curse of Lew Wallace resurfaces in New Mexico

Posted on by May 25, 2018
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Susana Martinez, 137th governor of  New Mexico since Western colonization

Every once in a while, I see something happening outside my bailiwick that I can’t resist commenting upon at length. Such an event occurred today in New Mexico, where I lived for 12 years long before becoming New To Las Vegas. In Santa Fe the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously invalidated 10 vetoes issued by Susana Martinez, the state’s hapless two-term Republican governor. I say hapless because all she had to do was issue the vetoes in a timely fashion and include one-sentence explanations, or “objections” as they are called in Article 4, Section 22 of the 213-page New Mexico Constitution.

This isn’t a very hard task; vetoes that stick happen routinely in state capitals across the country. But Martinez somehow blew it, big time.

However, in her defense her lapse may have something to do with a culture of incompetence of New Mexico. This is not a new thing.

Curse of Lew Wallace

Lew Wallace, 97th governor of New Mexico since Western colonization

Some 137 years ago this very weekend, the state’s most illustrious governor–Lew Wallace, author of the famous novel, Ben-Hur–defined that culture when he memorably wrote, “All calculations based on our experiences elsewhere fail in New Mexico.” In May 1998, after yet another governmental debacle, I explained what Wallace might have been referring to in an article for Crosswinds, then New Mexico’s largest alternative newspaper, entitled “The Curse of Lew Wallace.” Below is the text of what I wrote. (Another version with more photos and an image of the legendary wording in Wallace’s own handwriting can be found by clicking here.) Were I composing from scratch today, I would only update a few names and facts. Continue reading →

Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas, may revise John C. Frémont exhibit after my criticisms

Posted on by April 23, 2018
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John C. Frémont

John C. Frémont

An official of the Nevada State Museum says a traveling exhibit now in Las Vegas about the life of 19th century military adventurer and politician John C. Frémont might be revised to add negative material that I complained had been left out, like his war-criminal slaughter of Latino civilians and Indians in the run-up to the Mexican War.

Eugene M. Hattori, curator of anthropology at the museum, which has facilities in Las Vegas and Carson City, acknowledged there were significant omissions in the chronology presented at the exhibit of Frémont and that he was open to fixing that. Hattori spoke during a back-and-forth interview with me moderated by Joe Schoenmann aired today on “KNPR’s State of Nevada,” a weekday public affairs show on Las Vegas public radio station KNPR.

That interview can be heard by clicking here and in the next window clicking on the word “LISTEN.”

In a New To Las Vegas post and update earlier this month about the exhibit, entitled “Finding Frémont,” I wrote that so much bad stuff about his life had been left out that the exhibit should be renamed “Whitewashing Frémont.” I wrote then:

I saw no mention of his massacre of Indians, no mention of his massacre of Latinos, no mention of his being a tax cheat, no mention of his using inside information to get a lucrative land grant and fiddle with its boundaries, little mention of his poor military skills, little mention of his dreadful political skills, no mention of his role as an absentee lawmaker and office-holder, and no mention of his peddling worthless bonds or conviction and prison sentence for fraud.

Continue reading →

It Didn’t Stay Here: Alleged Pittsburgh-area fraud involved Las Vegas spending

Posted on by June 10, 2018
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It Didn't Stay Here

The Bellagio and its fountains (via Wikipedia)

George Retos Jr., a 69-year-old businessman and former lawyer who lives in the Pittsburgh, Pa. suburb of East Washington, was a big, big fan of Las Vegas. He especially liked visiting the Bellagio, the giant Strip casino hotel known for its spectacular fountain displays. Another favored place was the Cosmopolitan, the trendy casino hotel that frequently tops best-places-to-stay lists.

He used debit cards to run up personal charges at both facilities. But there was a big problem with this–if federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh are to be believed. The mention of federal prosecutors might make it possible for you to sort of guess where I’m going with this.

According to a 32-page federal indictment issued last month, Retos orchestrated several schemes to misappropriate the proceeds of federally guaranteed loans made to several private businesses he controlled in the plastics industry and to evade taxes “for his own personal use and the use of his family members.” The Las Vegas expenditures are identified as part of this effort.

The 13 counts in the indictment include wire fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. There are some other interesting charges, too, including false bankruptcy declarations and possession of a handgun despite being a long-convicted felon.

Earlier this month, Retos, the only person charged in the indictment although others are mentioned as unindicted co-conspirators, pleaded not guilty and remains free on $25,000 bond. Although this case has plea bargain written all over it, if convicted and hit with maximum sentences, Retos faces what amounts to the rest of his life in prison. A spokesman for him was quoted by a local newspaper as calling the charges “a misrepresentation of facts.”

While the court is sorting this all out, I am nominating Retos for my list, It Didn’t Stay Here. The roster consists of folks in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in that Mecca of Mischief called Las Vegas. My list is a New To Las Vegas rebuttal of that famous Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority marketing pitch, “What Happens Here, Stays Here.” Other nominees can be found on this page. By clicking on their names, you can learn their sad stories, too. Continue reading →

Another dodgy cancer charity comes acalling in Las Vegas

Posted on by April 12, 2018
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dodgy canceer charityThe recent telephone call to the New To Las Vegas world headquarters followed the usual pattern. The telemarketer stated the cause, in this instance The Breast Cancer Charities of America, based in The Woodlands, Tex. I was asked to make a verbal donation pledge on the spot, in this instance for “the ladies.”

Tracking the usual pattern, I would be pleased to read any literature sent me but that I couldn’t consider committing to a donation without first having something in writing to review.

Rather than agreeing to mail me materials, the caller promptly hung up. This also traced the usual pattern.

Besides the somewhat abrupt call termination once I expressed a reluctance to donate sight unseen, there were these other elements of the usual pattern. The caller wasn’t even a human but an interactive computer affecting a pleasant voice (female, this time).

And subsequent research by me suggested that the charity was thisclose to being a scam. Looking at BCCA’s own filings with regulators over the past six years, maybe 3% of the cash donations received was spent directly in grants to those in need. The percentage for the most recent year with filings, 2016, was 7%–a little better but still terrible. BCCA also has some skanky running buddies and has received a fair amount of adverse scrutiny, as I will point out.

Now you might assume an outfit with a plural in its name–the Breast Cancer Charities of America–is a widespread organization with scads of employees and volunteers. Your assumption would be way off. While the nonprofit also solicits under other names, including IGoPink and Breast Cancer Support Foundation, the latest tax return in 2016 stated it had only six employees and zero volunteers.

Want to learn more? Come along for the ride. Continue reading →

Las Vegas exhibit to open for war criminal John C. Frémont

Posted on by April 9, 2018
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war criminal John C. Frémont

John C. Frémont

See update at end of story for my snap review of the Frémont exhibit

The headline was stripped across the top of the printed local news section of today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal. “The ‘Pathfinder’ returns to town,” it read, touting the opening of a laudatory touring exhibit about the life of 19th century military opportunist and politician John C. Frémont (1813-1890). Always good copy, he was dubbed by the press of the era “The Great Pathfinder” for the maps generated under his watch of the American West, which helped the United States literally expand from sea to shining sea.

To me, Frémont was something else–a war criminal, and not just once, either. With that and some of the other stuff in his background, I have not understood why he is as celebrated and so uncritically examined as he is. Streets, neighborhoods, whole cities, schools and a slew of other governmental buildings have been named for him, mainly in the West. In Las Vegas–an area he first visited, for less than a day, in 1844–a part of Fremont Street is a popular tourist venue, home of the Fremont Street Experience. Fremont Street is the site of Nevada’s first legal gambling facility, the original home of the World Series of Poker and the city’s second best-known artery after Las Vegas Boulevard, a/k/a The Strip.

I first wrote about Frémont the man years ago when I lived in Seattle, where a funky, liberal inner-city neighborhood perhaps best known for a clothing-optional parade on the summer solstice is indirectly named for him. To me, the juxtaposition of a war criminal who later became the Republican Party’s first presidential candidate and a progressive section of a progressive town was a hoot. After becoming New To Las Vegas two years ago and observing his sway over Sin City, I wrote about him again. Looks like it’s time for me to take another swing. I am largely drawing upon my previous research and writings.

Continue reading →

Trump, Stormy, Las Vegas–and me

Posted on by May 25, 2018
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Trump Stormy Las Vegas

Trump Magazine cover March 2006 (via Wikipedia)

Stormy Daniels and Anderson Cooper may have cost me big time in that “60 Minutes” interview on March 25.

Why? From my New To Las Vegas headquarters, I had been trying to sell on Ebay an original edition of a 2006 issue of Forbes magazine with now-U.S. President Donald J. Trump on the cover. That was since Mother Jones magazine reported in January that Daniels had spanked Trump with an issue of Forbes bearing his cover image during a tryst at a Nevada hotel during a golf tournament in 2006. That Mother Jones reported she used an issue of big-money chronicler Forbes–with which I have been associated going back more than three decades–helped make this a more-talked-about incident than if it had been, say, Reader’s Digest.

I happened to own a copy of the only Forbes issue with Trump on the cover that year, the 2006 edition of the annual list of the 400 richest Americans. Putting two and two together and hoping it added up to a cool thou or even more, I ran to Ebay aiming to make America great again for me.

To a “60 Minutes” audience of 22 million viewers undoubtedly hanging on every word, adult-film actress Daniels confirmed her spanking of Trump. But she said it was with a copy of what Trump called “my new magazine,” which just happened to be lying around in his hotel room.

Damn! Those of us who long have written about Trump’s business career know that he had been involved over the years with a number of publications bearing his name (not unlike Oprah Winfrey and her O, The Oprah Magazine). Trump’s title, not Forbes, is what got applied to his derriere. The image of the cover is nearby. Continue reading →

From Las Vegas: Second Amendment defenders are defending slavery

Posted on by March 23, 2018
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Second AmendmentEvery time there’s a mass shooting–like the one just a few miles from my New to Las Vegas home in October that claimed 58 lives, or the Valentine Day incident last month in a Parkland, Fla., school that killed 17–a national debate breaks out over gun rights and the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The powerful National Rifle Association claims folks have a largely unfettered right under that amendment to pack heat. Majority public opinion seems to be something else, but most politicians up to and including President Trump are too afraid of the NRA’s campaign contribution money to do anything substantive.

So allow me to throw another log onto this fire. As I read our country’s history, people who defend the Second Amendment are actually defending a provision attached to the U.S. Constitution that was worded to make it easier for Southern states to preserve slavery. That’s right, slavery. The “well-regulated militia” phrase so famously found in the amendment, just before the equally famous “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” was a reference to officially organized whites-only posses in the South created for the purpose of keeping in line black slaves, who in many places outnumbered the whites.

Southern politicians were afraid of the nascent Federal Government, soon to be dominated by Northern anti-slavery interests. They specifically were worried southern states would be prohibited by federal authorities from continuing to have militias that could rummage through slave quarters without warrants and, I suppose, shoot black folks who got out of line. Continue reading →

Another iffy cancer charity solicits in Las Vegas

Posted on by February 27, 2018
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iffy cancer charityNew To Las Vegas world headquarters. Ringing phone. “Alice” on the line. Urgent request.

United Breast Cancer Foundation. “Alice” tells me it helps women with financial assistance for things like mammograms. She needs a donation.

So many cancer charities out there with similar names. I ask “Alice” for the organization’s tax identification number to do some research. “Alice” doesn’t have it. She refers me to her “manager,” who does.

By now you’re probably thinking, what with all the damn quote marks? Here’s what’s with all the damn quote marks. “Alice” is not a real person but rather an interactive computer that can recognize some questions and respond. Her “supervisor” is the real human monitoring and directing the computer.

More to the point, from my perspective it also wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to put quote marks around “United Breast Cancer Foundation.” From my reading of its latest available financial filings, the Huntington, N.Y. organization, which also uses the name United Women’s Health Alliance, spent almost none of the cash raised from telemarketing calls such as the one to me on anything I would regard as the financial assistance “Alice” told me about. The rest went to a farrago of fundraising costs and other expenses, including printing, marketing, overhead and, of course, executive compensation.

As a result, various charity watchdog groups hold a rather dim view of UBCF. The Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance flunks the charity on multiple standards, including one requiring financial statements be put on the charity’s website. Charity Navigator gives UBCF just two stars. Indeed, a few years ago the charity ranked No. 38 on the Tampa Bay Times’ list of America’s Worst Charities, which highlighted tax-exempts that spent very little of the money donated on good deeds. There are more than 1 million nonprofits in the U.S., so UBCF was in rather rarefied company.

And since we all now live in the Age of Trump, there’s even a tangential connection to the extended First Family. Interested? Read on. Continue reading →

It Didn’t Stay Here: Jail for embezzling Scot who partied in Las Vegas

Posted on by February 23, 2018
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It Didn't Stay Here

Las Vegas Strip (by Stefan Wagener via Wikipedia)

Alicia Moran probably looked like just another happy international traveler as she partied along the Las Vegas Strip in 2015. But the Scottish woman had a wee bit of a problem. She was spending money she had embezzled from Thomas Cook, the giant European travel agency where she worked as a foreign exchange sales assistant.

Indeed, it was while she was living it up in Sin City that U.K. authorities back home made the decision to charge her. Moran was arrested at Glasgow Airport returning from her 10-day trip to the colonies–Vegas and New York. A mother of two, she is now in a Scottish jail serving an 18-month sentence that started last month after admitting she stole about $200,000 in just a six-month period.

Moran, 34, becomes the newest person nominated to my list, It Didn’t Stay Here. The roster consists of folks in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in that bug light of mischief called Las Vegas. My list is a pointed refutation of “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the famous marketing slogan of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. You can see previous nominees elsewhere on this New To Las Vegas page. After the terrible October 1 massacre at an outdoor concert on the Strip, the agency stopped advertising the seemingly powerful pitch but resumed its use last month.

And so do I. Continue reading →

Las Vegas news media scene remains weak

Posted on by April 16, 2018
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Las Vegas news mediaSee update at end of story

I’ll give the Las Vegas Review-Journal credit for a big mea culpa. On Monday, it published a stunning story essentially admitting that 20 years ago it deep-sixed a story written by its court reporter that casino tycoon Steve Wynn faced allegations from employees of sex misconduct. The paper protected Wynn even though the 1998 claims were public record at the courthouse for anyone to see and thus immune from a valid defamation lawsuit by Wynn. On Tuesday, thanks to that coverage, which followed a blockbuster expose last month by The Wall Street Journal about many other alleged incidents of sexual misconduct by Wynn, he resigned his CEO and chairman posts at Wynn Resorts, all the while professing his complete innocence.

But who knows how many women could have escaped Wynn’s purported clutches had the Review-Journal properly done its job in 1998, or even at any point before this week? The reporter who dug up that story, and who kept her notes, is still on the paper; she’s an editor now. There also have been corporate ownership changes. But it still took the Review-Journal 10 days after the big Wall Street Journal scoop and months after the birth of the #MeToo movement to summon up the strength to do the right thing.

And it underscores what I have observed since becoming New To Las Vegas in 2016: The Las Vegas news media remains pretty weak when it comes to covering the news. A mile wide and a quarter-inch deep. From what I understand, this has been a problem in Las Vegas for a looooong time.

Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Review-Journal story about Wynn is the admission by then-publisher Sherman Frederick that he doesn’t remember killing the story about the Strip’s most prominent figure. To me, this suggests the paper routinely axed so many valid stories about important folks that this was journalistic business as usual in Las Vegas. Continue reading →

Las Vegas dog on dog crime rate may mirror humans

Posted on by September 3, 2018
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See update at end of story

Las Vegas dog on dog crime

Dog Fancier’s Park, Las Vegas

For all of its appeal to tourists, the Las Vegas area has a big problem. The serious crime rate is very high. The latest official FBI crime statistics, which can lag by up to two years, puts it at 849 incidents for every 100,000 residents. The national average is 373, so the Las Vegas rate is more than double.

Homicides are one component of serious crime (others include rape, robbery and aggravated assault). In 2017, the Las Vegas area had 199 homicides. That includes the 58 persons killed in the October 1 massacre along the Las Vegas Strip. By my rough reckoning, that works out to a local homicide rate of 10.0 for every 100,000 residents. The latest national average is 5.3, so the murder rate is almost double.

So far, this is all about humans. But I’m here to write about murders among dogs. Dog on dog crime, to be specific. At Dog Fancier’s Park, the off-leash dog park in East Las Vegas I visit regularly with my New To Las Vegas Basset Hound, I’m aware of at least two dogs in recent months who were murdered–yes, killed–by other dogs. Owners of victim and perp supposedly were nearby. Continue reading →

Las Vegas folks treated poorly by government

Posted on by December 27, 2017
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Las Vegas folks treated poorlyIt happened again. A lengthy article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal tells how the state government of Nevada has long failed to enforce its own law requiring review of emergency response plans filed by big places like casino hotels. This is no small matter especially given the October 1 massacre by a gunman firing from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino across the Strip to an outdoor performance venue that killed 58 and wounded more than 500 (just voted the year’s biggest crime story by CNN).

Earlier this year, I wrote a long piece for The Nevada Independent about how the state Secretary of State’s Office doesn’t comply with a 2013 state law requiring that full financial statements or IRS Form 990s be posted on its website of charities soliciting for contributions in the state. This makes it a lot easier for sketchy charities that spend as much as 90% of the money raised on fundraising and overhead to hide their scandalous financial efficiencies from my now-fellow Nevadans.

Several state officials, including Republicans Gov. Brian Sandoval and Attorney General Adam Laxalt (who is campaigning to replace Sandoval when his term ends next year), have refused to enforce a law calling for background checks on private-party gun sales that was actually passed statewide by voters in 2016. They say the law is flawed.

As someone still New To Las Vegas, I find only one conclusion to draw from this and other governmental actions–or inactions. Nevada is a state whose governmental entities and agencies do not take very good care of its citizens. Continue reading →

Pitch from dodgy cancer charity graces holiday time in Las Vegas

Posted on by January 14, 2019
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dodgy cancer charity Holiday season. The time of giving. The phone rang at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters. Molly–or rather, an interactive computer programmed to say it was Molly–was on the line. After telling a lame joke, she/it cut to the chase. She/it said she/it was soliciting donations to the Women’s Cancer Fund, and hoped I could be counted to make a financial pledge.

I had not heard of the Women’s Cancer Fund (not all that surprising since there are thousands of charities in the country with the word “cancer” in their names). Where is Women’s Cancer Fund located, I asked. “Harrisburg, Pa,” she/it replied cheerily.

I asked for the organization’s federal tax ID number. “You know, I don’t have that,” she/it said, adding that her/its supervisor could help. Indeed, a real live human–who likely was monitoring the back and forth between “Molly” and me–quickly came on the line and gave me a nine-digit number.

Except that after looking it up online, I discovered the number wasn’t in the name of Women’s Center Fund. It was in the name of something called Cancer Recovery Foundation International. Women’s Cancer Fund is one of several cancer-themed trade names that CRFI uses as it asks an unsuspecting public for funds. Other d/b/a’s include Nevada Cancer Research Fund and Pink Diamond Women’s Cancer Fund.

And do I mean unsuspecting. In its latest fiscal period, according to my reckoning, only a sliver of the cash donations CRFI received went directly for anything that I would call good works. The rest was spent on fundraising, marketing and overhead. CRFI does business with several sketchy outfits–several of which I have written about–while using an accounting ploy to make its financial efficiencies and largess seem better than they really are. Continue reading →