BARBWIRE by ANDREW BARBANO Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames

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Photo: Debra Reid, Sparks Tribune

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 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

Who will answer?
Part 1
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 3-29-2023 / Updated 5-8-2024

From the canyons of the mind
We wander on and stumble blindly
Through the often tangled maze
Of starless nights and sunless days
While asking for some kind of clue
Or road to lead us to the truth
But who will answer?*

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 Barbwire nominee Dennis Myers elected to NPA Hall of Fame Support Don Dondero and Jake Highton and David Toll and Foster Church and Norman Cardoza next. Send endorsements Eee-yo-leven! Barbwire wins 11th Nevada Press Association award GOLD 2017-18 2018 First-Place Winners From the depths of despair to the den of iniquity & holy of holies "Excellent work. These are some of the most moving columns I've read." — NPA contest judge/9-29-2018 The Grasshopper and the Dragonfly 9-6-2017 Kicked off the Ledge 4-18-2017 NATIONAL NEWS FIRST-BREAK Back to the Future in Mississippi West Nevada 10-18-2017 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 More statewide and national award winners We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series 1997 Pulitzer Prize entries Barbwire.TV: 15-year overnight success Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008 The Barbwire's Greatest Hits BEATING LUSH RAMBO AT HIS OWN GAME: Highlights from radio days mp3 file 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 Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential TOP SECRET— HushHush!

Might we in this fortress nation finally be feeling a twinge of the pain our peers suffer all across our little blue marble spaceship? All the Plagues of Job and Ramses, dripping with the red harvest of the Seven Deadly Sins, indeed seem simultaneously upon us.

Artists, scientists, priests, poets and occasional pols have long composed various verses of the same song.

The great Thornton Wilder tried his best to pose the great question, winning his first of three Pulitzers for his 1927 novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." Set in 1714 Peru, five seemingly unrelated lives come together and to conclusion on a failed rope bridge high over an Andean canyon. A priest investigates their lives looking for commonality and is burned at the stake for questioning God's will.

The Judeo-Christian tradition tells us that our God is all-powerful and all-knowing. So if the master of the universe sees and knows all, why does She allow Her own creations to wallow in suffering? The greatest poet writing in English, Emily Dickinson, asked "was it not He (Jesus) who suffered?" So why should I, she implicitly implored.

M*A*S*H writer Larry Gelbart's 1977 film "Oh, God!" directed by Carl Reiner poses the great questions with instructively incisive humor. John Denver's character dares to ask God (George Burns) why He permits so much sorrow.

"I don't control what happens. What happens happens," says the Big Guy, leaving Denver and the audience aghast.

"I gave you great seeds and everything still works," God concludes, adding that His gift of our once-balanced world comes with great responsibility.

"Try making a mackerel from scratch."

Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer was once asked another version of the great conundrum while lecturing to students.

"Do you believe in predestination or free will?" queried some brash freshman.

Wizened Isaac did not miss a beat. "You must believe in free will. You have no choice." Like Gelbart's magnum opus, a great moral lesson cloaked in comedy.

Do we choose to live the lives we will live before we live them? Do we preview the consequences of the free will we shall exercise? What's the reward for choosing the difficult?

Scientists have recently wondered if perhaps our seemingly massive universe might just be one big computer simulation in a bell jar on a shelf in that "helluva good universe next door" which poet e.e. cummings suggested we visit.

The dividing line between genius and insanity is thin. Van Gogh killed only himself. Theodore Kaczynski, aka The Unabomber, was a documented off-the-charts genius who turned his monomaniacal talents to hand-making perfect and perfectly untraceable letter bombs to smite his imagined enemies.

In the rooms of dark and shades
The scent of sandalwood pervades
The colored thoughts in muddled heads
Reclining in the rumpled beds
Of unmade dreams that can't come true
When we ask what we should do
Who, who will answer?*

And so we come to that twisted soul who took six lives at the loss of her own in Nashville this week. Authorities said she left a...manifesto. It may not help us understand the troubled mind of a citizen of one of our most disfavored classes, the lowest of the lowly, the transgendered.

Is our hope in walnut shells
Worn 'round the neck with temple bells
Or deep within some cloistered walls
Where hooded figures pray in halls?
Or crumbled books on dusty shelves
Or in our stars, or in ourselves
Who will answer?

The Unabomber's manifesto, "Industrial Society and Its Future", was reluctantly published by The New York Times and Washington Post as law enforcement's final attempt to locate a madman who lived so far off the grid that he even hand-made the wooden screws that held his devices together. His family recognized some of the scribblings.

Can the meanderings of the young Tennessee murderess provide any surcease from sorrow for all afflicted, including an increasingly desensitized nation?

The great moralist George Carlin perfectly described our defenses. World War One's "shell shock" mellowed to become "combat fatigue," then "traumatic stress syndrome" and finally "post-traumatic stress disorder," a bloodless euphemism for hot wet fear in the air. How numb can we become?

Analyzing Kaczynski's life provides clues about how he morphed from mathematical genius to mad bomber. And what of victims of bombs and guns? Were they all — and are we all — just confused fellow travelers on that frail bridge at San Luis Rey?

The great folk singer Pete Seeger answered the great question with yet another: "When will they ever learn?"

George Carlin often closed his shows admonishing us to "take care of each other."

Simple as that.

If the soul is darkened
By a fear it cannot name
If the mind is baffled
When the rules don't fit the game
Who will answer? Who will answer?
Who will answer?
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

"WHO WILL ANSWER" by mellow baritone Ed Ames was a monster hit on the major charts in 1967.

Mr. Ames was a regular headliner at the Sparks Nugget. I had the honor of sitting with him and singer/actress Connie Stevens at the Multiple Sclerosis Society Governor's Barbecue back in the 1970s. He stunned the crowd on the lawn of Carson City's executive mansion with an a capella performance of "Try to Remember."

Wikipedia reports that "Billboard magazine named 'Who Will Answer' its 'Record of the Week', praised the topical lyrics and the unusual musical combination of "Gregorian-like chant ... Johann Sebastian Bach and ... hard rock."

The printed word cannot do justice to a work of art that should be sung by a man alone in a cathedral — or a sepulchre. Get it, listen, share.

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for the children Palestine Ohio, Nashville Tenn., Ukraine and 63 other war-torn lands.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
__________________
*These stanzas were spoken by Ames with echo effects as though questioning God in an empty church.

¡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 54-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

 

 

Who will answer?
Part 2
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 11-22-2023

Even gambling execs were living in tents by the river in late 1970s. (I filmed them.)

Growth spurred by the openings of the MGM Grand (now Grand Sierra) and five other new hotels made the area burst at the seams. Speculators from California were driving around with suitcases full of cash looking to snap up properties at any price knowing they could make big bucks on a quick flip.

I knew a humble laundromat owner who quoted what he considered an outrageous and ridiculously high price for his business and the traveling realtor said yes without quibbling. Anything just to get all the laundromat's sewer fixture units.

An enlightened conservative old friend recently said he totally disagrees with me about rent control. We have nothing to disagree about, I responded. The Reno City Council actually passed rent control in 1978, quickly chickened out and repealed it. At least they caused Barbara Bennett to get elected mayor. (Barbwire July 17, 2019)

An elongated version of that boom has struck again, made worse by the pandemic and Wall Street hedge funds buying properties to turn into ripoff rentals. Mix in the Federal Reserve putting lots of people out of work thru interest rate hikes which kill new construction, and today is arguably worse. I was aghast to learn that the taxpayer-funded "temporary shelter" at the former spaghetti bowl softball fields now houses almost 2,000 souls.

Normally, our free enterprise system can work well but the MGM-LasVegas explosion threw a monkey wrench into an orderly market. That was short term. Today, rapid expansion is open-ended and affordable housing is once again tents on the river. I even helped the Guardian of London/UK put together a story that went worldwide four years ago about the plight of local "motel seniors." Many of those motels are now lightly-taxed vacant lots.

Rent control can't possibly hurt low cost housing construction because there is precious little of it without controls.

Only progressive taxation and cutback of gluttonous corporate welfare tax abatements offer hope. Alas and alack, both are proven Nevada pipedreams.

I have pretty much given up on solutions. I said decades ago that development is going to pave over this pretty little valley no matter what, so get yours while the getting's good so you can afford to move elsewhere when you need to do so. If you are upper-middle income and above, you will do fine. If you have kids and don't make much, go somewhere else rather than this Valley of Lost Causes, besotted with greed, racism and exploitation.

I have also asserted for years that the only macro remedy for our tribal, primitive, overly violent world lies with a majority of women coming to power. Not the battle-ax version ala Maggie Thatcher and Barbara Nukanovich, women who had to prove they were more warlike than any man; but rather women not possessed of male warrior egos and thus not so easily corrupted.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., only categorizes the obvious when she says that "capitalism without regulation is tyranny." Capitalism has spawned an increasingly unequal society where darlings of the moonhowler right like Congresscritter Marjorie Taylor Scream, R-Confederacy, openly advocate secession and treason with impunity.

The seeds of fascism were planted more than 40 years ago with the still ongoing assault against public education.

As my best history professor often quoted, "democracy without education becomes tyranny without limitation." Benighted minds beget dark futures.

Alas, 'twas ever thus a'movin' west. [[MORE AT Rentvolution.org>

TOXIC TURF WARS. An enlightened conservative friend suggested starting a non-profit public interest group to ban cancer-causing synthetic field turf. (Barbwire 11-24-2015 and forward)

We first need to build a fire under parents about this glaring and imminent danger to their kids. That has to start with a lawmaker coming forward right now to light the flame. At least the Barbwire is not any longer alone now that the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Guardian have jumped in. I sent last week's indictment to several lawmakers. We can make it a campaign issue next year. Stay tuned to ConsumerCoalitionv.org/

BETTER FOLKS THAN ME are doing good things. Railroad Workers United reports that employees want public ownership of the robber barons' rape and pillage legacies. After Palestine, Ohio, can it get any worse?...Unlike more enlightened states, backwater Nevada does not mandate automatic gas line shutoff valves in case of earthquake (or train derailment). I live about two miles from the epicenter of a 4.8 quake. I can pay $350 to $500 to install my own hardware, which provides cold comfort knowing my neighbors will still sit on firecrackers.

The Annual Nevada Women's March forms at the downtown Reno federal courthouse, Liberty and S. Virginia at 12:30 p.m this Saturday. Participants will trek to the "Believe" sculpture at Reno City Hall for death defyin' speechifyin'. A community action fair is scheduled afterward from 2:30 to 4:00 at the nearby downtown library, Center and Liberty.

Sen. Skip Daly, D-Sparks, has introduced Senate Bill 274 to fix the loophole that allows state and local governments to renege on their obligations to pay for the care of injured police, firefighters and other first responders.

Permanently maimed Washoe Sheriff's Deputy Kim Frankel is leading the charge so that others won't suffer as she has. Sheriff Darin Balaam has abdicated his responsibility by not even making a phone call to help her. She was permanently crippled when prompt care would have returned Nevada's version of Law & Order's Olivia Benson to special victims duty.

Go to the NevadaLabor.com expanded edition of this column for a link to submit your support or you may e-mail it to me. This is important.

UPDATE: The State Senate Commerce and Labor Committee will hear the bill on Wednesday, March 29. Meeting room doors open at 8:00 a.m. PDT.

CESAR CHAVEZ ABIDES. His United Farm Workers Union in California is trying to rebound after years of erosion in a difficult environment. I was heartened to learn that Nevada Legal Services is actively working on behalf of Lyon County laborers. On March 30, an awareness event will be held at the Yerington Theater from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. For info, contact Lorena Castaneda at the Farmworker Law Project (775) 284-3491 Ext. 230, <lcastaneda@nevadalegalservices.org>

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for the children Palestine, Ohio, Ukraine and 63 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 54-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH. Nevada is a great place to dwell if you don't have to breathe.

As my old football coach once noted, breathing is voluntary. Today's fearless leaders are like my coach. Only worse.

FOWL BALL. That fluttery squawking you hear is Sparks City Hall playing chicken with your kids' lives. The chickens are now coming home to roost.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Last week, I received uncomfortable congratulations by subscribers from Oregon to Massachusetts for being eight years ahead of the curve warning of brain damage and cancer at places like Sparks' Golden Eagle Park.

The biggies have finally joined the lonely Sparks Tribune in sounding the alarm about crumb rubber artificial turf.

The scandal finally gained traction after the Guardian of London/UK expanded on an investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Six Philadelphia Phillies baseball stars have died young on the same toxic turf I've been screaming about since 2015. The NFL finally banned toxic turf last year while Nevada governments and schools bought more.

Company brushing artificial turf at Golden Eagle park [Photo: John Byrne] Sparks Tribune 11-10-2015 Read much more about tire turf

The plastic blades of imitation grass are kept apart by ground-up used tires besotted with brain-damaging and cancer-causing chemicals.

See for yourself. Tribune photographer John Byrne's 2015 killer photo [[<— SEE LEFT]] of a turf brusher at Golden Eagle is sickening. Despite the rubber crumbs, the carpet must frequently get fluffed because it mats. Byrne's photo shows some poor lout driving a thing that looks like a big lawnmower. A miasma of black dust surrounds the maskless man.

The benzene and lead in tires is especially dangerous to children and teens.

"Recycled tires can contain heavy metals, benzene, volatile organic compounds and other carcinogens, and a growing number of US municipalities and states have banned or proposed banning them...(they) are linked to cancer, liver problems, thyroid issues, birth defects, kidney disease, decreased immunity and other serious health problems," the Guardian reported.

Sparks brags that Golden Eagle has the largest expanse of the stuff in North America, more than 1.4 million square feet. Another public relations coup for the city. We are now competitive with the likes of Love Canal New York, Flint Michigan and Palestine Ohio.

This stuff is so poisonous that it's illegal to dispose of it in a landfill.

The city has invested over $30 million in Golden Eagle and has bragged about it being a fantastic tourism and revenue producer. But at what true cost?

I have flat out warned parents not to let their kids play there. City hall has sat shiva.

In September 2015, Yale University researchers released a report revealing nearly 100 chemicals in the 14 turf samples they analyzed. The study also revealed 11 carcinogens, as well as 20 known skin irritants.

“'I knew there were heavy metals in them but I never expected 96 chemicals,” said Nancy Alderman, president of Environment and Human Health, Inc., a nonprofit organization that commissioned the Yale study.
I told my Massachusetts reader that I fear continued indifference.

All such stories carry the same asterisk: Cause and effect for cancer clusters is almost impossible to prove in court so the bad guys get away every time. That happened with the Fallon, Nevada, cancer cluster of 25 years ago.

Probable cause was a chemical stew: a tool manufacturing plant called Kennametal which spews tungsten toxics into the air; massive amounts of farm pesticides sprayed everywhere in the dust of that valley; and the jet exhausts and fuel spills at the Naval Air Station Fallon Top Gun school. No single source could be 100 percent confirmed, so the guilty all walked away leaving 20 kids dead.

But now our national religion, sports, has been impacted.

Ex-Phillies pitcher David West succumbed last May joining some of the greatest stars of the game in their day: Ken Brett (2003), Tug McGraw (2004), John Vukovich (2007), Johnny Oates (2004) and Darren Daulton (2017) have all died from brain cancer.

The Inquirer reported that the rate of brain cancer among former Phillies who played at Veterans Stadium from 1971-2003 “is about three times the average rate among adult men." Sounds like Fallon.

Crumb rubber turf infects just about every high school athletic field in the region, including Sparks' Reed High, the Jan Evans juvenile center and UNR's Mackay Stadium, Wolf Pack and Peccole parks. When former UNR baseball player Don Weir, Jr., donated big bucks to his alma mater, I asked the UNR media machine if they were planning to resurface the fields with crumb rubber. I'm still awaiting an answer lo, these many years later.

Before the plague, I drove up to McQueen High to inspect crumb rubber. I talked to several shamefaced coaches who knew of the dangers but could not or did not dare voice their opinions. I wonder how many of the ballplayers I saw are now afflicted.

The Nevada Legislature is now in session and should immediately move to ban crumb rubber turf. Is any lawmaker willing to fight an archaic system which dictates "our session is only 120 days every two years. We never have time to do much more than copy other states."

I repeat: Don't let your kids play on artificial turf. PLEASE.

FAIR WARNING: NEVADA'S KILLER HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING. SOON: The Dayton, Nev., wooden power pole pickling plant gets an EPA reprieve; Nevada doctors try instant replay of their 2004 shuck to keep themselves immune from malpractice lawsuits; why Nevada doesn't care if your house blows up in an earthquake; and only God can help our cops and first responders injured on the job because the system won't.

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for the children Palestine, Ohio, Ukraine and 63 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 54-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Gun—>

Why the science is clear that masks work
By Zeynep Tufecki / The New York Times / 3-10-2023

We opened for business this week in full swagger and strut.

CLINGING TO THE LEDGE: On Monday evening, Gomorrah South Assemblymember Venicia Considine, D-Clark, hosted a preview showing of "Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty."

INFO: Assemblymember Venicia Considine, D-Clark Seating is limited, RSVP recommended Chris.Molnar@asm.state.nv.us RSVP is not required to attend. (775) 684-8801

Silver State civil rights legend Ruby Duncan, now 90, twice organized thousands to march down the Las Vegas Strip to push state government to do something about poverty in the apartheid Nevada of yesteryear. They paralyzed business and received national attention. Thereafter, Nevada kids started eating better.

Duncan had been fired as a hotel maid in 1964 for organizing her fellow workers to protest against brutal working conditions and low wages.

In 1971, opening a decade when Nevada would know unprecedented prosperity while being showered with federal money, the state decided little kids should starve (like congressional Republicans today).
Redoubtable Ruby said no, took it to the streets and won. She has a Las Vegas school named after her.

The highly honored film premieres on PBS March 20. Watch local listings and the Barbwire. Links and references at NevadaLabor.com/

"The Westside Slugger," Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame journalist John L. Smith's biography of the late great State Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, contains extensive chronicles of the state's turbulently racist adolescence. We still haven't grown up.

DINA NEAL CARRIES FORWARD. Sen. Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, represents her dad's former legislative district. Last week, she rightly questioned Nevada's huge new corporate welfare tax giveaway to Tesla and its duplicitous boss, Elon Musk

Trashing the secret negotiations to give away $330 million to the supporter of racist "Dilbert" cartoonist Scott Adams, Neal said that such skulduggery "shouldn't protect large corporations and prevent the legislature from understanding the full impact of taxes that would be abated to make an economic development deal...It is time for the legislature to re-examine the delegation of authority for tax abatements" (to state bureaucrats).

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN. When Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval cut the original billion-plus deal with Musk, both promised that Tesla would hire local workers at decent wages. Nevada's biggest welfare queen soon broke his word, importing low-wage employees and generating serious union problems at the Storey County sprawl. There will likewise be no area-standard wage requirements on the new deal.

UNINTENTIONAL SEXY SELF-SATIRE DEPT. Last week, veteran Nevada journalist Dana Gentry published a piece at Hugh Jackson's Nevada Current website which was picked up in last Sunday's Reno Gazette-Journal. It once again displayed Nevada's hypocritical contradiction banning sex work in its major counties while allowing the (rural) Cow Counties to peddle flesh.

This distinction without a difference has long facilitated all facets of a thriving sex trade, from abject slavery to teen high roller hookers. It also leads to periodic spurts of political righteousness.

Thus it was last week when our lawmakers reviewed proposals to get tough. Penalties for buying sex would now cost attempted customers $800 instead of $400 in Sparks, Reno and Gomorrah South.

Assemblymember Shondra Summers Armstrong, D-LV, warned "We have the Super Bowl coming next year to Las Vegas and we have a thing which I hate -- 'Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas', she said, referencing Las Vegas' signature ad campaign," Ms. Gentry reported.

"That to me is an invitation that people believe that they can come to our town, abuse our girls, bring other people in, abuse them and it's cool," Armstrong added.

Well, yeah.

A representative of the R&R Partners ad agency decried trafficking in underage girls. Methinks they protesteth too much.

R&R was founded by longtime Republican operative Sig Rogich, the father of Nevada term limits. (Barbwire 2-22-2023). R&R originated and still makes tons of money on its "Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" media campaign.

UNINTENTIONAL IRONY DEPT. Eminent journalist Gentry is the daughter of legendary casino boss Ash Resnick who ran Caesars Palace gambling back in the wiseguy days. I'm sure he met Ruby Duncan.

INTENTIONAL HYPOCRISY DEPT. Many major hotel-casino statewide have long employed in-house hookers. When I lived in LV, I would sometimes go to shows at Caesars. I became curious about frequent pages over the casino public address system for "Princess Fatima." I asked a bartender about it. He said it was a call for a cigarette girl to come to the casino pit.

When I later told a casino owner's wife that story, she looked at me as though I was a virgin choir boy.

"It's a call for any cocktail waitress who wants to take the next high roller trick, report to the pit."

Of course, few hardworking cocktail servers were such multi-taskers but I have interviewed former painted ladies who practiced the in-house trade both north and south. As long as Nevada is ruled by the "extractive" vices of gambling and mining, there will only be cosmetic sex trade busts for public relations purposes here on the High Desert Plantation.

ANOTHER PUBLIC RELATIONS COUP FOR NEVADA. Washoe County's for-profit superspreader mass transit system has spread our infamy all the way to France.

Paris-based Mediapart just published a story about the depredations of Keolis Transit. Regular Barbwire readers know that the worldwide outfit is partially owned and subsidized by the French government.

The three 2021 Teamsters Local 533 Hat Trick strikes in these parts are prominently featured, along with a photo of an RTCRide bus. Mediapart reported that Keolis just got fired in Gomorrah South, losing a bid to renew its Clark County contract. Despite its usual bait-and-switch low-bid hustle, Keolis lost to the high bidder! (Barbwire 2-22-2023)

Local 533 President Gary Watson told Mediapart about this area suffering like so many others from Keolis abuse of its workers and constant attempts to bust unions. As I've reported several times, if striking union members in Virginia come to Reno-Sparks to picket, local Teamsters won't cross. (See NevadaLabor.com)

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for the children Palestine, Ohio, Ukraine and 63 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 54-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Gun—>

Why the science is clear that masks work
By Zeynep Tufecki / The New York Times / 3-10-2023

NEWS ITEM: Last week, the Washoe County Health District and Truckee Meadows Tomorrow co-sponsored a well-attended meeting about community health needs.NO ONE, not even vulnerable senior citizens, wore a mask.

Such is America today, partying all the way toward mass extinction. The Terminator and his microscopic minions prosper within a world at war with itself.

As the old saying goes, there ain't no cure for stupid. Wise persons are supposed to know when they are fighting a losing battle. Nonetheless, some of us unwise irrepressibles press on regardless.

So let us flash forward perhaps 25,000 spins around the sun from now. Assume that a version of our species survives and a student of socio-anthropology decides to study our times.

Her name is U235. She has become sensitized to our almost intentionally forgotten primitive era almost by accident. On break from undersea AquaTerra Multiversity, she has traveled to one of the few remaining spits of land on an oceanic planet no longer called Earth save by historians. Understandable, as there is almost no earth left on Earth.

Emerging from underwater after a 20-minute 250-mile swim from her dormitory, she becomes enthralled at the rare sensation of sand under her lower appendages. Because most of the planet's surviving hominids have long ago returned to their aquatic roots, walking has become rare and increasingly clumsy — almost seal-like as generations have adapted to a completely liquid world. A few experimental children are even showing signs of developing gills millennia after they became vestigial as hominids evolved onto land.

Increasingly enjoying the feel of walking on what are now commonly called flippers, U235 stumbles across long-abandoned ruins on one of the few unsubmerged places on the planet. Using her shocking blue cranial antennae, her head senses something remarkable in a recessed area under a volcanic rock overhang.

Slowly, she ambles toward the outlines of an ancient cave. Entering the small opening, she notices a heavy cylindrical object of unknown composition, as tall as she is. She will eventually be able to translate the ancient writing baked into what turns out to be a very resilient ceramic-composite shell.

Presenting her findings to her ATM colleagues, U235 notes that "whoever designed that vessel was very wise. Metals of that time would never have lasted nearly so long. The ancient writing on that canister curiously said 'Nevada Cookie Jar,' " she excitedly reports.

"The other embellishments thereon were depictions of long-extinct vegetable species called flowers. When our master laboratory carefully machined the object open, I was ready with drawings of what were called cookies. None appeared therein. The labeling apparently reflected an obsolete custom common among ancient tribes called 'sarcasm.'

"Most remarkable therein was a swatch of amazingly well preserved vegetable matter with symbols prominently displayed thereon. The fragile finding was derived from a long-extinct lower life form called 'trees.' It took networking the finest brains at the multiversity with our dominant artificial intelligence capacity to determine the nature of the vegetable matter. It was called 'newspaper,' " U235 announced triumphantly.

"It dates from the early 21st Century," she wide-eyedly continued, antennae crackling electric blue with enthusiasm.

"This discovery at last pinpoints the earliest days of the devolution of what was once the dominant species. The erosion resulted in development of the hybrid carbon-silicon synthetic life forms dominant today.

"The ancient carbon-based life forms made survival impossible through the most shameless and self-destructive use of the resources of what had long been a remarkably resilient small planet. Constant attack on what had been a well-balanced and productive environment resulted in dominance by viruses and bacteria," U235 noted.

"Microbial ascension was enabled when hominids decided that the plagues of the early 21st Century were not worth addressing despite constant emergence and evolution of new threats. Hominids instead shunted their efforts toward pirating resources from other tribes, killing millions in the process.

"Demagogic leaders promised that the best days were yet to come and that mass plagues, die-offs and intentional mass murder were merely transitional requirements and nothing to worry about.

"Common safety measures fell by the wayside. Microbes thrived as humans increasingly died by participation in a sport entailing the aiming of devices called automobiles toward each other at high speed. Dangers were further exacerbated as powerful primitive cults emerged demanding worship of projectile propulsion systems. Large such devices were called 'cars' or 'missiles," others were termed 'guns.'

"With most hominids addicted to projectile propulsion, the species began to die out until what had evolved into today's artificial intelligence-based government subsumed and re-purposed them."

U235's findings were solemnly received. Ancient customs like applause or complimentary language were frowned upon. Emotion and memory were no longer favored traits and had fallen into disuse.

"I thus propose that this department of AquaTerra Multiversity undertake long term study of how these self-destructive impulses nearly destroyed all life forms on the planet so that it may never happen again," she stated.

"Now, please excuse me. I need to rush to the Desert Research Institute reproduction laboratory to review the progress of the synthesis drones who are tasked with composing my new carbon-silicon daughter."

It can't happen here, right? Right?

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for the children Palestine, Ohio, Ukraine and 63 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 54-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

The Nevada Legislature has started its retro-19th Century, every-other-year scramble to adjourn with minimal damage to the body politick.

This year, the lineup is stocked with starry-eyed newbies proposing windmills of laws worthy of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. It's all a hangover of President Ronald the Vague's fabled and fatuous pronouncement that "government is the problem."

Nevada Reaganauts pushed a lot of "reforms" to damage government as badly as possible. Even some otherwise intelligent Democrats voted to limit legislative sessions to four months every two years in addition to other strictures.

The Republican Party backed a constitutional amendment imposing political term limits. Critics noted that once experienced dinosaurs had been expunged, lobbyists would be more powerful than ever. They don't suffer from term limits.

Most lobbyists serve a very valuable function. They are experts on their issues and provide important information to legislators and staffers in the shaping of the law. But term limits arguably tilt the playing field in favor of big money which can afford the staff, time and money to outgun unpaid private citizens.

Nevada voters cemented term limits into the state constitution in 1996. The GOP's real purpose, of course, lay in the usual: power.

Most of the time since WW2, Democrats have dominated the state legislature largely due to the growth of Gomorrah South. The membership has always turned over every two years but some lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, had careers that were decades-long. There is something to be said for the value of experience.

Conservative money interests funded the campaign to place term limits on the ballot. As usual, the issue first ended up in the Nevada Supreme Court which cut the baby in half. Instead of one term limit amendment, the blackrobes imposed two.

The first, which passed, established term limits for state and local legislative and executive offices. The second, imposed by the court, applied only to the judiciary. It failed and Nevada's judges were permanently spared the embarrassment of forced retirement save at the polls, which rarely happens. Judicial races are usually very low profile and most incumbents run unopposed.

The independent judiciary independently thus awarded itself job security.

In Washoe County, term limits have just resulted in lots of new faces on elective bodies. Same with the legislature.

CLINGING TO THE LEDGE. One Carson City freshman (are we supposed to say freshpersons now?) wants a state lottery to fund mental health care, a laudable goal. Noting the success of the California state lottery which began in mid-1980s, the gambling-industrial complex got lotteries banned on this side of the state line.

As an alternative, the casino overlords established the Megabucks progressive slot machine program, whereby one-armed bandits all over the state would be electronically linked to offer a very handsome payday for one lucky winner. It apparently failed. Witness the long lines of Nevadans traveling to play the national lottery in California.

Earmarking funds for a worthy cause seems noble. Alas, reality has proven otherwise. California lottery proceeds were earmarked for education, an attempted remedy for the destruction wrought by Ronald Reagan's two terms as governor followed by the Proposition 13 permanent property tax cuts in 1978.

The California legislature indeed devoted all lottery proceeds to education. And deducted the same amount to fund other budgets so the net effect for schools was zero. I guarantee gambling lobbyists will bring up that history if the newbie lottery bill even gets a hearing.

Nevada's schools will remain underfunded because the gambling and mining industries want it that way. In 2016, Washoe County voters were presented a punitive and regressive sales tax increase versus nothing to fund new schools and maintain old ones. Education "activists" thus carefully avoided pissing off the gamblers. It worked, so a people like a low-wage Sparks Nugget dishwasher or fixed-income seniors take the worst hit.

The gross gaming tax on the largest, most profitable casinos has not been raised since 2003 and even then, the hike was small. The 1931 deal to legalize Silver State gambling was that casinos would fund government services. Not anymore. Sales taxes on dishwashers long ago became the principal source of funding for Nevada government services like parks, roads, schools and first responders.

Freshperson Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago has made a big deal of increasing per-pupil funding by about two grand annually. That won't dig our schools out of the sub-basement.

He touted spending lots of money in many places, conveniently ignoring that much of it came from that despicable federal government. Speaking of sins of omission...

30 LASHES WITH A WET NOODLE DEPT. Reno Fire Chief Dave Cochran just got hit with a state ethics violation for appearing in a 2022 campaign ad for Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto. At the same time, Republican Gov. Lumbago wallpapered the state with ads showing him in full Las Vegas Sheriff drag and apparently no one has heard a discouraging word. Speaking of discouraging outfits...

KEOLIS-19 LOSES AGAIN. The contractor mismanaging the local mass transit system just got fired by the Gomorrah South Regional Transportation Commission. LV even went with the highest of three bidders. Foreign-owned Keolis turned the Reno-Sparks-Washoe system into a COVID-19 superspreader and lost a hat trick of strikes by the Teamsters Union in 2021. RTCRide workers could again walk out anytime if strikers from Virginia come to town and establish picket lines.

Sparks Mayor Ed Lawson, current Washoe RTC chair, said the current system needs to be leveled and started over. Of course, money-wasting Keolis-19 is the place to start. So let's get it on. [[MUCH MORE]]

INVESTIGATIVE DEPORTING. The $2 billion libel case filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the Fox Fake News Machine could destroy the First Amendment. Rupert Murdoch's outfit will appeal any loss and the moonhowler majority on the highest court, already under right-wing pressure to negate current standards, could use the Dominion action to place freedom of the press in a coffin.

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE DEPT. Last Friday, conservative Republican NYTimes columnist David Brooks proposed radically changing local education by establishing "micro-schools" with smaller student bodies. Hmmm...where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, here, a few weeks ago.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and other currently war-torn lands, now up to 63.

¡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 54-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Gun—>

Why the science is clear that masks work
By Zeynep Tufecki / The New York Times / 3-10-2023

Moonhowlers: Fix Social Security. Please die.
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 2-15-2023 / Expansions in blue

Life imitates art. The dystopian, polluted world of the Charlton Heston/Edward G. Robinson film "Soylent Green" (1973) has gone mainstream.

That's the net effect of what's being proposed both here and abroad. In Japan, a place where elders are supposed to be respected, some yayhoos have suggested that the elderly should off themselves.

Said yayhoos are not outliers and this is nothing new over there. Or over here.

Ten years ago, Taro Aso (insults based on his last name welcome), the Japanese government's finance minister, said he would refuse end-of-life care and would "feel bad" knowing that his treatment was paid for by the government. (Guardian of London/UK 1-22-2013)

"Hurry up and die," he demanded of his elders as a fix for the government paying for senior citizen medical care.

Actually, Mr. Aso was behind the curve. In 1984, Colorado Gov. (1975-1987) Richard Lamm (aka "Governor Gloom") said pretty much the same thing. Supporting physician-assisted suicide, he said elderly people had a "duty to die."

He was elected as a Democrat and later schmoozed billionaire Ross Perot's Reform Party for a presidential run. He made lots of friends in Nevada when he said that one in eight Las Vegas women under 45 were prostitutes. Several hundred thousand hookers? Not even brothel legends Joe Conforte or Dennis Hough were that ambitious.

The terminally ill have a "duty to die and get out of the way" instead of fighting to the bitter end, Lamm said.

"Let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life." (NYTimes 3-29-1984)

Lamm said "that the costs of treatment that allows some terminally ill people to live longer was ruining the nation's economic health," the Times reported.

Hmmm...what about Reaganomics, also practiced by the Bushmasters and Trumpistas who came later, robbing the poor to give to the rich? What about our bloated and wasteful war spending?

Nah. Just blame old people.

Lamm later said that that his views had been sensationalized by the media.

Fast forward back to the future. French folks today are rioting in the streets because President Macron wants to slightly raise the retirement age.

And echoing Lamm and Aso, a Yale professor has suggested mass suicide of the worst kind: seppuku, ritual disembowelment with a Samurai sword. (How Hollywood. Akira Kurosawa, call your office.)

Like Lamm, Dr. Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of Reaganomics...er, economics...at Yale, said he'd been misinterpreted and that he was mainly addressing getting old guys out of business and political leadership positions. Uh huh.

Narita has even advocated mandatory mercy killing. And a cadre of congressional Republicans just leaked a strategy to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. (Barbwire 1-18-2023)

The only thing left is to use the bodies of the elderly for Soylent Green's grannyburgers. Not to worry...

COVID-19 WILL DO THE JOB FOR US. I have been chilled to the bone with moonhowlers, including our new Trumpista Nevada Governor, stating "the pandemic is behind us."

Thus spake Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago in his first state of the state address. His factually flawed sophistry was music to the ears of casinos and economic development/corporate welfare boosters. Party on down, business as usual.

Last Saturday, the fake news New York Times published the following warning: "For Older Americans, the Pandemic Is Not Over. Seniors are increasingly left to protect themselves as the rest of the country abandons precautions."

Japan and South Korea have long traditions of mask wearing. To not wear one indicates that you don't care for others.

"Americans do not agree about the duty to protect others,” the Times reported.

"About three-quarters of Covid deaths have occurred in people over 65, with the greatest losses concentrated among those over 75.

"In January, the number of Covid-related deaths fell after a holiday spike but nevertheless numbered about 2,100 among those ages 65 to 74, more than 3,500 among 75- to 84-year-olds and nearly 5,000 among those over 85. Those three groups accounted for about 90 percent of the nation’s Covid deaths last month.

"Hospital admissions, which have also been dropping, remain more than five times as high for people over 70 than as those in their 50s. Hospitals can endanger older patients even when the conditions that brought them in are successfully treated; the harmful effects of drugs, inactivity, sleep deprivation, delirium and other stresses can take months to recover from — or can land them back in the hospital," the Times noted.

"Nancy Berlinger, a bioethicist and research scholar at the Hastings Center, made a similar point: 'The foundational questions about ethics are about what we owe others, not just ourselves, not just our circle of family and friends.'

"Three years in, the societal answer seems clear: With mask and vaccination mandates mostly ended, testing centers and vaccination clinics closed and the federal public health emergency scheduled to expire in May, older adults are on their own. [[Emphasis added.]]

“Americans do not agree about the duty to protect others, whether it’s from a virus or gun violence,” Dr. Berlinger said.

Peerless predixion: Hollywood will re-make and updated version of "Soylent Green." With Samurai sword-style light sabers, perhaps.

A MORE ATTRACTIVE PROPOSITION: MORE SEX FOR EVERYBODY. Magdalene J. Taylor's guest commentary in the Times took a happier stance.

"Sex is good. Sex is healthy. Sex is an essential part of our social fabric. And you — specifically — should probably be having more of it.

"Americans, in the midst of a loneliness epidemic, are not having enough sex. Across almost every demographic group, American adults old and young, single and coupled, rich and poor are having less sex than they have had at any point in at least the past three decades," she wrote.

Wow. Hollywood and television are not doing their jobs selling everything with sex. Perhaps they need to cut down on violence and start filming friendlier human interaction.

Sex is a lot cheaper than hospital care for gunshot victims.

As oldsters used to say when we were youngsters, make love, not war.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and other currently war-torn lands, now up to 63.

¡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 54-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.