In Las Vegas, unique Nevada ballot law saves another Democratic U.S. Senate incumbent

Posted on by November 11, 2024
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None of These Candidates

Nevada ballot, 2024

It didn’t do Kamala Harris a lick of good. But for the second straight biennial election, Nevada’s unique, half-century-old law giving voters the explicit option to defiantly choose “None of These Candidates” has saved the bacon of a Democratic U.S. Senate incumbent.

Five days after the November 5 election, they’re still counting votes in the thinly populated Silver State. Still, nearly complete returns compiled by the Nevada Secretary of state’s Office show that despite Donald J. Trump’s solid presidential victory in Nevada (and the country), Democrat Jacky Rosen is winning her second six-year term in the Senate by 21,202 votes (out of 1,419,550 counted) over Republican challenger Sam Brown. But “None of These Candidates” is polling 41,638–nearly double Rosen’s margin.

It is widely believed by political experts that Nevada’s NOTC line overwhelming draws Republican voters rather than Democratic voters in partisan races. The GOP certainly believes that, which is why the party some years back challenged NOTC in court (unsuccessfully). Indeed, attracting unhappy Republicans was the somewhat-hidden intention of Democratic lawmakers who in 1975 enacted the measure into law. Helping give NOTC additional force: another Nevada law prohibiting write-in candidates. Continue reading →

It Didn’t Stay Here: Employee for Montana gunmaker spent some stolen funds in Las Vegas

Posted on by October 28, 2024
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Teri Anne Bell, a 58-year-old bookkeeper who worked for a gunmaker in northwest Montana, is about to start serving some hard time in federal prison after pleading guilty to stealing $159,000 from her former employer. If you are a regular visitor to this space, you probably know already where this post is heading.

Yes, she took some of the stolen loot and spent it in Las Vegas, that great, big bug light for folks with a few extra dollars to blow in ill-gotten gains.

That makes her a candidate for my long-running list, It Didn’t Stay Here. The criterion is simple: people who got in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas (in this case the local spending of ill-gotten loot). It’s a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal of that famous former Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here.”

You can see the list nearby. Bell is not the first on the roster who stole money and hot-footed it to Sin City. Since becoming New To Las Vegas, I have been amazed at how often this town is the lure for people with such proclivities.
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In Las Vegas, tomorrow is Nevada Day, when Lincoln invented a state to help win re-election

Posted on by October 24, 2024
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Abraham Lincoln in 1863

As the tighter-than-a-hangman’s-noose presidential race approaches its denouncement, Donald J. Trump and some of his fellow Republicans, despite the absence of evidence, are still complaining nationally about voter fraud in the 2020 race and predicting the same on November 5. This is especially true here in Nevada, where Republicans have especially groused about supposed future and past voting by non-citizens and non-residents. The GOP apparently thinks that most of these folks are in the tank for Democrat Kamala Harris, even though Trump’s name graces the top of the state’s tallest non-casino building just off the Las Vegas Strip.

As it happens, tomorrow is Nevada Day, the start of a three-day holiday weekend in Nevada. Government offices and schools are closed. Celebrated on the last Friday of October, it commemorates Nevada’s admission to the union in 1864 as the 36th state.

Why do I bring this up? Because Nevada actually became a state to help rig the 1864 re-election of Trump’s fellow Republican, Abraham Lincoln. Putting aside the party it favored, that sort of makes today’s claims of voter fraud pale by comparison. But there are some interesting parallels. Continue reading →

Near Las Vegas, Rutgers is playing USC, but not as oldest college football team

Posted on by October 28, 2024
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oldest college football teamSee update at end of story

On Friday, October 25, the University of Southern California football team will host Rutgers under the lights at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The game will be the first gridiron match ever between the two, as well as the first ever for Rutgers in the City of Angels.

Both the Trojans and the Scarlet Knights are now members of the Big Ten (which for $ome broadca$t rea$on now ha$ 18 team$). Since becoming New To Las Vegas, I have learned that USC has a big following hereabouts. As for Rutgers, from which I have two degrees, I sometimes have to tell local folks what and where it is. For the record: New Jersey’s state university, the country’s eight oldest college, never a member of the Ivy League, located in the distant New York City suburb of New Brunswick, N.J.

Rutgers was founded in 1766 as a tiny church-related institution named Queens College with a charter signed by Ben Franklin’s illegitimate son. The institution is nearly twice as old as USC, co-founded in 1890 by a family harboring racist thoughts. (But to be fair, I should note that Henry Rutgers, for whom the school was renamed in 1824 after making  a big gift, was a slave owner.) Both schools have grown into major academic institutions.

However, I digress. Whenever Rutgers plays a new team in football, the scribes covering the opposition like to play up the role of Rutgers in what has been called the first college football game, against Princeton in New Brunswick on November 6, 1869. This is especially likely this week since the game otherwise is shaping up rankings-wise as a real yawner. Rutgers is 1-3 in the Big Ten (but 4-3 overall), while USC is 1-4 in the conference (and 3-4 overall). Both team are coming off losses this past weekend, but–since I am in Las Vegas–the early betting line has home-team USC as a 13.5 point favorite.

Still, using today’s political vocabulary, this ancient football history is simply fake news. I’m here to tell you that first contest way back when was not a football game as the term is now understood in the U.S. It was a soccer match.

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In Las Vegas, campaign flyer uses antisemitic imagery against U.S. Senate incumbent

Posted on by October 30, 2024
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campaign flyer uses antisemitic imagery

Republican Party, Nevada, 2024

The campaign flyer arrived in the mail yesterday at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters on behalf of Republican U.S. Senate challenger Sam Brown. It depicts a photoshopped image of Jacky Rosen, the Democratic incumbent running for a second term representing Nevada, with legs spread sitting in front of the U.S. Capitol surrounded by piles of hundred-dollar bills. “MULTIMILLIONAIRE AND CAREER POLITICIAN JACKY ROSEN GOT RICH IN WASHINGTON, While Voting to Make Your Life More Expensive,” the headline reads.

campaign flyer uses antisemitic imagery

Nazi Party, Germany, 1938

The copy doesn’t say it, but Rosen is Jewish.  And the set-up of the image bears more than a little resemblance to a drawing in The Poisonous Mushroom (Der Giftpilz), an infamous antisemitic children’s book published in Nazi Germany in 1938. The original cartoon depicts a Jewish speculator with legs spread sitting on a big, fat bag labeled (in German) “Gold” in front of the “Stock Exchange.”

Look at the two images nearby, and judge for yourself.

After World War II (and the Holocaust), the publisher of The Poisonous Mushroom, Julius Streicher, was convicted and hanged at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity because of his antisemitism. Prosecutors specifically cited The Poisonous Mushroom as evidence against him.

In my view, this political flyer as constructed, playing on ancient tropes linking Jews to ill-gotten money, is antisemitic as hell. But that’s not even the most shocking part. Besides the fact that it’s not very often that Republican campaign literature criticizes the accumulation of wealth, this wasn’t sent out by some crazy, third-party political operation.

It was paid for and mailed by the Nevada Republican Central Committee, the state’s main establishment GOP operation, based in Las Vegas. And according to its filings, a number of Jews made campaign contributions to the NRCC. Folks like Miriam Adelson, Steve Wynn, Jared Kushner and his dad. Do they know how their money is being spent? Continue reading →

Not far from Las Vegas, Texas hero-worshippers still have a spelling problem

Posted on by October 14, 2024
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Texas hero-worshippers

William Barret Travis

Once again a Texas media outlet has mangled the spelling of one of the state’s most celebrated historic figures, who partly shares my name. A story last week in The Highlander, a twice-weekly newspaper published in Marble Falls, Texas, invited the public to the dedication of a plaque commemorating the famous 1836 “Victory or Death ” letter written by William Barret Travis, commander of the Alamo.

Except that the story in several places incorrectly spelled Barret with two Ts.

The Highlander thus joined an impressive roster of prominent Texas media, politicians and organizations that over the decades have gotten the storied man’s name wrong in print–scores of times. The list includes–repeatedly and too numerous to cite individually–the state’s largest newspapers: The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and even the Alamo’s hometown San Antonio Express-News. Texas Monthly, the state’s most prominent magazine (which once declined to publish my letter of correction). Written statements from elected officials, including both of Texas’s sitting Republican U.S. senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. Even, amazingly, the web page right now of something called the Alamo Letter Society, apparently based in the Dallas suburb of University Park, and the list of inductees into another something called the Texas Trail of Fame in Fort Worth.

Okay, I admit this is a rant. My grievance dates back to when I lived in Texas decades before becoming New To Las Vegas. I used to get asked a lot if I am kin to Travis or named for him (no and no). It was annoying because, as I will explain presently, I don’t consider Travis all that much of a role model.

But I think this repeated blunder by the powers-that-be says a lot about the shallowness of hero-worshipping in the Great State of Texas, if not elsewhere.

Continue reading →