Coronavirus crisis suggests Las Vegas economy remains a one-trick pony

Posted on by April 25, 2020
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Las Vegas economyEver since becoming New To Las Vegas in 2016, I’ve heard plenty of local claims the Las Vegas area is successfully diversifying its economy away from reliance on the sin stuff that long made the Strip famous (or infamous): gambling, entertainment and lodging. Building a knowledge-based, tech-driven economy for the 21st Century, local leaders proclaimed. It’s no longer like 2008, they said, when the Great Recession abruptly dried up tourism and all the sectors associated with it. The Las Vegas Valley was one of the country’s hardest-hit area, and recovery took a long time.

But to my mind, the coronavirus pandemic already is giving the lie to those economic diversification claims hereabouts.

The Las Vegas Valley is reeling and had been even before Gov. Steve Sisolak last night ordered a minimum 30-day statewide closure of all casinos, restaurants, bars and other non-essential businesses. World-famous Las Vegas Strip resorts–Encore, Wynn, Cosmopolitan, Venetian, Palazzo, all eight MGM properties–were already shutting down their operations. Famous entertainment acts–Cirque du Soleil, David Copperfield, Penn & Teller–went dark. Cascading layoffs are accelerating, although many of the casinos say they will keep workers on the payroll for varying lengths of time or at least cover health care premiums.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal announced it was suspending a number of sections, including its weekly entertainment guide. “With Vegas headliners going dark, resorts suspending operations, movie theaters closing, concerts canceling and social events being discouraged, there is not much left in this city to advertise or list,”  the paper wrote.

For days the Strip has looked like more of a ghost town than video I’ve seen of other famous tourist venues around the country like Times Square in New York, a city that has a lot of other industries. Leaders like Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman are blaming the distress on media publicity about coronavirus rather than the resulting illness itself. Her comments by themselves–she pushed strongly for casinos to stay open–might be evidence of non-diversification.

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Far from Las Vegas, coronavirus and Thomas Paine legacy in New Rochelle

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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coronavirus and Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine Cottage Museum, New Rochelle, N.Y.

New Rochelle, N.Y., a leafy New York City suburb where I have relatives, is in the news as a U.S. hotspot for cornoavirus. The New York State National Guard today started enforcing a one-mile-in-radius “containment zone” around a synagogue on North Avenue where a member came down with the illness that then infected any number of contacts. Residents can come and go as they like, although large gatherings are prohibited.

As it happens, within that zone a few blocks down North Avenue sits one of the strangest and most bogus shrines to political action in America that I know of–strange and bogus mainly because nothing political ever happened there. Before becoming New To Las Vegas, I wrote about this for another blog in 2013, from which this account is drawn. Cornoavirus gives me a fresh hook to resurrect the curious tale.

I am referring to what is now called the Thomas Paine Cottage Museum. The structure is perhaps the last tangible vestige of Paine (1737-1809), the English philosopher and revolutionary who came to America in late 1774 and within 14 months published “Common Sense.” That was the best-selling manifesto for freedom so persuasive and fiery the Second Continental Congress borrowed large chunks of its logic when fashioning the Declaration of Independence just a few months later.

Why am I so down on this tribute to a man listed among the country’s Founding Fathers? Keep reading to see some reasons. Continue reading →

Different names but same sketchy financials for Knoxville cancer charity trolling Las Vegas

Posted on by March 2, 2020
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Knoxville cancer charityKnoxville cancer charityAt the New to Las Vegas world headquarters recently, Mary Newton was on the line, cold-calling me and soliciting a cash donation for the American Breast Cancer Support Association. It was the usual pitch: Commit to a specific-dollar pledge before seeing any paperwork.

I asked where the charity is located. The voice on the other end said she was with a fundraiser named Innovative Teleservices in Port Huron, Mich. That’s fine, I said, but repeated, where is the charity located?

Mary–who wasn’t a real person but a computer-generated voice using artificial intelligence–eventually said she would get someone else on the line. That someone–a real person–said the charity was headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn. I pressed for the formal name of the charity rather than the trade name used in soliciting funds. United Cancer Support Foundation. I was told.

Now–especially if you’ve been writing about charities like I have for a long time–being asked for money by a cancer charity based in Knoxville sets off more alarms than the Great Chicago Fire, or an email plea from Nigeria. Especially this one. For as it turns out, I was personally solicited before by this very organization–a long time ago and under one of its previous names.

But what hasn’t changed very much is the m.o. By my reading of UCSF’s latest tax filing, maybe 4 cents of each donated dollar went to something I might call good works, like grants to individuals and organizations. The other 96 cents of each dollar was gobbled up by fundraising costs and overhead. These are truly dreadful financial efficiencies.

This data is not volunteered to would-be donors. Nor is the charity’s recent banning from soliciting in two states. But it all sort of makes a mockery of UCSF’s printed motto, “United we care, united we share.” Continue reading →

New study ranks Las Vegas economy as very good but off a bit

Posted on by February 26, 2020
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Las Vegas economyA national study released today says the Las Vegas area economy remains one of the country’s best, but not quite as good as it used to be–and not even the best in Nevada.

The report from the Milken Institute, a California economic think tank that periodically evaluates regional economies, ranks the Las Vegas metropolitan area No. 44 among the country’s 200 largest metros. But in the last report, two years ago, Las Vegas ranked a lot higher–No. 23. The 21-click drop was the biggest among the 50 highest-ranked large metros.

The new report, “Best Performing Cities 2020,” ranks Las Vegas’s cross-state arch-rival, Reno, as No. 4, higher by a click, even, than Silicon Valley capital San Jose. In 2018, Reno ranked No 11.

And in a separate evaluation of the country’s 200 next largest metropolitan areas, Carson City ranks No. 21, also better than Las Vegas when measured against peers. Last year, the state capital ranked No. 63.

The main reason for the gap between Las Vegas and Reno is more rapid job and wage growth in Reno and the fact that technology there is a bigger chunk of the local economy. In the view of the Milken Institute report’s authors, knowledge-based industries are better, perhaps because they are more sustainable. Continue reading →

Las Vegas Sun story claiming victory in Review-Journal litigation omits major point

Posted on by February 19, 2020
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On a day that Las Vegas was full of presidential caucus and debate excitement, as well as presence of President Trump, the Las Vegas Sun this morning stripped this all-caps headline across the top of the front page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, obliged by a joint operating agreement to print: “R-J ORDERED TO PAY SUN FOR IMPROPER ACCOUNTING PRACTICES.”

The story in the Sun, which is distributed as a section inside the RJ, said that state District Judge Timothy C. Williams had upheld an arbitration ruling ordering the RJ to pay the Sun $1.9 million. The Sun had claimed, among other things, that the RJ, which collects all advertising and circulation revenue for the two papers, improperly included its own editorial expenses from 2015 to 2018 before calculating how much cash flow should go to the Sun under a formula in a JOA agreement revised in 2005. That agreement, a revision of one originally negotiated in 1989, runs until 2040.

For some reason, the RJ, owned since 2015 by conservative Republican billionaire casino magnate and Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson, did not publish a story about this. But if it had, the paper might have pointed out what to me when I looked at the court file today was a rather glaring omission in the account in the Sun, founded in 1950 by the liberal Democratic and anti-Trump Greenspun family. In his order, based on a January 28 filing, Williams also upheld a finding by the unnamed arbitrator that the RJ did not engage in bad faith or unfair dealings in its relationship with the Sun. Continue reading →

Las Vegas billboards vie for attention with presidential caucuses

Posted on by February 13, 2020
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Las Vegas billboardsWith the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary out of the way, attention is now turning in a big way to the next contest—Nevada’s own presidential caucuses on Saturday, February 22. Candidates, their handlers and the national media are pouring into the state and mainly Las Vegas, since almost all the state’s Democratic voters are here and it’s a lot more fun when on an expense account.

Here’s what they will see: giant billboards promoting excessive drinking, human sexuality (some in rather crude terms, to boot) and law firms making over-the-top claims.

Where else across the fruited plain can one experience a cityscape festooned with billboards openly lauding drunkenness, like the one displayed nearby from Lee’s Discount Liquor: “Booze is the answer. I don’t remember the question.”? Another from Lee’s reads, ” ‘Trust Me, You Look Great’–Alcohol.”

Las Vegas billboards"Or erectile dysfunction billboards loudly beseeching, “Don’t Let Your Meat Loaf.” Or a strip club billboard on a major freeway prominently displaying the image of a pussycat? Or giant ads promoting “The Love Store,” which sells sex toys?

Or billboards unjudiciously advertising “Guard Dog Law,” “Battleborn Injury Lawyers” “Powerhouse Injury Attorney,” “More Lawyer, Less Fee,” “Lowest Priced Lawyers,” and “Half Price Lawyers”? (The last two appear to be somewhat mutually exclusive.)

Yes, Las Vegas definitely is a different place. The city’s image makers clearly were on to a universal truth when they recently changed their famous marketing slogan to, “What Happens Here, Only Happens Here.” Continue reading →