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ANDREW BARBANO
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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.

By Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) & Sharon Robinson
© 1988 CBS Records, Inc.


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

For Sale: Unsafe at any speed, $40,000
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-10-2022 / Updated 8-10-2022 / Expansions in blue

Today's column got started in a Reno bar decades ago.


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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

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TOP SECRET— HushHush!

 

I was drinking with a bunch of lawyers. The conversation was wide-ranging until somebody uttered the magic words: "Jeep case."

That opened the floodgates. All had war stories about their many Jeep cases, even criminal defense, corporate or estate-planning specialists.

I never forgot that free seminar in consumer abuse.

Then came last Thursday's Reno Kazoo-Journal front page story about a local teen who spent the last two years refurbishing a 1984 Jeep CJ-7 which he donated to the Hot August Nights nostalgiafest charity auction.

Some blithe spirit paid $40,000 for the shiny rolling death trap. Adding insult to injury, U.S. taxpayers subsidized the tax-deductible purchase. Be careful what you Make-A-Wish for.

I dropped everything I was doing and posted the following at the Reno Gazette-Journal website: "Your story can kill people. If you will call me, I will put you in contact with some top gun trial lawyers who have tried and won 'Jeep cases.' Just about every personal injury lawyer of long standing has had one or several. The post-WW2 commercial/consumer Jeep had to be engineered for consumer comforts. (Ask a few WW2 vets about how many soldiers died or were seriously injured because those cute little Jeeps flipped like pancakes.) The young man has already exacerbated the problem of the original manufacture by adding higher suspension. Raising the center of gravity means easier rollover, especially for an inexperienced driver. (See the DJ Benardis death case your paper covered extensively.) The road to hell is paved with good intentions and the teen mechanic and Hot August Nights are heading straight for a cliché ending and a plethora of lawsuits. Please call me."

Benardis was a local high school football hero with a scholarship to play for Notre Dame. He was killed when his Jeep rolled near the Reno spaghetti bowl.

The Reno newspaper last week noted that the young mechanic and his family had "taken the car for a few test drives, and they’ve given it their seal of approval for on- and off-road excursions."

Zounds.

The RGJ's accompanying photo showed a typical macho RV with chassis well above the wheel wells, a raised center of gravity and recipe for turning a vehicle into a rolling stone. Ironically, "60 Minutes" last Sunday aired a piece on military vehicle rollovers featuring today's Jeep, the Humvee, another high-centered death trap with the requisite WW2 Jeep-emulating grille.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," the RGJ reporter responded, adding "I will discuss this with my editor." [UPDATE: I have yet to hear back. I discussed it in detail with her editor before I e'd her.]

I sent the paper a CJ-7 website filled with the bravado of macho dudes not afraid of a little rollover risk or being thrown thru the windshield.

Just about any automobile can flip. American movies and TV are filled with such stunts. Careful and experienced drivers have a better chance of survival.

Maybe the story of that fine young man's early death combined with that of last week's $40k coffin can save a few lives.

If only people make a wish to remember
.
FREEWAY FREAKOUT. I've found an entertaining way to scare people about the horrors of artificial intelligence without pointing to Republican governors. I write down TV closed-captioning nonsense.

"Northbound I-80" was recently termed "North Bong 80" on TV-11's Oakland news. Not to be outdone, TV-4 described the Tahoe classic boat "concourse d'elegance" as "con Coors day a gonz."

Understandable. Bongs and beer can make people gonzo.

RENTVOLUTION. After last week's debacle in Gomorrah South, the Reno City Council remains alone in infamy as the only local government ever to have voted for rent control (1979, promptly repealed. Barbwire 7-17-2019)

The North Las Vegas City Council just agreed with its city clerk in refusing to place the Culinary Union's rent control initiative on the November ballot. The next step is also predictable: court, also like Reno long ago. And the little people suffer. Stay tuned to Rentvolution.org/

GOOD NEWS FROM RENO CITY HALL. Longtime Councilmember Neoma Jardon has resigned to become boss of something called the Downtown Reno Partnership. The "non-profit" is largely funded by downtown redline tax money which would otherwise go to frills like schools, roads, parks and first responders.

Earmarked taxing districts were all the rage in the 1970s. Reno and Sparks have several, all attractively named corporate welfare fronts by which casinos may ensure that their taxes are diverted for their own benefit. Just like the convention authority.

Jardon's most recent claim to infamy was chairing the tax money wasting Regional Transportation Commission, currently comprised of four Republicans, including Sparks Mayor Ed Lawson, and non-partisan Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve. On Jardon's watch, bus system employees went on strike three times in 2021 with Teamsters Local 533 winning each time. Worker abuses remain epidemic and very costly. Who will Reno councillors name to replace Jardon? I know of two sensible choices, neither of whom has much chance.

CALL YOUR MOTHER. The Sparks-based Northern Nevada Central Labor Council just announced a new attraction for its Labor Day LaborFest at Reno's Idlewild Park: A presence that once struck fear into the hearts of every union-busting swine in North America.

The Mother Jones Museum in Mt. Olive, Illinois, is sending a giant inflatable made unto the image and likeness of Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1837-1930), a legend of 20th Century union organizing.

"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living," she famously shouted to the rooftops. (Today's venerable hell-raising magazine is named in her honor.)

She spoke to the Sheet Metal Workers Union in Sparks on January 6 (!), 1912. The NNCLC has asked me to delve into the Barbwire archives for more Mother Jones Nevada connections. All submissions welcome.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Or, as Mother Jones might say,

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.)Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Outlive them all
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-3-2022
Updated 8-5-2022 / Expansions in blue

"I'm black and you're a Jew. How do you intend to make it in this town?"
— Bill Russell to Red Auerbach c. 1956

"I'll outlive them all," the legendary Boston Celtics coach replied.

Good advice both in the concrete and the abstract.

Boston is still flamingly racist. As is the small town called Nevada. Beantown and Mississippi West have just gotten good at euphemism, winks and nods.

For a peek underneath the PR mask, read John L. Smith's splendid biography of the greatest public servant I've known in my 53 years in these parts.

"The Westside Slugger: Joe Neal's Lifelong Fight for Social Justice" will shiver your timbers. (University of Nevada Press 2019, cover photo by former Tribune photo editor Debra Reid from the Barbwire archives)

In my autographed copy, Smith termed me the Westside Slugger's corner man. High praise indeed.

My friend Sen. Neal, D-North Las Vegas, died on New Year's Eve 2020 at 85. Last Thursday would have been his 87th birthday. On Sunday came news that Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols and basketball great Bill Russell had likewise graduated to greater glory.

All infused our lives with one great lesson. All that will outlive you is what you achieve. In accomplishments large and small lie the seeds of greatness.

"One life affects so many others," Clarence the guardian ange (Henry Travers) l informs a despondent George Bailey (James Stewart) in director Frank Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life."

The Beatles closed the circle: "In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." (Somebody play that song for Czar Putin. Please.)

Ancient Egyptian mythology held that all would be judged by a simple standard. Your heart would be placed on one side of a scale with a feather on the other. If the feather outweighed your heart, woe unto thee.

I'm a Trekkie but I didn't know until she died that Nichols shared TV's first ebony and ivory kiss with Captain Kirk in a 1966 episode. No big deal by today's standards. Back then, pushing the envelope could get you canceled.

Powerful singer Leslie Uggams broke new ground as the only African American on Mitch Miller's popular weekly musical TV program. (NBC 1961-64) She could never interact on camera with the otherwise all-white cast.

"If I did, the southern stations wouldn't run it," she once recalled.

I remember how different it felt when black actors were finally allowed to appear on TV commercials in 1971. I cast a black actress on a local Subaru commercial a few years later.

Ms. Nichols was self effacing about her Star Trek stardom. "I played the receptionist," Lt. Uhura once quipped.

We remain so tribal. War and violence are the norm rather than the exception worldwide. I have little faith in my fellow men. My only hopeful solution is long range: Women need to become the majority in power in all walks of life.

Speaking of which, three female political leaders will be feted at a Washoe Democrats dinner August 26 at the Grand Sierra. Former Sparks Councilmember and State Senator Julia Ratti will be honored along with former Miss Nevada and term-limited Assembly Majority Leader Theresa Benitez Thompson and likewise timed out County Commissioner Kitty Jung. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto will deliver the keynote address. Info at WashoeDems.org/

Those outstanding leaders and the two late superstars have received well deserved praise. Accordingly, I offer a belated birthday present to Sen. Neal.

Most norte Nevadians don't know that he was a longtime columnist for the Las Vegas Sentinel, a publication oriented toward southern Nevada minorities. Biographer Smith notes that Neal's commentary for many years was the lone liberal voice in Gomorrah South media.

The good senator already stands in the Nevada State Senate Hall of Fame and the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame. So let's make it a hat trick for the great writer and constitutional scholar.

Sen. Neal, welcome to the Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniators Hall of Flames, a giant to walk with giants.

RENTVOLUTION.ORG. The Culinary Union today will ask the North Las Vegas City Council to reverse the city clerk's decision to bounce the union's rent control initiative petition. Sen. Neal's eloquence will be missed. Stay tuned. [UPDATE: NLV City Council sez no, as expected. Next stop, court, as expected.]

BACK TO THE FUTURE. Labor Day parades were once the norm in many Nevada communities. Not any more.

Northern Nevada workers will begin to remedy that on Sept. 5 with a Labor Day job fair and community picnic extravaganza at Reno's Idlewild Park. Watch NevadaLabor.com for details from the Sparks Labor Temple. Speaking of fervor...

THE CATHEDRAL OF FOOTBALL. Teamsters Local 533 is hosting a day with the UNR Wolf Pack at Mackay Stadium on Sept. 10. Union members can bring up to three immediate family members at $25 each which includes tailgating, food, game tickets and a souvenir t-shirt. Reservations by August 10. Union members should call (775) 348-6060 ext. 101 ASAP. First come, first served.

If you want to avoid the parking hassle, you might take an RTCRide bus from downtown to the game. Driven by a Teamsters member, of course.

For those who consider football a religious experience, this game is for you. The Wolf Pack's opponent is the Incarnate Word Cardinals.

To borrow the late Al Maguire's favorite term, these guys ain't East Cupcake State. The Division 1 San Antonio Catholic school is coming off a 10-3 Southland Conference championship season. We will need all the help we can get. Football is a recognized religion in Friday Night Lights Tejas, so they've got God on their side. Twice.

Which begs the burning bush question: Will beer be available at the game? Yes. All the beer you can buy. But you must feel guilty while drinking it.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.)Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

How to live forever
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-27-2022
Updated 7-28 & 8-5-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

"In the future, every single thing we see on the Internet is going to be fake."

Thus spake a major high tech investor on the PBS Newshour last Saturday.

Early warning avatars surround us. On the smartphone application TikTok, you can make yourself dance like a cartoon or modify your body to look like JLo or The Rock. Or both. (Aargh!)

Harmless? Hardly. It means that Donald Trump can live forever. (Aargh!)

So spake the most notable futurists of our time: ABBA.

The legendary Swedish rock group has been with us for half a century in some form. "Mama Mia," a Broadway show incorporating most of their hits, is playing Tahoe this month. It was made into a Hollywood film a few years ago in which ex-James Bond Pierce Brosnan, ahem, "sings." (Aargh!) Made megabucks anyway.

ABBA's latest incarnation hits the U.S. this week. It was a smash in its London debut last May. It cost $175 million and employed Star Wars guru George Lucas' latest holographic technology.

The four singers, now in their 70s, became young again. They recorded music and moves for weeks enabling "ABBAtars" to be created using body doubles and computer animation magic. British audiences rose as one to dance and pretty much never sat down. The superannuated entertainers actually showed up at the premiere.

Great fun, eh wot? And pretty reasonably priced.

And unreasonably scary. People believe what they see. Decades ago, the late "Superman" actor Christopher Reeve, paralyzed due to an equestrian accident, made a TV commercial advocating better funding for neurological research. Therein, a virtual Reeve rises from his wheelchair and walks.

Doctors across the country were besieged with phone calls from those similarly injured: "I want the therapy Christopher Reeve got."

Much of the sick success of Donald Trump can likewise be attributed to such desperate hope which makes people vulnerable to pimps and thieves.

In 1971, KOLO TV-8 reporter Thayer Walker interviewed a local mobile home salesman who announced his major platinum find near Topaz Lake. The shyster was, of course, seeking investors. Back then, TV-8 was a CBS affiliate and local news followed the most credible man in the country, legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite.

One viewer jumped out of his chair, convinced to invest a large chunk of his savings with the glory hole hustler.

"Grandpa," warned his family, "we know that guy. He's a crook."

Gramps said they were wrong because he swore he saw Cronkite hisself conduct the interview and Uncle Walter would never have allowed anyone dishonest on his newscast. (He actually believed Cronkite had said he endorsed the project.) Alas, the power of media confusion. If it's on TV it must be true. Grandpa, of course, lost everything and the mobile home salesman moved to Gomorrah South to mine more suckers.

Multiply that by billions and you begin to see the dangers of a media-sotted society, a dys-reality wherein everything has been faked, even reality itself. How many people have you met who "know" that the 1969 moon landing was a Hollywood production? (Hollywood naturally exploited the popular urban myth and made a movie about a faked moon landing. Art imitates life.)

How about the shuck that the World Trade Center was actually blown up by Americans, not Osama's terrorists? Misplaced trust, a very human flaw, is Christmastime for crooks and dictators.

"Though we never thought that we would lose, there's no regret. If I had to do it all again, I would my friend...take a chance on me."

The ABBAtars have warned us.

DOROTHY'S JOURNEY TO OZ AND BACK. Groundbreaking Reno Municipal Court Judge Dorothy Nash Holmes has retired. Last week's front page Reno Gazette-Journal story glossed over her four years as Washoe County's first and only female district attorney (1991-94) and ignored her authorship of the 1995 grand jury report documenting how the Renown octopus stole our county hospital. (With a little help from three corrupt county commissioners.) NevadaLabor.com remains the only place on the web you may access the document.

The good ole boy network simply couldn't stand having a woman DA. One of her yayhoo deputies even got drunk one Friday night and put a bullet through the office wall. (She showed me the damage.)

Her prosecution of corruption finally did her in, succeeded by Republican Dick Gammick. Other than constantly complaining he wasn't paid highly enough, the ill-tempered Gammick's greatest achievements over the next 20 years were infamous. He refused to meet with the NAACP and dismissed slam-dunk charges against a dozen execs of the Reno Chevrolet dealership for embezzling customer factory rebates.

Dorothy's mother was longtime Nevada journalist Vickie Nash. You navigated the Yellow Brick Road very well, lady. You did your mom and all of us proud.

RENTVOLUTION.ORG. The North Las Vegas City Clerk has bounced the powerful Culinary Union's rent control initiative petition. Stay tuned. [UPDATE: NLV City Council sez no, as expected. Next stop, court, as expected.]

HUG HIGH2 RIBBON CUTTING next Tuesday, August 2, 3:00 p.m. If you attend, make sure to take in the Feemster Family Resource Center named after the late Reno-Sparks NAACP matriarch Dolores Feemster and her son, the late former Reno City Councilman Darryl Feemster, Sr. My dear friend and colleague Dolores was a fixture at the old Hug for decades where most of her children attended. She continued counseling students well into her retirement. School administrators knew that when all else failed, call mother Dolores. In that sense, she never retired all.

The new Hug is at 3530 Sullivan Lane in Sparks, north of McCarran and the Wildcreek Golf Course. Get there early. It's a narrow street. Reservations strongly recommended.

As Dolores and Darryl would advise, take care of each other and be careful out there.

Pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.)Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Nevada: Company town, corporate dumpster
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-20-2022
Updated 7-28-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

"The Lord created the world. Mankind built the cities. And the Devil thunk up the small town." — Wise old saying

Part of Silver State survival lies in learning local code.

For instance, when a pol uses the tired slogan "one of us," it means that whoever opposes him (and it's usually a him) is somekinda furriner or a prevert, probably from Las Vegas.

Same mentality applies when Carson City sneers at Reno/Sparks and when the rural 14 diss all of the above as "the big cities." Gomorrah South? That's a foreign country. Real folks don't go there.

One of the first things I learned about Nevada's Cow Counties was don't dare pretend to be one with them. You're not and never will be. Same thing with Sparks and Reno.

"Reno is very cliquey, very clannish, you've got to fit in. So wear a tie and get a haircut," my ad agency boss Bob Brown ordered when he moved me north from Las Vegas in 1971. I was aghast that Mississippi West still had whites-only hotels.

Brown, a former Las Vegas Review-Journal editor, was a buttoned down Republican conservative. My other boss was 179 degrees different. Former pro gambler Jerry May had once made a living winning money from casinos for notorious Reno mobster and Golden Hotel owner Bill Graham (not the rock promoter).

"There's nothing wrong with Reno that about 12 selected funerals can't cure," the card-counting Big Kahuna in the pink shoes told me.

I lived through those funerals only to find that the deceased were simply replaced by their kids. The downtown casino overlords made sure that no Las Vegas-style strip would ever grow up here to challenge their power. Thus the infamous "red line" surrounding downtown, beyond which unlimited gambling licenses were not granted.

Incest makes ugly. Just go look.

Another of my earliest lessons came with the realization that Nevada was actually a small town, just spread over a huge geography. Still is.

I also learned that the north has a heart where the south is often cold.

"You've got to give the town time to know you," super cool auto salesman Bert Strochsheim told me in 1971. "Treat it right and when you need it, the town will take care of you."

Another long ago lesson: The company town will forever exploit the great unwashed. Us. Nevada's "extractive" industries, gambling and mining, will enjoy extremely stingy and sometimes zero taxation while foisting upon the little folks the costs of community.

Which is why 2016 Washoe County voters were given no choice other than a regressively higher sales tax to fund new schools. The school district's citizens committee considered several options, including a hotel room tax, but wilted under the power of the overlords.

Big business extracts, exploits, exudes and execrates this High Desert Plantation. Mining has raped and pillaged the land with impunity for more than 150 years. Now comes news that the sprawling Tesla-Panasonic battery factory east of here will get state permission to further foul the air. You didn't see that on the news? Once again, you gotta translate the code.

Tesla will still be required "to maintain compliance with state and federal regulations and ambient air quality standards," according to the Orwellianly named Nevada Bureau of Environmental Protection. (Reno Gazette-Journal 7-17-2022)

They failed to mention the reason Tesla's dirty factory can slide where they could not in most other places.

Nevada air is already so clean that major polluters can build dirty plants here and remain below federal ceilings. Witness NV Energy's filthy coal-fired generator at Valmy, Humboldt County.

But the current Reno Gazette-Journal staff simply hasn't been around long enough to translate the code. So the residents of the company town cough up big corporate welfare tax breaks that are hard to swallow as we struggle to breathe.

IMMORTALITY. Last week, I nominated two of Nevada's original (1977) Pulitzer Prize winners for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame. Why editorial writers Foster Church and Norman Cardoza are not already in the Silver State's rogues gallery remains a mystery. This year's inductees will be announced at the organization's annual convention and awards banquet scheduled for September 24 in Las Vegas.

Alas, Church and Cardoza's chances of winning this fall are somewhat remote. NPA now tries to install honorees close to home. Fair enough. When my first nominee, the Kazoo-Journal's Guy Richardson, won in 2012, the honors were bestowed in Pahrump just north of LV. All five of my 2022 nominees are northerners: Church, Cardoza, David Toll of Gold Hill and Jake Highton and Don Dondero of Reno.

That doesn't mean I can't install Norm and Foster in a much more exclusive club right now. The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniators Hall of Flames has just two qualifications. Your writing had to have had max impact. And you gotta be dead.

Foster Church died in Oregon on June 1 at age 80. Cardoza, now in his nineties, still lives in Reno. So he hereby becomes the second inducted while still writing on this planet, the first being the late Tribune alumnus Prof. Highton. That brings the membership to boxcars, an even dozen including the abovementioned Bob Brown. Stay tuned.

MORTALITY. Word arrived last week that attorney and former Reno-Sparks NAACP President Jeffrey Blanck has died. Watch NevadaLabor.com for memorial service information and other details. May my friend and colleague Jeff rest in peace.

Pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands. Take care of each other and be careful out there.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.)Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

The wages of sin
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-13-2022 / Updated 7-15-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

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

"Reno is so incestuous," a reporter who became a noted lawyer once told me. The result of that longtime good-ole-boys sterility remains obvious to anyone standing under the Reno Arch today.

Into this corrupt post-WW2 mix came two entrepreneurial Italians in a very Italian town. Al Figoni legendarily ran old downtown Reno vice and kept the riff-raff out. Ex-cab driver Joe Conforte started a retail house of ill fame east of here.

Another ambitious Italian cruised the self-righteous side of reality. Bill Raggio got elected Washoe District Attorney and in the best Carrie Nation tradition, brought a crew with torches and probably pitchforks to burn Conforte's mobile home brothel to the ground. Mr. "I am not a pimp, I'm a businessman" merely set up shop again slightly farther east in tiny Storey County. The fabled Mustang Bridge Ranch was born.

Not taking anything, ahem, lying down, Conforte later tried to trap Raggio with some hookers in a Reno hotel, cameras grinding (see below), but was jailed for his trouble.

The feud between the two Italian stallions became the stuff of legend. They both made a fat living trashing each other. In the Nevada Legislature starting in 1973, Senator Raggio, R-Reno, introduced a bill just about every session to make Cow County prostitution illegal.

Insiders told me that they eventually buried the hatchet (not in each other), and occasionally enjoyed a clandestine dinner laughing at how they had prospered from their mutual con.

Conforte just could not leave well enough alone.

"Politics is just a game to him and he loves it," one of his confidantes told me. He hired pollsters so he could make smart election wagers, hedging his bets by contributing to campaigns. His accuracy was astounding and politicians lusted for the numbers. Conforte was hot copy. Did some reporters get, ahem, a little too close to the story? Jawhol.

The Little Waldorf Saloon would post Conforte's odds and betting lines. Little Wal's bet board was watched by political pros for avatars of campaign trends. Trying to affect the media spin, some candidates would bet on themselves.

Little Joe had pols of all stripes on the take, from locals to governors and senators. Everybody knew it, nobody could prove it. Cash was king and he was a kingmaker.

Wise guys knew not to take a Mustang comp from Joe — unless they wanted to star in their own porno movie.

Conforte got into boxing promotion but things soured when Argentine heavyweight contender Oscar Bonavena, rumored to have been involved with Mrs. Conforte, was shot to death by Mustang security guard Willard Ross Brymer.

That tale eventually became part of the fictionalized Hollywood film "Love Ranch" (2010). Oscar winner Joe Pesci ("Goodfellas") came out of retirement to play a Joe Conforte-ish character. Fellow gold statue honoree Dame Helen Mirren ("The Queen") performed a Sally Conforte-ish role. It was partially filmed in downtown Reno because much hadn't changed in half a century. Incest again.

The doomed Bonavena-ish character was cheekily named "Armando Bruza" as in bruiser, get it? For such an all-star cast, including Bryan Cranston, it bombed at the box office.

By 1970, Conforte's presence and power were ubiquitous. Joe and Sally's Thanksgiving turkey giveaways to the poor endeared them to many. He spread cash around to many charities and became an internationally recognized anti-hero.

As I wrote back then, "everyone loves sexy, whorehousy Nevada stories."

In 1971, Conforte wrested control of the Sparks City Council away from casino magnate John Ascuaga. Mustang freebies after council meetings became notorious. These guys were so full of themselves that one even tried to extort a Catholic parish which needed a zoning change. Exhibiting sinful chutzpah, he did it in the confessional knowing that the priest's lips were sealed.

Reno Gazette-Journal Executive Editor Warren Lerude began a campaign to "get Joe Conforte out of our community." For his efforts, Lerude and his commentary page editors won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, a first for Nevada.

"They couldn't have done it without me," Conforte quipped. Only one has been awarded since, to the Las Vegas Sun in 2009 for exposing lethal high-rise construction conditions on the Strip.

Lerude went on to teach journalism at The University of Nevada-Reno (UNR), albeit holding only a bachelor's degree. He was elected to the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame some years ago.

His fellow Pulitzer honorees, Foster Church and Norman Cardoza, were not and have not been, an outrageous omission.

Church moved on to a stellar career with The Oregonian in Portland. Cardoza, retired and in his 90s, still lives in Reno.

Last week, I woke up reminding myself to draft an HOF endorsement for David Toll, publisher of the legendary Gold Hill News and The Compleat Nevada Traveler who died earlier this year. (Barbwire Feb. 23, 2022)

Somehow, I flashed on Church and Cardoza. How come those guys aren't in the HOF? I have now nominated both.

A successful Barbwire nominee, Nevada's greatest reporter and Tribune alumnus Dennis Myers, once commented on my ongoing campaign for photographer Don Dondero.

"Don just didn't get nominated soon enough after his death," Dennis noted. Indeed. Don died in 2003 but was not put in the running until I got into this game about 10 years ago.

Well, Foster Church just took care of that roadblock. He died in Oregon on June 1 at age 80. Perhaps he sent me a long distance message from the big newsroom in the sky.

Sorry you didn't live to see it, old man. Your colleagues, friends and family will work to honor your legacy and that of Norm Cardoza.

This incredible injustice must be remedied. And soon. Otherwise, that's just bad journalism.
Pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands. Take care of each other and be careful out there.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.)Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Poison Annie's Revenge Executed
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-6-2022 / Updated 7-7-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

The late great Walt Kelly got it right in 1971. Did you attend the first Earth Day in 1970? Thank you, Mr. Kelly and Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wisconsin.

 

TRUE OR FALSE?

If you didn't answer false to all three, you may return to Fox News.

Regular Barbwire readers know that when I make a mistake, I eat crow with lots of mustard. However, when proven right, I crow. Loudly. Today, I soar while some become sore. Evermore.

In this column five years ago, I shamelessly projected that a newly-minted U.S. Supreme Court justice would become his mother's revenge on the federal agency she once headed and tried to destroy. I drew serious fire from Democrats and Republicans alike. Here is the Barbwire of February 7, 2017 (1):

"If you want to attack Anne Gorsuch Burford, the first woman appointed as the head of the EPA, now deceased, and impute her alleged sins to her son, a distinguished jurist of impeccable reputation, then you are free to do so. But if you do, there are those who might be tempted to ask you 'Sir, at long last, have you no sense of decency?' "

One of my correspondents employed the classic gimlet which attorney Joseph Welch used as a scalpel to torpedo the credibility of Sen. Pat McCarran's (D-Nev.) best bud, Sen. Joe "Commies Under Every Bed" McCarthy, R-Wisconsin.

Such kneejerk response misses my point: With the nomination of Poison Annie's progeny Judge Neil Gorsuch, Tsar Donaldov Vladimirovitch and Rasputin Breitbartsky (Steve Bannon) have deftly engineered an inside triple play, a three-layered insult to environmentalism, a joke which all moonhowlers will immediately understand.

In 1981, King Ronnie the Vague appointed Anne Gorsuch Burford to head the Environmental Protection Agency, an institution she reviled.

The Tsar's (2017) EPA nominee, oil patch politician Scott Pruitt, is cut from the same ideological cloth and likewise assigned to destroy.

Poison Annie did her best to dismantle the EPA and gloried in the destruction and carnage even as she walked out the door in disgrace. She was the first cabinet minister ever cited for contempt of Congress and resigned after Reagan threw her under the bus.

Her defense was the ancient war crime cop-out: I was just following orders.

The Reaganauts ordered her not to comply with congressional subpoenas about more than $1 billion of Toxic Waste Superfund mismanagement.

When the White House abandoned its executive privilege claims, she walked after just 22 months on the job. Her chief aide, Rita Lavelle, went to jail for perjury.

The nomination of Poison Annie's kid is a multi-layered insult to tree huggers without explicitly stating it, thus eliminating the risk of righteous (but nonetheless off the mark) reactions such as stated by my learned legal correspondent, above.

Rasputin is truly an evil genius.

When the Trumpista Court finally gutted the EPA last week, my warning of Poison Annie's revenge came terribly true by a vote of six to three.

Gorsuch2 wrote a "full-throated" 19-page concurrence (NY Times 7-1-2022) with Chief Justice Roberts' execution order. The CJ hung his hat on the Clean Air Act's lack of "particular clarity." Hmmm...where have I heard that one before. Oh yeah — President Nixon's lawyers, fighting congressional Watergate subpoenas, alleged "lack of specificity." (Try to say that fast 10 times as Daffy Duck. Despicable.)

Roberts was joined by fisherman/Justice Samuel Alito, who two weeks ago neither rowed nor waded. He just destroyed the river.

According to these guys, the EPA can't even order paper clips without a formal act of Congress signed by the president and published in the Federal Register.

In her kickass dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote "that the statute at issue in the case had given the agency ample authority...The Clean Air Act was major legislation designed to deal with a major public policy issue," she stated.

"Congress knows what it doesn't and can't know when it drafts a statute and Congress therefore gives an expert agency the power to address issues — even significant ones — as and when they arise...

"This is not the attorney general regulating medical care or even the CDC regulating landlord-tenant relations. It is E.P.A. (that's the Environmental Protection Agency, in case the majority forgot) acting to address the greatest environmental challenge of our time."

Mommy thus lectured the errant children who nonetheless declared gang warfare against the 21st Century.

As I have noted many times, today's retro Supremes practice homotextuality. ("Rise of the Homotextuals," Barbwire 2-9-2022) It's a shuck fabricated to overturn Roe v. Wade and popularized by the late Antonino Scalia and his corrupt sidekick, Clarence the Morally Obtuse. (Barbwire 9-15-1991)

Homotextual judicial activism is lazy person's justice, dictionary dictation. Focus on the words of the Constitution as written in the 18th Century and look for definitions from that time. If not there, it won't fly. (Somebody find me the word "airplane" from 1789. No? Thus crash the FAA, air traffic control and the US Air Force.)

"The current court is textualist when being so suits it," Kagan wrote. "When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the 'major questions doctrine' magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards."

In other words, the toxic sextet makes it up as they go.

The destruction of the EPA thus comes down to the same cross-cutting cause of the court's cancer as stated by longtime Supreme Court journalist Linda Greenhouse. Of Alito's tortured, tortuous and twisted tracheal tweaking of Roe, she simply said "they did it because they could. It was as simple as that."

Welcome back to the Gilded Age of 1896 when robber barons ran wild, workers and women had no rights and black people were "separate but equal." Racial segregation was obviously constitutional according to 19th Century Supremes who might well admire the jurisprudence of today's Saudi princes.

The sickening six are flush with power. Beware: Indoor plumbing's not in the Constitution.

Fight back any way you can every day.

Pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands. Take care of each other and be careful out there.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.)Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)

Web xtras and smoking guns —>

1. UNPUBLISHED (UNTIL NOW) NOTES FROM THE 2-7-2017 BARBWIRE:

The Trump EPA nominee is Poison Annie Part Deux and the cherry on this toxic sundae is Judge Gorsuch, a devotee of that disgrace to Italian-Americans, Antonino Scalia.

I never cottoned to the late justice because he was lazy. His buzzword concept of "originalism," when stripped of ornaments, is basically jurisprudence by dictionary. To find out what the Constitution means, concentrate only on the meaning of the words therein. All else is irrelevant. Since the Constitution does not mention it, is the U.S. Air Force thus illegal?

Does Mr. Justice-designate Gorsuch hold grudges? His mother's resignation "clearly echoed in his work," according to last Sunday's New York Times.

"In preparing a moot court brief at Harvard on workplace safety, he tried to add material concerning the E.P.A. that did not fit, recalled a classmate, Ellen M. Bublick, who is now a law professor at the University of Arizona," the Times reported. (Sunday 5 Feb. 2017)

At Columbia University, he "minimized the Iran-contra affair and dismissed a shantytown built on campus to protest South African apartheid," the Times noted.

I wonder if he called mom to see if the shantytown could be attacked as an environmental hazard.

2. WHERE CREDIT IS DUE DEPT. I stole the appellation "Poison Annie" from the late, great Tribune columnist and talk radio legend Travus T. Hipp, whom I assume would approve such Gorsuch usage were he still available to grant it.

___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

The Fall of Camelot
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-29-2022 / Updated 6-29-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

"At your highest moment, be careful. That's when the devil comes for you." — Denzel Washington

Fight against white elephants
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-22-202
Updated 6-23 & 6-27-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

KEEP ON ROLLIN'. Teamsters locals across the country are representing cannabis workers. I have suggested that they market union-made hemp t-shirts by grabbing the hashtag #hashtogs.

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$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

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem
"The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24
By Michael Cooper / The New York Times 1-23-2019

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Copyright © 1982-2022 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 53-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 a longtime member 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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