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 Barbwire Archives |
Crapshoots, trapshoots and turkey shoots
Expanded from the 8-8-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 8-9 and 8-15-2010
Barbwire wins second straight Nevada Press Association first-place award
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.
SUING FOR SCHOOLS: Click here to view the new Barbwire show on your desktop
Currently rerunning on Boulder City cable. Go to bcnv.org and then go to the BCTV link.
If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwavesThe 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
Barbwire column on the depredations of Charter Communications and the Reno City Council wins 2009 Nevada Press Association first-place award
Past 12 months
Use the search tool you will find at page right at the above link. It will return the 19 newest TV programs. You may also search by date — M-F for the past year save holidays.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 fileFor the past couple of weeks, national media have been reporting a slow uptick in the economy coupled with a stubborn stall in hiring.
Employers enforced huge cutbacks while the burning Bushies torched the American Dream, some cutting much more than necessary.American workers now produce much more for much less, laboring in the well-founded fear of future layoffs.
As a result, we remain by far the most productive workers in the world per hour worked.
So how would you like to be burdened doing the jobs of six people for one person's pay?Some employers continue to run their workers into the ground.
The Carrows restaurant chain eliminated bus trays a year or more back.Food servers must now run dishes directly back to the kitchen, which means hundreds of more trips per week for the understaffed operations.
Servers already had five jobs: seating/hosting, food service, pantry (soups and salads), bussing and cashiering. Now, they also have to wash dishes. Six for the price of one.Business has been picking up but the servers are not picking up any extra help — or pay.
Carrows needs a union.
CRAPSHOOTS, TRAPSHOOTS AND TURKEY SHOOTS. John Cahill of the Nevada Outdoor Democrats advises that the Union Sportsmen's Alliance is sponsoring a sporting clays shoot next Sunday morning, Aug. 15 at Sage Hill Clay Sports, 7370 Desert Way in Reno.For information, contact Paul McKenzie at the Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada/AFL-CIO in Sparks, (775) 355-9200.
Speaking of crapshoots, Washoe County district attorney candidate Roger Whomes is holding two fundraisers this week to develop support for his attempt to turn the race against madcap 16-year incumbent Dick Gammick into a turkey shoot.
The first will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 10, up Tahoe Way at 1140 Vivian Lane in Incline Village from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Anyone who wants to attend should contact Donna Prishmont at (775) 831-1662 or 741-6921.
The fun party will be this coming Friday the 13th at the very hip Cathexes Architectural Studios, 250 Bell Street just north of Second in downtown Reno.It begins at 5:45 p.m. and features the entertainment of local lawyer and longtime folk-rock artist Geoff White and his Smokin' Bulldogs, a group of superannuated Beatles specialists, albeit without much hair.
That's cool, because Mr. Whomes has little hair and Mr. Gammick has none, but as long as he pays his 99 bucks at the door, I'm sure Big Roger will make him feel most welcome.
The DA may show up anyway, or just send the DEA with his warmest personal regards.Mr. Gammick has been known to suffer extreme kneejerk reactions when he hears anybody's smoking anything, even if it's bulldogs.
For more info, go to roger4da.com.
ONLINE UPDATE 8-9-2010 — Learned lawyers Whomes and Gammick have reportedly accepted invitations to debate on Wednesday, Aug., 18, at the Atlantis Hotel at 7:00 p.m. The Republican Jewish Coalition is the sponsoring entity. Their contact is Don Kaplan, (775) 832-6886.
The candidates are wrangling over who will moderate, which seems rather incongruous, given that moderation has long been absent from this contest and is likely to remain so for the duration.
UPDATE 8-15-2010 — Debate negotiations have crashed and burned. Consider contacting the players about the hardassed Barbano solution.
JOE NEAL 75. According to former Reno-Sparks NAACP President Eddie Scott, Sen. Joe Neal's July 30 birthday bash was one helluva party.
The food was great and, better yet, free.
The turnout was huge.
Mr. Scott did a great job representing us frozen norte Nevadianos at the North Las Vegas event.
"It was held at a community center where the people are, not on the Strip," Scott noted.The longtime former Democratic state senator wouldn't have had it any other.
Sen. Neal thanked the crowd and noted that he's been recovering from (oxymoron alert) "a slight stroke."
I made it my business to make sure that invitations were sent to everyone who showed up to witness Neal's historic filing for governor in 1998.
Two had already left us, Reno-Sparks civil rights legend Bertha Woodard and Carson City Democratic Party official Lewis Rosenberg.
Alas, a third must now be added to the list of the lost.Distinguished educator and former Carson City Democratic Chair Pat Potter passed away last Thursday at the age of 80 after a long illness.
She taught in the capital city school system for 25 years and went on to win election to the Carson-Tahoe Hospital Board of Trustees, eventually chairing the body.
You may read a full obituary about this great lady linked to the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com, where you will also find Sen. Neal's very entertaining and often hilarious oral history of his five decades in public life.
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
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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