Not far from Las Vegas: Nothing

Posted on by January 10, 2023
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Nothing Arizona

What’s left of Nothing, Arizona

On a recent car trip back to Las Vegas, I actually saw Nothing.

Or something.

The faded billboard sign pictured with this post, along with an abandoned falling-apart convenience store nearby, is all that’s physically left of Nothing, Arizona.

Nothing is about 180 miles southeast of the New To Las Vegas world headquarters at an elevation of 3,269 feet. It sits near the center of Arizona rattlesnake country along an extremely remote desert portion of U.S. 93. That’s the ancient, often treacherous direct road between the Phoenix and Las Vegas areas. U.S. 93 actually went over the narrow top of the Hoover Dam until a nearby bypass bridge partly prompted by post-9/11 concerns of a truck bomb was finally opened in 2010.

The population of Nothing, founded less than 50 years ago, topped out at something like 9. From what I know and could see, it’s down (appropriately enough for its name) to zero and has been there for maybe a decade. In my experience this is a pretty short time frame for creation of a ghost town (or perhaps ghost settlement, as Nothing never even rose to anything near the level of a town), especially in the present-day West. But then again, unlike the 19th and early 20th century mineral rushes that at least lasted until the mines played out, there wasn’t anything resembling a boom that triggered Nothing.

Literally, Nothing is the Seinfeld of places. And like the TV “show about nothing” with its seemingly inconsequential plots, the vicinage imparts a clear message even if at first not obvious.  Continue reading →

The devil near Las Vegas

Posted on by December 26, 2022
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devil near Las VegasIt was nearly 30 years ago when The New York Times Magazine riled the waters of suburbia/exurbia with a cover story. “The Devil in Long Island” was writer Ron Rosenbaum’s review of the seemingly large amount of strange doings in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. That’s the home to a collection of bedroom communities, now with 2.9 million residents, stretching eastward for 100 miles from New York City along the continental U.S.’s largest island. Published on August 22, 1993, the much-commented-upon 9,000-word article distressed local leaders who, among other things, thought it would hurt economic development by unfairly stigmatizing the area.

Now that I have become New To Las Vegas, I think I have found the Southwest equivalent of the nearby diabolic inferno Rosenbaum described. It is the huge but exceedingly thinly populated Nye County. The jurisdiction is a stretch of mountains, desert, desolate mining ghost towns and a Death Valley National Park portion immediately to the west and northwest of Clark County, home of Las Vegas. Like Long Island, Nye County is often in the news for lousy reasons–amazingly so, given its tiny population of just 53,000.

In perhaps their most infamous moment, Nye County voters in 2018 overwhelmingly elected a dead pimp–brothel owner Dennis Hof, who croaked right before the election–to the Nevada Assembly.

’nuff said. Continue reading →

Las Vegas predictions for 2023

Posted on by September 24, 2023
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Las Vegas predictionsAlmost none of my Las Vegas predictions for 2022 from last December came true. But of course they weren’t supposed to. It was just me, still New To Las Vegas, committing satirical social commentary. Here I go again for 2023.

–Fresh off his second straight defeat for statewide office, Adam “Fourth Generation Nevadan” Laxalt moves back to the Washington, D.C., area where he grew up and lived much more of his life.

–Facing a lawsuit claiming deceptive marketing, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority changes the official slogan from “What Happens Here, Only Happens Here” to “What Happens Here, Could Happen To You.”

–The Nevada Department of Education throws a party after a new national study ranks the state’s public schools only the 48th worst in the country, an improvement.

–Cisco Aguilar, the newly elected Nevada Secretary of State, continues the policy of not enforcing a new state law requiring many telemarketers soliciting funds within Nevada for dubious causes to first register their cause with the state.

–Clark County officials call a press conference to declare that a new specialized court set up just to handle crime committed near Las Vegas Blvd. should not be interpreted to mean the Strip isn’t safe for tourists. Continue reading →

Despite vow, Las Vegas fallen-cop charity transparency hasn’t improved

Posted on by January 12, 2023
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Las Vegas fallen-cop charity

See update at end of story

In my annual look last year at Las Vegas’s Injured Police Officers Fund, its new leadership said the nonprofit agency to aid families of fallen cops in the Las Vegas area would work to add transparency to its operations. So far, I haven’t seen evidence of this.

IPOF, as I will explain below, is a meritorious law-enforcement-themed nonprofit in many ways. But it still does not post its latest annual IRS 990 tax filing, a public record that contains a wealth of information, on its website. This isn’t legally required so long as a charity provides a copy to a requester upon request, but has been highly recommended by the IRS and charity watchdogs for years as a good governance practice for nonprofits.

At my request, IPOF recently sent me its 990 for the year ending December 31, 2021 (there’s always a long lag between the end of the reporting period and when the document becomes available). The filing still didn’t list–or give any hint of–the magnitude of what may have become IPOF’s major function: overseeing the collection of designated donations for specific fallen officers, which are then remitted to the officer or his next-of-kin.

It’s possible these individual campaigns in some years total in the millions of dollars, or at least dwarf the relatively modest numbers shown on the 990. I would suggest that tax-exempt nonprofits acting as the public face for such donations have an obligation to disclose the collective extent of such fundraising to the public. None of this is revealed on IPOF’s 990. Continue reading →

Around Las Vegas–as predicted here–‘None of These Candidates’ ballot line in Nevada keeps U.S. Senate with Dems

Posted on by November 13, 2022
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None of These Candidates

Part of mail ballot in Las Vegas

See update at end of story

In this space on October 24, I made a bold prediction. Nevada’s unique and even cynical “None of These Candidates” ballot line could cost Republicans control of the U.S. Senate. No one else I saw at the time wrote about the spoiler scenario I envisioned from the New To Las Vegas world headquarters.

Now I’m getting ready to take a bow.

For four days in a painfully slow vote count, first-term incumbent Nevada Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto trailed upstart Republican Adam Laxalt. But on Saturday night, mainly on the strength of continual counting of mail-in ballots from heavily Democratic Clark County (home to Las Vegas and 74% of the state’s population), Laxalt finally fell behind. If that holds–and almost all the uncounted votes are from Clark County–Cortez Masto will become the 50th Democrat in the 100-member U.S. Senate. With Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote, that would give the Dems control for another two years regardless of who wins the run-off election next month in Georgia. CNN and the Associated Press just called the race for Cortez Masto.

Laxalt is now trailing Cortez Masto by 4,982 votes. But None of These Candidates is pulling more than twice as many votes, 11,877 votes. It’s widely believed among political pros in Nevada that NOTC disproportionately draws far more votes away from disaffected Republicans than it does from disaffected Democrats. Continue reading →

Around Las Vegas, could ‘None of These Candidates’ ballot line determine U.S. Senate control?

Posted on by November 12, 2022
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None of These Candidates

Portion of mail-in ballot in Las Vegas

Nevada elections are quirky, and that was true long before voters in the county immediately to the west of Las Vegas elected a dead pimp to the state Assembly. But two unusual provisions in Nevada election law–banning write-in candidates while affording voters the option in statewide primary and general races to formally choose “None of These Candidates”–might actually determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. Senate come next January.

That’s because (1) the Senate is now split 50-50, and (2) first-term Nevada incumbent Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto is in a surprisingly tight race with Republican Adam Laxalt. Pollsters now rate the contest a toss-up.

This is where None of These Candidates (NOTC) might come into play as the spoiler. It is an article of faith among political experts in Nevada that NOTC attracts far more upset Republican-leaning voters in general elections than it does upset Democratic-leaning voters. There even have been several contests in Nevada where NOTC has gotten more voters than all candidates. (How do you put that on the “winning” candidate’s resume?) NOTC votes are disregarded when determining the winner, but the law requires that the results for NOTC be included in every official voting tally. A public shaming, I suppose.

Think I am engaging in rank hypotheticals? In 1998, long before I became New To Las Vegas, Harry Reid, the incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator (and later majority leader) seeking a third term, won by a scant 401 votes over Republican John Ensign. NOTC received 8,011 votes, 20 times Reid’s margin of victory. Continue reading →