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 Barbwire Archives |
Fladager and Reid: Legends of the Fall
Expanded from the 10-31-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune
HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award
COMING SOON: The new season of Barbwire TV. The first show will be about (what else?) jobs. The lack of them is well documented. How we've blown them and where they can be regenerated, that's something else. I guarantee you'll get mad enough to want to get even. Watch NevadaLabor.com for show times. Help us get the word out.
Support the project at http://resurge.tv#donate
SUING FOR SCHOOLS: Click here to view the show on your desktop
If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves
The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.
The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.
Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.
Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.
You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.
Your contribution will help fund the distribution of the Dec. 6 and Feb. 21 programs as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station.
You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.
Thanks.
Be well. Raise hell.
Andrew
Click here for on-demand re-runs
from the 2009 legislative sessionBarbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file
HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award
The irresistible force finally met an immovable object. Last Tuesday, Patricia T. Fladager died at 89.
Pat lived a rich life and died wealthy — not materially, but surely rich because of all the people she enriched on her journey.
The Tenstrike, Minn., native moved to Reno in 1945. In 1953, she joined the Reno Police Dept, identification bureau, was promoted to secretary to the chief, became a sworn officer and the fourth police woman ever hired by the City of Reno.
Pat left RPD in 1958 for the University of Nevada student affairs office, working there until her 1982 retirement. She termed it "the best career anyone ever had."
She was a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP.Branch matriarch Dolores Feemster called Pat "one of the most caring human beings I've ever met She did so much to help so many at the university, including members of my family."
Numerous former students influenced by Pat went on to become part of the heart and soul of this community, Ms. Feemster added.
Former Nevada State Sen. Joe Neal, D-N. Las Vegas, called Pat "a dear friend whom I accepted as a member of my family. I knew her from the time I first got elected," the eight-term (1972-2004) legislative veteran added.
"She always kept up with what I was doing. She would always remember my birthday," Neal stated.
Pat Fladager was on hand the day Joe Neal made history by filing for governor in 1998. A photo of those present has long been published at JoeNeal.org. Four are now gone: Nevada civil rights legend Bertha Woodard; Carson City Democratic mainstay Lewis Rosenberg; Carson-Tahoe Hospital board and CC Democratic Central Committee chair Pat Potter, and now Pat Fladager.
She served on the board of Common Cause Nevada and was the first UNR classified employee chosen to sit on its human relations committee. She was honored with the State of Nevada Employees Association Jerry Cianci Award and was recognized at UNR’s Honors Convocation with the Thornton Peace Award.
She was a member of the Carson City Democratic Women’s Club and, along with several friends, "adopted" a pre school group of Native American children in Hungry Valley. In that capacity, Pat read to, interacted with and supported the youngsters in many ways. In 2004, she was a strong voice in the successful effort to rename a portion of Clearacre Lane as Rev. William C. Webb Circle in honor of the retired longtime pastor of Reno's Second Baptist Church.
Pat had a long association with Retired Public Employees of Nevada (RPEN), joining in the 1980’s and remaining active until her death. She served in several elected positions with RPEN's Washoe Chapter and was twice elected its president.
Several years ago, RPEN re-named its most prestigious honor "The Pat Fladager Special Recognition Award." Unable to attend RPEN’s annual gathering last month in Mesquite, Pat was pleasantly surprised by a conference call allowing her to participate in the "Pat Fladager Awards Banquet."
Years ago at a legislative committee hearing on Sen. Neal's proposal to emulate New Jersey by banning regulated casinos from involvement in politics, Pat handed me the first contribution to a grassroots organization I formed to support the bill.
I told her she didn't need to do that.
"I believe in this," Pat flatly stated. I still have the $50 check made out to Casinos Out of Politics (COP). Pat Fladager was always willing to out her money where her mouth was.
Pat's only child, Richard Rardin, preceded her in death. If Pat had one regret, it involved her second baby which lives on as the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County's Access program which provides transportation to the disabled.
Pat and Dorothy Pharis started the service as Elderport, a volunteer organization in the 1970's. In 1982, RTC placed a sales tax increase on the ballot to "save Elderport." It was the only time in my life I supported a regressive tax, one that hits harder the lower one's income.
Immediately after it passed, RTC got rid of Pat and Dorothy and used the sales tax revenue to build the very necessary but inefficient bus system we have today, the one that abuses its workers and is run by a foreign management company for $400,000 a year. (See the history I have compiled at NevadaLabor.com through many years of working on behalf of RTC system workers and Teamsters Local 533.)
NO LOOSE ENDS AT THE END. My late wife, Betty, liked Pat from the start.
"That is one very together lady," Betty said.
Strange parallels, predictions & predilections of impending elections
Republican implosion forecast a decade ago / 10-24-2010
Downticket Dems worried
10-17-2010Reid in '52 or Angle in '72?
10-10-2010Calvin Coolidge and prairie dog stew / 9-26-2010
Rory, Rory quite contrary
9-19-20101982 — Chickens, Chicky Baby and My Sharrona / 9-12-2010
Gov. Raggio: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss / 4-25-2010
Warnings of worldwide depression / 5-29-2005
How together?
She wrote her own obituary two years before her death, concluding with a plea "to look not AT each other but rather INTO each other wherein you find the heart and soul whose friendships you will find extremely rewarding."
Read Pat's obituary in her own words and the memorial to Pat which ran in the news pages of today's Reno Gazette-Journal.
Memories from friends will be added to this page as they arrive.A memorial service is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 4, at Mountain View Mortuary, 425 Stoker in Reno.
A private interment will precede the ceremony. More information may be obtained by called Mabel Mayes at (775) 747-4690.
Remembrances may be sent to me and will be posted at NevadaLabor.com in perpetuity.
The last time I talked to Pat, we lamented the sorry state of politics as infested with the current crop of madcap candidates.
Sen. Harry Reid will be pleased to learn that Pat Fladager cast her 2010 ballot at an early voting location just six days before she died.
One together lady.COMING SOON: The new season of Barbwire TV.
The first show will be about (what else?) jobs.
The lack of them is well documented.
How we've blown them and where they can be regenerated, that's something else.
I guarantee you'll get mad enough to want to get even.
Help us get the word out and watch NevadaLabor.com for show times.
You may support the project via http://resurge.tv#donate
Remember, the 2011 Nevada legislative session is just around the corner. I already have a working title for it: Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
Alas and alack, there's a prediction which is absolutely certain to come true. We could use Pat Fladager to lobby for us. Got a hunch she'll be around to help.
Be well. Raise hell.
______
Andrew Barbano is a 41-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, second vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks Tribune since 1988.
Nevada Press Assn. annual award winners announced on Sept. 18, 2010.
HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place for third year in a row.
Next year, we go for the sombrero.The winning entries:
Suing for Schools: The 20-year shuck
Expanded from the 2-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune
Click here to view the show on your desktopRED flags flying low over Sparks
Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks TribuneThe wrath of self-righteous racism
Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune
And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?
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
The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners
Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL
Barbwire / 11-30-2008
Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry
Barbwire / 8-3-2008
Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here?
Barbwire / 6-15-2008
The price of a piece / 6-17-2007
Boxing Pandora /9-23-2007
The Lady in the Red Dress
10-28-2007
Barbwire Corporate Welfare Archive
Cabellyup.com
TOLJASO LONG TIME AGO
BP/ARCO: The greasy root of our evils
Barbwire / Daily Sparks Tribune 9-10-2006
The awful truth — Read it and weep, fellow suckersLabor Day 2009: Rise of the Vampire Corpobots
Expanded from the 9-6-2009 Daily Sparks TribuneAngry Americans and Freudian fraud
Using war to market cigarettes
Expanded from the 8-23-2009 Daily Sparks TribuneBARBWIRE Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive
Propaganda fuels gasoline price fixing
Barbwire 8-14-2005Donate to the cable ratepayer legal defense fund at our PayPal-enabled ReSurge.TV Consumer War Room
Phillips, Kevin; Numbers Racket: Why the economy is worse than we know
Harper's Magazine; May 2008; page 43
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.
Review of Alex Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:
Propaganda in the US and AustraliaThe Orwell Diversion by Alex Carey
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.
Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa
As Wal-Mart struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable ally: conservative research groups.
New York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.BARBWIRE: Labor Day '94: People vs. corporate con job, 9-4-94
Chilling forecasts from Alex CareyBARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97
A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchyThe sands of time do not cloud the long memories of the sheiks of Araby
Barbwire 9-10-2006
Rinfret, Pierre A.; Peace is Bullish; Look magazine, 5-31-1966
Copyright © 1982-2010
Andrew Barbano
Andrew Barbano is a 41-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as second vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.
Barbwire by Barbano premiered in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in those parts ever since. Tempus fugit.
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