‘What’s it like living in Las Vegas?’

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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What's it like living in Las Vegas

Backside side of the famous Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas sign on the Strip

It’s a question I hear all the time when traveling, conducting business on the phone or interacting on social media. I tell someone my home is in Las Vegas. The response often is an astonished pause, followed by a breathless, “What’s it like living in Las Vegas?” Or something to that effect. It happened to me during a family trip to Georgia in February, when I was in Los Angeles last month judging a journalism competition, while chatting up someone on the phone in New York last week, and in a Facebook exchange with a long-time friend this week.

It’s almost as though I said I lived in Baghdad, or Pyongyang, or maybe the Moon.

The astonishment, I suspect, has a number of sources, all grounded in the notion that Las Vegas has a reputation as a despicable place not fit for habitation by normal folks (which, of course, helps make it a great place to visit). This reputation perhaps includes perceptions of excessive summer heat, poor air quality, bad local morals, accident-prone drivers, crime, the October 1 massacre, inadequate medical care and under-performing schools.

The “Sin City” nickname probably doesn’t help. Nor does the famous marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here.” Nor the 1995 movie “Leaving Las Vegas,” featuring Nicolas Cage’s Oscar-winning performance as a down-and-out Hollywood scriptwriter who moves to Vegas to successfully drink himself to death. (When remembered, the upbeat 1964 song fest film, “Viva Las Vegas,” starring Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret, cuts a bit the other way.)

Some of these factors are undoubtedly valid. But there are 2 million people living in the Las Vegas metro area (a statistic that often surprises people from elsewhere when I cite it), compared with all of 18 at the start of the 20th century just 119 years ago. (Don’t take my word; click here to see the single handwritten U.S. Census enumeration page listing everyone in 1900 in Las Vegas.) The Clark County School District, which includes all of metro Las Vegas, is now the nation’s fifth largest by number of students (another eye-popping number for some). There must be a reason why so many people are here and indeed growing rapidly in number. Continue reading →

Poorly rated child illness charity solicits illegally in Las Vegas

Posted on by July 31, 2019
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poorly rated child illness charityUpdated on April 24, 2019. See end of story.

The phone rang at the New To Las Vegas World Headquarters. The cold caller said her name was Grace Miller. She sought a donation by me to the Childhood Leukemia Foundation, headquartered in far-away Brick, N.J., and asked if I would make a pledge.

I said I would be happy to review any literature she could send me. This apparently was not exactly the answer she hoped to hear. We had a back and forth. But after Miller could not get me to commit to a donation–on what likely was a recorded line, which would be used against me should I decline to pay–she terminated the call.

This afforded me the chance to locate online CLF’s latest financial filings, for the year ending December 31, 2017. They might help explain the extreme urgency of Miller–not actually a person but an interactive computer-generated voice monitored by a human–to get a sight-unseen pledge from me. By CLF’s own filings, the charity spent more than 75% of the money donated on fundraising costs, dwarfing the amount left for, say, helping kids fight illness, the stated mission. Indeed, according to the filings, of CLF’s total expenses for the year, just 21% went to the mission.

Since donors usually want the bulk of their gifts to go to the cause, these are terrible financial efficiency ratios for a charity. How terrible? CLF won’t agree to be evaluated by the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, a charity watchdog group that says no more than 35% of donations should be spent on fundraising expense, and no less than 65% of the total budget on the mission. Not sending the BBB paperwork is a huge red flag for would-be donors.

On its zero-to-four-stars scale, Charity Navigator, another leading nonprofit watchdog, gives CLF an overall rating of zero stars. It doesn’t come any lower than that. Last year, Consumer Reports magazine listed CLF on the bad side of its “Best and Worst Charities for Your Donation.” Yelp reviews are no kinder.

On top of all this that, CLF was soliciting illegally in Nevada. With a few exceptions not applicable here, a 2013 Nevada law prohibits non-religious charities from seeking donations in the state without first registering with the Nevada Secretary of State’s office and renewing that registration annually. CLF does not come up in the online database on the Secretary of State’s website as ever being registered. I confirmed this by calling the main office in Carson City. Nor, I was told, was an application from CLF being processed but not yet in the system. Continue reading →

Also for Joe Biden, It Didn’t Stay Here in Las Vegas

Posted on by March 31, 2019
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It Didn't Stay Here

Joseph R. Biden Jr.

It’s anyone’s guess whether, before next year’s presidential election, Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. will appear on the same platform to debate the great issues of the day. But they both are now on the same platform–right here.

Those of you who follow this space know that I have a long-running feature, “It Didn’t Stay Here.” It consists of stories about folks in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas. It’s a pointed refutation of “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the well-known marketing slogan of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. The full list is nearby.

In 2017, New to Las Vegas, I nominated Trump for the list after a 2013 video surfaced of him partying along the Strip with Russians and Rob Goldstone. He’s the British publicist who later set up the infamous June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., brother-in-law Jared Kushner, then Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a clutch of Russians supposedly bearing gifts in the form of Kremlin-sanctioned dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Vegas has a funny way of popping up at the most unexpected of times. On Friday, prominent Las Vegas politician Lucy Flores wrote an essay for the New York Magazine website “The Cut” saying then-Vice President Biden inappropriately smelled her hair and kissed her on the back of her head at a 2014 Democratic campaign rally in a Las Vegas union hall during her unsuccessful bid to be Nevada lieutenant governor. Biden “touched me in an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners—and I felt powerless to do anything about it,” she wrote. At the time Flores was 35 year old; Biden was 71. (Click here to see photos of the rally.) Continue reading →

Green Book–the real thing, not the movie–shows racist history of Las Vegas

Posted on by March 21, 2019
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racist history of Las Vegas

Green Book 1962 edition (courtesy New York Public Library)

The name of the Best Picture Oscar-winning movie “Green Book” comes from a published guide to places where black travelers and tourists could stay without being hassled on account of their race during much of the 20th century after the advent of automobiles. In the movie, the Green Book was used to help guide real-life characters–black pianist Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali, who won his own Best Supporting Actor Oscar) and his white driver/bodyguard, Tony Vallelonga (portrayed by Viggo Mortensen)–across the deep South during a 1962 concert tour.

The South, of course, was infamous for its racial intolerance. So it’s easy for folks in other parts of the country to look back and smirk. However, the Green Book–its full name was the Negro Motorist Green Book–quickly came to cover the entire United States.

And it proved to be an interesting measure of racial comity. Based on the paucity of listings in most places, few regions came out looking good.

But few fared as poorly as Las Vegas. Continue reading →

Iffy cancer charity trolls anew in Las Vegas

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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Iffy cancer charityIt was Alice on the phone again at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters. She was shilling again for United Breast Cancer Foundation, imploring me to make a small pledge “for the ladies.” I kept saying I first wanted to review any literature she might care to mail me. On what likely was a recorded line, that was not a condition that pleased her, as it would not be possible for UBCF to follow up with a letter demanding I make good on my oral pledge. After going back and forth, she finally ended the call by beseeching me to tell three women to get mammograms.

Alice was not a real person but rather a voice generated by an interactive computer using artificial intelligence and monitored by a real human. This technology still has a way to go. In my opinion Alice wasn’t all that responsive to my remarks and actually came across as a little slow on the uptick.

Which I would say much the same about UBCF, which is based in Huntington, N.Y. After Alice called me a year ago, I researched the charity, saw how little of the cash donations went to items I considered meritorious, and wrote a withering post. Now I’m getting called again by UBCF and still being asked for money. So I’m nominating UBCF to my long-running list of “America’s Stupidest Charities.” It’s a roster of nonprofits that solicit me for a contribution after I already have strongly criticized them in a public post. Really, can it get any dumber than that? You can review the list elsewhere on this page.

Alice’s call gave me an excuse to dig up UBCF’s latest available financial filings and conduct a fresh analysis. I was able to find the audited financial statement and IRS Form 990 filing for a later period, the year ending December 31, 2017, on the website of the North Carolina Secretary of State. (Despite a state law, the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office doesn’t post online meaningful financial filings). It’s still not a pretty picture. Continue reading →

Accused knife killer of homeless Las Vegas man I found had just left jail facing a sword charge

Posted on by April 6, 2020
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knife killer of homeless Las Vegas man

Jarrid Johnson (booking photo courtesy Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Dept.)

See updates at end of story

It’s possible Jarrid Johnson, the man charged with stabbing to death the homeless Las Vegas fellow whose body I found last month on the street near my home, has a thing with blades.

According to my reading of the public court record, Johnson, 25, had been released without bail on his own recognizance less than two days earlier for another felony charge. That alleged offense: domestic violence using a sword!

Had Johnson remained in custody, he wouldn’t have been on the street to encounter Ralph Franzello, 63. It was Franzello’s lifeless body, surrounded by a lot of blood and his remaining life’s possessions in an overturned shopping cart, that I spotted on a deserted block while walking the dog near the New To Las Vegas world headquarters. The time was just before dawn on the morning of December 21–the year’s shortest day. I quickly called 911.

According to authorities, a remorseful Johnson turned himself in unprompted at the county jail three days later and confessed to the crime, saying he used Franzello’s own folding knife in the middle-of-the-night deed. One news account said Johnson acknowledged attacking Franzello after being caught going through Franzello’s possessions, presumably in the shopping cart that remained at the scene of the crime for several days thereafter. Johnson is being held on $500,000 bail pending a hearing scheduled for tomorrow.

But the same authorities that eagerly issued a press release about Johnson’s arrest didn’t bother to mention that he had been freed from custody literally hours earlier with the state’s consent pending trial in a separate case of violence involving clear indications of mental illness. At least, that’s what alleged use of a sword in an assault on a family member says to me. So the Johnson matter may well raise serious issues about how the overworked Nevada court system evaluates such troubled individuals even before being convicted. I also believe some of these details concerning Johnson’s background have not been reported elsewhere in the Las Vegas media.

Continue reading →