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


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Je Suis Charlie
"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together." — Joseph Pulitzer

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"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

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   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.


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


Fake boobs and fake news: Guts, feathers and all
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 7-4-2018 Sparks Tribune / Updated 7-5 and 7-18-2018 / Expansions in blue


Greatest Hits Dept.

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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8 the hard way!
Barbwire wins 8th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo
10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
Toxic turf threat ignored

12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Bronze 6-pack
In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill
4-28-2015
On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary (above)
11-24-2015
Leading questions, lead-headed leaders
1-19-2016

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

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

1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

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SUING FOR SCHOOLS
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 Barbwire.TV archives

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success

Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

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Great Depression 2 started last Sunday, July 1, as I predicted in 2017.

REVOLUTION. Quite appropriately, I'm writing this screed on Independence Day, July 2, the 242nd anniversary of the 1776 Second Continental Congress adoption of Richard Henry Lee's treasonous motion.

Many copies of the Declaration of Independence were distributed over the next few weeks. Most of the delegates signed on August 2, some later, with two never signing at all. We celebrate on July 4 because somebody once blew it and scheduled a celebration on the wrong day.

The new nation thus began eating an uninterrupted diet of fake news — guts, feathers and all. The gluttony continues to this very day, the era of "alternative facts."

EVOLUTION. A few weeks ago I got an irate phone call from a moonhowler armed with rock-solid beliefs, evolution not among them. According to him, almost nothing is to be believed if you weren't there to see it.

I told him to give himself a small paper cut. When the cut begins to heal and forms a scab, that's evolution, your body adapting to circumstance. Just like when you spend the holiday outdoors and get a suntan. He was not convinced.

DEVOLUTION. Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, wrote "of a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past."

Which begs George Santayana's famous observation "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

And so here we are in Tipping Point City.

DEVOPRESSION. GD2 will raise a powerful leader, perhaps another Franklin Roosevelt. Or another Mussolini. Or worse. (You know his name.)

The parallels between today's governmental incompetence and that of the 1920s are almost perfect. Warren Harding started off the decade with the most corrupt administration since Grant and fortunately (for himself), Harding died of a heart attack before near-certain conviction and removal from office.

When the bubble burst in 1929, the very able President Herbert Hoover unfortunately listened to the lousy economic advice of his treasury secretary, Andrew W. Mellon, Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics idol.

Mellon said just leave the economy alone and it will fix itself. Then came the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which turned what should have been a garden-variety slump into Great Depression, Part One.

GD1-style financial regulation has just been scuttled — again — and big banks have once more devolved into casinos able to risk your money with impunity.

They keep the profits, you eat the losses — guts, feathers and all.

THE NEW SILICON BOOB JOB. Reno has recently pimped some slick PR booming this area as the new Silicon Valley. Like fake boobs, fake booms can bust.

Nevada rides the top of every boom and sinks to the depths of every bust. We are again the hottest housing market in the country, just like 2007-08.

Just by reading actual facts, the Barbwire predicted the so-called Great Recession (which never ended for millions and gave us Czar Donaldov) more than two years ahead. (Barbwire 5-29-2005 et seq.)

All the red flags are waving again.

The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates in the teeth of an economic slowdown. The rest of the world's industrialized nations are already teetering or have fallen into recession. The only truly bi-partisan bill of any import that Congress has been able to disgorge is financial regulation assassination.

TESLAdios? Only 40 percent built, construction at the Tesla gigafactory east of Sparks has stalled as I foreshadowed. (Barbwire 12-27-2017) Unpaid contractors have begun walking away. One financial analyst recently predicted that somebody big like GM will end up taking over the company. Perhaps this week's glowing announcement of production increases was the last gasp.

RENO OR RUST? Long-lamented Harolds Club
(Tribune 12-26-1999) made Reno famous by co-opting the historic Pike's Peak slogan into "Reno or Bust."

Dark harbingers of decay have been installed on the banks of the mucky Truckee at taxpayer expense. A rusty giant daisy sculpture stands next to stacked steel shipping containers where half of the venerable Riverside Hotel once stood.

The City of Reno bought the word "BELIEVE," sculpted in rust a dozen feet high, and placed it on the site of the Mapes Hotel. One of the few memorable buildings in these parts was imploded because of a mayor's ego and now stands vacant save for heavy metal corroding in the sun.

If you have any, put your money in gold, bury it in a coffee can in your backyard, and get ready for a bumpy ride.

Happy Interdependence Day. We will need all the help we can get.


Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
_______
Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, executive 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 BallotBoxing.US and SenJoeNeal.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 and received its 8th Nevada Press Association award and 5th first-place at the 30 Sept. 2017 NPA annual convention in Carson City. (That trophy and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.)

WEB XTRAS & SMOKING GUNS —> Sore-oppressed Soul-Sister Cities:
Menlo Park and Reno-Sparks-Fernley share similarly sad high-tech stretch marks

"All humanity has left the area": paying for Tesla's Gigafactory
Barbano and Nevada conservatives decry corporate welfare depredations

By Rory Carroll / The Guardian 7-3-2018

Editor's Note: The Guardian publishes 180,000 newspapers daily in London and environs and generates ONE BILLION monthly web page views. (I should live so long.)

"Facebook is taking everything": rising rents drive out Silicon Valley families
Property companies advertising their proximity to Facebook’s campus are giving low-income residents a choice: pay a huge rent increase or move out
By Sam Levin / The Guardian 6-20-2018

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


Metastasizical Statisticals

Trump FCC chair investigated for Sinclair ties
TheVerge.com / 2-15-2018

Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News
Its mix of terrorism alerts, right-wing commentary and “classic propaganda” could soon reach 3/4 of the US.
By Andy Kroll/Mother Jones Oct.-Nov. 2017

How Sinclair Broadcasting puts a partisan tilt on trusted local news
By William Brangham/ PBS NewsHour 10-10-2017

Top-down Democrats haven't learned
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 8-10-2017

More Faux than Fox? Corporate octopus Sinclair moves to dominate Nevada and U.S. television
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 8-3-2017


  A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

  Stay tuned.

  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.

 

END OF TIMES SURVIVAL KIT. Defend yourself with humorous or humorless but always-peerless pontification by subscribing to the Barbwire Confidential News Service. Scandalous bonuses for new subscribers.

Hush Hush!

"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

Last year's dark foreshadowings unfortunately became reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/ It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment. Thank you kindly for your support.

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

Peruse the Underbelly of the News —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now: Tell your friends and friendly enemies to subscribe to Barbwire Confidential for warm laughter, cheap thrills, hot scoops and occasional cold logic at BallotBoxing.US/ Cheap at twice the price. (Hush Hush!)


Smoking Guns—>
Cat house to state house: Any publicity is good publicity
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-27-2018 Sparks Tribune
Ghost in the machine: The return of NAGPAC
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-20-2018 Sparks Tribune
Lucky June 13: Cheap shots and low blows
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-13-2018 Sparks Tribun
A duo of D-Days visit Nevada this week
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-6-2018 Sparks Tribune
Grandma, gold standards, forearms and tin ears
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-23-2018 Sparks Tribune
Mother Dolores: Our village loses its patron saint
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 5-30-2018 Sparks Tribune
Beer & music and rent & pillage
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-16-2018 Sparks Tribune
Stormy weather: Poll dancing for fun & prophet
Barbwire by Andres Luis Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-9-2018 Sparks Tribune
Flint, Nevada: Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Barbwire by Andres Luis Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-2-2018 Sparks Tribune


$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later

How come nobody noticed 'til now?
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?

From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.
The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)
The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Chico Marx disguised as Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" (1933)
Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

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Copyright © 1982-2018 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president and political action chair 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.

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005

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