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Yesterday, today and tomorrow
NEWS BULLETIN & ALMANIACAL ARCHIVES
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But before you do so, please read this note. —AB
Political Animal Crackers & Crackups
"I think it is dangerous to confuse the idea of democracy with elections. Just because you have elections doesn't mean you are a democracy...I'm still taken aback at the extent of indoctrination and propaganda in the United States. It is as if people there are being reared in a sort of altered reality, like broiler chickens or pigs in a pen."
— Indian novelist Arundhati Roy
in the Barbwire of 9-12-2004
The American electorate is a dumb cow that follows the herd, is easily stampeded, gets milked for all she's worth and produces offspring for meat, muscle or cannon fodder to benefit the few. When all used up, she is sent to the slaughterhouse so that she may give her overlords the last full measure of devotion, bones for Jello and hide for belts. No stars and stripes for her grave because she doesn't merit one, having been totally consumed by our consumptive system. — Barbwire 9-12-2010"If elections mattered, they wouldn't let us do it." — Travus T. Hipp, 1982
Great Minds Think Alike Dept.
Over-rated New York Times Pulitzer over-achiever Thomas Friedman predicts emergence of a third political party a month after the Barbwire did so for the umpteenth time (He's just one short.)
Paul Krugman: Murdoch as Citizen Kane / GOP candidates paid off by Faux News
New York Times 10-3-2001
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[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac [PDA]. Items highlighted in blue are of interest to labor in particular and seekers of justice in general. Copyright © 2010 Dennis Myers.]]
UPDATE FRIDAY 14 Jan 2011 00:17:31 PST, 08:17:31 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1697, Samuel Sewell, one of nine judges in the Salem witch trials, admitted error and apologized, saying he "...Desires to take the Blame & Shame of it, Asking pardon of men, And especially desiring prayers that God who has an Unlimited Authority, would pardon that Sin", and he became a pariah among community leaders (other participants had apologized, but Sewell was the first not to make excuses); in 1892, Hollywood producer Hal Roach (who would film One Million B.C. in Nevada's Valley of Fire) was born in Elmira, New York; in 1917, James McMillan, who would become a leading African American figure in Nevada history, was born in Mississippi; in 1920, former French finance minister Joseph Caillaux, arrested in 1917 on treason charges for opposing France's entry into the world war, was finally put on trial more than a year after the war ended (he was convicted only of corresponding with Germans, exiled and stripped of his civil rights for ten years, amnestied, served twice more as finance minister, and refused to serve in the Vichy government); in 1920, an official of the Nevada Valleys Power Company said construction of a power generator on the Truckee River at the McCarran Ranch would begin within the next few weeks; in 1936, Desiree Worder of Redwood City obtained a Reno divorce from William Worder so she could marry Roy Burnett, Jr., and Burnett's wife Gladys could marry Mr.Worder; in 1946, U.S. Senator Edward Carville of Nevada said he would sponsor legislation making twelve months of peacetime military training compulsory for every citizen (he didn't say so but presumably he meant only men); in 1954, Marilyn married Joltin' Joe at San Francisco city hall; in 1970 at the Frontier casino hotel in Las Vegas, the Supremes performed together for the last time; in 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigned in Carson City shortly before the Nevada caucuses.
UPDATE THURSDAY 13 Jan 2011 00:02:30 PST, 08:02:30 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT —
Emile Zola/J'accuse/L'Aurore/January 13, 1898: Since they have dared, I shall dare: I do not despair in the least of ultimate triumph. I repeat with more intense conviction: the truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.
On this date in 1842, William Brydon arrived at Jalalabad, the only survivor of a contingent of 4,500 British soldiers and 12,000 aides and camp followers wiped out by Afghan patriot forces during British aggression against Kabul; in 1891, a month after the killing of Sitting Bull and two weeks after the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, Nevada whites were being freaked out by large gatherings of Nevada tribes in Elko and Austin, by Piutes and Bannocks reportedly meeting, and by a dancing ground for the ghost dance near Deeth (the Elko county sheriff reportedly wired Governor Colcord for arms); in 1898 in an effort to invite legal action against himself and get the Dreyfuss case into court, Emile Zola published J'accuse on page one of L'Aurore; in 1931, the will of the late Clark Alvord, postmaster and storekeeper in tiny Nelson, Nevada left 55 percent of his estate (including more than a half million shares of mining stock) to movie star Marion Davies, who he had seen on screen in a Las Vegas theatre; in 1940, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas joined other Latin American leaders in saying the Monroe "doctrine" does not legally exist, that it is a pretext for U.S. intervention in the affairs of the region and a unilateral expression of U.S. interests; in 1944, staffers at the U.S. Treasury delivered to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau a Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews, which Morgenthau passed along to President Roosevelt, threatening to resign unless FDR removed authority over the matter from the State Department (Roosevelt established a War Refugees Board to take over handling of the issue); in 1960 when stepping out of a cab in New York City, blacklisted actor Zero Mostel was hit by a crosstown bus, crushing his leg and prompting doctors to recommend amputation, which he refused to permit because it would have ended his already damaged career, and in a lengthy hospitalization he avoided gangrene to go on to career recovery and comeback; in 1982, an Air Florida Boeing 737 that had just taken off from National Airport in one of the worst blizzards in D.C. history came in low over the Potomac River, hit the 14th Street bridge, sliced the top off several cars, and crashed through thick ice into the river (the riverbank quickly became lined with passersby and one of them, 28 year-old public employee Lenny Skutnik, became a national hero when he plunged into the river and rescued stewardess Kelly Dunan, who had been foundering in the river, unable to hold on to a rope lowered to her by a helicopter); in 1998, the Catholic newspaper in France, La Croix, apologized for its antisemitism one hundred years earlier during the Dreyfuss matter.
UPDATE WEDNESDAY 1-12-2011 15:34:20 PST, 23:34:20 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1877 at Nevada's Leviathan mine, miners were being compelled to work ten hours a day, and workmen above ground were expected to put in twelve hours for the wages of $4, and it was expected that other mines would follow the Leviathan's example; in 1901, Phillippine "governor" William Howard Taft was considering whether to allow Filipinos to have freedom of religion; in 1908, a commission appointed by President Roosevelt to investigate the labor situation in Goldfield, Nevada, into which he had sent federal troops, reported that businesspeople and the governor in Nevada had manipulated Roosevelt into using the troops to break the mining unions (the Washington Post headline was "TROOPS TO COERCE"); in 1935, Louis Piquet, John Dillinger's attorney, got a break in his trial on charges of harboring the gangster when U.S. District Judge William Holly ruled "It is not required of a lawyer to surrender his client or to inform law agencies."; in 1942, President Rooseveltsigned executive order 9019 closing Nevada land to the public and reserving its use to the War Department for an aerial machine gun range, and executive order 9020 transferring control of the Tonopah airport to the War Department; in 1954, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced that the Eisenhower administration would follow a policy of "deterrent of massive retaliatory power" in working its will, a policy that — as the U.S. and the Soviet Union improved their nuclear delivery systems — led to "mutually assured destruction" (MAD); in 1957, actress Jean Peters married billionaire Howard Hughes at the L & L Motel in Tonopah, Nevada, reportedly in room 33; in 1960, Reno Mayor Bud Baker said he would continue working to turn the downtown‚s casino district into a mall, proposing that the idea be tried on major holidays and then, if it worked, made permanent on Memorial Day; in 1966, the U.S. got a better sense of the meaning of camp with the debut of the television series Batman, which quickly became a huge (though short lived) hit with some of the biggest stars in the nation lining up for a chance to guest star (the show had an unusual schedule, airing twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays); in 1991 in a vote on authorizing use of force by the first George Bush, the U.S. Senate came within three votes of preventing war in the Persian Gulf; in 1998, Gene Vincent, Lloyd Price, Allen Toussaint, Jelly Roll Morton, the Mamas and the Papas, Santana, the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Billy Brawl: Raggio Resigns
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-9-2011 Daily Sparks Tribune
The Lady in the Red Dress
The Barbwire's classic Nevada Day column written in 1983
The compleat history of the Silver State in 500 words
SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
DAILY SPARKS TRIBUNE 1-3-2011UPDATE SUNDAY 12-30-2010, 00:45:32 PST, 08:45:32 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1899, a Reno man named E. Honeyman was believed to be a prisoner of Filipino defenders against the U.S. invasion of the Philippines; in 1912, during a family celebration in Bloomington, Illinois, 11 year-old Adlai Stevenson was imitating the manual of arms with a .22 rifle that had been checked by an adult to make sure it was unloaded when the weapon went off, killing one of the other children at the gathering, 16 year-old Ruth Merwin (New York Times: "Young Stevenson was overcome with grief when he learned that the accident had resulted fatally"); in 1936, the legendary Flint, Michigan, sit-down strike against General Motors by members of the United Auto Workers began; in 1940, the Arroyo Seco Parkway (Route 110, aka the Pasadena freeway), California's first freeway (which still exists) was formally opened; in 1956, a Bolivian named Ugo Ungaza Villegas threw a rock at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, chipping the paint near La Gioconda's left elbow; in 1970 at a D.C. coffeehouse called the Cellar Door, Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff, and John Denver sang the new song they wrote, Take Me Home, Country Roads, prompting a long ovation (the song was later included on Denver's first album and became his first hit); in 1999, George Harrison was stabbed in the chest by an intruder at his London home.
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005
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.
HAT TRICK 2010:
Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award
The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners
Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL
Barbwire / 11-30-2008
Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry
Barbwire / 8-3-2008
Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here?
Barbwire / 6-15-2008
The price of a piece/6-17-2007
Boxing Pandora/9-23-2007
The Lady in the Red Dress
10-28-2007Barbwire.TV
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Guaranteed to irritate all points of the political spectrumHappy High Holly Days
Go organize a good time!UPDATE SUNDAY 12-25-2010 00:00:42 PST, 08:00:42 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT —
Excerpts from Poor Denny's Alamanac 12-20 thru 12-25 2010. Used by permission. Copyright © 2010 Dennis Myers
December 25
On this date in 274, Roman Emperor Aurelian dedicated a temple to sun god Deus Sol Invictus; in 1621 Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Bay Colony in Massachusetts caught some people away from their workplaces, a violation of the church-imposed law outlawing Christmas observance, and sent them back to their jobs; in 1918 five weeks after the end of the world war, newspaper reporter Carl Sandburg, arriving in New York on the SS Bergensford after a three month reporting trip to Europe, was arrested by the U.S. Military Intelligence Bureau under the Trading With the Enemy Act (a federal law used by the Wilson administration to silence dissent) , all his written materials confiscated, his money and money entrusted to him seized, and he was interrogated for a month (he was finally released at the end of January but the feds kept two $5,000 bank drafts Sandburg had planned to deliver to the Finnish Information Bureau in the U.S.); in 1921 President Harding commuted the sentence of Eugene Debs, imprisoned for an antiwar speech during the world war, to time served and released him from prison; in 1940 the Civilian Conservation Corps completed the 55-mile Las Vegas/Pahrump Valley truck trail that took a thirty-person crew 13 months to build; in 1951 nine days after the television program Dragnet — which would provide many years of positive PR for the rogue Los Angeles Police Department — went on the air, 50 wilding LAPD police officers savagely beat seven Latinos, undercutting Police Chief William Parker's highly publicized claims of police "professionalism" (the "Bloody Christmas" riot was a plot point in the novel and movie L.A. Confidential); 1965 the Dave Clark Five's Over and Over -- one of the group's lesser known songs but also its only number one hit -- went to number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1968, after the release of the first photographs ever taken of the entire planet earth within a single frame (probably taken by astronaut William Anders), the New York Times published a memorable essay -- almost a prose poem -- by Archibald MacLeish (see below).; in 1998 the bodies of more than thirty wild horses were discovered in the Virginia Range east of Sparks, victims of a holiday shooting spree by U.S. marines.Archibald MacLeish/December 25 1968: For the first time in all of time men have seen it not as continents or oceans from the little distance of a hundred miles or two or three, but seen it from the depth of space; seen it whole and round and beautiful and small as even Dante -- that "first imagination of Christendom" -- had never dreamed of seeing it; as the Twentieth Century philosophers of absurdity and despair were incapable of guessing that it might be seen. And seeing it so, one question came to the minds of those who looked at it. "Is it inhabited?" they said to each other and laughed -- and then they did not laugh. What came to their minds a hundred thousand miles and more into space -- "half way to the moon" they put it -- what came to their minds was the life on that little, lonely, floating planet; that tiny raft in the enormous, empty night. "Is it inhabited?"
The medieval notion of the earth put man at the center of everything. The nuclear notion of the earth put him nowhere -- beyond the range of reason even -- lost in absurdity and war. This latest notion may have other consequences. Formed as it was in the minds of heroic voyagers who were also men, it may remake our image of mankind. No longer that preposterous figure at the center, no longer that degraded and degrading victim off at the margins of reality and blind with blood, man may at last become himself.
To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold -- brothers who know now they are truly brothers.December 24
On this date in 1223, a group of monks, including Francis, installed a nativity scene in a cavern on Mount Lacerone, supposedly the first nativity scene or the first celebration of Christmas (depending on who's telling it); in 1855, Latter Day Saints missionaries in what would become Clark County, Nevada, recorded their wish that Native Americans they had baptized would establish a camp on the site of what is now know as the Kiel Ranch property; in 1898, the road between Elko and Tuscarora was snowbound and all teams making the trip pulled wagons on runners, not wheels; in 1907, Isadore Feinstein Stone, the greatest journalist in U.S. history, was born in Philadelphia; in 1924 the Society for Human Rights, the first U.S. gay rights organization, was incorporated in Illinois (Chicago police soon broke the organization up and publicized the members‚ names so they lost their jobs); in 1941, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a tiny eight-island colony of France northeast of Maine near the southern tip of Newfoundland, was liberated from Vichy by Free French forces landed by sea, a rare instance of the Second World War coming to north America (U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull denounced the liberation as a violation of the Monroe "doctrine" and demanded restoration of Vichy rule); in 1957, silent movie star Norma Talmadge died in Las Vegas; in 1963 at a White House reception, President Johnson told the Joint Chiefs "Just get me elected and then you can have your war."; in 1966, attorney Robert Reid reportedly became Nevada's first African American judge when the Las Vegas city commission appointed him an alternate municipal court judge; in 1992, President George Bush the Elder pardoned several of his cronies in the Iran Contra scandal, prompting special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to call it a continuing cover up; in 1994, Vitalogy by Pearl Jam hit number one on the Billboard album chart.
December 23
Vera Brittain/Testament of Youth: I make no apology for the fact that some of these documents renew with fierce vividness the stark agonies of my generation in its early twenties. The mature proprieties of "emotion remembered in tranquility" have not been my object, which, at least in part, is to challenge that too easy, too comfortable relapse into forgetfulness which is responsible for history's most grievous repetitions. It is not by accident that what I have written constitutes, in effect, the indictment of a civilization.On this date in 1886 in Arles, after attacking Paul Gauguin with a razor, Vincent Van Gogh turned the blade on himself and sliced off his ear; in 1912 an excerpt of Marcel Proust‚s Rememberance of Things Past was rejected by editors of Nouvelle Revue Francaise, a French literary periodical (editor Andre Gide reportedly said of the manuscripts that it was „full of duchesses, not at all our style‰ and later publicly blamed himself for the blunder); in 1915 twenty year old British poet Roland Leighton, fiance of Red Cross nurse Vera Brittain, died of wounds suffered near Hebuterne, France, the first of most of Brittain's closest friends ( including her brother) killed in the senseless war that inspired her to write Testament of Youth to try to make some sense of it all; in 1933, lured by heavy deposits resulting from business sales traffic generated by DePauw University's homecoming, John Dillinger and his gang robbed the Central National Bank of Greencastle, Indiana, of a reported $74,782.09 ($1,230,955.78 in 2008 dollars); in 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered the execution for desertion of Eddie Slovik of Michigan, the first execution of a U.S. soldier since the civil war; in 1966 on a visit to Vietnam, U.S. Catholic Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York gave a ringing defense of the war, neglecting to clear the remarks with his boss Pope Paul, who sawed off the limb under Spellman by calling for an end to the war; in 2003, responding to a petition from first amendment advocates, Governor George Pataki of New York issued a posthumous pardon of Lenny Bruce for the 1964 obscenity conviction that followed Bruce's performance at the Cafe Au Go Go (Pataki said "The posthumous pardon of Lenny Bruce is a declaration of New York's commitment to upholding the First Amendment. I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on terror.").
December 22On this date in 1849, Dostoevsky and 21 of his comrades in an anti-government Russian organization were brought before a firing squad to be executed three at a time but a reprieve from the czar arrived, halting the executions (instead, Dostoevsky was sent to a Siberian prison for four years followed by four years of military service); in 1942 Congress amended the Flag Code to end use of the Bellamy salute that had been used with the pledge of allegiance since socialist Francis Bellamy wrote the pledge in 1892 (the Bellamy salute was dropped because it was adopted by the Nazis in Germany); in 1944, Frances Wills and Harriet Pickens were commissioned the first African American Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service); in 1972 on a vote of 70,373 to 56,334, United Mine Workers reform leader Arnold Miller was elected president of the UMW over William Boyle, who had ordered the murder of previous reform leader Jock Yablonski (Miller appointed Levi Daniel of West Virginia as the union's first African American district president); in 2009, twenty years after the television program The Simpsons began its run, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, in an article headlined "Aristotle's Virtues and Homer's Doughnut", faulted the program's "excessively crude language, the violence of certain episodes or some extreme choices by the scriptwriters" but also found merit in the "realistic and intelligent writing," calling the show "a mirror of the indifference and the need that modern man feels toward faith. ... Homer finds in God his last refuge, even though he sometimes gets his name sensationally wrong" (perhaps a reference to an episode in which Homer calls God "Superman").
December 21On this date in 1908, Samuel Clemens incorporated himself to protect his pen name of Mark Twain and as part of a scheme to get around the copyright laws so that his family members would continue to control his literary works after his copyrights expired; in 1911, Negro leagues baseball great Josh Gibson was born in Buena Vista, Georgia; in 1952 on the CBS television program This Is Show Business playwright George S. Kaufman remarked "Let's make this one program on which nobody sings Silent Night", generating some calls and letters of complaint, whereupon CBS fired Kaufman at the behest of sponsor American Tobacco Co. (to show solidarity with Kaufman, John Daly, Fred Allen [Allen: "This thing is ridiculous. There are only two good wits on television, Groucho Marx and George S. Kaufman. With Kaufman gone, TV is half-witted."], and Garry Moore refused to replace him on the program, religious leaders praised Kaufman's remark, and editorials condemned the network with North Carolina's Statesman Record commenting that the name of the program should be changed to This Show Is Business, and on January 3d the network backed down and reinstated Kaufman -- but not until the tobacco company's sponsorship contract expired); in 1967, the motion picture The Graduate was released; in 1969, a full page ad appeared on page 16 of the Sunday New York Times: "War Is Over! If you Want It. Happy Christmas from John & Yoko".
December 20
L. Frank Baum/Saturday Pioneer/December 20 1890: The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.
On this date in 1876, a war between Ruby Valley farmers and ranchers over cattle roaming over crops was turning violent, and the Elko Post reported that the farmers were enforcing the law: "It is done by emptying the contents of a double barreled shotgun into the sides of a trespassing animal."; in 1944 on a U.S. bombing run to Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, a B-24 piloted by Lt. George McGovern lost one of its engines but McGovern continued on to complete the mission during which it was hit with flak, which knocked out another engine which burst into flames, and McGovern brought the plane to a safe landing on an airfield less than half the length required by a B-24 on a tiny island in the Adriatic with all aboard alive (he received the Distinguished Flying Cross for the feat); in 1960, after years of withholding support from insurgency in the south while it waited for the Saigon regime and the U.S. to comply with the Geneva agreement requirement for elections on national reunification, Hanoi gave support to the National Liberation Front, a military force of southern Vietnamese, to free the south of Vietnam from the U.S.-created regime; in 2001, the New York Times published a front page story by Judith Miller, "Iraqi tells of renovations at sites for chemical and nuclear arms" without getting competing analysis of the information from skeptical U.S. intelligence sources; in 2001, three months after September 11, George Bush said "But all in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me."; in 2002 in a mammoth settlement, Salomon Smith Barney (Citigroup), Winstar Communications, Credit Suisse First Boston, Bear Stearns, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Group, J. P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Morgan Stanley, UBS Warburg (and probably, after further negotiations, U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray and Thomas Weisel Partners) agreed to pay nearly a billion in fines in suits filed by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charging misleading stock advice and parceling out hot stocks to curry favor with high roller clients; in 2009 in York, England, priest Tim Jones told his congregation that with socially acceptable avenues of inproving their situation closed to the working poor, it was permissible to shoplift: "I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.I would ask them not to take any more than they need." (He was summoned for a prayer meeting with his archdeacon, who issued his own statement: "Father Tim Jones is raising important issues about the difficulties people face when benefits are not forthcoming, but shoplifting is not the way to overcome these difficulties. There are many organizations and charities working with people in need, and the Citizens' Advice Bureau is a good first place to call.")
Forced to play against a stacked deck
Barbwire by Barbano/ Expanded from the 12-19-2010 Daily Sparks TribuneUPDATE SUNDAY 12-19-2010 00:06:23 PST, 08:06:23 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1732, Benjamin Franklin began publication of Poor Richard's Almanac, an annual pamphlet published from 1732 to 1757 under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, most of the contents of which he plagiarized; in 1776, The American Crisis by Thomas Paine was published (see below); in 1914, Allied and Axis troops facing each other across No Man's Land on the front in World War One met in the middle to recover their wounded and began chatting and sharing smokes, a truce that (to the consternation of the upper officer corps) spread all up and down the front for several days with football games, sharing of supplies, and swapping of souveniers, alarming officials of various nations by threatening to "prematurely" end the war; in 1947, University of Nevada officials were looking into the possibility of buying 26-room surplus barracks buildings in Hawthorne from the Navy to relieve the postwar campus housing shortage (72 students were sleeping in the old gym, 12 in the football fieldhouse, and 36 couples in trailers); in 1964, Come See About Me by The Supremes hit number one on the Billboard Magazine chart; in 1968, Kristina Keneally was born Kristina Kerscher in Las Vegas (on December 3, 2009, she became premier of New South Wales); in 1985, five years after he lost the presidential nomination to Jimmy Carter and two years after he passed up the 1984 presidential race, Senator Edward Kennedy announced he would run for reelection in 1988 instead of the presidency, part of an effort to prevent all of his actions as a legislator being interpreted in light of his supposed presidential aspirations: "I know that this decision means that I may never be president. But the pursuit of the presidency is not my life. Public service is."; in 2002, the convictions of five men accused of assaulting and raping Central Park jogger Trisha Meili were overturned after DNA evidence exonerated them, though the prosecutor and some detectives still wanted the convictions kept in place.
From The American Crisis by Thomas Paine: These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.
UPDATE SUNDAY 12-18-2010 00:01:21 PST, 08:01:21 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1890, the owner of a buckboard shipping line between Elko and Pioche announced that he would no longer accept intoxicated passengers; in 1892, Tchaikovsky's Suite from the Nutcracker debuted in St. Petersburg; in 1931, Nevada Governor Fred Balzar was among westerners suing the Latham Square Corporation for fraud and misappropriation of investor funds; in 1944 in Korematsu v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the "guilt" of U.S. citizen Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu for the crime of living in his home, upholding the validity of Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 providing for imprisonment of U.S. citizens without due process (in 2003 Korematsu filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of a U.S. citizen, Yaser Hamdi, held by the Bush administration for two years without due process); in 1957 at a hastily called Nevada Board of Regents meeting, the regents voted to pay $12,500 to University of Nevada President Minard Stout, who had resigned under pressure effective July 1, 1958, if he would go away immediately; in 1971, There's A Riot Going On by Sly and the Family Stone hit number one on the Billboard album chart; in 1972, President Nixon ordered the Christmas bombing of 1972 during which over eleven days (excluding Christmas day) three thousand sorties dropped 40,000 tons of bombs on the heavily populated area from Hanoi to Haiphong, the heaviest bombing of the war resulting in the loss of 26 aircraft and 93 pilots and crew members (only 31 survived to be captured), while inflicting relatively light casualties on Vietnam (though Bach Mai hospital was destroyed) and drawing condemnation from around the world — and then Nixon accepted essentially the same peace agreement he rejected before he began the bombing; in 1997, during episode 10 in the ninth season of Seinfeld, a new holiday called Festivus was born in reaction to the annoyances of the holiday season (while creation of the holiday was on December 18, Festivus itself falls on December 23d); in 2009, in what police speculated was either a political crime or a theft by collectors, the sign that hung over the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp ("Work sets you free") was stolen and Polish President President Lech Kaczynski said recovery of the artifact was a matter of national honor (at an environmental summit in Copenhagen, Israel's president and Poland's foreign minister held a side meeting on the theft).
December 19, 1675 — Whites fighting the tribes of King Phillip found a village in the Great Swamp of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations where a group of Wampanoag Tribe members had taken refuge and they burned it to the ground, burning perhaps 300 Native Americans alive.
UPDATE SUNDAY 12-17-2010 00:01:00 PST, 08:01:00 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1907, former Michigan judge Orrin Hilton argued before the Supreme Court of Nevada for a new trial for labor leaders Morris Preston and Joseph Smith, framed for murder by mine owner George Wingfield; in 1930, an American Legion post in California was considering a resolution calling for Albert Einstein to be barred from the state because of his opposition to war; in 1934, the San Francisco office of the National Park Service approved plans for a Civilian Conservation Corps camp of 200 men at Fort Churchill to restore the fort; in 1941, German Christian church leaders of Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, Thuringia, and Lubeck gave their approval to the "severest measures" against the Jews; in 1944, a U.S. B-24 bomber piloted by Lt. George McGovern blew out a tire as it was taking off on a mission that targeted an oil refinery in Germany, and McGovern completed the mission and then made a safe landing on the left and nose wheels, sliding to a stop after a quarter-turn, all aboard alive; in 1954, plans were announced for a plaque memorializing slaves who were used to operate a mine at the southern sympathizer mining camp of Rough and Ready in Nevada County, California, in the 1850s; in 1960, Professor Wendell Mordy reported to the Nevada Board of Regents on plans for an atmospherium/planetarium, a facility in which scientists could create weather -- the "first time such an atmospherium has been attempted in the United States", according to Morby; in 1979 in an innovative experiment, the CBS program Lou Grant broadcast an episode in which Grant's reporters tried to solve an old Hollywood murder, and the program was taped in the style of a film noir mystery, with lazy jazz themes, tough talking narrator, and even some once-popular Hollywood stars like Laraine Day and Margaret Hamilton; in 1982, eight days before Christmas, the Mapes Hotel Casino in Reno unexpectedly shut down, never to reopen, throwing 500 people out of work.
UPDATE THURSDAY 12-16-2010 00:14:07 PST, 08:14:07 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT —Teetime for the Troublesome Truth about the First Tea Party
Smuggling Powerhouse
Boston Tea Party Historical SocietyOn this date in 1773, Bostonians dressed as Native Americans threw tea into Boston bay to protest tea taxes being too low and to demand that those taxes be raised; in 1879, the Silver State in Winnemucca and the Nevada State Journal in Reno blasted U.S. Postmaster General David Key's recent order barring mail delivery at rail stops that have no post offices: "Nevada is a country of magnificent distances and there are stretches of country along the Central Pacific Railroad where postoffices are thirty or forty miles apart. Before Key got the idea in his head that mail routes were established for the convenience of not the public, but to give him opportunity to display his authority and ignorance, letters and papers addressed to persons at stations and side tracks, where there is no postoffice were thrown off by the mail agents, who are generally gentlemanly and accommodating. A subscriber writes us from Moline, Elko County, a station on the Railroad, where there is no postoffice, that since Key's new order went into effect, he has to go to Elko, thirteen mills [sic] east for his mail, which before was thrown off at the side track by the clerks on the postal cars."; in 1924, masked men invaded a Nashville, Tenn., hospital and seized a fifteen year-old African-American boy named Samuel Smith and lynched him; in 1944, the U.S. Office of Price Administration said Las Vegas was facing a butter shortage because of "the peculiar geographic and industrial situation" of Las Vegas and complications related to wartime rationing; in 1950, President Truman declared a state of emergency in the United States, claiming a threat from "communist imperialism"; in 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ignorance of the law is an excuse, overturning the conviction of a Los Angeles woman who violated an ordinance requiring ex-convicts to register with the police on the grounds that a person has to know about a law before being convicted of breaking it; in 1966, Eddie Scott was elected president of the NAACP of Washoe County; in 2005, after sitting on the story for a year and a half — and withholding it before the 2004 election — The New York Times disclosed the warrantless U.S. National Security Agency surveillance program that included phone calls, e-mails, internet activity and text messaging.
UPDATE SUNDAY 12-12-2010 00:21:26 PST, 08:21:26 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT —
Columnist Jack Mann / December 12, 1993: The really dumb non-sequiturs of the second half of this century are routinely attributed to Yogi Berra, who never actually had much to say. They are largely attributed (and often coined) by columnists and television sportscasters who weren't around when Yogi wasn't saying them.
On this date in 1870, a news report revealed the arrogance of large powers during the era of "the great game", showing that not much has changed: "There is a rumor that Bismark favors giving England the protectorate over the Suez canal, in consideration that England shall permit Russia to do as she pleases with Turkey.";
In 1914, the International Hotel that dominated Virginia City for nearly four decades burned to the ground; in 1924, Nevada Gov. James Scrugham received a mummy of a child that had been excavated in Nevada and sent to the Museum of the American Indian in New York, which had now decided to "return" it and other Nevada artifacts — to the state government, not to state tribes; in 1932, operators of the Depression-troubled Reno Golf and Country Club said they would ask the city council to take it over, operate it, and enlarge it with a $75,000 loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (a Hoover administration economic recovery agency); in 1943, Reno's Junior Chamber of Commerce asked members of the public to report their neighbors (to the Junior Chamber) who spread "Axis-aiding" rumors; in 1957 in Portland, Oregon, disk jockey Al Priddy was fired by station manager Mel Bailey for playing Elvis' version of White Christmas which Bailey said "is not in the good taste we ascribe to Christmas music. Presley gives it a rhythm and blues interpretation. It doesn't seem to me to be in keeping with the intent of the song." (Irving Berlin had personally been writing to radio stations asking them not to play the Elvis recording of his song); in 1969, a 1,350-person Philippine force sent to Vietnam in 1966 (entirely paid for by the U.S.) as part of Lyndon Johnson's effort to make his war seem like a multi-national cause, was withdrawn over an eight-day period.
Rebels, heroes and mavericks are made, not born
Barbwire by Barbano/ Expanded from the 12-12-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune
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mp3 fileAssemblymember Peggy Pierce, D-LV, proposes tax on big business
Las Vegas Review-Journal / 12-8-201012-8-2010
For Immediate Release
Contact: Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce (702) 631-8036
Assemblywoman Pierce proposes a broad-based business tax
Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce, D-Las Vegas, has asked for a bill draft for a broad-based business tax to be considered during the 2011 legislative session. The rates will be lower than in surrounding states and small businesses will be exempt.
The State of Nevada is facing a $3 billion deficit in the next legislative session.
"The governor-elect has called for shared sacrifice. The middle class has already stepped up and is paying a higher sales tax. Seniors, people with disabilities and children have already endured four rounds of cuts to vital services and education. State workers have deferred merit increases and taken forced unpaid furlough days." Pierce stated.
“Shared sacrifice is a good idea. It is time for big business to share in the sacrifice,” she added.
"We have known, from study after study for 20 years that we need to broaden the tax base in Nevada. Our tax system needs to be fairer and more stable. Part of the reason that this recession is deeper and more punishing in Nevada than any other state is the reliance on a too-narrow slice of our state economy for the support of our government. While individual Nevadans are doing their part, big box stores, for example, are shipping their largely untaxed profits out of our state.
"A strong education system and infrastructure is necessary to attract the investment in Nevada needed to build a brighter future. A broad-based business tax is a first step in that direction.
“It is time to not just move our state out of this recession but move our state forward, ” Pierce concluded.
UPDATE WEDNESDAY 12-8-2010 04:41:52 PST,
