Home Page


Yesterday, today and tomorrow
NEWS BULLETIN & ALMANIACAL ARCHIVES
Also see NevadaLabor.com's Statewide U-News Roundup

Bottom of this page

Click here to get on our news & bulletins mailing list...
But before you do so, please read this note. —AB

[[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. Red means war. Copyright © 2011, 2012 Dennis Myers. More Myers.]]

Aug. 2012-Aug. 2013: the Barbwire's Silver Anniversary Year
—>Now we go for gold
Barbwire by Barbano moved to the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

Happy New Year / Feliz Año Nuevo
May you and yours enjoy a peaceful and prosperous time

Updated 12 Jan. 2013

Power politics & prescient predictions
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-10-2013 Daily Sparks Tribune

Nevada to mining: Never mind (the tax thing)
Hugh Jackson / Las Vegas CityLife 1-9-2013

Barbano back on Sam Shad's statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV program

Wine, winners, whiners & white guys
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-3-2013 Daily Sparks Tribune

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

Happy High Holly Days

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

HAT TRICK
Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award

BIG NEWS FROM THE 9-22-2012 NPA CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

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

Barbwire.TV
Support the new community TV channel

BREAKING NEWS AND THEN SOME—>

Bestest of the grotesquest for 2013
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 12-27-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

John Wayne, Michael Moore & Andrew Undershaft
The guns of mythology
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 12-20-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune
Great minds think alike dept.—>Includes an update from Michael Moore

Tit for Tat: Body blows from Lydia and Kap
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 12-13-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

COLIN KAEPERNICK, CALL YOUR OFFICE — Groucho Marx sings Lydia the Tattooed Lady in the 1939 Marx Brothers film At the Circus. The song gained renewed popularity in the 1970's and 1980's on the nationally syndicated Dr. Demento radio show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posthaste
Letter Carriers ask you to call your congresscritters at 202-224-3121 and tell them not to use the lame-duck congressional session to kill Saturday delivery.
"...all in the name of holding onto the misguided mandate to massively pre-fund 75 years' worth of future retiree benefits and to do so within just 10 years."National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando

 

 

 

 

 

Crash in Sparks construction zone injures three on Dec. 10
Daily Sparks Tribune / 12-11-2012

UPDATE: Laborers' Union Local 169 member Cameron Owens was discharged from Renown Regional Medical Center on Dec. 11. His father and brother are both members of the union. He stood with his back to the oncoming car in the middle of the area behind the rear of the truck at right. Its hydraulic lift was in the position shown. (Look below the stop sign on the bus.) Cameron's fellow workers began to shout "car" as they got out of the way of the auto approaching at 100mph. Cameron dove to his right, breaking his foot but saving his life. Had he not moved, he would have been cut in half between the auto and the lift acting as a blade. He had surgery to place pins and plates in his foot and is recovering, reinforcing the fact that road construction work remains one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. (Photo, John Russell, Local 169 Field Rep.)


Calls to Action

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
Come participate in the Festival of the Failure of the King Maker.
Where/when: in front of his palace, the Venetian Casino, 12-12-12 at 12:00
Who: Bring your friends, neighbors and countrymen (members) and celebrate with us.
Signs will be provided.
Join the Society of Trauma Nurses, Building & Construction Trades Council of Southern Nevada/AFL-CIO,
Culinary Union Local 226 and the Nevada State AFL-CIO.

FYI: In light of his recent failure, Kingmaker Sheldon Adelson has vowed to double down in the next presidential cycle.
President Gingrich, anyone?


WHEN: Monday, December 10, 4:30 p.m.
WHERE: Lloyd George Federal Building / 333 Las Vegas Blvd. S. / Downtown
WHAT: Candlelight Campaign Against Cuts

Tell Senator Dean Heller and Congressman Joe Heck we need more economic security, not less. Don’t continue to give tax breaks to the richest 2%. Don’t sacrifice Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the wealthy.
Join us on Monday, Dec. 10 to send Congress a message!

Peace on earth, good will to Boise & Nepal
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 12-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

BOONSOGGLE
As massive flooding looms for the region, here's how this sorry state got to this sorry state —> Watersports 2012: Reno-Sparks-Washoe governments blew millions, learned little and did even less after the killer floods of 1986, 1997 & 2005


Teenage Immigrant Welfare Mothers on Drugs
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-29-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Barbano back on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV/radio program

Triangle Shirtwaist inferno redux a century down the road: Bangladesh killer inferno was Wal-Mart sweatshop
Harold Meyerson / Washington Post / November 28, 2012

3-25-1911: New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146, including 132 girls


Culinary union head D. Taylor poised for new challenge as national leader
J. Patrick Coolican / Las Vegas Sun / 11-25-2012

UPDATED SATURDAY, 24 NOV. 2012, 4:12 p.m. PST, 00:12 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT SUNDAY 25 NOV. 2012 —>

NEVADA'S CANCER KIDS: New lawsuit claims Fallon cancer cluster isn't over and leaking military jet fuel pipeline is the cause
Superintendent refuses transfers from suspect school

UPDATED SATURDAY, 24 NOV. 2012, 1:27 p.m. PST, 21:27 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT

Wal-Mart salaries decried in Reno Black Friday protest

Reno fourth-grader Zachary Davis spent his Black Friday morning outside a Walmart on East Second Street. Holiday shopping was not the reason.

Instead, the 9-year-old was protesting with a small group of Renoites, including his mother, who accused the corporation of unfair labor and wage practices, which it denies. Store associates average less than $9 an hour (see below) and many are only offered part-time schedules, according to IBIS World, a research marketing company.... —>

—> Story text, still photos and video from the Reno Gazette-Journal / 11-24-2012

—> Local workers protest Wal-Mart / Reno News & Review 11-29-2012

UPDATED FRIDAY, 23 NOV. 2012, 8:07 p.m. PST, 04:07 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT 24 NOV. 2012

Hope you enjoyed a happy Thanksgibleting

Now dust off your picket signs and get to work!


TWO RENO WAL-MART BLACK FRIDAY DEMONSTRATIONS NOV. 23

Wally World's Fantasyland spin on wages

WAL-MART SUCCESSFULLY SELLS CHEAP SPIN:   Wal-Martians on another planet

Nov. 23, 2012 — In a statement to NBC used by Reno's KRNV TV-4, Wal-Mart asserted that "The fact is, our pay and benefits plans are as good as or better than our retail competitors, including those that are unionized."

Bullshit.

“Walmart, they make record profits and here they don't even pay these people a living wage to feed their families,” Reno protester Mary Jan Roesler told TV-4. ”I would love to see the Walmart corporate people try to live off of that.”

A couple of Sundays ago, CBS TV's venerable 60 Minutes did a piece featuring vocational education at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno. The program spokesman was Ryan Costella, the son of a Reno union leader who obtained an excellent college education as a result. He is now reportedly a registered Republican. The young workers training in his program for Reno metal and high-tech fabricator Click-Bond gushed about making —> get ready —> a whole 12 bucks an hour.

How inspiring. How 21st Century. How Wal-Martian!

What the legit media fail to report is that $12 an hour is barely above the real-dollar minimum wage.

The buying power of the dollar peaked, as did America with its progressive tax structure and its most egalitarian economy, in 1968 when the minimum wage rose to $1.60 per hour.

My first job in college washing dishes at Denny's in 1964 paid $1.25. Adjusted for inflation (which Congress never did), that's worth about $9.33 in 2012 dollars. Higher than Wal-Mart today. (See below.)

Had the 1968 minimum wage of $1.60 per hour been continually adjusted for inflation, it would be worth $10.64 per hour today, almost exactly what some established —> but striking —> Wal-Mart workers told TV network reporters that they currently make.

Wally World also says it offers health care, but only to full-timers, many of whom can't afford it. Like so many major employers, Wal-Mart keeps legions on part-time hours even if they want more. Makes them easier to fire, even in states with far better labor laws than Mississippi West Nevada.

Keep up the work and the good fight.

¡Si se puede!

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano
CesarChavezNevada.com
NevadaLabor.com
Barbwire.TV

CWA 9413/AFL-CIO

Definition of chutzpah

Video: Walmart claims $12.40 an hour is average pay, CNN says it's $8.81
By Michael Allen, OpposingViews.com / Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Walmart is facing mass employee walkouts this week over low wages, unsafe working conditions and poor benefits.

Walmart's vice-president of communications David Tovar defended the company’s wage and labor practices on CNN on Tuesday, which seemed to contradict actual Walmart pay.

Tovar said: “Our average rate is about $12.40 an hour for a full time associate. We also offer comprehensive benefit packages as low as $17 a pay period, which is very affordable. We also pay quarterly bonuses, which is something that not a lot of retailers do.”

However, CNN host Carol Costello told Tovar that independent research has shown that the average hourly rate of pay at a Walmart store is $8.81 an hour and the average yearly salary for Walmart employees is $15,500, which is $370 above the federal government’s definition of the poverty line, report RawStory.com and ThinkProgress.org.

Costello said: “Walmart made a whole lot of money last year, billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. Why not at least negotiate with [employees] so that they can live a better middle-class lifestyle?”

Tovar said that Walmart can’t negotiate with unions because its employees are not unionized. However, he did not mention how Walmart is trying to get the National Labor Relations Board to treat the employees as if they were a union by preventing employees from striking.

Tovar added: “It’s the same people that the unions put up every year, and have been doing it for years. A lot of that is smoke and mirrors, and is not having an impact. In fact, our associates have said to us, ‘Why aren’t we speaking out more?’ Which is why I’m doing shows like yours and others.”

UPDATE: FRIDAY, 23 NOV. 2012, 6:13 p.m. PST, 02:13 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT 24 NOV. 2012

DEAR HELLRAISERS: WELL DONE. The morning activity at the E. 2nd St. Wal-Mart was covered on KOLO TV-8/ABC (5:00 p.m.) and KRNV TV-4/NBC (12n, 4:00, 5:00 and 6:00 p.m.) I included both locations in my e-bulletin sent out in the wee hours. KTVN TV-2/CBS ran only national stuff, reinforcing my long-held opinion that of the four local TV news departments, they are by far the most corporate and reluctant to do anything that might ever piss off an advertiser. TV-2 viewers were thus kept in the dark about local protests.

TV-4 and TV-8 went to the morning picket on Second St. which they probably would not have known about save for the bulletin hereinbelow. TV-8 quoted the Wobblies statement about the National Labor Relations Act protecting striking workers from firing or retaliation. The Wobblies probably got better turnout at the Kietzke location at mid-day.

TV-4 reported that protests will continue thru Christmas, so PLEASE keep me informed.

More would have shown up with earlier notice. Organize!

No matter —> We got on TV so in society's opinion, we have been validated as officially existing.

Anyone who has photos of the picket lines I can put up at NevadaLabor.com, please send them to me.

Keep up the good work and the good fight.

¡Si se puede!

Be well. Raise hell.

In Solidarity,

Andrew Barbano
CesarChavezNevada.com
NevadaLabor.com
Barbwire.TV

CWA 9413/AFL-CIO

Wal Mart War Room
Reno contractors sue for millions in unpaid construction costs

UPDATE: THURSDAY, 22 NOV. 2012, 4:11 p.m. PST, 00:11ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT 23 NOV. 2012

Reno, Nev., USA (U-News) — Reno will see at least two Wal-Mart demonstrations on Black Friday, Nov. 23.

The first will take place from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. at 2425 E. Second Street just east of the Martin Luther King Highway (Interstate 580), across from the unionized Grand Sierra Resort. It is being organized by local affiliates of OURWalmart, a group of Wal-Mart workers standing together nationwide to improve working conditions at the world's largest retailer.

"Please come by for as much or as little as you can. We need to show that union pride and solidarity are strong in northern Nevada," one of the organizers said in a statement.

At 12 noon, workers will gather in front of the Wal-Mart location at 4855 Kietzke Lane.

The demonstration will "defend workers' rights under section 7a of the National Labor Relations Act making it unlawful for an employer to retaliate for concerted actions by employees to improve conditions," a spokesman stated.

Media may talk with any demonstrator at the event. This thing appears to be organically organized Occupy-style.

Facebook page for this event
Nov. 23 picketing in support of Wal-Mart workers
Facebook / 11-21-2012


OURWalmart --> http://ourwalmart.org

Nevadalabor.com Wal-Mart Nevada War Room

Bulletins will be updated here as news breaks.

Feel free to send stuff.

BLACK FRIDAY DOUBLE-TALK: The term has several meanings and was most recently co-opted by modern retailers naturally enamored with operating in the black, meaning profitably, as opposed to the red, meaning...well, pick your favorite red state.

Black Friday originally referred to the stock market crash of 1869, followed by 1929's Black Thursday and Black Tuesday, which foreshadowed Great Depression I, all caused by unregulated Wall Street speculation with other people's money. Sound vaguely familiar? Whether or not 2013 will bring GD2 remains to be seen. So take President Bush the Lesser's economic advice and shop till you drop..

BARBWIRE BY BARBANO IN THE THANKSGIBLETING DAY SPARKS TRIBUNE —>
John F. Kennedy's 2013 inaugural address
An update of one of my golden oldies. Keep it for reference come Jan. 21.

SUPPORT THE RETURN OF RENO-SPARKS COMMUNITY TV. If this year's elections didn't convince you of the need for non-corporate filtered news, arts and public affairs, the 2013 legislature certainly will. Join up at ReSurge.TV --> http://resurge.tv#donate

Thank you.

Hope you and yours enjoyed a happy Thanksgibleting. Now dust off your picket signs and go to work!

¡Si se puede!

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano
CesarChavezNevada.com
NevadaLabor.com
Barbwire.TV

CWA 9413/AFL-CIO

Anatomy of the Walmart Strike: Walking Out, One Day at a Time
By David Bacon, Truth-Out.org Op-Ed / Tuesday, 20 November 2012
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This one hits home. Like the writer and so many in the story, I was also fired for union organizing.]

Wal-Mart files charges against UFCW, Black Friday strike still on
Reuters / 11-16-2012

John F. Kennedy's 2013 inaugural address
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-22-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Michael Moore and Crackers the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken assert that they have been thrown out of better places.

Mobilization message from the Mahatma: Michael Moore to President Obama

SATURDAY, 17 NOV. 2012, 1:59 p.m. PST, 21:59 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT

Wal-Mart files charges against UFCW, Black Friday strike still on
Reuters / 11-16-2012

Nevadalabor.com Wal-Mart Nevada Archive

UFCW settles with Raley's. Contrary to Raley's PR, this was not their first strike
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-15-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

SATURDAY, 17 NOV. 2012, 12:08 p.m. PST, 20:08 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT

The Twinkie Defense
Call to action from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

Wall street vultures are blaming workers for getting rid of your sweets—and that’s just not right.

You might have heard that Hostess Brands, the company that makes Twinkies, Ding Dongs and other desserts, filed for court permission to go out of business, and that its blaming a worker strike for the shutdown.

The Wall Street hedge fund managers who run the company have squeezed every cent out of Hostess for eight years. And they’ve put their friends with no experience in the baking industry in high-level management positions.

Hostess workers believe in their company, and we need to stand with them—sign our pledge to support workers, not greedy CEOs who will cut and run for a quick buck. 

What’s happening here is a classic Bain Capital-style assault—blame the little guy to cover the greedy corporate policies that are gutting the middle class.
It’s not just happening to the workers who make the great products Americans love. What’s happening at Hostess is happening to workers all over this country. It’s wrong. And it has to stop.

Crony capitalism and poor management drove Hostess into the ground, not the workers who are now paying the price. In this struggling economy, the greedy corporate executives are willing to let 18,000 people lose their jobs—just so they can pad their pockets.

Hostess' executives are now blaming workers who’ve offered their company multiple concessions and want it to succeed.

This is what’s wrecking our country.

Workers have borne the brunt of bad decision-making by executives who didn’t know anything about the baking business. And they’re the ones getting fired?

These brave workers need to know we stand with them—and we’ll stand with everyone who will take a stand against the corporate race-to-the-bottom.

In Solidarity,

Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

Editor's note: Brother Trumka might have added that bankruptcy court is the newest tool in the union-buster's kit to void union contracts and break unions.

MORE: Union workers refuse to act like ding-dong little cupcakes / Union statement via Sacramento Bee, 11-13-2012

      Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union/AFL-CIO


Why rednecks didn't vote for Obama
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-15-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Barbano back on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV/radio program

WEDNESDAY, 7 NOV. 2012, 12:24 a.m. PST, 08:24 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUTSomebody place a want ad for campaign managers.

WOULD'A COULD'A SHOULD'A DEPT. Come Wednesday, Nov. 7, Sen. Harry Reid and Nevada Democrats may rue not having nominated Sheila Leslie for U.S. Senate.
Be well. Raise hell. — From Barbwire by Barbano / Daily Sparks Tribune / 11-1-2012

TUESDAY, 6 NOV. 2012, 1:26 p.m. PST, 21:26 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT — From Danny Thompson / Nevada State AFL-CIO

Teamsters 14 needs help! There is a decertification vote on Thursday at Coca-Cola.
When: Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Where: Coca Cola Bottling
230 N. Mojave Road / Las Vegas, NV
Times: Wednesday 8AM to 6PM Anytime
               Thursday, 8AM to 6PM Anytime
I am asking that leaders and members join with Teamsters 14 to show solidarity and strength.
For more information, contact Lynn Griffith
.

TUESDAY, 6 NOV. 2012, 10:37 a.m. PST, 18:37 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT

2004 KERRY-BUSH INSTANT REPLAY IN THE BUCKEYE STATE
GREG PALAST REPORT FOR AMY GOODMAN'S DEMOCRACY NOW: Ohio – Wrong Ballots for Black Voters Investigation Uncovers Thousands at Risk of Ballot Loss

Unions file charges of Romney profiteering on General Motors bailout
Author Greg Palast offers free downloads of new book "Billionaires and Bailout Bandits"

MONDAY, 5 NOV. 2012, 9:46 p.m. PST, 05:46 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT TUESDAY 6 NOV. 2012

Vote early and often

Michael Moore and Crackers the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken assert that they have been thrown out of better places.

Messages from the Mahatma: Michael Moore makes a helluva case as to why you should vote whether you want to or not

MONDAY, 5 NOV. 2012, 3:38 p.m. PST, 23:58 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT —

POLITICAL LAUGH OF THE DAY (and perhaps the year)

PHONE CALLER FROM NEVADA STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY (a young lady with an English accent): "May I speak to (a certain person)."

BARBANO: "Negatory."

ENGLISH LADY: "Would you like to speak to a Spanish speaker?"

BARBANO (Laughing): "You're very young, aren't you? That wasn't Spanish, it was CB Radio."

ENGLISH LADY: CLICK.

Where are Johnny Cash and CW McCall when we need them?

No Hallowe'en Prank
Nevada Division of Welfare will now follow the law and allow employees to vote
The following e-mail from a state employee arrived on Oct. 31:

TO: Editor, NevadaLabor.com

Hello.

I thought you may find it interesting to know that after all the scrutiny that our office has gone through with the lawsuit due to the whole voter registration issue, it is kind of ironic that even though the NRS (Nevada Revised Statutes) allows for administrative leave so that we as state employees have the time to go out and vote, our department office manager and his boss have stripped us of this right and said this time off will not be allowed.

You were the one who broke this story and I hope that you bring light to this new issue. I am a mother of small children and with sicknesses and picking children up from and dropping kids off at school we do not have the time to do many things. I will quote the NRS below. I have contacted the presidential campaigns, you, the AFSCME and next shall be the governor's office. I work at the Kings Row office in Reno, NV.


Nevada Administrative Code (NAC) 284.586 Civil leave with pay to vote

(NRS 284.065, 284.155, 284.345) — Civil leave with pay must be granted to allow an employee time off to vote subject to the conditions established in NRS 293.463. If an employee determines he or she will need time off to vote, he or she must submit a request for civil leave with pay to the person authorized to grant such leave before the day of the election.

[Personnel Div., Rule VII § E subsec. 7, eff. 8-11-73]—(NAC A by Dep’t of Personnel, 10-26-84; A by Personnel Comm’n by R145-05, 12-29-2005)

UPDATE 11-2-2012: KRNV TV-4 aired a story about this on Friday, Nov. 2, noting that the situation has purportedly been "cleared up," although NDW admitted no error. An NDW spokeswoman said that workers who wish time off to vote must request it ahead of time. In his interview, Secretary of State Ross Miller merely reiterated the law. (The piece is not available online.) TV-4 obscured the identity of the complaining workers.


Union Says Reno V.A. Retaliated Against and Fired Whistleblowers
KRNV TV-4 / 10-29-2012

As in 2008, the Salt Lake Tribune endorses Obama
SNOPES.com / 10-24-2012

Unions file charges of Romney profiteering on General Motors bailout
Author Greg Palast offers free downloads of new book "Billionaires and Bailout Bandits"

Dreams of Redemption on All Saints Day
A presidential candidate Nevadans can and cannot vote for + Reid regrets
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-1-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

HOPE YOU WORE HALLOWE'EN ORANGE
FOR THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS

¡Viva Los Gigantes!

...all of whom are represented by a labor union

Kiss the Reno Aces goodbye —>NOW
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-25-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

We don't need no education, Part XII
And we don't need no evolution, 'nuther
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-18-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

ED Part XI
Instant replay of rape and pillage
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-11-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Endorsed candidates (.pdf): Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO
Endorsed candidates/statewide, complete (.pdf): Nevada State AFL-CIO


MONDAY, 8 OCT. 2012, 11:58 a.m. PDT, 18:58 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT — AT&T workers demonstrate today at AT&T Reno

Barbano back on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV/radio program

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

HAT TRICK
Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award

BIG NEWS FROM THE 9-22-2012 NPA CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

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

Barbwire.TV
Support the new community TV channel

 

Special notice to Sparks Tribune readers

In its 25th year as a daily, the 102 year-old Sparks Tribune moved to twice-per-week publication as of 1 Sept. 2012. Alas and alack, the publishers have not done a very good job informing our readers and the general public. I've been getting phone calls. The print edition will now be published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Four longtime columnists have been retained: David Farside, Jake Highton, Harry Spencer and the Barbwire. The newspaper's website will continue to publish stories on a daily basis.

My annual Labor Day column appeared in the Sept. 3 Reno Gazette-Journal.

I also highly recommend journalist Mark Robison's extensive piece Hard Labor: Nevada unions tout role in helping workers, firms, economy in the Sunday 2 Sept. 2012 RGJ (starting on page one of the Reno Rebirth section of the print edition). Therein, union men Jim Burrell, Paul McKenzie and Guy Louis Rocha did the movement proud. [Click here to access the shocking but not surprising graphic included in the print edition but not on the RGJ website.]

The RGJ also used a photo and information from this NevadaLabor.com golden oldie.

Hope you enjoyed a happy Labor Day. Stay tuned. Be careful. Be cool.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano

Former Teamsters Local 533 Business Agent Al Tarson dies


UPDATE 9-23-2012: WE WON! Guy Richardson was inducted into the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame in Las Vegas on Sept. 22. Guy and another first-time nominee, longtime Las Vegas Review-Journal Carson City Bureau Chief Ed Vogel, bested seven other worthy contenders. Guy's widow, Zoe Rose, flew in from Ohio for the honors, as did his daughter and son-in law from Sparks. Thanks be to all of Guy's former colleagues who sent endorsements. I'll publish them shortly.

FRIDAY, 21 SEPT. 2012, 6:31 a.m. PDT, 13:31 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT —

EXCLUSIVE: RTC trying to give away
$50 million+ in corporate welfare

          U-News / 9-21-2012 // Updated 9-24, 9-25, 9-27, 10-1, 10-22-2012

MEDIA ILL-ADVISORY: SAVE THE TAXPAYERS $50 MILLION ON THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER

TO: Heavy hitters in the legit media
FROM: The dinosaur cheap seats in the back of the bus at the Sparks Tribune
RE: Please do your freakin' job this morning

Dear Mostly-Newbie Media Types:


This week, you totally missed that T.J. Maxx and Old Navy will be closing tax-producing stores to score legendary chunks of corporate welfare at the Sparks Marina. Wal-Mart is next in line. (9/20 Barbwire)

You've ignored the growing evidence, including his own admissions, that the miraculous Heath Morrison Washoe graduation rate increase was mostly reshuffling the deck.
See "We Don't Need No Education", now in its 11th installment.

Most of you have overlooked the recently published Office of Medical Inspector's Report detailing dastardly deficiencies and occasional death at Reno's Ioannis A. Lougaris Veterans Administration Medical Center. (9/13 Barbwire)

I'll cut you some slack. Everybody's short-staffed these days. Me, too. I've thus spared every expense to hand you an easy one for a slow news Friday, a smoking gun rollover, your chance for painless redemption and you don't even have to go to confession.

Show up at the Reno bus cave this morning and you can save the taxpayers more than $50 million. My treat. Buy me a beer or sacred wine next time you see me.

Longtime Barbwire readers have long been aware that the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County has never been known as a good steward of the public purse. (See NevadaLabor.com for decades of complaints about their extravagant management subcontracting, among other sins.)

This morning, RTC will consider draining the road improvement fund established by the sales tax approved by voters in 2008. They plan to hand it as pure profit to rich guys who don't need it.

Inside word is that three of the five board members are already wired, but hope springs like the sieve eternal in the pre-lobbied world of local government.

THE STING: Basically, some heavyweight developers want to cash in what are known as impact fee credits. Builders are notorious for charging homeowners full retail for impact fees but rather than turn the money over to the government, they make required improvements themselves, usually on the cheap. This explains why you get a lot of short-lived roads in new developments which are then turned over to the government to fix and maintain. Buy low, sell high.

Impact credits get carried forward for 10 years. Alas, some of the big boys have found themselves on the end of that chain letter and want a public bailout, cash for the credits at retail rather than at cost. (Projects that low-balled and failed to pay area-standard construction wages may get stuck for the difference. That should liven up some homeowners' association meetings.)

Why these credits exist in the first place, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe the next step is an international derivatives market. If you think this stuff is a bit hard to understand, then you've gotten the point. Somebody call Goldman-Sachs.

Apparently, RTC's own lawyer has told them all this foolishness is illegal but who cares? It's only public money and most of them will be out of office shortly. Somebody call Goldman-Sachs.

THE AWFUL TRUTH: "Funding sources available to RTC for the purchase of impact fee credits are not allowed under current state law. If the Board desires to pursue the purchase of impact fee credits, the use of sales tax could potentially be allowed contingent on legislative approval modifying the Nevada Revised Statutes to allow such use." [Staff Report, Agenda Item 6.1(c), page 1, emphasis added]

Translation: It's against the law but go ahead and do it anyway. Somebody call Goldman-Sachs.

I can see the arguments before the legislature now: The previous commission put us on the hook and the big boys are going to sue our asses, so please bail us out and let us hand over the taxpayers' money. We'll just do without roads. We can always get a loan from Goldman-Sachs.

As Justice Louis Brandeis once wisely stated, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

And so, dear media types in the Age of Aquarius on this last day of a long hot summer, let the sun shine in.

WHEN: 9:00 a.m. Friday Sept. 21
WHERE: The RTC Bat Cave
      Under the Martin Luther King Highway US 395/580 across from Wooster High
      2050 Villanova Drive [] Reno, NV 89502
WATCH OUT for nearby NHP school zone speed traps that you may zoom past coming off the freeway.
WHO: Here's Regional Transportation Commission contact info for voters who might want to drop a comment to the members, e-mail addresses below.

Ron Smith, Chair, CIty of Sparks
Bob Larkin, Vice-Chair, Washoe County
Dave Aiazzi, City of Reno
Dan Gustin, City of Reno
Bonnie Weber, Washoe County

rsmith@cityofsparks.us (Ron Smith),
blarkin@washoecounty.us (Bob Larkin),
aiazzi@cityofreno.com (Dave Aiazzi),
gustind@cityofreno.com (Dan Gustin),
bweber@washoecounty.us (Bonnie Weber),

Please send me a copy: <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us>

In addition to the 9-27 and 10-18 Barbwires, the above U-News Bulletin generated the following RTC stories in the corporate media
U-News Too—>Wal-Mart Black Friday picketing which otherwise would have gone unheralded

We don't need no education, Part XII
And we don't need no evolution, 'nuther
Election ploy? Aiazzi wants to sweep road construction tax funds to schools, legal or not
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-18-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

New stores at Legends raise questions about STAR bonds
KRNV TV-4 (NBC) / Reported by Ashley Cullins / Video clip hereat / 10-1-2012

Please don't cook or eat the books
ITALIAN STEREOTYPE VALIDATED: Aiazzi and DiLoreto almost throw blows
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-27-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Legendary problem
Whether Sparks development project is really working goes unexamined

By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 9-27-2012

Chapter and verse according to RTC
Daily Sparks Tribune / 9-25-2012

RTC credit buyback program decried as bailout for Reno-area developers
Reno Gazette-Journal / Front page above the fold/ 9-22-2012

RTC board explodes over proposed buy-back program using taxpayer funds
KRNV TV-4 / 9-21-2012

NevadaLabor.com/U-News also generated TV and print coverage of the Nov. 23 Reno Wal-Mart Black Friday picketing

ALSO: Nevada Division of Welfare will now follow the law and allow employees to vote


MACHINE POLITICS: America's greatest 20th Century philosopher, Scrooge McDuck, once said "in a world full of little men with their big machines, the only solution is for another little man to build a bigger machine."

Here's a modest start.

SUPPORT THE NEVADA CITIZEN TV PROJECT to re-establish a non-corporate community channel in these parts. Is it needed? Just try to find all of the above elsewhere in one place, in depth and in context.

As the late, great Travus T. Hipp used to say, I may be wrong, but I'm never uncertain.

It's certainly important to anyone of the opinion that little things like $50 million in corporate welfare giveaways might matter.

You may support the cause at ReSurge.TV

Turn on, tune in and tell a friend.

Be well. Raise hell.
_________
Andrew Barbano is a 43-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. For much more on Nevada governmental corporate welfare addiction, go to Cabellyup.com/ and the Barbwire Corporate Welfare Archive. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and has occasionally appeared in most Nevada newspapers, usually when the boss has been out of town.

-30-

The flipside from an old fry cook
Legit media stenographers fail to pop the corporate welfare question
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-20-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

A great week for scandals

We Don't Need No Education, Part X
The school district master chefs continue cooking the books
[UPDATE 9-17-2012] TOLJASO DEPT. The Awful Truth: "Successes and Challenges" indeed —> As only the Barbwire predicted last spring, Dr. Heath Morrison's disappointing third-year graduation rate explains why he got outta Dodge after year two.
Teachers' business tax petitions hit Nevada streets while Chicago teachers do likewise
Damning inspection report brings union call to oust Reno VA hospital leadership
State ignores voter registration lawsuit until the day after this column printed

NEEDED NOW MORE THAN EVER: New community TV channel
Barbwire by Barbano / Humongously expanded from the 9-13-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

The Post-dated Recession:
Pay me now or pay me later

Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

SUFFRAGETTES 2012 (Bruce Thompson Federal Courthouse, Reno NV Aug. 26, 2012) —Left to right, the signs read Your Body, Your Way / We Can Do Better / (Missouri Republican Rep. and U.S. Senate candidate Todd) Akins can kiss my voting booth / My Body My Choice. There are actually six readable signs in the photo if you count "sandwiches" in the upper left background and "Do Not Enter" to the right of Ms. Your Body, Your Way — which adds a nice touch of irony to this energetic demonstration on a sunny Sunday morning. Somewhere, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Victoria Claflin Woodhull, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Jeannette Rankin, Nancy Gomes, Mary Gojack, Bella Abzug, Jean Ford and legions of iron-jawed angels are smiling.

Women and Unions: Orphan Majorities
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-3-2012 Reno Gazette-Journal /
Updated 9-4-2012

Lie when that pollster calls you
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 8-26-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

You can't handle the truth
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 8-19-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

You've lived here too long when...
PLUS: Myth Rumpney & Retro Ryan Alert
77th Anniversary of Social Security celebrated statewide Tuesday

Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 8-12-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

BREAKING NEWS

MONDAY, 8 OCT. 2012, 11:58 a.m. PDT, 18:58 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT —
AT&T workers demonstrate today at AT&T Reno

Oct. 8, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
JIM BURRELL, PRESIDENT
Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO
(775) 338-4719

AT&T WORKERS WILL DEMONSTRATE AT RENO AT&T OFFICES TODAY

RENO, NEV. — Members of Communications Workers of America/AFL-CIO will demonstrate at AT&T offices at 1450 Vassar Street in Reno today beginning at 4:00 p.m. PDT. Between 100 and 200 are expected. Most will have arrived by 5:30.

AT&T has been enjoying record profits in the billions but its western workers have labored without a contract since April 7. The biggest issues are health care and job security.

The Reno demonstration follows August work stoppages (a union strike followed by a company lockout) on both the east and west coasts triggered by illegal company unfair labor practices. There was also a walkout in May.

“Contract negotiations are never easy,” CWA District 9 Vice-President Jim Weitkamp said in August. “But when AT&T violates the law repeatedly, the process really can’t work. Given AT&T’s record profits, tax breaks and jaw-dropping executive compensation, there is no reason for them to insist on lowering the standard of living of a single worker.”

Sparks-based CWA Local 9413/AFL-CIO is the longest continuously operating labor organization in Nevada. Beginning as the Washoe Typographical Union in the days of the Comstock Lode, it once counted Mark Twain among its members.

Communications Workers of America/AFL-CIO now represents thousands of Silver State workers including telecommunications (AT&T statewide, CC Communications in Fallon), health care (St. Mary's Regional Medical Center), Naval Air Station Fallon support staff, Clark County employees (school police, district court marshals, district attorney investigators, park rangers) and law enforcement personnel in Henderson and Elko.

CWA represents approximately 18,000 workers at AT&T West. These employees maintain and repair the fiber and copper networks which carry regular telephone and cellular telephone signals. They repair and install residential and business telephone systems, install AT&T’s video products and provide service and sales to AT&T customers. 

AT&T is the largest and most profitable company in the communications industry and the 12th biggest company in America. In 2010, AT&T recorded profits of $19.86 billion on revenues of $124 billion. Last year, AT&T made $20 billion in profits. 

HOT AUGUST STRIKE!

WE'RE OUTTA HERE!
Reno, Nev. — CWA Local 9413 members and some of their closest friends picket in 100-degree heat at the AT&T facility on Capital Blvd. in southeast Reno on August 7.
Reno, Nev. — THE GATHERING STORM: CWA Local 9413 members take a break from 100-degree heat at the longime AT&T Vassar Street facility in southeast Reno on August 7.

CWA sisters (above) march in 100-degree heat next to busy traffic at heavily-traveled Kietzke Lane and Vassar Streets in Reno, just up the block from AT&T offices (right).


The company vs. the workers

"Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" —Chico Marx

We just want to bargain fairly," Local 9413 President Jim Burrell told the Reno Gazette-Journal (8 Aug. 2012). (Burrell carries the red flag in the foreground of the top photo, above.)

"We want what is fair and this is maintaining what benefits we have," Burrell said.

"We aren't asking for increases," he added

So far, the National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against AT&T West in response to two unfair labor practice charges filed, and is reviewing several other charges.

"Contract negotiations are never easy, but when AT&T violates the law, the process really can't work," said CWA District 9 Vice President Jim Weitkamp. CWA represents about 18,000 AT&T West workers.

About 3,200 members of CWA Local 1298 in Connecticut who work at AT&T East also engaged in a two-day unfair labor practice strike.

Aug. 7, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
JIM BURRELL, PRESIDENT
Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO
(775) 338-4719

AT&T WORKERS STAGE TWO-DAY WALKOUT IN EAST AND WEST

RENO, NEV. — Members of Communications Workers of America/AFL-CIO have walked off the job at AT&T in two large regions.

Triggered by company unfair labor practices, the work stoppage affects Nevada, California, New York, New Jersey and all of New England.

Workers have placed informational picket lines at 1450 Vassar and 1375 Capital Blvd. in Reno.

The work stoppage follows a similar walkout in May. Workers have labored without a contract since April 7, 2012, at a time when AT&T has reported billions in profits. The biggest issues are health care and job security.

UPDATES: RENO KRNV TV-4 STORY —> Our press release vs. AT&T's much longer one

CWA DISTRICT 9 (California/Nevada) —> AT&T WORKERS ON STRIKE


Cold Reality TV
Life is a bitch and the bitch is television
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 8-5-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Fear is a Liar
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-29-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Heat and light for the Hall of Flames
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-22-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

UPDATED TUESDAY, 17 JULY 2012, 5:14 p.m. PDT, 00:14 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT July 18 —

Feeney hospitalized in Oregon. Concert off. BBQ, music and party still on.

Anne Feeney has been hospitalized in intensive care in Oregon. All we know is that her symptoms included low blood pressure. It does not appear to be life-threatening. We regret that she will not be able to entertain her union brothers and sisters in Reno tonight. Say a prayer or send some good vibes to your concept of an almighty if you relate to such.

Playing with fire
Too stingy to pay for fire protection but not to raise taxes and blame unions
PLUS: Legendary labor folksinger Anne Feeney plays Reno July 17
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-15-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

If you give it away, you can't sell it
How the Beehive State bested Nevada by investing in education rather than prostituting to corporations
High-tax Utah has now surpassed Virginia on the Forbes list of most business-friendly states
Tax-the-workers Nevada is at the bottom of the barrel, as usual

By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 7-12-2012

God looks nothing like Charlton Heston
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-8-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

UPDATED THURSDAY, 5 JULY 2012, 1:51:43 p.m. PDT, 13:51:43 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT
Demonstrations July 9 & 12 at Sen. Heller's office

FROM: Danny L. Thompson, Executive Secretary-Treasurer
Nevada State AFL-CIO


In the last decade, more than 50,000 manufacturing facilities have closed, six million manufacturing jobs have been lost and the U.S. trade deficit has grown. And we’ve seen outsourcing spread to other sectors, like call centers and financial services. If we want to rebuild our economy, we need to stop sending good American jobs offshore.

SENATOR HELLER - IT IS TIME TO BRING JOBS HOME

UPCOMING ACTIONS

RENO: Join with IUPAT leaders delivering a letter to Senator Heller’s Reno office asking him to vote in favor of the Bring Jobs Home Act. This action is taking place on Monday, July 9, 2012 (1:00 – 2:00 p.m. PDT) at Senator Heller’s Reno District Office at the Bruce Thompson Federal Building, 400 S. Virginia Street (at Liberty Street, downtown) Suite 738, Reno, NV 89501. For more information or to RSVP, contact Chad Smith or call 443-924-8616.

 LAS VEGAS: Join with other Nevada labor leaders outside Senator Heller’s Las Vegas district office to ask for his support for the Bring Jobs Home Act. The event will take place on Thursday, July 12, 2012 (12 Noon – 1:30 p.m. PDT) outside the Lloyd George Federal Building, 333 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Suite 8203, Las Vegas, NV, 89101. For more information or to RSVP, contact Shannon Marietta or call 702-459-1414.

Call Senator Heller today at 1-888-659-9401

Tell him to vote for the Bring Jobs Home Act (S. 2884).

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

HAT TRICK
Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award

STAY TUNED FOR BIG NEWS FROM THE 9-22-2012 NPA CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

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

Barbwire.TV
Support the new community TV channel

Burn, baby, burn

UPDATED MONDAY, 2 JULY 2012, 4:04:39 p.m. PDT, 23:04:39 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT MURPHY'S LAW POETIC JUSTICE DEPT. —> At about 12:30 p.m. PDT, roughly 28.5 hours after the divorce of the City of Reno and Washoe County fire departments, a major forest fire broke out in one of the two newly unprotected county areas. At about 1:45 p.m. PDT, I saw one U.S. Forest Service and three Reno Fire Department trucks "speeding" to the scene more than an hour after the fire started. Glad I don't live up there in the high rent district. In addition to their taxes, I've gotta hunch their fire insurance rates just went up. —> AB

July 2 Reno Gazette-Journal front page headline: Washoe County fire district starts 'flawlessly,' fire chief said

Washoe County Commission Republicans raise taxes and cut fire protection to damage union
Reno News & Review / 6-28-2012

i'toon: Fertilizing apples with citizens as mushrooms
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-1-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

UPDATED FRIDAY, 29 JUNE 2012, 6:19 p.m. PDT, 01:19 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT June 30(U-News) — NO STRIKE —> Teamsters vote to ratify new contract with Reno-Sparks-Washoe bus system

Pension abuse: Right wing Chicago group makes up stats to damage Nevada PERS
Reno News & Review / 6-28-2012

We Don't Need No Education, Part VIII
Departing Reno-Sparks-Washoe school boss admits cooking the books
Eighth in a series on the collapsing future of Nevada education

Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-24-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Updated 7-17-2012

UPDATED SATURDAY, 23 JUNE 2012, 12:03:40 a.m. PDT, 07:03:40 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT June 23 — On this date in 1419, Pope Martin V made his predecessor, deposed Pope John XXIII, cardinal bishop of Tusculum [EDITOR'S NOTE: The latter John XXIII is often termed an anti-pope who ruled during the Great Western Schism. He is obviously not the revered 20th Century John XXIII]; in 1863 at Dayton, Nevada, John Thoroughman enlisted in the army for three years and was inducted at Fort Churchill (after Civil War service, he ended up in the Ormsby County Poor Farm where he died); in 1910, legislation protecting labor unions from antitrust law, previously passed by the House, was defeated by the House after President Taft threw his efforts into the fight against a measure he called "class legislation" (three Democrats voted to support Taft: Joseph Sherley of Kentucky, Robert Page of North Carolina and George Bartlett of Nevada); in 1938, a mobile NBC television unit was shooting footage in front of Radio City and recorded the suicide leap of a Girl Scouts secretary from the Time and Life building; in 1941, lyricist Robert Hunter, author of one of the iconic lyrics of a generation, "Lately it occurs to me/What a long, strange trip it's been", was born in San Luis Obisbo; in 1960, the United Nations ruled that Israel acted illegally when its agents kidnapped Adolf Eichmann from Argentina; in 1964, Henry Cabot Lodge resigned as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam so he could return to the United States after unexpectedly winning the New Hampshire presidential primary election as a write-in candidate; in 1970, Harold Lee Linville of Reno, Nevada died in Phong Dinh province, Vietnam (panel 9w, row 84 of the Vietnam wall); in 2003 in Grutter vs. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the University of Michigan Law School using race as a factor in deciding admissions because of "the educational benefits that diversity is designed to produce. These benefits are substantial. ... In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. All members of our heterogeneous society must have confidence in the openness and integrity of the educational institutions that provide this training. As we have recognized, law schools 'cannot be effective in isolation from the individuals and institutions with which the law interacts...'"

UPDATED FRIDAY, 22 JUNE 2012, 9:00:06 p.m. PDT, 04:00:06 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT June 23 — On this date in 1891, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field and District Judge Matthew Deady of Oregon organized the new U.S. Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit in San Francisco with Ernest Hawley of Carson City, Nevada as crier; in 1914, with the state fiscal year a week short of complete, the state workers injury insurance system reported that there had been 1,203 injuries and twenty nine deaths during the year to date and that more than $201,000 in claims had been paid out with $227,000 paid in as premiums; in 1917 in front of the White House, arrests began of National Women's Party volunteers who were protesting President Wilson's failure to support federal suffrage, and they were imprisoned at Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia where on 15 November 1917 the warden ordered guards to begin brutalizing the protesters to break their will (EDITOR'S NOTE: as dramatized in the Hilary Swank film Ironjawed Angels];  in 1932, the Nevada Public Service Commission ordered the Western Pacific Railroad, which shut down its Sand Pass station without obtaining PSC permission, to reopen the station (the station was located between Flanigan and Gerlach); in 1944, President Roosevelt signed legislation creating the GI Bill of Rights; in 1956, the California Highway Commission decided to relocate U.S. 40 from Donner Lake to Floriston, bypassing Truckee; in 1968, Classical Gas by Mason Williams was released; in 1969, the legendary one and only album of Blind Faith was released; in 1980, Mohawk-Algonquin Kateri Tekakwitha, known as the Lily of the Mohawks, was beatified by the Catholic Church.

BREAKING NEWS

UPDATED FRIDAY, 22 JUNE 2012, 10:59 p.m. PDT, 05:59 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT June 23 —
Reno-Sparks transit strike possibly averted

UPDATED THURSDAY, 21 JUNE 2012, 1:08 a.m. PDT, 08:08 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT (U-News) —
As Charlie Brown might say, rats!

   WHITE RATS — MV Transportation has imported strikebreakers to ride Reno-Sparks-Washoe RTC buses as passengers to learn the routes and the town as best they can before the June 22 strike/lockout deadline. They can be identified by their white shirts and black pants. From all of us who have been through this a few times before, welcome to déjà vu all over again. Stay tuned and keep NevadaLabor.com posted.

ALSO —As predicted last year, mass firings have begun as the union busters take over St. Mary's Regional Medical Center in Reno as of June 30 . Looks like the Hot August Strike season may come early this year. Stay tuned and keep NevadaLabor.com posted. [NevadaLabor.com Health Care War Room]

UPDATED WEDNESDAY, 20 JUNE 2012, 12:49 a.m. PDT, 07:49 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT (U-News) — Last Friday, June 15, Teamsters Local 533 sent a letter of termination to MV Transportation, contract operators for the Regional Transportation System of Washoe County's Reno-Sparks-Washoe bus and senior/disabled transit system. The letter served notice that the union is terminating the interim collective bargaining agreement between the workers and company effective at 11:59 p.m. PDT on Friday, June 22, 2012. Union drivers and support staff can strike anytime thereafter. A strike or company lockout of workers would be nothing new in the contentious relationship between the workers and whichever hired gun that local elected officials have retained to ramrod the public transit system. Stay tuned.

Updated WEDNESDAY, 20 JUNE 2012, 12:27:56 a.m. PDT, 07:27:56 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT On this date in 1874, Congress ordered a takeover of the white-administered Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, a bank created in 1865 to help former slaves make the transition to freedom that had been subverted by white overexpansion, mismanagement, abuse, and fraud and by the Panic of 1873; in 1879 in Elko, the Nevada Board of Regents met, approved the principal's salary (the state university then included pre-collegiate instruction) and approved the janitor's salary, and adjourned; in 1900, German minister (ambassador) Baron von Kettler was killed by a Beijing street crowd, triggering the 55-day siege of the international compound of embassies representing western governments occupying and exploiting China; in 1917, newspapers were making a fuss over William Teller, a Shoshone from the Duck Valley reservation, because he purchased a liberty bond (war bond); in 1927, federal narcotics officer George O'Neil arrested alleged Elko bootlegger Helen Wong for brewing rattlesnake whiskey (using a diamondback at least four feet long) which she insisted was Chinese medicine; in 1940 with war still 17 months away, President Roosevelt jolted Washington by forming a coalition war cabinet, appointing Republicans Henry Stimson as secretary of war and Frank Knox as navy secretary (the move that for some reason convinced many in Washington that FDR would not seek a third term); in 1972, Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman met about Watergate, and the tape recording of their conversation later became famous when an 18-and-a-half minute section of it was found erased; in 1979 at a routine Managua checkpoint during the last days of the Somoza dictatorship, ABC News reporter Bill Stewart, lying face down on the street, was executed by a member of the Nicaraguan guardia while (unknown to the killer) a camera rolled, and the footage helped dissolve U.S. support for the tyrant, an incident later dramatized in the Joanna Cassidy/Nick Nolte film Under Fire in which a Nicaraguan woman is portrayed saying, "Fifty thousand Nicaraguans can die...Maybe we should have killed an American journalist fifty years ago." (The guardia had been formed by the United States Marines in 1927 during a U.S. occupation of Nicaragua and became the Somozas' personal terror force).

NAGPAC's Ghost Riders Saddle Up Again
Blackguards challenge Nevada's legendary None of the Above ballot option
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-17-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune
UPDATED 9-6-2012: Federal appellate judges put None of the Above back on the November ballot. Alleluia!

The Rocking Ghosts of Del Mar Station
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-10-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Updated: THURSDAY, 7 JUNE 2012, 10:30 a.m. PDT, 17:30 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT Barbano back on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV/radio program

Updated: WEDNESDAY, 6 JUNE 2012, 1:44 a.m. PDT, 08:44 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT D-Day

Jack Newfield on the assassination of Robert Kennedy: I tried to read the Los Angeles papers, filled with sidebar stories about violence in America. Sociologists, politicians, and religious leaders blaming movies, comic strips, and television. None seemed to think that Vietnam, or poverty, or lynchings, or our genocide against the Indians had anything to do with it. Just popular culture like [the film] Bonnie and Clyde, never political institutions, or our own tortured history. ... Now I realized what makes our generation unique, what defines us apart from those who came before the hopeful winter of 1961, and those who came after the murderous spring of 1968. We are the first generation that learned from experience that things were not getting better, that we shall not overcome.  We felt, by the time we reached thirty, that we had already glimpsed the most compassionate leaders our nation could produce, and they had all been assassinated.  And from this time forward, things would get worse: our best political leaders were part of memory now, not hope.  The stone was at the bottom of the hill and we were alone.

On this date in 1856, President Franklin Pierce suffered an indignity endured by no other elected president -- he was denied renomination by his party, James Buchanan winning the Democratic presidential nomination instead [EDITOR'S NOTE: President Pearce is a direct ancestor of George W. Bush. His mother's maiden name was Barbara Pierce. George the Lesser certainly staggered in his ancestor's footsteps.]; in 1859, an exploring party led by army topographical engineer James Simpson passed Carson Lake; in 1864, residents of the Territory of Nevada voted for delegates to a constitutional convention preparatory to statehood; in 1911, debts of the closed Searchlight Bank in Clark County, in receivership for three years, were paid at 25.5 cents on the dollar; in 1928, a plane carrying Will Rogers landed upside down in Las Vegas, but the comedian was uninjured and he continued east in another plane on his way to an appearance before the Republican National Convention in Kansas City (the next day the Rogers plane made an emergency landing in Wyoming, smashing the undercarriage); in 1936, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Hansen of Reno put their hydroplane, Singer Miss 2nd, into the water at Tahoe City to make preparations for the summer speedboat races; in 1944, reporter Martha Gelhorn, denied press credentials for the D-Day landings, stowed away on a hospital ship and got ashore by carrying a stretcher; in 1944, it was business as usual away from Normandy: 1,795 Corfu Jews arrived in Greece on the way to Auschwitz, where all but 200 were gassed and the remainder made slaves; in 1963, Alaska Governor William Egan turned back the $300 honorarium due him for speaking at the University of Nevada commencement, specifying that it be used as a scholarship for a deserving Nevada student; in 1966, Robert Earle Garey of Las Vegas died in Quang Nam province, Vietnam (panel 7e/row 133 of the Vietnam wall); in 1968, Robert Kennedy died; in 1971, April Kestell of Reno graduated first in her law school class at the University of San Francisco (which she attended on a full scholarship), winning the ancroft/Whitney Prise and the Haley Award after editing the law review; in 2004, Donald R. Currey, a geography professor who achieved immortality of a sort by cutting down a bristlecone pine in eastern Nevada (such pines are the second oldest living things on earth), died in Utah.

Travus T. Hipp & Tales of Nevada's Futures Passed
Expanded from the 6-3-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Travus T. Hipp leaves us laughing and forewarned
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-27-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

SPECIAL WARNING / Updated 5-26-2012: If you plan on attending Travus T. Hipp's memorial service, please consider driving up the back way/southern route via Nevada Highway 50 East in Carson City. The Virginia City Memorial Day Parade starts today at noon and there has been road construction on Geiger Grade, the direct route from Reno. The weather also may be wet and blustery. Safe journey.

Updated: FRIDAY, 25 MAY 2012, 2:44 a.m. PDT, 09:44 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT
WEDNESDAY, 23 MAY 2012, 5:40 p.m. PDT, 00:40 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT 24 May 2012
TUESDAY, 22 MAY 2012, 11:36 a.m. PDT, 18:36 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT
SUNDAY, 20 MAY 2012, 6:32 p.m. PDT, 01:32 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT 21 May 2012

Followed by a moon shadow

TRAVUS T. HIPP, 1937-2012

ADIÓS, COMPADRE — Our friend Travus, 75, passed away peacefully between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. PDT on 18 May 2012 at his home in Silver City, Nevada. The sun is in eclipse as I write this at 6:30 p.m. on May 20.

SLIGHT CHANGE OF VENUE (5-22-2012) — Adiós in Silver City, Nevada, Saturday, May 26, 2012 —>
The auld church where Travus lived and died is too small for the expected multitude, so gathering, gnoshing and remembering will commence at the Silver City Community Center, 385 High Street, at 10:00 a.m. PDT. Bring food if you want but most important, bring yourself and all your memories. Memorial service starts at High Noon. Travus will be buried next to his rock star companion Lynne Hughes, a short walk away. My remembrance of Lynne from the 3-21-1993 Daily Sparks Tribune will posted with Travus' formal obituary at this website. All memories accepted for permanent posting hereat. Thanks for all your kind words. Keep up the good work and the good fight.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano

Morrison & Maurins: M&M's hard to swallow
Seventh in a series on the collapsing future of Nevada education
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-20-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Updated: MONDAY, 14 MAY 2012, 4:22 a.m. PDT, 11:22 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT

Memorial service for former Teamsters Local 533 business agent
Don Bouma set for Sunday, May 27, 2012, in Sacramento, Calif.

Updated: SUNDAY, 13 MAY 2012, 1:41 a.m. PDT, 08:41 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT

All that's missing is an enemies list
Sixth in a series on the collapsing future of Nevada education
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-13-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Updated: SUNDAY, 6 MAY 2012, 5:56 p.m. PDT, 00:56 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT MONDAY 7 MAY 2012

Playing Dixieland - The shell game continues
Fifth in a series on the collapsing future of Nevada education
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

May 5, 2012 — ¡Viva huelga!

U-NEWS FROM Barbwire.TV, SATURDAY, 5 MAY 2012, 4:35 p.m. PDT, 23:35 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT Reno AT&T union workers remain on the picket line at AT&T in southeast Reno. Charges of illegal unfair labor practices have been filed with the National Labor Relations Board. Communications Workers of America/AFL-CIO General President Larry Cohen may call a national strike of more than 40,000 workers from the west (District 9, HI, CA, NV) to the mid-Atlantic states (District 4) to the northeast (Distict 1) as early as Monday, May 7. Members have already voted 93% to 7% to authorize a strike. The decision as to whether or not to allow workers to wear the patch (below) on the job seems to be completely arbitrary at the whim of lower managers. AT&T wants to kill retiree health insurance starting on 1 Jan. 2013, a benefit in existence since the 1940's. AT&T has refused to even discuss the issue. Stay tuned. Be well. Raise hell.

Back to the table: AT&T Bargaining Updates from Local 9400

AT&T union workers locked out in Reno
by Michael Wolfe

KTVN TV-2 News / 6:30 p.m. PDT 4 May 2012

RENO, Nev., USA — AT&T employees say they were barred from work because of a sticker they wore supporting their union in health care negotiations.¡¡
The union members say AT&T told they couldn't work as long as they sported the offending sticker.

Employees we spoke to said they want to make their opposition to AT&T's proposed health insurance rate hike known.

"We will be here until they make some movement, we're not asking for a lot. There's nothing offensive about this sticker, it's telling the truth," says Jim Burrell, president of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO.

AT&T released a statement to Channel 2 News saying employees could return to work easily saying: "Technicians who come to work appropriately without the offending sticker will be welcomed back. We are continuing to negotiate with the union and remain committed to working together with them to bargain a fair contract that will allow us to continue to provide and protect high quality middle class careers for our employees."

Copyright © 2012 Sarkes-Tarzian, Inc.

    U-News UPDATE: Burrell reports that CWA employees have been locked out at various locations in several states. Union members will picket through the weekend at AT&T's facility at 1375 Capital Blvd. in southeast Reno inside the Dermody Industrial Park. More than 200 service calls were missed on May 4 as more than 60 workers picketed. Those not locked out refused to cross the picket line. They have worked without a contract since April 7.

The offensive sticker which is absolutely legal for union workers to wear on the job under long-established labor law.

California CWA workers locked out
Santa Rosa Press Democrat via Chicago Tribune / 5-4-2012

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

HAT TRICK
Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award

STAY TUNED FOR BIG NEWS FROM THE 9-22-2012 NPA CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

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

Barbwire.TV
Support the new community TV channel

Updated: FRIDAY, 4 MAY 2012, 4:53 p.m. PDT, 23:53 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT U-NEWS FROM Barbwire.TV

RENO, NEV. 5-4-2012 (U-NEWS) — Watch Reno's KOLO TV-8 this evening for an update on the fabled Flagger Moms of Orange Cone Hell.

Reporter Terri Russell today interviewed Laborers' Local 169 flagger and traffic control supervisor Marlinda Ebbert on a job in Sparks.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, road construction and especially traffic control is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, even during a tight economy. In 2010 (the latest national stats available, see page 3), 68 people died in "highway, street and bridge" construction accidents, 25 of whom were "workers killed struck by vehicles."

The Nevada Dept. of Transportation reported "one death and close to 700 work zone crashes in active Nevada work zones last year,” according to NDOT Director Susan Martinovich in an April 20 statement

Local 169 flaggers have come up with the equivalent of a criminal profile of the person most likely to kill them: If you see a 30-ish woman on a cel-phone driving a tan SUV with a Nevada license plate, run. She won't see you even if you hurl your 10-foot stop sign thru her windshield like a javelin.

Alas, Nevada drivers are far worse and much more dangerous than tourists.

A couple of years ago, a Local 169 flagger was struck in downtown Reno by a young woman piloting a Camaro who intentionally sped up while heavy equipment was crossing the area, endangering her life. The flagger could have been killed had he not jumped away at the last second.

"You're trying to get me fired!" screamed the late-for-work kamikaze.

A Yellow cabbie rushing for a fare at Circus Circus seriously injured a Local 169 flagger near St. Mary's Hospital four years ago. The cabbie pled guilty and the injured flagger won a cash settlement in court.

Clock here for the original National Safety Council Award-winning Flagger Moms of Orange Cone Hell campaign.

TOMORROW —> Cinco de MayDay / UPDATE: Event Facebook Photos

The Industrial Workers of the World (aka The Wobblies) union and the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada are jointly producing a May Day / 1 de Mayo Reno Rally, Celebration and Demonstration for Workers Rights in downtown Reno on Saturday, May 5, 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Workers will gather for death-defyin' speechifyin' at the Mapes Graveyard in front of the City Hall Black Tower at First and S. Virginia streets.

Inglés contact: Paul at 775-513-7523; Par Español, contact Elvira at 775-379-9054. Facebook: Reno May Day/Primero de Mayo 2012

This is not be confused with the commercial event being held the same day at the Grand Sierra Hotel-Casino.

NOTE: International Workers' Day is fundamentally an American holiday. It commemorates what is known as the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886, in which several demonstrators at a mass rally for an eight-hour workday were killed. Labor Day is celebrated on MayDay, May 1, worldwide, save for the U.S., which moved it to September back in the McCarthy Red Scare era of fear and loathing.

BARBWIRESQUE MEDIA MEANDERINGS

SUNDAY, May 6 —>
Barbwire by Barbano in the Sunday Daily Sparks Tribune: The fifth installment in the series "We Don't Need No Education," a continuing embarrassment for the Washoe County School District and its departing CEO. Also: The real reason that President Obama is coming to Reno on May 11.

COMING SOON / Mark your calendar —>
TUESDAY, May 29 —> Unions Fight Back5:30 p.m. PDT, Northern Nevada Labor Temple, 1819 Hymer Ave., Sparks. Rank and file members get the opportunity to ask questions directly of officeholders and community leaders. Union members only. Talk to your shop steward and bring a friend. Pizza provided. (Last month it was Chinese food but not Chinese pizza. Why not? They invented pasta. Just ask Marco Polo.) Info: Liz Sorenson, 775-322-9413.


SUNDAY, June 3 —> 5th Annual Cops & Burgers + Show 'n' Shine, Grand Sierra Resort parking lot, 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. PDT. Special Olympics benefit. Contact Gary Brown, UAW Local 2162/AFL-CIO, 775-856-1459. To donate a raffle prize, contact Neal Grows, 775-972-7456. Info: CopsAndBurgersReno.com

SATURDAY, June 16 (new date) —> Reno-Sparks NAACP Annual Freedom Fund Awards Banquet, 6:00 p.m. PDT, Mandalay Ballroom, Circus Circus Hotel-Casino, Fifth and Sierra streets, downtown Reno. Sponsorship and ticket info: RenoSparksNAACP.org Contact: Barbano, 775-882-TALK (8255).

SUPPORT THE NEVADA CITIZEN TV PROJECT, a new channel and network for the many voices of activists, artists and magnificent misfits in a non-corporate environment. For more info or to ante into the game, go to ReSurge.TV to donate. (U-News postal service mailing address, below.) Please let me know if you need a letter for your e-board. Thanks to those who have already stepped up.

Stay warm and bring the heat.

Be well. Raise hell.

In Solidarity,

Andrew Barbano
U-News


P.O. Box 10034
Reno, NV 89510
775-882-8255 [882-TALK]

CesarChavezNevada.com
RenoSparksNAACP.org
NevadaLabor.com
Barbwire.TV / ReSurge.RV

May 1, 2012
Happy Labour Day!

International Workers' Day is fundamentally an American holiday. It commemorates what is known as the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886, in which several demonstrators at a mass rally for an eight-hour workday were killed.
Reno May Day Rally this Saturday May 5


We don't need no education
Abandon hope, all ye who enter college
Fourth in a series on the collapsing future of Nevada education
Expanded from the 4-29-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
Andrew Barbano
(775) 882-TALK [882-8255]

WMD at Victorian Square - Workers Memorial Day commemoration 4/25
Labor is pushing back against those who say that regulations kill jobs. At work, lack of proper regulation kills people.

SPARKS (4-25-2000) — Nevada workers and public officials commemorate those injured and killed on the job. From left, labor activist Mike Slater (back to camera), Charles Cox (United Auto Workers Local 2162), Assemblymember Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, John Doran (Communications Workers of America Local 9413), and Pat Sanderson (Laborers' International Union Local 169). [NevadaLabor.com photo]

SPARKS, Nev. —> Nevada workers will remember those killed and injured on the job tomorrow as part of the AFL-CIO's national Workers Memorial Day annual campaign.

Among other things, speakers will highlight the Silver State's substandard safety enforcement due to underfunding.

Sponsored by the Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO, the gathering happens at 4:30 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, April 25, 2012, at the Victorian Square Amphitheater in downtown Sparks.

Workers and labor leaders will speak. Friends and relatives of Nevadans killed or injured on the job will be most welcome. Candles will be lighted for those who gave their lives for a paycheck.

Labor is pushing back against those who say that regulations kill jobs. At work, lack of proper regulation kills people. Big-money lobbyists hide under the cloak of "regulatory reform" because saying "disposable workers" is not smart PR.

Details at NevadaLabor.com, including a story and photo of past Nevada WMD ceremonies.

Be well. Raise hell.

_________
Andrew Barbano chairs the Workers Memorial Day Committee of the Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO.
_________
"We just come to work here, we don't come to die." —> Music and lyrics by Coos Bay, Ore., ILWU Longshoreman Harry Stamper; most memorably interpreted by attorney and former Pittsburgh Musician's Union President Anne Feeney, who has performed in Reno.

CWA 9413/AFL-CIO

Barbano back on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV/radio program

The Mythological Morrison Miracle
Third in a series on the collapsing future of Nevada education
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 4-22-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 4-24-2012 Dr. Heath Morrison is in Charlotte, NC, today signing his contract to accept the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school superintendent position.

The marshal is getting outta Dodge
So much for Nevada education's strategic plan + 4/25 Workers Memorial Day commemoration
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 4-15-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Breaking our own backs: If you have kids, move elsewhere
Have teachers made a deal with the devil? / St. Mary's firings begin
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 4-8-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune


Shades of César Chávez: LV Culinary union and supporters start hunger strike against Station Casinos
Associated Press / Daily Sparks Tribune / 4-20-2012

APRIL 12 5:00 p.m. PDT —> Postal workers and supporters rally to save the system.
Bruce Thompson Federal Building, Liberty @ S. Virginia, Reno
Call your U.S. senators@ 1-888-863-6103 to vote no on S. 1789

FED UP AT THE FEDERAL BUILDING (9-27-2011) — More than 200 postal workers and members of other unions demonstrate at the Bruce Thompson Federal Building in Reno in favor of passage of HR 1351, which would remove the funding drain now threatening the United States Postal Service. The federal courthouse may be seen in the window reflections of the auto in the foreground. (NevadaLabor.com photo)

Breaking our own backs: If you have kids, move elsewhere
Have teachers made a deal with the devil? / St. Mary's firings begin
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 4-8-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Martin, 1968
Trayvon Martin, 2012

On April 4, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., while in town to support striking union trash collection workers.

UPDATE 4-11-2012: The Florida special prosecutor today indicted Trayvon Martin's killer on charges of second degree murder. He has been arrested.

I can screw up twice as bad for half the price
Barbwire U-News exclusive leads to judge stepping down
Barbwire by Barbano /
Expanded from the 4-1-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

César Chávez Celebration X
Saturday / March 31, 2012 / Circus Circus-Reno
Sponsorship & Ticket Information
Purchase online thru E-Bay's secure PayPal service

View new television spots
English / Español

César Chávez X Celebracion
sábado
31 DE Marzo, 2012 en Circus Circus de Reno

Boletos e información

The César Chávez Long March
by Reno artist Erik Holland


Mr. Holland will be selling cards and prints at the March 31 César Chávez celebration at Circus Circus in Reno. The original watercolor is currently displayed at the Nevada Legislature in the office of Sen. Ruben Kihuen, D-Las Vegas.

Copyright © 2009 Erik Holland. All rights reserved.


Obama pays tribute to late Reno labor leader

THE WAY WE WERE — The above is a recently discovered photo from July 15, 1986. Left to right are Kathy Brown, Culinary Union Local 86 office manager; Miguel Contreras, Local 86 Secretary-Treasurer; Local 86 President Bill Uehlein; a lady named Natalie (anyone who knows her last name, please write), and César Chávez. This item was first published in Ahora, northern Nevada's Spanish-English weekly, on March 26, 2008. (On 3-19-2009, President Obama paid tribute to Brother Contreras as he spoke in the L.A. building named after the late labor leader. See the 1986 Chávez Reno archive, below.)

(Photo courtesy of Dan Rusnak, retired business manager of Laborers' Union Local 169.)

More stories and photos from César Chávez's 1986 Reno visit

BREAKING NEWS AND THEN SOME
DoctorLawyerWatch.com Exclusive
District Judge Brent Adams, who recused himself late in the high profile Harvey Whittemore cases, now faces a disqualification motion in the bitter, decade-old litigation between warring U-Haul millionaire heirs
U-News Bulletin / 3-29-2012

Liberty and justice for some
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 3-25-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Updated: SATURDAY, 24 MARCH 2012, 5:27 a.m. PST, 12:27 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT and FRIDAY, 23 MARCH 2012, 3:14 a.m. PST, 10:14 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT —

Click in the above image for the Reno demonstration's Facebook page.
Contact: Marianne Denton, 775- 843-9550.

Occupy Carson City will also demonstrate from 12 noon to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday in front of the Nevada Legislature on S. Carson Street in the capital city.
Contact: Janette Dean, 775-461-3282

What Happened to Trayvon Martin —> Explained
Plus a backgrounder and history of the case / Who pushed Florida's fire-at-will law
With an exclusive statement from NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous
MotherJones.com / 3-23-2012

Update: THURSDAY, 22 MARCH 2012, 3:47 p.m. PST, 22:47 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT — Sign the petition to win justice for 17 year-old Florida murder victim Trayvon Martin. Prosecute the killer of our son.


Renown 150th: Profiting at taxpayer expense
Barbwire by Barbano/ Expanded from the 3-18-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune


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

HAT TRICK
Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award

STAY TUNED FOR BIG NEWS FROM THE 9-22-2012 NPA CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

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

Barbwire.TV
Support the new community TV channel

CALENDAR OF IMPORTANT UPCOMING EVENTS

UPDATED Thursday, 29 March 2012, 03:09 a.m. PDT, 10:09 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT —
UPDATED Sunday, 18 March 2012, 07:19 a.m. PDT, 14:09 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — IMPORTANT UPCOMING EVENTS

RENO, NEV., 3-18-2012 (U-NEWS)Sisters and brothers, I sincerely hope you're not feeling too green in the gills after St. Patrick's Day. The sure-fire cure lies with increased blood circulation to clear up your head and mess up your mind. Here are some timely remedies guaranteed to get your blood percolating and help you get well quick.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR —> CÉSAR CHÁVEZ DAY / EL DÍA DE CÉSAR CHÁVEZ at Circus Circus-Reno on Saturday evening, 3-31-2012, César Chávez's 85th birthday. The 10th Nevada César Chávez Day Celebration presents us with a serious opportunity to demonstrate union power and solidarity in a critical year. The 2011 event featured a who's-who of state and local officials. This year will prove even more interesting with election season upon us.

On the subject of elections, nominations will soon close for employer, project and union organizer of the year. Send yours ASAP as well as sponsorship and table reservations for the event. We especially need support for student attendance. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 7:00. Details attached. More at CesarChavezNevada.com

Your consideration is appreciated. Thanks for your past support.

Tuesday, March 27 10:00 a.m. PDT: County Commissioner Kitty Jung has agendized a César Chávez Day proclamation before the Washoe County Commission. Ramon Chávez, César's nephew, will attend to accept the honor of behalf of the Chávez family.

Thursday, March 29 3:30-4:30 p.m. PDT: UNR César Chávez Day II in the rotunda at the Mathewson/IGT Knowledge Center (aka the new library), University of Nevada-Reno. Info: Carla Castedo-Testa, Latino Student Advisory Board, 775-342-7612.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/395005770525806/ Admission free.

SUPPORT THE NEVADA CITIZEN TV PROJECT, a new channel and network for the many voices of activists, artists and magnificent misfits in a non-corporate environment. For more info or to ante into the game, go to ReSurge.TV to donate. (U-News postal service mailing address, below.) Please let me know if you need a letter for your e-board. Thanks to those who have already stepped up.

BARBWIRESQUE MEDIA MEANDERINGS

RIGHT NOW —> From Barbwire by Barbano in the Sunday Sparks Tribune: "Earlier this month, the proprietors of the Renown medical octopus announced a year-long celebration of the institution's 150th anniversary. I am only too happy to do my part. For their part, Renown management has always wished me well — they wish I was at the bottom of one." Read about unhealthy profits plus a Yogi Berra twist.

For a few more painful laughs, check out the untold story about how Lush Rambo actually got started right here in Nevada --> TWICE! 

MONDAY, March 19 —> Look for my radio face on Sam Shad's Nevada Newsmakers show Monday, March 19, 12:30 p.m. PDT on Reno's KRNV TV-4 (KENV TV-10 Elko). Other victims will include Reno Gazette-Journal politics-as-bloodsport reporter Ray Hagar; State Sen. Greg Brower, R-Raggio; Mary Lau, President and CEO, Retail Association of Nevada (aka Wal-Mart); and Connie McMullen, Senior Spectrum Magazine publisher.

To see when the show will hit your neighborhood, go to the statewide radio and TV rerun schedule at http://barbanomedia.com/shad.html.

Turn on, tune in and tell a friend.

IMPORTANT EVENTS

WEDNESDAY, March 21 —> Reno City Council candidates address the Truckee Meadows Democratic Alliance, 7:00 p.m. PDT at Donkeykong HQ, 1465 Terminal Way, Suite 1, Reno. Info: 775-323-VOTE (8683), <ed@washoedems.org>

THURSDAY, March 22 —> CWA marches on Verizon in Reno and Las Vegas

From the 3-18-2012 Barbwire: LOST VERIZONS. My union, Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO, will demonstrate at S. Virginia and McCarran in Reno starting at 5:00 p.m. PDT this Thursday, March 22, part of a national day of action spotlighting Verizon corporate greed. Info: 775-322-9413. In Las Vegas, workers will rally at the Verizon retail outlet, 3825 S. Maryland Parkway, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. PDT. Click here for info and links.

SAME TIME, SAME OLD STATION. Also on Thursday 22 March, in southern Nevada, Culinary Union Local 226 will rally against Station Casinos' institutionalized maltreatment of workers; 6:00 p.m. PDT at the Red Rock Casino Resort, 11011 West Charleston Blvd., Summerlin. (Ushers will escort participants to parking.) Info: Cecil Kofford, 702-495-1414.

TUESDAY, March 27 —> Unions Fight Back meeting, 5:30 p.m. PDT, Northern Nevada Labor Temple, 1819 Hymer Ave., Sparks. Rank and file members get the opportunity to ask questions directly of officeholders and community leaders. This month features candidates for Reno City Council. Union members only. Talk to your shop steward and bring a friend. Pizza provided. Info: Liz Sorenson, 775-322-9413.


WEDNESDAY, March 28 —> WOBBLIES FILM FREEBIE. The Reno Industrial Workers of the World monthly filmfest features Nevada historian Guy Louis Rocha presenting his magnum opus,  Might is Right: Nevada AFL-CIO Labor History.

1. The Comstock Miners Union http://nevadalabor.com/rocha.html
2. The IWW in Goldfield
3. Hoover Dam
4. Right-to-Work http://nevadalabor.com/barbwire/barb99/barb7-4-99.html

The above links are for those who want to do a little advance reading ahead of the films. Brother Rocha will introduce each segment and lead discussion afterward. Free admission and popcorn. Beverages via no-host bar.

Where/When: Good Luck Macbeth Theatre, 119 N. Virginia, Reno, 7:00 p.m. PDT, Wednesday 28 March. Info: 775-230-5330, e-mail <wobblyfilmseries@gmail.com>

April 28 —> Workers Memorial Day. I need volunteers to work on this AFL-CIO national promotion of worker safety and commemoration of those injured and killed on the job. It's been a long time since we've focused on this in Nevada. Click here to access the story and photo of our 2000 Sparks event. Contact: Barbano, 775-882-TALK (8255).

May 5 —> IWW May Day / 1 de Mayo Reno Rally, Celebration and Demonstration for Workers Rights; downtown Reno, Saturday, May 5, 11:00 a.m. PDT. Volunteers needed. Contact Paul at 775-513-7523, <palan80@hotmail.com>; Spanish speakers may contact Elvira at 775-379-9054. Facebook: Reno May Day/Primero de Mayo 2012

June 3 —> 5th Annual Cops & Burgers + Show 'n' Shine, Reno Grand Sierra Resort parking lot, 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. PDT. Special Olympics benefit. Contact Gary Brown, UAW Local 2162/AFL-CIO, 775-856-1459. To donate a raffle prize, contact Neal Grows, 775-972-7456. Info: CopsAndBurgersReno.com

June 16 —> Reno-Sparks NAACP Annual Freedom Fund Awards Banquet, Circus Circus-Reno. Sponsorship and ticket info: RenoSparksNAACP.org Contact: Barbano, 775-882-TALK (8255).

Stay warm and bring the heat.

Be well. Raise hell.

In Solidarity,

Andrew Barbano
U-News


P.O. Box 10034
Reno, NV 89510
775-882-8255 [882-TALK]

CesarChavezNevada.com
RenoSparksNAACP.org
NevadaLabor.com
Barbwire.TV / ReSurge.RV


3-17-2012 / Happy St. Patrick's Day

UPDATED Saturday, 17 March 2012, 00:01:24 a.m. PDT, 07:01:24 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1875, the Washoe Club in Virginia City moved to the Reynolds building on B Street just north of the courthouse; in 1897 after the Nevada Legislature hastily made boxing legal, a heavyweight title fight between Ruby Bob Fitzsimmons and Gentleman Jim Corbett was held in Carson City (as late as 1999, the film of the fight received a vote in a Village Voice poll of film critics as the best film of its decade); in 1922 in New York, a parade celebrated the liberation of most of Ireland but one sign carried by a women's society read "We know no south, we know no north, we know only Ireland"; in 1928, Knights of Columbus official Joseph Becker said in Salt Lake City that being raised by mothers and being taught in school and church by female teachers were making boys effeminate; in 1928, federal prohibition agents interrupted and dispersed a high school fraternity dance at Moana Springs; in 1932, New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt moved into the lead over U.S. House Speaker John Nance Garner for the first time in a crude public opinion survey being conducted by the Nevada State Journal, Elko Free Press and Las Vegas Review Journal; in 1939, the Nevada Legislature was trying to wrap up business for the year, and the clock had been stopped at midnight on March 16; in 1955, Anais Nin married Rupert Pole in Quartzsite, Arizona, neglecting to inform or divorce her husband, Hugh Guiler;  in 1965, The Beatles announced the title of their next movie would be Eight Arms to Hold On To You (it was released as Help!); in 2003, the contributions of U.S. socialists were finally recognized on a coin when the Alabama quarter was released with socialist and IWW leader Helen Keller featured.

Helen Keller/November 3 1912: "If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement the book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness."

UPDATED Friday, 16 March 2012, 18:31:39 p.m. PDT, 01:31:39 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1892, the Nevada State Journal reprinted a melancholy report from the fading mining camp of Pioche: "The furnaces were shut down Monday, February 29th, at 5:30, and the employes at the smelter and upon the Pioche and Jack Rabbit railroad were given their time. About fifty men altogether were laid off from the smelter and railroad. They are making arrangements to leave camp. Our streets are nearly deserted now. Thus doth our glory fade."; in 1912, former first lady Patricia (Ryan) Nixon was born in White Pine County, Nevada; in 1936, Eugene the Jeep, a gift to Olive Oyl from her Uncle Ben, was introduced in the comic strip Thimble Theatre ; in 1942, Fats Waller recorded Jitterbug Waltz for Bluebird Records; in 1942, more than 1,816 Jews from Pochep, Russia, were massacred; in 1953, the Nevada Assembly killed a civil rights bill not by a straight vote but by "indefinite postponement"; in 1964, with Beatlemania still in full throat, Can't Buy Me Love (Capitol 5150) went straight to number one the instant it was released on the strength of a million and a half advance orders; in 1997, Nevada's first professional historian, Russell Elliott, died after a distinguished career that produced a half dozen books on Nevada, including the standard History of Nevada (Elliott was hired on September 1, 1949, by the University of Nevada as an assistant professor of history and political science at a salary of $3,600 a year); in 1984, Jesse Jackson won the Mississippi Democratic caucuses, the first instance in U.S. history of an African American candidate winning a presidential preference contest; in 2012, the centennial of the birth of former first lady Pat Nixon in Ely, Nevada (see 1912 above) is being commemorated in Ely and in Yorba Linda, Calif., at the Nixon Library.

The Ides of March 2012
Ecce Cesar!

UPDATE ON THE IDES OF MARCH, Thursday, 15 March 2012, 12:27:09 a.m. PDT, 07:27:09 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 44 BC, Roman military dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated; in 1939, The Third House, a satirical show about Nevada legislators staged by legislative attachés, was held for the 1939 session with only the Assembly participating; in 1945, the King Cole Trio was number one in the first Billboard magazine albums chart (Nat Cole later abandoned jazz for MOR ballad singing, but his trio's recordings are still widely admired); in 1954, The Chords (one of the "hallway groups" that harmonized in school, on streetcorners, or in the subway) recorded Sh-boom as the B-side of a 78 record on the Cat label, setting off the doo-wop era (unfortunately, a white group called The Crew Cuts quickly covered the Chords version, draining away the Chords' earnings and their hit); in 1956, My Fair Lady opened on Broadway; in 1957, a one-day delay in delivery of a gambling regulation bill to Governor Russell six days before the end of the 1957 legislature raised questions of whether the governor had to act on it before the end of the session or could wait until after the lawmakers went home, which would determine whether the '57 or '59 legislature would vote on overriding a veto; in 1988, a four-day battle began in the area of Halabja on the Iran/Iraq border during which the city was gassed by what the Reagan administration said was an Iranian attack (fourteen years later, the second Bush administration changed that story as part of its campaign for war, claiming the attack was launched by Saddam Hussein's forces, then charging that "he gassed his own people"). [EDITOR'S NOTE: In a 1991 report which appeared after the Kuwait/Gulf War and was thus ignored, the San Francisco Chronicle published an extensive article with expert analysis from the U.S. Army War College concluding that the dead had not been gassed at all.]

More sucker punches from Lush Rambo
Barbwire by Barbano/ Expanded from the 3-11-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Corpo-Dems, Labor-Greens and golden mensches
Also: Jeanmarie Simpson previews her new play in Reno March 9, Carson City March 10

Jeanmarie Simpson

Barbwire by Barbano/ Expanded from the 3-4-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Leaping back to the future

Update: WEDNESDAY, 29 FEB. 2012, 3:41 a.m. PST, 11:41 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT — On this date in 1968, President Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move "toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal." (New York Times)

This bitch just isn't sexy enough
A domestic cartel fixes the price of gasoline
while politic
ians say nothing can be done and media sit shiva.
Such is BigOil's power to intimidate while hiding in plain sight.

Barbwire by Barbano/ Expanded from the 2-26-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

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

HAT TRICK
Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award

STAY TUNED FOR BIG NEWS FROM THE 9-22-2012 NPA CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

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

Barbwire.TV
Support the new community TV channel

Democrats helped elect Republicans Halseth and Heck
By David McGrath Schwartz / 2-22-2012 Las Vegas Sun

Red line in a new bottle:
We are caged for slaughter in an electronic zoo

Expanded from the 2-19-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Barbano back on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV/radio program

God herself decrees every sperm is sacred
Plus: Bogus Beach Boys Grammy Awards claim
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-12-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Update: SATURDAY, 11 FEB. 2012, 01:59:50 a.m. PST, 09:59:50 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT — On this date in 1870 at the Carson City branch of the U.S. Mint, the first coin (a seated liberty dollar) was struck; in 1916, Reno's Twentieth Century Club heard author Jean Morris Ellis (Character Analysis) speak on eugenics; in 1937, General Motors signed an epochal agreement recognizing the United Auto Workers and protecting striking workers from prosecution after plant workers seized the Fisher Body plant in Flint, Mich., and held it for 44 days but AFL President William Green, who was not involved, condemned the settlement as a defeat for labor: "All the laboring men of the country have been injured by the General Motors settlement" (and in D.C., a U.S. Senate committee revealed that GM had paid nearly half a million dollars over two years — about $6,900,000 in 2005 dollars — to the union-busting Pinkerton Detective Agency); in 1942, Nevadan Karetaro Ishii of Sparks was fired from his job with the Southern Pacific Railroad after 22 years (he was rehired the day after the war ended); in 1962, former Nevada assemblymember and senator Newt Crumley, who brought big name entertainment to the Commercial Hotel in Elko in 1941 and later owned the Holiday Hotel in Reno, died in a plane crash; in 1969, Corporal Thomas Bennett, a medic, was killed while trying to rescue a fellow soldier, the end of two days of heroic actions for which he received the Medal of Honor, the only conscientious objector so honored during the Vietnam war (see citation below); in 1979, followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power when Iranian Prime Minister Shapur Bakhtiar stepped down after serving for 37 days following dictator Reza Pahlavi's flight from the country (during those 37 days Bakhtiar dismantled the hated Savak secret police).

Thomas Bennett
Citation

   For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Cpl. Bennett distinguished himself while serving as a platoon medical aidman with the 2d Platoon, Company B, during a reconnaissance-in-force mission. On 9 February the platoon was moving to assist the 1st Platoon of Company D, which had run into a North Vietnamese ambush, when it became heavily engaged by the intense small arms, automatic weapons, mortar and rocket fire from a well fortified and numerically superior enemy unit. In the initial barrage of fire, 3 of the point members of the platoon fell wounded. Cpl. Bennett, with complete disregard for his safety, ran through the heavy fire to his fallen comrades, administered life-saving first aid under fire and then made repeated trips carrying the wounded men to positions of relative safety from which they would be medically evacuated from the battle position. He valiantly exposed himself to the heavy fire in order to retrieve the bodies of several personnel. Throughout the night and following day, Cpl. Bennett moved from position to position treating and comforting the several personnel who had suffered shrapnel and gunshot wounds. On 11 February, Company B again moved in an assault on the well fortified enemy positions and became heavily engaged with the numerically superior enemy force. 5 members of the company fell wounded in the initial assault. Cpl. Bennett ran to their aid without regard to the heavy fire. He treated 1 wounded comrade and began running toward another seriously wounded man. Although the wounded man was located forward of the company position covered by heavy enemy grazing fire and Cpl. Bennett was warned that it was impossible to reach the position, he leaped forward with complete disregard for his safety to save his comrade's life. In attempting to save his fellow soldier, he was mortally wounded. Cpl. Bennett's undaunted concern for his comrades at the cost of his life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.


Update: FRIDAY, 10 FEB. 2012, 2:53:20 p.m. PST, 10:53:20 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT —

VALENTINES FOR VETERANS

VAlentines (10 Feb. 2012) — Nevada Alliance for Retired Americans/Gail Bishop Chapter VA Valentine Volunteers begin their rounds at the Reno VA Medical Center. Left to right are VAVol Carol Mark, former Nevada State Board of Education member Peggy Lear Bowen, Miss UNR Ashton Sunsiri, VAVol Dean Schermerhorn, NARA event coordinator Gail Dietrich (seated), VAVol Nelson Dietrich, Miss Reno/Sparks & Miss UNR Pageant Director Shirley Lunsford and Miss Reno/Sparks Madeline Burak.

VALENTINE SURPRISE (10 Feb. 2012) — Specialist David Barajas, Jr., home on two weeks' leave, wanted to surprise his mother and ended up with quite a surprise himself. David not only got a Valentine, he also got an up-close-and-personal photo with Miss Reno/Sparks Madeline Burak, left, and Miss University of Nevada Ashton Sunsiri, right. David is a 2008 graduate of Reno High School and a member of the Nevada Army National Guard's 485th Military Police Company stationed in Afghanistan.

His mom, Blue Star Mother Elizabeth Barajas, works in quality management at the hospital.

Valentines were produced by local artist Susan Sullivan and were distributed to each of the roughly 100 inpatients at the Ioannis A. Lougaris Veterans Administration Medical Center.

And to one surprised veteran who was surprising his mom.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The above photo and an expanded version of this story appeared on page 3-D of the Sunday, 2-19-2012 Reno Gazette-Journal.]

REPORT FROM GAIL DIETRICH (10 Feb. 2012) We had a wonderful morning. The beauty queens are not only stunningly pretty, but they are both on scholarships. Miss UNR is majoring in international affairs and politics and Miss Reno/Sparks is studying psychology. We could not have had a better reception by the vets and it caused quite stir around the hospital. 

Channel 2 (CBS) spent one hour with us. They interviewed me and the queens and followed us. Miss Reno/Sparks has a grandfather who is an inpatient and awaiting airlift to have triple bypass in Palo Alto. After he signed a release, the TV crews filmed the queen and her grandfather. It could not have been a better scripted scene. The TV man was so excited. This is the second time I have done this with him and he and I have an excellent working relationship now.

The Director of the Beauty Pageant, Shirley Lunsford, has invited my husband and me to be her guests at the upcoming Miss Nevada Pageant. She thanked me for asking the girls and I said I felt this was a mutually rewarding relationship. We plan to work together again.

A young vet had arrived home from Afghanistan today and came to the hospital to surprise his mother, who works there. We took a photo of him in uniform with the two queens. He was on cloud nine. I will send him the photo. (EDITOR'S NOTE: See above.)

Gratitude and huge thanks to Andy Barbano. This would not have been such a PR success without him. He was a wonderful and accommodating partner who pressed to make it happen. Thank you Andy!

Our vets were so happy, surprised and appreciative.

No one seemed to know who NARA was but our name is buzzing around the hospital now. The cards were beautiful too. Thanks to Susan Sullivan, a professional artist and art therapy professor.

Update: THURSDAY, 9 FEB. 2012, 2:58 a.m. PST, 10:58 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT —

VALENTINES FOR VETERANS THIS FRIDAY

RENO, Nev. [MEDIA ADVISORY] — The reigning Miss University of Nevada and Miss Reno/Sparks will join members of the Nevada Alliance for Retired Americans this Friday morning to distribute valentines at Reno's Ioannis A. Lougaris Veterans Medical Center.

Shirley Lunsford, Executive Director of the Miss Reno/Sparks Pageant, will accompany Miss Reno/Sparks Madeline Burak and Miss UNR Ashton Sunsiri.

"The purpose of the event is to show the compassion, appreciation and respect the more than 17,000 members of the Nevada Alliance of Retired Americans have for our veterans on the day our society expresses love," stated NARA Gail Bishop Chapter coordinator Gail Dietrich.

"We thank them for serving our country. We want them to know just how much we value their sacrifices and cherish them as individuals," Dietrich added.

Beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 10, the NARA Valentine Volunteers will gather at the hospital's 975 Kirman Street entrance. They will be escorted inside starting at 10:30. No one may enter unless accompanied by hospital staff.

Valentines were produced by a local artist who wishes to remain anonymous. The visitors will have one for each of the roughly 100 inpatients at the facility.


On Feb. 7, 1941, Betty Joyce Luffman was born in Enid, OK


BREAKING NEWS AND THEN SOME

Forward to the same damned old place
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-5-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Barbano back on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV/radio program

Corporate welfare brings Reno and Sparks closer to bankruptcy

Updates: SUNDAY, 22 JAN. 2012, 12:01 a.m. PST, 08:01 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT —
THURSDAY, 19 JAN. 2012, 03:52 a.m. PST,
11:52 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT —

BARBWIRE AND BALLOT BOXING FROM NEVADALABOR.COM — LIBERALS PICKET BIDEN IN RENO TODAY

RENO, NEV. 1-19-2012 (U-NEWS) — Contrary to popular legend, the hotbed of liberalism in Nevada is not Gomorrah South but the northwest (Reno-Sparks-Washoe County). While voters in these parts occasionally elect an overt racist or good Christian wifebeater, a look at state lawmakers over the past four decades reveals a who's-who of liberalism, including a sprinkling of Republicans.

So it's not at all out of character that liberals from the frozen north will brave the cold today and picket Vice-President Joseph Biden's rally at Galena High School out in the high rent district.

Union members, activists in community organizations and Occupadistas will demonstrate outside Biden's event beginning at 10:30 a.m. PST.

Some signs suggested for diehards who have been encouraged to make their own:

We Demand a Fair Settlement
Protect NV Homeowners
Stop Foreclosures
We are the 99%
Downsize This! (Apologies to Michael Moore)

For more information, contact the awesome Julie Wedge at (775) 750-7345.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: A PROUD LABOR MAN ADDRESSES NEVADA LABORSen. Joe Biden, D-Del., addresses the Nevada State AFL-CIO convention at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno on August 21, 2007.

A fiery journey down glory road
Joe Biden and the Grateful Dead
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-22-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Sen. Obama, meet Mr. Durocher
Barbwire / Sparks Tribune / 8-31-2008

Biden was the Barbwire's third choice for president

A record number of Americans — 150,000,000 — now live at or below the poverty line. That's half the freakin' population of the rusty formerly shining city on the hill. This rich land now sends millions of its children to bed hungry every night. (Yeah, we know, Newt — they should all go and get janitorial jobs like your buds in China.)

If we, the great unwashed, fail to wise up and rise up, corporately schmoozed Democrats will increasingly take us for granted and treat the entire bottom half as though we are all black or brown. (Minorities have gotten used to such treatment, which is not to say they cotton to it.)

On the dimly lit bright side, perhaps it's actually healthy that the former middle class is now sitting with the ghost of Rosa Parks in the back of the bus. (Here on the High Desert Plantation, that includes most of us except teachers and public employees who were thrown under the bus last year with a little help from our friends.)

As Bob Dylan might ask of formerly upward-mobile American dreamers, how does it feel?

If you feel like the legendary Fannie Lou Hamer who was famously "sick and tired of being sick and tired," journey across the railroad trench and tracks to play a little bump and run with the veep today.

Getting our political and governmental dinosaurs off their big, fat sofas is a difficult task at best.

Stand with the occupiers before the man comes to occupy your house.

SUPPORT THE NEVADA CITIZEN TV PROJECT, a new channel and network for the many voices of activists, artists and magnificent misfits in a non-corporate environment. For more info or to ante into the game, go to ReSurge.TV. (U-News postal service mailing address, below.)

If the kids can occupy Wall Street, we can occupy our fair share of the public TV spectrum.

Unlike the original structure, there is no public money available to operate this new entity. The deal the former community station's founding board of directors made with the City of Reno in 1991 was that half of cable company franchise fees would be reserved for public access. That would have been $1 million in 2011 from Reno alone. (The original intent of the enabling federal legislation called for all franchise fees to be devoted to public, governmental and educational programming. Apparently, today we don't need no education.)

Over the years, a series of inept managers and hostile public officials in Reno, Sparks and Washoe starved the community station to death.

Bring the Phoenix back from the ashes in time to fire up the populace.

Please donate what you can afford. To those who have already become founding supporters, thank you so much and please spread the word.
You may contribute online at ReSurge.TV.

Stay warm and bring the heat.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano
U-News
P.O. Box 10034
Reno, NV 89510
ReSurge.TV.
Checks or money orders payable to U-News may be mailed to the above address.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR: CÉSAR CHÁVEZ DAY / EL DÍA DE CÉSAR CHÁVEZ at Circus Circus-Reno on Saturday, 3-31-2012, César Chávez's 85th birthday. We enjoyed a great turnout from legislators and other public officials, Nevada businesses, non-profits and union members last year. Contact me to reserve tables and sponsorships now. Details at CesarChavezNevada.com.

I'VE SHOWN YOU MINE, NOW SHOW ME YOURS. You may have already seen my list of the most powerful Nevadans.

Send me your suggestions and I'll publish them. Thanks to those who have already responded.

OUR SPIES REPORT: Reno's Atlantis Hotel will break ground on a long-anticipated high rise and a separate parking garage later this year...About 500 attended last Friday's memorial service for Washoe Dist. Judge Bob Perry, one helluva man. Rumor has it that several of his former colleagues will retire early in the coming months. [From the 15 Jan. 2012 Barbwire in the Daily Sparks Tribune. Subscribe or remain out of the loop.]

Check out the Barbwire MLK weekend columns from the Sparks Tribune, Reno Gazette-Journal and Fresno Bee.

And stay tuned.

Be well. Raise hell.

CesarChavezNevada.com
DoctorLawyerWatch.com
NevadaLabor.com
BallotBoxing.US
Barbwire.TV



REMEMBERING MY DAUGHTERS. On Jan. 16, 1959, two babies were born. They became sisters in both life and death.


Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968

Newly uploaded blast from the past for MLK Day —
I was a teenage racist

Barbwire by Andrew Barbano / Expanded from the 1-12-1990 Daily Sparks Tribune
This column also appeared in the 1-19-1990 Comstock Chronicle
Updated and modified versions in the Fresno Bee, Daily Sparks Tribune and
Reno Gazette-Journal
Jan. 14-15, 2012
To get the full picture, I suggest reading all of them, as each contains new and different information.
Reader comments (positive and negative) will be uploaded soon.

Please send yours.

Update: SUNDAY, 15 JAN. 2012, 00:01:11 a.m. PST, 08:01:11 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT — On this date in 1844, the University of Notre Dame du Lac in Indiana was chartered; in 1896, U.S. Representative Francis Newlands of Nevada was appointed to a commission to establish the boundary line between Canada and the U.S. and also a committee to inquire into the imprisonment of U.S. Consul to Madagascar John Waller (France conquered Madagascar that year and sentenced Waller to twenty years in prison on grounds that he gave military information to the patriot government to try to prevent the French conquest); in 1920, Republican national chair Will Hays (later Hollywood morals cop) spoke in Reno; in 1929, Michael King was born in Atlanta (when he was five years old his father would change both their names to honor Martin Luther); in 1936, former Clark County deputy district attorney T.J.D. Salter was named president of the Winnemucca Townsend Club (Townsend Clubs were chapters of the EPIC movement [End Poverty In California] that had gone national); in 1943, former U.S. district judge William Hastie resigned as Secretary of War Stimson's civilian aide to protest the government's continuing racial policies of segregation and discrimination in the armed forces; in 1951, Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, was sentenced to life in prison for her sadistic treatment of camp inmates and for her collection of gloves, lampshades and other items made from inmates killed at her order for their tattoo-decorated skin; in 1962, the North Las Vegas city council voted to ask U.S. Post Office officials to expand the city's service to the entire township so that outlying patrons would not have to drive into town to pick up packages; in 1978, tyrant Reza Pahlavi fled Iran an hour ahead of the posse; in 1996, Tommy Rettig, "Jeff Miller" in the first Lassie television series, an actor in numerous movies and later a computer software engineer, died in Marina del Rey (in 1990, Rettig wrote one of the episodes of The New Lassie, about Lassie learning to use a computer); in 2005, during a morning news program on KTNV TV-13 in Las Vegas, weather reporter Rob Blair referred to "Martin Luther Coon King" and (in an apology for the first reference) "Martin Luther Kong, Jr.", prompting a workforce threat of a walkout (Blair was fired the next day).

About 500 attended the Jan. 13, 2012, memorial service for Washoe District Judge Bob Perry
at the University of Nevada-Reno Crowley Student Union. Several of his former colleagues will retire early.
(Barbwire / Daily Sparks Tribune 1-15-2012)

Barbano: Flurry of phony corporate conservative petitions blatant attempt to confuse voters
By Ed Vogel/ Las Vegas Review-Journal / 13 Jan. 2012

Mixed Mayan mammary metaphors:
Going belly up and upside down

Barbano by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-8-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Former Teamsters Local 533 business agent Don Bouma dies

The awful truth hurts so good
Barbano by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-1-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

City of Reno solicits job applications, especially for police officers, thru 1-27-2012

BARBWIRE.TV REGIONAL SCHEDULE

 

NEWS BULLETIN & ALMANIACAL ARCHIVES

Also see NevadaLabor.com's Statewide U-News Roundup


Home Page

Search this site

Top of Page

 

Site composed & maintained by Deciding Factors (CWA 9413 signatory)
Comments and suggestions appreciated.

Click here to get on our news & bulletins mailing list...
But before you do so, please read this note. —AB