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


Barbwire
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Corporate Propaganda Research Archive

The Barbwire's Silver Anniversary
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.

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
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.

Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen


Fold your favorite charity, then go thank yourself
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-13-2014 Sparks Tribune


HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME

Support Dondero next

Barbwire.TV

Watch NevadaLabor.com for show times. Help us get the word out.

Support the project at http://resurge.tv#donate

SUING FOR SCHOOLS
Updated 8-30-2011
Reruns on Carson-Dayton 226

Additional programs
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 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 as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.

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 selected on-demand re-runs from the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Barbwire.TV archives

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success

Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file


HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME

Support Dondero next

I'm tired of moonhowlers ranting about "a government takeover of health care."

In 2011, well before Obamacare, no less than Nevada State Medical Association Executive Director Lawrence Matheis said that it was already a done deal.

In a speech to union members in Carson City and earlier on my TV show, he noted that the U.S. government was then surpassing the 50 percent mark in paying for all health care.

I'm further sick and tired of all the wondrous PR that for-profit outfits get for contributing to non-profits, especially now that so many tax-exempt organizations are being perverted for political purposes.

I chafe at the praise heaped upon wealthy athletes, moguls and media stars for supporting worthy causes.

A few years back, I was introduced to a comely young wench representing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

She almost called security when I asked how much of the huge charity's funding was subsidized by American taxpayers.

Financial advisors advise rich people to start foundations to keep control of fortunes that would otherwise go to the taxman.

I can understand, especially since so much public money is devoted to warmongering and mass murder. (When do we stop making more veterans?)

But please don't expect me to over-adore superstars doing good works when in reality much of the tab is picked up by the huddled masses.

I don't diminish the good and necessary work done by so many churches and charities in trying to blunt the harsh edges of our softshoe fascist state. They didn't invent the system. (See the expanded edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com for a new opportunity to support the Food Bank.)

Tote up the amount of money given to churches and charities and thus not to the U.S. Treasury, combined with government-subsidized health care, and you will see the outline of a vast welfare state, corporate and otherwise.

The Wall Street right wing very creatively rewrites history.

Rather than admitting that free-market economics has been a grotesque failure, they assert it has never been tried.

Wrong.

The U.S. created the perfect laboratory, a country with no regulations at all: occupied Iraq.

U.S. regent Paul Bremer wiped out all laws save one, Saddam Hussein's ban on labor unions.

How's it working so far?

We don't have a free-market U.S. economy, but rather one of crony capitalism.

The cities of Reno and Sparks teeter on the edge of bankruptcy because of hundreds of millions in debt incurred by corporate welfare giveaways. (See Cabellyup.com/)

We already live in a socialistic welfare state.

The problem lies with a rule book rigged to shunt most of the welfare to those who need it least.

So next time you see some superstar or corporate octopus tout largesse toward society's lessers, remember that they are really telling you to go thank yourself.

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

WEB EXTRAS...

RENDER UNTO CESAR: Northern Nevada César Chávez Celebration XII happens on the great labor leader's birthday, March 31, 2014.

Commit for tickets and tables now at CesarChavezNevada.com.

I'm planning a TV special about César Chávez's days in Nevada.

Stay tuned.

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is.

PayPal monthly subscription software is now operational at the website.

A thousand thanks to those who already responded.

Keep sending show suggestions.

Current frontrunners include (pardon the pun) wild mustangs as canned goods, educationi-Guns and gay Olympics with César Chávez in Nevada recently surging.

Now come queries about ballot questions. After the Jan. 30 column came a surge of questions about the Nevada State Education Association corporate tax petition on this November's ballot.

Stay tuned.

"Media is the plural of mediocre."
                              — Jimmy Breslin

  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.

We've got work to do.

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 in 2012.

Let's double down.

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 and DoctorLawyerWatch.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 Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Guns...

PLEASE VOTE FOR Cherie Jamason and help the Food Bank of Northern Nevada win $50,000 to feed hungry people!

Please join in congratulating our very own Cherie Jamason for a national award with Unite4Good. She is one of five finalists across the country to be in the running for the Unite4: Humanity Inspiration Award. As executive director of the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, Cherie has been feeding the hungry in our community and inspiring people for decades. This is a perfect honor for her. The winner of this award will be able to do even more good in the community because the honoree will receive a $50,000 grant for his or her charitable organization!

Who wins this award is up to you. You may vote for Cherie on the unite4good website. See all of the finalists here: http://www.unite4good.org/inspiration-awards . All you have to enter is your e-mail address and there is only one vote per e-mail address permitted. The voting period ends at 6:00 p.m. on February 19, 2014.

Vote here: http://unite4.gd/1cbrS7U

Again, there is only one vote allowed per e-mail address (if you have more than one, use all of them), so please vote for Cherie and share on every social network in which you participate.

Since we can only vote once, sharing is so important. Use these handles and hashtags and they will help by reposting and retweeting—> @unite4good, #unite4good, #U4Gunite4humanity

Thank you!

From Jon Sasser at Washoe Legal Services and
Bob Fulkerson at the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada

We Don't Need No Education
The continuing Barbwire series

...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

...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





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


NevadaLabor.com | U-News | Bulletins + Almanac
Casinos Out of Politics (COP) | Sen. Joe Neal
Guinn Watch | Deciding Factors
| BallotBoxing.US
DoctorLawyerWatch.com | Barbwire Oilogopoly Archive
Barbwire Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive
Annual César Chávez Celebration
War Rooms:
Banks, Cabbies, Cabela's/cabellyup, Cable TV, Cancer Kids/Mining, Energy, Food, Health Care, Resurge.TV/consumers, Starbucks, Wal-Mart
We Don't Need No Education
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Copyright © 1982-2014 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.

Site composed and maintained by Deciding Factors, CWA 9413 signatory

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