Las Vegas gains in Forbes 400 members

Forbes 400The 43d edition of the annual Forbes 400 list was released today, and for the Las Vegas area it was good news if one likes proximity to conspicuous consumption. The number of local swells rose from four to six. No one fell off (like casino magnate Phil Ruffin did last year). This is fewer than the nine who graced the famous list of America’s richest eight years ago in 2016, the year I became New To Las Vegas. But Sin City this year at least has more than its cross-state rival of Reno, the self-styled “Biggest Little City in the World” with four entries each year.

Here’s the Las Vegas-area contingent:

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New book about Las Vegas delivers less than promoted

Vegas ConciergeNow this seemed interesting. Brian Joseph, who was fired as an investigative reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was writing a book entitled, Vegas Concierge: Sex Trafficking, Hip Hop and Corruption in America. Breathless pre-publicatio promised a broad look at how American society disregards sex trafficking victims, how Las Vegas is probably its center and in Vegas, “how self-interest corrupts news organizations and the corridors of power.”

Oooh. With hype like that, I expected something cataclysmic on the order of The Green Felt Jungle. That’s the 1963 exposé by Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris that laid out details of organized crime control of Vegas for the whole world to see. The international best-seller greatly embarrassed important state and local pooh-bahs, helping to spur government reforms that eventually drove out the mob and spur dramatic economic growth. I wrote about the book’s continuing impact last year, the 60th anniversary of its publication.

I have finished reading a reviewer’s copy provided by publisher Rowman & Littlefield of the 292-page Vegas Concierge, whose official publication date is tomorrow. To put it bluntly, I don’t think the book quite delivers on its promised premise to blow the lid off Sin City and America in this regard. But Vegas Concierge certainly has its moments. Continue reading

Las Vegas newspaper backing Trump posts lowest print circulation in 60 years

newspaper backing Trump

Las Vegas Review-Journal, September 22, 2024

With Election Day just six weeks off, the presidential race is a dead heat. That’s especially true here in Nevada, that giant morass of mountains, desert and casinos considered one of the Seven Swing States. The latest poll, from Emerson College/The Hill, shows Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald J. Trump tied at 47% each for the Silver State’s six electoral votes. The candidates clearly need all the local influencers they can get to proclaim their virtues as loudly as possible.

Which is why a legal notice buried at the bottom of page 5-G in yesterday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state’s most formidable newspaper and a long-time bullhorn for Trump, spells big local trouble for The Donald. The notice was the paper’s legally required once-a-year sworn statement of circulation.

The data showed that the RJ‘s paid print circulation has fallen to its lowest level in six decades! Even including digital subscriptions, the total paid circulation is the lowest in five decades!

Put another way, less than 7% of the households in the RJ’s main market area of Clark County–home to an overwhelming 78% of Nevada’s population–will be directly exposed to the RJ‘s loud clamor of editorials, cartoons and columns beating the drum for the one-time President. Six decades ago, such a din would have reached 60% of the households. Continue reading

From Las Vegas, how an only-in-Nevada ballot rule could stump Trump

only-in-Nevada ballot rule

2020 presidential ballot in Nevada

With its six electoral votes, Nevada is one of the seven battleground states that likely will determine the next president of the United States. By all accounts the race is pretty close in the Silver State. The latest poll shows Democrat Kamala Harris with a 1% edge over Republican Donald J. Trump, 47% to 46%, well within the proverbial statistical margin of error.

So anything could happen. But as someone New to Las Vegas who has studied Nevada election trends, I’m here to tell you that Harris has a secret weapon in her favor unique among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, especially if the race stays close. A nearly half-century-old law requires that the ballot for every statewide race give voters the option to choose “None of These Candidates.”

Along with another law that prohibits write-in candidates, it is an article of faith among devotees of Nevada politics that the NOTC option draws far more disenchanted Republican voters than it does disenchanted Democratic voters. The GOP simply hates it, which is why in the past the party has gone to court–unsuccessfully–to get the line eliminated. But Republicans are not challenging it in court this time around. Continue reading

As ‘Casino’ defined Las Vegas, so ‘The Third Man’–75 years old today–depicted Vienna

The Third ManMostly shot on location, the movie is full of shady characters depicting a fading era in a famously corrupt city trying to cope with change amid moral decay. Mysterious forces abound. Folks get murdered. There is a love interest. Law enforcement is everywhere. The chief villain is almost sympathetic. The soundtrack is striking. So is the acting. Memorable scenes and dialogue abound. After all the carnage, you don’t know watching the ending whether to cry or cheer, but you know you’ve seen something profound.

Since I am New To Las Vegas, you might think I’m writing about “Casino.” That’s the 1995 Martin Scorsese-directed movie starting Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone about the rise–and fall–of corrupt mob control over the casinos that help build up Las Vegas.

But I’m not. Instead, I’m describing “The Third Man.” The film noir, starring Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard and Alida Valli, is about corruption in post-World War II Vienna, Austria. The flick had its world premiere in London exactly 75 years ago today, in 1949.

Today, “The Third Man” is not all that well known beyond film aficionados. But it is on just about every list of the 100 greatest movies ever made, and maybe the best ever to come out of a United Kingdom studio. Unlike “Casino,” the movie even won an Oscar, for the stark, haunting, black-and-white cinematography of Robert Krasker. Much of the footage, it seems, was made by cameramen lying at night on the ground of bombed-out Vienna shooting up at odd angles.

Why am I writing about ‘”The Third Man?” I was in Vienna last month on holiday, and had occasion to pass by some of the actual shooting locations. One was the Wiener Riesenrad, the 127-year-old Ferris wheel towering 212 feet (but still less than half the height of Las Vegas’s High Roller) that is the setting for a key scene in the movie. Another was Wiener Zentralfriedhof, Vienna’s main cemetery (surprisingly, only 40 years older than Las Vegas’s first cemetery) where in the movie there are two funerals for the same person. A third was the Hotel Sacher, once the ho-hum headquarters for the British military occupation where key scenes were shot but now a ritzy five-star hotel, across the street from the Vienna State Opera.

I took the cheeky Wien Kanal system’s land and underground tour of several sites where striking scenes in the movie were shot of hunters and prey, even learning something about European sanitation procedures. During the tour, scenes from the movie were actually broadcast on the walls of what has to be the planet’s smelliest theater. I even visited The Third Man Museum, said to be the only one in the world devoted to a single movie. Continue reading

In Las Vegas, careful parsing from the Nevada Republican Party

Nevada Republican PartyAt the New to Las Vegas world headquarters I received in the mail today a flyer from the Nevada Republican Party (headed, it should be noted, by a fake elector) listing “Trump’s Real Common Sense Agenda.” The last point, which you can see nearby: “Keep violent criminals off the streets” (circle added by me).

In my view, the clear implication seems to be that it’s okay for non-violent criminals–like say, anyone declared guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records–to stay on the streets. Personally, I find it hard to pick and choose among felons.

I’m wondering if that printed agenda point was carefully hedged–not “criminals” or “all criminals” but just “violent criminals.” Otherwise, it might appear that Silver State Republicans were calling for the jailing of their ultimate leader.

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Far from Las Vegas: the strange Austrian tale of Joseph Haydn’s head

Joseph Haydn's head

Joseph Haydn

Near the front of Wiener Zentralfriedhof, the grand cemetery of Vienna, Austria, sit the final resting spots for a murderer’s row of history’s most celebrated classical composers. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), to name but a few. There’s even a monument to Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791), although he’s actually buried in an unmarked grave in another Vienna cemetery.

But missing is perhaps the greatest composer of all: Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). Besides writing a lot of great music, he’s considered the father of symphonies and string quartets. Haydn is now entombed 40 miles away in Eisenstadt, capital of the rural Austrian state of Burgenland, where he composed and debuted so many of his famous works.

However, herein lies a tale full of deception, chicanery and just plain un-believability. Four days after Haydn’s death in 1809, associates severed his skull, supposedly for scientific research. Initially buried in Vienna, the rest of Haydn’s body made it back to Eisenstadt in 1820 while the head remained in Vienna, first hidden but later bequeathed by will, passed around and sometimes put on public display!

It wasn’t until 1954–a full 145 years after Haydn’s death at age 77–that his real skull and body came together again where they are now. That’s in a marble mausoleum attached to the Bergkirche (Hill Church), an ornate 18th Century Catholic church built by Haydn’s musical patrons, the noble Esterházy family, and informally known as Haydn’s Church. It’s largely pay-per-view. The church today charged me, a tourist far from the New To Las Vegas world headquarters, three euros ($3.30 at current exchange rate) to open the thick mausoleum door on the side of the main sanctuary. Revealed was the sarcophagus, protected by bars, containing all of the great man–and, as it turns out, a little extra. Stay with me on this.
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Like Las Vegas and the mob, Vienna still profits from the Cold War

Las Vegas and Vienna

Vienna skyline

With a monument devoted to a mobster, eateries named for their luminaries and even a museum to their m.o., Las Vegas brings in good coin from the legacy of its organized crime past. It’s a topic of continuing interest. I regularly get asked about this heritage, both by visitors to Sin City and by folks I encounter elsewhere once they realize I am New to Las Vegas.

So I’ve had a sense of déjà vu recently spending a little time around Vienna, the capital of Austria. This is a town still  profiting from its geography literally just a few miles from the old Iron Curtain separating the democratic West from the vassal states of the former Soviet Union. Continue reading

Is ex-Las Vegas sheriff–now Governor–Joe Lombardo “Donor A” in alleged fallen-cop fundraising scam?

alleged fallen-cop fundraising scam

Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo

SEE UPDATE AT END OF STORY

A federal criminal indictment released today in Las Vegas concerns a pet peeve of mine–dodgy fundraising for law enforcement causes. Ex-Las Vegas councilwoman Michele Fiore, 53, stands accused of siphoning off more than $70,000 ostensibly raised to build a fallen-officer memorial, for, among purposes, personal rent and her daughter’s wedding.

From the New To Las Vegas world headquarters I’ve been writing for years documenting such fundraising abuses. Substantially all the money raised from ignorant donors goes nowhere near the stated cause.

But this case, which dates back to activities a half-decade ago, has an interesting twist. If I am reading correctly the indictment and public online campaign contribution records, one of the marks, who coughed up $5,000, was the then-sitting Clark County Sheriff, Joe Lombardo.

He’s now the governor, having gotten elected in 2022 on a platform including law and order.

No criminal activity is alleged on his part, but maybe a little embarrassing if true?  I emailed the governor’s press office hours ago asking for comment, and will update this post if I hear back. Meanwhile, let me lay out how I see this now.
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How extreme heat made Las Vegas, again

LAS VEGAS SHATTERS ALL-TIME HEAT RECORD!

See update at end of post

This material is drawn from a post during a similar Las Vegas hot spell in the summer of 2023.

On this 248th birthday of American independence the apprehension is palpable. Will Las Vegas soon break its all-time any-day-of-the year high temperature of 117 degrees Fahrenheit? That’s the prediction by early next week from the National Weather Service. This mark has been touched five times in recorded history, twice since I became New To Las Vegas in 2016. Yesterday’s official high at Harry Reid International Airport was 113.

Accompanying this 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.

Indeed, 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

Corporately, Las Vegas and Nevada again seek a race to the bottom

race to the bottom

Ad by a firm soliciting incorporation business

In many ways the economic well-being of Las Vegas and Nevada is based on a race to the bottom of human decency. Nearly a century ago, it was the enactment of laws allowing open gambling, quick divorces and even quicker marriages that jump-started what had been a dying 19th century financial model based on little more than mining and ranching. Suddenly, folks had a reason to come here and cough up some of their money with little in the way of inhibition.

The addition 50 years ago of legal houses of prostitution in a number of Nevada counties (not containing Las Vegas or Reno) added to that perception. The lack of a state income or corporation tax insured that the public education system would remain underfunded and dreadful, a scenario welcomed generations ago by political leaders (although efforts are being made to fix that now). This tax structure is much to the benefit of well-heeled retirees or even moderate retirees with grown kids fleeing states with good school systems–paid by state income taxes, be they high or low.

Here at the New to Las Vegas world headquarters I’m watching the latest phase of Nevada’s ability to profit from the foibles of others. Over the past several decades the Silver State has been changing its corporation laws to make it easier for officers and board directors of public corporations to avoid accountability by shareholders (perhaps you with a retirement account) for many of their actions. Continue reading

SCOTUS to Las Vegas: Drop Dead

drop dead Las Vegas

U.S. Supreme Court photographed in a secured building

No further comment is required from me beyond my headline above on today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the manufacture of bump stocks that led directly to the massacre of 60 folks on October 1, 2017. That tragedy was along the Las Vegas Strip, seven miles from the New To Las Vegas world headquarters.

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In Las Vegas, a faux firefighter charity mails an illegal solicitation–to a dog

faux firefighter charity

Illegal request for payment addressed to a Las Vegas dog

I’ve written it before, and I’m writing it again. National Committee for Volunteers Firefighters PAC is one dumb organization. Why? The outfit, which says it is based in Boston, keeps calling me at the New to Las Vegas world headquarters asking for money even though I’ve blistered it several times in this space (click here and here).

NCVF-PAC presents like a charity–it’s not–and has spent virtually none of the money raised nationally during its entire existence on its stated mission of, well, helping volunteer firefighters politically. (PAC stands for political action committee.) In the world of fundraising, making follow-up calls to a possible donor under these circumstances can’t get any more moronic. That’s why NCVF-PAC, which I call a faux charity, long has been a candidate for my running list of America’s Stupidest Charities, which you can see nearby on this page.

On top of this, the recent outreach to me violated a 2021 Nevada law prohibiting all fundraising for, among other topics, firefighting personnel within the state without first registering with the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office and making filings, on pain of incurring civil penalties. I checked, and there’s no registration in Nevada for NCVF-PAC. Never has been. Yet the presenting NCVF-PAC caller–not an actual human but rather a computer-generated voice using the bland name “Tom Evans” secretly monitored by a real person with soundboard technology–falsely told me when I asked point-blank that the organization was indeed registered to solicit in the Silver State. That strikes me as a possible separate violation of Nevada’s deceptive trade practices law.

NCVC-PAC and other faux charities make tens of thousands of illegal calls a year to my fellow Nevadans, some of whom, alas, fork over some hard-earned funds. Yet it’s my perception that the Nevada state government, which runs without a state income tax, is not exactly overstaffed with investigators or lawyers tasked with regulating these kinds of matters to protect the public.

So I decided to play along, with an appropriate twist, to see what kind of documentary evidence I could generate to prove beyond my own words that NCVF-PAC was illegally operating in Nevada. A few minutes later, I told a different computer-controlled NCVF-PAC voice, “Emma Thompson” (I’m guessing at the spelling) that a pledge card could be mailed. A name and an address were provided. Days later, the pledge card asking for payment arrived in the mail.

Addressed to my dog.

Yes! You can see part of the invoice letter nearby, with some identifying detail redacted. Carrizozo, my nearly 10-year-old basset hound, is being billed for $30 by NCVF-PAC’s cynically named “Fundraising Committee.”
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Las Vegas sends out multiple mail ballots to some folks–including me

multiple mail-in ballots

Mail ballot No. 2

Here at the New to Las Vegas world headquarters, I’m not one of those folks who thinks voter fraud is a significant problem, either here or around the country. I see efforts talking up the issue more as a campaign ploy by Republican- and conservative-leaning interests to suppress voting by Democratic- and liberal-leaning interests. It’s a sad commentary of what we’ve become.

Still, it’s not a good thing that for the upcoming June 11 primary elections in Nevada I was mailed two identical ballots a few days apart by the Clark County Election Department, each with a postage prepaid envelope for return. A little more worse, I now suspect election officials, who work for the Democrats who control the county government, covered up their incompetence. I think this is lest they give fuel to rival Republicans who have focused on absentee voting, nationally but especially in Nevada.
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Far from Las Vegas: Satirical deletions before new SCOTUS ethics code (updated)

SCOTUS ethics code

The honorable members of the Supreme Court of the United States

Originally published last year, this post has been updated, revised and expanded in light of recent revelations

The New to Las Vegas world headquarters has obtained earlier drafts of the new U.S. Supreme Court ethics code announced in November 2023. To avoid bias, the court in conference had asked that the first version be written by AI “in the style of John Marshall Harlan.” He was the conscience of the Supreme Court more than a century ago with his dissents favoring civil liberties and equal rights.

But since unanimity was required in the court for the new code, the objection of any one justice required a provision to be struck. As the draft went through the review process, a large amount of extremely specific material was cut, leaving behind blander generalities.

Here is a leaked list of deleted passages and the justice or justices who vetoed them. Only Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest justice, objected to nothing. It should be noted that the Supreme Court itself declared unanimously in Hustler v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), that political satire is protected speech under the First Amendment.

CANON 3(A): “A justice shall not display for public view, or allow to be displayed for public view, a flag or other other emblem on property reasonably under the control of the justice if that flag or emblem could be construed by others as an opinion on a matter before the Court or likely to come before it.” SAMUEL A. ALITO Jr. Continue reading