Las Vegas ballot
See important updates at end of story
Exactly one month ago, on October 4, I wrote about the possibility that two enduring characteristics of Nevada elections–a ban on write-in votes and inclusion of the option to vote for “None of These Candidates”–could determine the next president of the United States in a close national race.
My scenario is on the verge of coming true. Continue reading
The Internet-driven ad meltdown in the daily newspaper industry continues with word that BOTH daily newspapers in Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, are ending everyday print publication after a century-and-a-half of such operations. For those of you elsewhere whose knowledge of the West’s geography comes mainly from Saul Steinberg’s famously warped 1976 cover in The New Yorker, “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” Salt Lake City is just 420 miles north on the interstate from the New to Las Vegas world headquarters. There’s not a lot in between the two metro areas.
Which begs this question today, the annual state holiday celebration of Nevada Day: Can Las Vegas be far behind? Continue reading
Exhibit A: Nevada Republican Party mailing
The New To Las Vegas world headquarters today received a political flyer in the mail from the Nevada Republican Party. It plugged the re-election of President Donald J. Trump on the clearly false grounds that he’s done a terrific job fighting the coronavirus.
Except that the two-sided flyer sported a far larger photo image of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Federal Government’s leading expert on infectious diseases. Along with this quote attributed to him, “I can’t imagine … anybody could be doing more.” An image of the flyer is nearby.
Fauci has gone on national TV to complain about the use of a video clip of him saying this in national Trump advertising, noting he wasn’t talking about Trump himself but rather the White House coronavirus task force. He also noted he said this way back in March, when coronavirus was a fraction of the disaster it has become. The Trump political organization essentially told him to pound sand.
I have an idea for the good doctor, especially if Trump loses his re-election bid. Fauci should consider suing the Nevada Republican Party right here in Las Vegas for its false advertising. There’s no shortage of competent plaintiff lawyers in Las Vegas. I’m also not sure how many good lawyers work for the local GOP, given how many cases its operatives have lost over the years (the latest was just today). Fauci might have a very interesting lawsuit.
Allow me to explain. Continue reading
In this space I’ve been writing about what I call “faux charities.” These are outfits that cold-call me on the telephone at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters asking for donations for what seem like charitable causes for health care or first responders. In reality, they aren’t charities at all. They are political action committees, or PACs, purportedly raising money to give to favored candidates for public office. Except that these faux charities spend almost all the money raised for fundraising and very little in political contributions, ostensibly the raison d’être for the organization in the first place.
PACs are very thinly regulated by the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service (a PAC can be registered with either agency), and basically not at all by most state charity regulators. This may be the reason why operators of some sketchy charities have moved into the “faux charity” PAC business. There simply is a lot less scrutiny and legal risk.
All this is background for a call I received recently from “Anna.” I put her name in quote because Anna wasn’t a real person, but a computer-generated voice likely monitored by a real human. “Anna” said she was soliciting a contribution for something called the U.S. Breast Cancer and Women’s Health Initiative. I asked where her organization was located. She said Washington, D.C. Continue reading
Ballot in a Las Vegas precinct
John Bolton is the mustached conservative stalwart who served as President Donald J. Trump’s national security advisor for 17 tumultuous months and then wrote a best-selling book attacking his boss, The Room Where It Happened. In a recent interview, Bolton says he won’t vote for Trump, and of course not for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Instead, he declared he would write in the name of a “Republican conservative yet to be determined.”
It’s a good thing for Bolton he lives in Maryland and not here in Nevada. That’s because the Silver State, alone among the 50, prohibits write-in votes. Instead, for statewide races voters are given the option of choosing “None of These Candidates.”
In the past the NOTC option has influenced the outcome of races in Nevada. This year it could even do so nationally in the presidential contest. Continue reading
Maybe Home Depot is showing a little sense.
Two weeks ago in this space, I showed a photo of a big, crudely hand-lettered sign outside the Home Depot store on Marks St. in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. Mask-wearing in the store is “mandated by the governor,” it declared.
I opined that blaming Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, seemed to me more a way to stir up even more mask-wearing opposition following the unfortunate lead of Republican President Donald J. Trump. And also a reason why the coronavirus pandemic might last awhile. In addition, the language of the sign struck me as consistent with the pro-Trump sympathies of Bernard Marcus, a Home Depot co-founder and one of Trump’s biggest contributors in 2016.
Accordingly, I declared a personal boycott of Home Depot.
Now, I’m still New To Seattle. But this blog does get read and sometimes shared. And whadayaknow! Today, I passed by the Home Depot store as I headed to the Costco across the street. The offending (to me, anyway) sign was gone and replaced by the one shown nearby.
“All customers must wear facial coverings while shopping in our stores,” it says. No blame. No finger-pointing. A simple matter-of-fact statement.
So my Home Depot boycott is now over. Time for new light bulbs.
This morning, Forbes Magazine published its 39th edition of the Forbes 400, the heaviest hitters (by net worth) in the country. The rich have never been so rich, with a collective net worth valued in late July of $3.2 trillion, up $240 billion in a year.
But the Las Vegas contingent isn’t doing so well. Once numbering as high as nine entries, the Las Vegas roster is down to four. One fell off this year, while most of the others saw their fortunes decline.
The latest to drop: Elaine Wynn, 78. Last year, she was ranked tied for No. 388 with a net worth of $2.1 billion. Then came coronavirus, which knocked 68% off the value of shares of Wynn Resorts, which she co-founded with (twice) ex-husband Steve Wynn and remains the largest shareholder of. Forbes values her down $400 million at $1.7 billion. That’s not chump change, but it’s $400 million below the $2.1 billion cutoff for this year’s list. Continue reading
See update at end of storyAt the New To Las Vegas world headquarters I’m getting as many as 10 telephone calls a week from someone who says he’s with Energy Advocates, marketing home solar energy systems. Most of the time he says his name is “Jason;” occasionally, it’s “Greg.” But it’s the same voice every time, which may not be surprising because the voice is generated by a computer using technology and probably a real person to monitor how I respond.
Now, I would tell you that any outfit using a computer to call me 10 times a week is not on the up and up. Another reason for my thinking this: The local telephone number that shows on the caller ID generally is nonexistent, as I find when I call that number after the call to me is over. Judging from complaint postings on the Internet, Energy Advocates is plying its scheme nationally. Continue reading
Francis Scott Key
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
This 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Last week, amid the outcry over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Andrew called me again at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters asking for a donation to his cause helping the families of officers “killed in the line of duty.” The conservation lasted less than a minute, but not because this is a hard time for police fundraising. When I politely asked how much has been spent in Nevada, Andrew abruptly hung up. This might be because the true answer is probably zero.
This was not the first time this year I’ve heard from Andrew. He called months before the Floyd killing making the same plea, using roughly the same language. Nor was this the first time this year he hung up on me after I asked something simple (the last time, to be connected with his supervisor).
Clearly, Andrew has deficient interpersonal skills. I can say this without fear of committing defamation because Andrew is not a person, but rather a computer monitored by a real human trying to use artificial intelligence to fund-raise. Artificial intelligence is definitely not the same as emotional intelligence.
Andrew raises money in the name of Police Officers Support Association. This is a trade name used by Law Enforcement for a Safer America PAC. Yes, PAC, as in political action committee, outfits that usually support candidates. Based on recent filings, the money raised doesn’t actually go to next of kin, as Andrew implied in our brief chat. In fact, almost all of it goes for fundraising, and very little of it to anything that might be construed as the stated mission, like supporting sympathetic candidates or aiding grieving police families. Continue reading
