BARBWIRE
 Some people have their heads so far up where the sun never shines
that they can French kiss themselves. To shine a light on this serious
public health problem, I inaugurate the Corporate Patsy French Kiss Awards.
Trophies consist of bittersweet chocolate lips posed in proper puckery,
wrapped in expired stock options.THE SNIDELY WHIPLASH CATEGORY is devoted strictly to those infected
by Union Pacific Railroad merger madness. I named it after the infamous
cartoon villain who was always tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks just
as the train loomed into view. Where is Dudley Doright of the Royal
Canadian Mounties when we really need him?WORST AND FOREMOST, the Rail City takes the Grand Prix Patsy. At
last week's Reno City Hall hearings before the federal Surface
Transportation Board, Sparks senior planner Rob Pyzel endorsed the STB's
dangerous proposal to run more and faster trains through this valley as
long as the railroad builds a couple of cheap bridges. Mr. Pyzel should go
wash his lips.Wiser was Sparks resident Bob Sonderfan who worried about losing
the town should a speeding train cause an explosion near the railroad's
tank farm, sort of instantaneous downtown redevelopment.BRINGING UP THE REAR: FRIENDS OF UNION PACIFIC (FOUP), an Astroturf
(fake grass roots) propaganda front set up by the railroad. The only people
I saw wearing FOUP buttons at Reno City Hall last Thursday were expensively
dressed railroad flaks.Last Sept. 14, in "The Reno Gannett-Journal Railroad Job" (a piece
now quite popular with striking Detroit News-Free Press workers), I wrote
that I knew of no Nevadan favoring Union Pacific's attempt to stick us
bumpkins with the costs and calamities of increased train traffic carrying
increasingly
hazardous cargo. UP recently sent out a fancy mailer using that column to
rally its rodents against such "senseless attacks."It generated a call from an authentic Astroturf FOUP, a Sparks man
who makes his money in the freight business. Mr. FOUP said he supports
Union Pacific because he thinks they're going to win and sees personal
benefit in sucking up to power. The railroad was here first and those near
the tracks deserve what they get, he said.At Reno City Hall, UP exec Robert Starzel echoed the party line.
"Reno grew up around us," he oozed. "We did not change. Reno created the
problem."The railroad has indeed never changed. It remains as morally obtuse
as ever. In a groundbreaking display of massive corporate welfare long
before the term was coined, the U.S. government gave railroads alternate
sections of land stolen from Native Americans. Over the past century, the
railroad sold off many of these "checkerboard" parcels, thus making itself
complicitous in problems from which it now disclaims responsibility. If the
iron octopus had wanted to keep growth away from its tracks, it should
never have sold or leased property for things like homes or hotel-casinos.The "we were here first" argument further withered when a tribal
spokesman reminded the STB that Native Americans lived here long before the
railroad arrived.I told the feds of growing up in Fresno listening to railroad
stories from my Uncle John, who served as Reno railroad agent some 50 years
ago. In high school, I read "The Octopus" by Frank Norris. That book ranks
with Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" among the great turn-of-the-century
muckraker novels. The Octopus is a fictionalized account of the infamous
Mussel Slough Incident, a shootout near present-day Selma in Fresno County.About 100 years ago, hard working San Joaquin Valley farmers
developed railroad land in exchange for a company promise to deed it to
them. When Southern Pacific decided instead to evict, the farmers rebelled.
The railroad had them killed.I told the feds that I never imagined I would someday live through
a real-life replay. Just as SP did in the 1890s, UP in the 1990s used its
money to buy influence and politicians in order to short-circuit public
safeguards and get its greedy way. I asked the board members to read the
book which not only foreshadowed their establishment but predicted their
role as rubber stamp.I still know of no Nevadan supporting Union Pacific. Mr. FOUP
stands neither for nor against the octopus, only for himself. I told FOUP
an old Johnny Carson joke about a well-dressed man who walked into a bar
and beheld a beautiful woman sitting alone."I'm a very wealthy man. Would you go to bed with me for $1 million?""Hmmm...I suppose so," she cooed."Would you go to bed with me for a dollar?""Just what do you think I am?" she snapped."We've already established that," said the man. "We're just
haggling over the price."Mr. FOUP agreed that I had accurately described his support of the
railroad.Next week: more Corporate Patsy Awards, another $1 million
proposition standing under a streetlight in Sparks' Victorian Square.
Nominations welcome. See you at the Syufy theater follies, 3:30 p.m.
tomorrow at Sparks City Hall.Be well. Raise hell.
Andrew Barbano, a Reno-based syndicated columnist and 29-year Nevadan, is editor of U-News.Barbwire by Barbano has appeared in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and parts of this column were originally published 10/12/97.Nevada Instant Type in Sparks and both Office Depot Reno locations. |
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