BARBWIRE by ANDREW BARBANO Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream

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Herewith, a grossly underachieving list of 2013's most grotesque, grandiose and gratuitous.

HOW THE LOWLY HAVE FALLEN. Time Magazine's Man of the Year Award once meant something, even when occasionally won by a woman.

It used to be unflinching, given to the person who most impacted the world for good or evil.

This year, they named Pope Francis, latest apologist for the dinosaur boys' club who speaks softly but lets women go to prison in El Salvador where miscarriage is apparently a capital crime.

Time understandably chickened out in 2001 by naming media hotdog Rudy Giuliani rather than Osama bin Laden, who has arguably retired the title every year since.

Time could have instead easily honored the 3000-plus dead of 9/11.

Nonetheless, the magazine's fortunes have only dimmed since.

Speaking of dim, the Reno Gazette-Journal finally came out of the closet to admit what everybody knows: like all commercial media, they live in fear of their advertisers.

Reno new car dealers ordered the RGJ to oppose the school repair tax and the paper complied.

Actually, the automongers fell in line with Democratic Party principles by defeating a regressive sales tax penalizing lower income people.

So next time you go to a Reno new car dealership, thank them for being such overzealous Democrats.

ABORTION AND GUN RIGHTS, A HAPPY MARRIAGE. Rumor has it that whistleblower Edward Snowden almost beat the pope for Time's tarnished trophy.

Snowden was most deserving because the ultimate modern weapon is superior information, not low-tech projectile propellers.

If you fear gun registration because it tells the feds who owns weapons, remember that you have already ratted on yourself with such actions as your magazine subscriptions and Facebook postings.

Information is power.

Despite occasional mass murder, gun rights absolutists can rightly state that crime has gone down notwithstanding a firearm-sotted society.

The authors of Freakonomics point to a more verifiable cause: abortion.

Most crimes are committed by young men aged 15-24, often products of abusive childhoods.

When Roe vs. Wade made it a bit easier to pre-empt the unwanted, crime went down starting about 15 years later.

MOST UNDER-REPORTED STORIES—>

(1) The phony graduation rate increases continually touted by the Washoe and Clark County school districts. Read the Barbwire's We Don't Need No Education series at NevadaLabor.com/

(2) The teachers' tax initiative's potential invalidation of over 100 existing statutes, including term limits and the union-busting right-to-work-for-less law. [See the 28 February 2013 Barbwire.]

(3) Corporate welfare queen Apple Computer's absolute censorship control over the Nevada Public Utility Commission regarding Apple's new Lyon County power plant.

NEVADA'S BIGGEST EMBARRASSMENT: GREYHOUND THERAPY. I've blown the cover off a lot of state mental health abuses over the past four decades, but our stingy state government's patient dumping via bus ticket reached new and very dangerous lows.

Happy High Holly Days anyway.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

WEB EXTRAS...

SUPPORT THE RETURN OF COMMUNITY TV. Support the cause at Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is.

Keep sending show suggestions.

Current frontrunners include (pardon the pun) wild mustangs as canned goods, education,  i-Guns and gay Olympics.

  Please forward additional ideas or vote on the above.

  I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/

The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet.

This is important.

HONOR YOUR DON. Keep sending comments supporting legendary Nevada photographer Don Dondero (1920-2003) for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.

His life's work appeared worldwide, including the Tribune and most probably every newspaper in Nevada.

Enlist in the campaign to install Big Don.

Please send me your memories and endorsements via e-mail or to P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

The Barbwire got the late Reno Gazette-Journal columnist Guy Richardson elected last year.

Let's go for a repeat.

Happy High Holly Days!

MerryChristmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus/Chanukah/Thanksgibleting

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

____________
Andrew Barbano is a 45-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first 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 and JoeNeal.org. 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.

Smoking Guns... Liberal reasons to oppose liberal positions and policies Guaranteed to irritate all points of the political spectrum DAILY SPARKS TRIBUNE 12-26-2010 Let's persuade Apple to start making i-Guns here Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-24-2013 Sparks Tribune Enron II: Nevada's Battle-Born Toxic Event Indigence and indigestion from ingestion of Warren Buffett's buffet Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-6-2013 Sparks Tribune Updated 6-7 and 6-17-2013 ...and more ammo.. Nevada Day Required Reading The Lady in the Red Dress The Barbwire's classic Nevada Day column written in 1983 The compleat history of the Silver State in 500 words SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Sparks Tribune 10-31-2013 and previously Barbano on the Barbwire plots new TV season Barbwire Special Web Edition / 10-21-2013 Barbwire: Nevada not really a state No, we were not Battle Born in Kenya Top 10 reasons Nevada lives in the 19th Century Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-17-2013 Sparks Tribune Low-income penalty: Nevada socks it to the working poor BARBANO: Nevada is one big company town Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 10-10-2013 State of Health National health care comes up against a very sick state. WHAT'S IN IT FOR US? Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 10-10-2013 USA at crossroads: New Deal or new Confederacy? Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-10-2013 Sparks Tribune UPDATE—>Bill Moyers: Shutdown is simply secession by other means We Don't Need No Education The continuing Barbwire series ...and more ammo yet The Post-Dated Recession: Pay me now or pay me later Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune The Post-dated Recession By Joshua H. Silavent / Daily Sparks Tribune / 5-3-2011 Union decline and rising inequality in two charts by Colin Gordon Economic Policy Institute / 6-5-2012 Used in journalist Mark Robison's extensive Hard Labor: Nevada unions tout role in helping workers, firms, economy (Sunday 2 Sept. 2012 Reno Gazette-Journal, page one, Reno Rebirth section of the print edition). Union men Jim Burrell, Paul McKenzie and Guy Louis Rocha did the movement proud. Not included in the RGJ online edition. WOMEN AND UNIONS — ORPHAN MAJORITIES The Barbwire Labor Day column Reno Gazette-Journal / 9-3-2012 Nevada Press Assn. Better Newspaper Contest HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place three years in a row. 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 desktop RED flags flying low over Sparks Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune The wrath of self-righteous racism Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune Government contacts Nev. congressional delegation Nevada Legislature State of Nevada Secretary of State Carson City Clark County City of Las Vegas Douglas County Reno City Council Sparks City Council Washoe County Commission Washoe Registrar of Voters The campaign against forcibly-paid newspaper obituaries 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 2008 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners The price of a piece / 6-17-2007 Boxing Pandora /9-23-2007 The Lady in the Red Dress 10-28-2007 1997 Pulitzer Prize entries The life and times of Travus T. Hipp The best who ever was

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Copyright © 1982-2013 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 45-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 first 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 moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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