Holiday gift to Las Vegas courtesy of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy

Posted on by December 16, 2021
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Holiday gift to Las Vegas

Lobby door, USPS East Las Vegas Station, December 16, 2021

“Sorry, no stamps!”

Nine days before Christmas, this cheerful holiday message courtesy of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy greeted customers today at the USPS East Las Vegas Station, 4948 S. Mountain Vista St., Las Vegas, NV 89121. This important branch on the Latino side of town is not far from the New To Las Vegas world headquarters.

There was no immediate word on whether the exuberant exclamation point on the sign was per policy from USPS headquarters in Washington, D.C.

DeJoy, who took office during the Trump administration, has managed to hang on despite problem after problem. He has touted his managerial, logistical and supply-chain expertise.

Marketing, customer service and public relations skills, not so much.

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What’s buried here, stays here: the few famous Las Vegas graves (Part 1)

Posted on by December 16, 2021
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famous Las Vegas graves

Sonny Liston memorial, Davis Memorial Park, Las Vegas

Las Vegas has been home to a lot of famous–and infamous–people. But for a place so large, prominent and buzzy, what it isn’t is the final resting place for very many household names. Reasonable folks can differ, but I count eternal homes in the Las Vegas Valley for no more than a score of persons whose fame might be said to be persistent and widespread. And that includes folks associated with Vegas’s storied organized-crime history.

One reason for this might be Las Vegas’s relative youth as a major outpost of civilization. The area’s population in 1900 was just 18 in 1900 (and you can see all their names on a single enumeration page of the U.S. Census by clicking here). Founded in 1905, Las Vegas became the largest U.S. city created in the 20th century. But as late as 1950, the metro area’s population was still under 50,000. It’s 2.3 million now. But people need time to die and be laid to perpetual rest.

Still, it might be safely said that Vegas has a fatal attraction for a certain kind of celebrity. So I have stories to tell. This is the first of an occasional series. Continue reading →

New leaders of Las Vegas fallen-cop charity vow more transparency and efficiency

Posted on by November 16, 2021
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Las Vegas fallen-cop charityThe new leadership of Las Vegas’s Injured Police Officers Fund say it will strive for more transparency and less overhead at a charity that long has shrouded its operations in ways that allowed rumors of inefficiency and unfairness to fester.

President Chelsea Stuenkel and Vice President Jesse Kommel-Bernstein told me in a recent joint interview that they’ve been educated by past NewToLasVegas.com stories about IPOF. Among other points, the stories noted that according to its public tax returns, IPOF over the past two decades on average has spent nearly twice as much on overhead as it has in official grants to fallen officers. In some years accounting expense alone exceeded grants, even though the IPOF apparently never has even produced an audited financial statement.

The pair said they would consider posting on its website the IPOF’s annual tax return, a public record that federal rules recommend but don’t mandate be so displayed, as well as the nonprofit’s by-laws, which would help explain the process for handing out grants in respect of fallen officers. Some social media posts from several years ago but still online have criticized the process as unfair, secretive and infected by favoritism. Before 2018, the annual IPOF tax return stated flatly–and by federal law falsely–the return was “not made available to the public.” Hey, I got them simply by asking! Continue reading →

Las Vegas Review-Journal circulation plummets 19% in one year

Posted on by November 16, 2021
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The Las Vegas Review-Journal is Nevada’s dominant daily newspaper. But its circulation is sinking even faster than the approval rating of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is regularly disparaged on the paper’s conservative editorial page.

According to its own published numbers, the RJ‘s average paid print-and-digital daily circulation fell in the one-year period to late August by 19%, from 82,369 during the year earlier period to 66,525. In 2015, when the family of now-deceased billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson bought the paper, its circulation, all print, was a reported 232,372.  So that works out to a 71% circulation drop–nearly three-quarters, and most of it before COVID-19, which surely hasn’t helped–in just six years, despite bargain-basement subscription offers.

If you’re thinking, so what, almost all newspapers are faltering, that sadly is a fair view. But nationally, newspaper circulation since 2015 has dropped less than 50%. And the Las Vegas market population has gone up 12% over that period, compared with only a 4% rise nationally. Everyone is dealing with the economic fallout from the pandemic. So the RJ is really under-performing. Now that takes a special skill. Continue reading →