Hey, Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine, proof-read your ad!

Posted on by July 17, 2020
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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.

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Far from Las Vegas: How a 1980s management book explains Trump

Posted on by June 25, 2020
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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 →

Sketchy police cause that doesn’t engage is back trolling in Las Vegas

Posted on by June 9, 2020
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Sketchy police cause 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 →

In Las Vegas, reopenings include pitch by faux autism charity

Posted on by April 23, 2021
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faux autism charityThe United States is slowly coming out of the coronavirus shutdown. Businesses are reopening–like casinos today here in Las Vegas–and folks are going back to work. But that swelling workforce apparently includes those who labor in that section of the cold-calling telemarketing industry pushing would-be charitable-minded donors to make contributions–very little of which will go to the stated mission.

After several months of silence–hey, one might catch COVID-19 in boiler-room call centers–the phones at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters have started ringing regularly again with such pitches.

Following a trend first noted here two years ago, the calls have been on behalf of political action committees, or PACs. These, of course, aren’t charities at all, but conduits for political contributions and sometimes lobbying. They masquerade as charities. No more than pennies on the dollar are spent on the seemingly laudable mission. For the often-shadowy figures behind these enterprises, a big benefit is extremely light scrutiny by one of the most toothless regulatory agencies we have, the Federal Election Commission, as well as virtually no scrutiny at all by state charity regulators and private charitable watchdogs. Continue reading →

Post-pandemic, what will be left of the Las Vegas Strip?

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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Las Vegas StripUndoubtedly, the phrase of the year in 2020 across our planet is “social distancing.” This is also Las Vegas’s absolute worst nightmare. There probably is no other city in the U.S. whose economy is more completely tied to a lack of social distancing. “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the cheeky former official slogan of Las Vegas image-makers, was premised on an extreme lack of social distancing, with folks normally thisclose all the time.

With the nation’s highest statewide unemployment rate at 28.2%, Nevada in general, and Las Vegas in particular, face a loooooong road back to any semblance of recovery. (The unemployment rate in the Las Vegas area in February was just 3.9%) How long? For starters, somewhat longer than it takes for folks to feel comfortable getting on airplanes and traveling long distances for the privilege of losing a lot of money gambling in casinos.

I’m thinking maybe sometime in 2022–and that’s if an effective coronavirus vaccine can be developed, mass produced and administered in record time. Otherwise, who knows? Continue reading →

Far from Las Vegas, did Gannett claim Pulitzer Prize credit for papers it didn’t own?

Posted on by May 6, 2020
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GannettOn Monday, Columbia University announced the awarding of the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes for 2020. These haven’t been good times for print media, so the winners understandably were quick to proclaim their triumphs.

In barely an hour, USA Today, flagship of the Gannett chain, now the largest in the country by total circulation, put online a story about how a Gannett paper, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, won the breaking news Pulitzer for its coverage of questionable last-minute pardons issued by Kentucky’s governor.

All well and good. But the story contained this sentence: “Gannett … has won at least 56 Pulitzer Prizes.”

“At least?” In my half-century as a journalist starting long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I never have encountered a news organization that didn’t know exactly how many Pulitzers it has won. Something is up here. Continue reading →