Barbwire by Barbáno: Flint Michigan, Sparks-Reno style

   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...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
— Leon Russell, 1942-2016

We Don't Need No Education Part LXXVII—>
Flint Michigan, Sparks-Reno style
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-28-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 6-29-2017 / Expansions in blue.

Scurrilous Barbwire predictions have a way of coming true, even some I regret.

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

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Note: Alas and alack, Dondero did not make it in 2015 or 2016.
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The politics of media ga-ga boosterism / 3-20-2014

We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series

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SUING FOR SCHOOLS
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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

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See History foreshadows a GOP November win, 16 Feb. 2016. (I did include a 2020 silver lining.)

Sparks, Washoe County, the school district, UNR and the Catholic Diocese will get hit with massive class actions by aggrieved parents and former students within the next five to 10 years.

By the time this column hits the streets, the Sparks City Council will have voted to spend $300,000 to expand parking at Golden Eagle Park. I've written an entire series about the toxic, cancer-causing, brain-damaging phony turf at that pit. It's long overdue for replacement.

It also infects sports fields throughout Nevada, including the football fields at Mackay Stadium, McQueen, Manogue, Carson and Douglas high schools. Ditto Peccole Park, the UNR baseball complex.

I informed Washoe County School District Superintendent Tracy Davis at a public meeting. Her basic response: Don't talk to me, I just work here. Get a bunch of people to complain at a board meeting.

That cover-your-ass bureaucratese is Exhibit A why I've been telling people she will announce her departure before her three-year contract expires. I hope her greener pastures don't include parks and athletic fields with toxic turf.

I assume an occasional intern at Sparks City Hall may get stuck with skimming a random edition of the Trib. Alas, perhaps not. The mayor and council have been just like Ms. Davis, informed but catatonic without a crisis (see Flint, Michigan).

The days are long gone when public officials looked into public problems. Modern political management advises ignoring them. Most of the time, they'll go away or someone else will do something. If a government official looks into a situation, that action confirms something's wrong for the damned liberal media.

So Ms. Davis, Mayor Martini and the usual suspects do nothing while kids get brain damage from lead- and benzene-laced turf. School district staff know. I've talked to embarrassed coaches afraid to say a word.

Sparks better hope City Attorney Chet Adams is long retired before these lawsuits start flying.

LOUSY LEGAL ADVICE DEPT. This week's council agenda item 10.1 was about as illegal as possible. It involves "modifying environmental control and pretreatment standards."

Of what? Asthma victims? Paint primer? Wood stain? Swamp gas?

Sparks has developed a rep for vague and thus questionably legal meeting agendas. Just remember folks, the last council that did lots of business in secret was unanimously ousted in 1983.

REQUIESCANT IN PACE. We are losing giants. This Friday at 11:00 a.m. at Reno's Second Baptist Church, we say goodbye to Nevada civil rights legend Eddie Scott. (I composed his full and extensive obituary at RenoSparksNAACP.org/)

While I was writing this column, word arrived that another former Reno-Sparks NAACP president died. We lost William Moon last Sunday. Watch my websites for updates.

I lament the loss of these good friends.

They were better than me. Eddie and Bill would already have been out picketing Golden Eagle and City Hall.

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

SMOKING GUNS —>

One for the books under the bus
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-21-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 6-22-2017

Condemned at Birth
The diabetes establishment inhibits research on a very promising diabetes CURE
"Tell us how it will make ever make us money."
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-14-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 6-14 and 6-20-2017

Nevada consumers consumed again
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-6-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 6-8 and 6-14-2017

For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now —>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: FEEL UP YOUR FIRE METER. The Reno Gazette-Journal did big spreads on three consecutive Sundays (Sept. 14, Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, 2014) on NV Energy smart meter fires. Welcome aboard. Barbwire readers were two years ahead on the fire meter issue. (Touch a Smart Meter, Go to Jail — 11 October 2012)

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is. A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

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 a lot of work to do.