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Vote
for Howard Rosenberg anyway, dammit
Expanded from
the 7-27-2008 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 11-22-2010
Welcome to déjà vu all over again. The voters of northern Nevada elected Howard Rosenberg in 1996, then had to fight another campaign to allow him to take his seat on the university board of regents.
The university administration brought an action before the Nevada Ethics Commission in an attempt to keep Rosenberg from taking office.
"Rosenberg's crime seems to lie in the fear that he might empty the piggy bank controlled by a narrow clique of academic alchemists adept at turning leaden incompetence into personal gold," I wrote on Dec. 8, 1996.
The phony rationale was that a university professor should not sit on the board of regents. The commission ruled in Rosenberg's favor in a brouhaha that aired much of the dirty laundry of the U-system, most of it originating right here.
From the last quarter of 1996 well into the following year, I printed a neverending series revealing corruption and financial mismanagement.
I showed how foundations were used as money laundries and a source of tokes for administration pets and their wives; how non-existent "ghost professors" were kept on the payroll with their salaries shunted to pay lawsuit losses. The Tribune entered 10 of my columns in the 1997 Pulitzer Prize judging.
Xerox stock went up during the series run. I had to place originals of my weekly exposés at Sparks and Reno copy shops where they sold by the hundreds after the Tribune ran out of papers.
Chancellor Richard Jarvis witheld copies of the Barbwire from the board of regents and lied to them about why he had done so. (Tribune 12-8-1996)Regents started calling the chancellor when constituents from around the state began asking the officeholders questions about stuff which only the regents had not read.
I found UNR triple-dipping (charging three different non-profit foundations for the same expenses) and even illegally shunting funds for landscaping to buy a new basketball floor for Lawlor Events Center.
I hoped having Howard Rosenberg on the board of regents would help stop some of the rampant abuse. As the recent rash of employee lawsuits has shown, the fight continues.
My most vivid memory of those years came from one guy interviewed about why he was supporting Rosenberg: "I know Howard will protect the students."
How serious was Rosenberg's commitment? Two decades ago, the nationally noted film critic was offered a lucrative syndicated television deal. He turned it down because it meant that he would have to leave his students.
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As he stated on my TV program last Friday, "everything I am relates to my students."
In other words, critic Rosenberg could not exist unless he was also cinematology (my term) Prof. Rosenberg.
I would like to think I showed political prescience in scheduling Howard for two hours last Friday, just hours after the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that his name would be stricken from the November ballot. Actually, it was equal parts dumb luck and the hot issue presented by the ongoing state budget crisis.
Rosenberg has no anger at the blackrobes who, he said, did their job as they viewed it. He also said that either of his two opponents will have the university's best interests at heart.He reserves his anger for two people: Secretary of State Ross Miller II and Atty. Gen. Catherine Cortez Masto, both Democrats. Each was asked to rule on the term limits question in January and chose to do nothing, Rosenberg said, adding that many people who might have filed for office did not do so against now-disqualified incumbents.
An e-mail from a prominent southern Nevada attorney stated that this is a "very sad day for Nevada losing (Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury). It’s a shame he has to go out like this. Many will never forgive Ross for this timing."
Rosenberg's attorney, former Nevada Assembly Speaker Byron "Bill" Bilyeu, R-Elko, is reviewing legal options. He may ask the Supremes for a rehearing, he said on my show.
Nevada's cockamamie term limits law was on the ballot in 1994 as a single proposed constitutional amendment. The Supremes later cut the baby in half, turning it into two ballot questions for the required second vote in 1996. The state constitution says that constitutional amendments must be the same on two consecutive general election ballots. This was not.
The Supremes placed a separate question for judges before the voters in 1996, and left all others to a separate referendum. Then, the legal profession mounted a successful media campaign against term limits for jurists, so blackrobes are now exempt.
I see a substantial issue based on the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution and am sure Mr. Bilyeu and attorneys for other officeholders will explore it.
Last Friday, the Supremes exempted a group of very powerful legislators on the goofy reasoning that lawmakers take office immediately upon election but those lower on the food chain are sworn in after the supreme court's official "canvas" (rubber stamping) of the election in late November.
Rosenberg told the Reno Gazette-Journal that lawmakers take their oath of office on the opening day of the legislative session in the year following their election, as did everyone who was blown off the ballot."Oh, bullshit," Rosenberg said.
"That's what I call ministerial garbage. Everyone knows that election day is the day you were elected, unless someone contests the election. I was canvassed on Nov. 12, 1996, the day I was elected, and that's before the amendment went into effect on Nov. 27."
Rosenberg said legislators don't take their formal oaths of office until February, when the Legislature convenes every other year.
"Are they sworn in immediately after being elected?" he said. "Is there some sort of legislative session I don't know about, or does the session commence after the election? None of this makes sense." (Reno Gazette-Journal 7-26-2008)But lawmakers just happen to set the budget for the supreme court and the salaries of justices. Heavyweights like Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, can have significant impact on one's career after leaving the bench.
There's not a chance of that happening in a state like Nevada where our judicial system has always been above reproach.
Rosenberg will still be on the primary ballot.Let's send him out a winner and keep up the good fight.
TO NEWS PURISTS: Article 11 of the Nevada Constitution says that the "State University" shall be controlled by a "Board of Regents." Whether anyone had the power to unilaterally rename the U-system without a constitutional amendment, I leave to lawyers and other exemplars of the enlightened ethers. Until somebody changes the constitution, the "Nevada System of Higher Education," a bloodless term worthy of the scorn of George Carlin, does not exist.
Be well. Raise hell.
_______
* NOTE TO READERS: During what Mr. Bilyeu termed "L'affaire Rosenberg" in 1996, the Reno Gazette-Journal printed a typographical error and referred to Howard as "Rosenbergy," which was adopted as both a nickname and a chant by supportive university students. Reno News & Review writer (now a UNR journalism professor) Deidre Pike wrote a column entitled "Let there be Rosenbergy."Indeed.
Let there be Rosenbergy again.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Oct. 27, 1996, Barbwire began a six-month investigation into the labyrinthine intrigues of the University and Community College System of Nevada (UCCSN), now called the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE). At the suggestion of chess grandmaster and author Larry Evans, most of the 1996 installments, as well as one involving university issues in the following year, were entered by the Sparks Tribune in two categories of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize competition. You may access the archive by clicking here. That ongoing interest in the affairs of higher education has never waned. You may use the NevadaLabor.com search engine to do a keyword search on the occasional treatment of university issues. You will also enjoy the ongoing comments of longtime University of Nevada-Reno journalism Prof. Jake Highton. Be well. Raise hell. — Andrew
Nevada Legislature
State of Nevada
Secretary of State
Clark County
City of Las Vegas
Reno City Council
Sparks City Council
Washoe County Commission
Washoe Registrar of Voters
The Dean's List
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006
And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?
Phillips, Kevin; Numbers Racket: Why the economy is worse than we know
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Phillips has authored numerous books on history and politics over the past 40 years. His most recent, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, was published by Viking on April 15, 2008.NAOMI WOLF: Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps
There are some things common to every state that's made the transition to fascism. Author Naomi Wolf argues that all of them are present in America today.
Alternet 5-20-2007Johnson, Chalmers; REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE? A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States; Harper's magazine; January, 2007. I love it when heavy hitters validate what I've been saying for years in the tiny Sparks Tribune.
Barlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.; America: What Went Wrong? (1992); America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? (1994); America: Who Stole the Dream? (1996) ; Andrews & McMeel/Universal Press Syndicate. For additional comments on the work of the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning team, use the NevadaLabor.com search engine and sweep for "Barlett."
Review of Alex Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:
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Excerpted from the book available below
ORDER Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
By Alex Carey
Edited by Andrew Lohrey
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
University of Illinois Press
SEE ALSO: Lapham, Lewis H.; Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History; Harper's Magazine cover article; September, 2004, page 32.
By one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion to suit big business goals. Lapham's number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)
Adjusted for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in 2005 dollars.
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Rinfret, Pierre A.; Peace is Bullish; Look magazine, 5-31-1966
Copyright © 1982-2008, 2010 Andrew BarbanoAndrew Barbano is a 39-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; a member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO, and the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune since 1988.
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