NevadaLabor.com: 2016 Breaking News, Bulletins & Almanac

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[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' daily 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. Occasionally but not surprisingly, magenta will mean both. Copyright © 2007-2017 Dennis Myers. More Myers.]]

This archive contains some 2015 and 2017 material at the top. It's thus kind of a 2016 sandwich. Enjoy. It's low-calorie, gluten- and shellfish-free.

Workers make a house call on their congressman

3-14-2017

Subject: Make your Mark this p.m. in Reno & Carson
TO: Flaming Nevada redistributionist socialist progressive bleeding heart liberals and trade unionistas
FROM: The Barbwire
RE: HOUSE CALLS ON THE CONGRESSMAN

Just before his address to a joint session of the Nevada Legislature yesterday, Representative Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said he would not vote for the current proposal to eviscerate Obamacare with Trumpcare aka I-Don't-Care.

Good for him. Last Thursday, Mr. Amodei said "“Instead of going about this process in an open, transparent, and collaborative manner, House leadership has opted for a rushed approach – undercutting sound analysis, public transparency and the time necessary to determine the implications of their policy."

Now, let's hold him to it. As you know, Obamacare can use a few tweaks like stopping any phaseout of Medicaid expansion. First slated for 2020, a move's afoot to assassinate it by the end of 2017. Then there's that Obamacare provision to make workers pay income tax on health benefits starting in 2020, something that hasn't happened in 70 years. The former Cadillac Tax may now be re-named the Trumpcare Rolls Royce Tax. (Tsar Donaldov wouldn't be seen in something as pedestrian as a Cadillac.) it needs to be permanently scrapped.

Earlier this year, Culinary Local 226 President Geoconda Arguello-Kline pegged it as a "40 percent tax on worker’s health benefits." One estimate projects the cost as much as $200 billion.
On his show last night, Stephen Colbert quipped that the expenses are probably overstated because many of those affected will die early. (See Death Panels 2.0, below.) If this doodad goes thru, employer-paid health plans will become an endangered species anyway.

Mr. Amodei may still be in Nevada today, so let's pay him a courtesy call.

At 2:00 p.m. today, workers will gather at the Culinary 226 office, 1135 Terminal Way, Suite 207 in Reno. At 2:30, the assembled multitudes will proceed to Rep. Amodei's office and ask to meet with him. His Reno office is on the west side of Kietzke extension, south of McCarran past Lowe's: 5310 Kietzke Lane, Suite 103; Phone: (775) 686-5760; Fax: (775) 686-5711. If you like, you can go directly to Kietzke.

Thereafter, the health campaigners will caravan to the capital city to make a housecall at Mr. Amodei's domicile: 805 West Sunset Way, Carson City, NV 89703. They will then further bring it home by hanging doorknobs throughout his neighborhood with information.

Those who can't make the 2:30 thing can try for the later soirée. (Daylight Saving Time may actually be good for something.) Coordinate with Culinary representatives Nico delaPuente and JT Thomas. Nico's cel is (775) 287-4268.

For less polite enlightenment on the same subject, check out The Barbwire in today's Sparks Tribune: Death Panels 2.0

And don't forget César Chávez Celebration XV / Celebración de César Chávez XV / Wednesday 29 March 2017 / Miércoles 29 de Marzo 2017 at the Circus Circus Reno Mandalay Ballroom. Doors open at 5:30, dinner and program seven-ish. Award nominations are still open. Info at CesarChavezNevada.com

I hope to see you later today and no later than March 29.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

In Solidarity,

Andrew
CesarChavezNevada.com
NevadaLabor.com
Barbwire.TV
(775) 882-TALK (882-8255)

CBO Deals Paul Ryan’s Health-Care Plan a Major Blow
Russell Berman / The Atlantic 3-13-2017

Death Panels, Part Deux
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 3-14-2017 Sparks Tribune

Love's Labours Lost Dept.

On 12-27-2005

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

On 12-27-2015

Hunka Hunka Bernie Love

SOLIDARITY — Communications Workers of America members and their families from throughout northern Nevada pose with Sen. Sanders after his speech. NevadaLabor.com editor Andrew Barbano, far right, holds up his copy of the Dec. 3, 2015, edition of Rolling Stone with Sen. Sanders on the cover. The senator signed it immediately after the photo-op. Primo.

Sanders promises penalties for state corporate welfare

Sparks, Nev. (U-News) [Copyright © 2015 NevadaLabor.com] 4:55 p.m. PST 12-27-2015, 00:55 GMT 12-28-2015 — Campaigning in northwestern Nevada, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, told a standing-room-only crowd at the Northern Nevada Labor Temple that he would work to inhibit state vs. state corporate welfare.

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local 26/AFL-CIO Business Development Director Rob Benner asked "Senator, I assume you've noticed the 'Fix Tesla First' sign on the wall. Another electric car company, China-owned Faraday, has just received $334 million in tax breaks to come to Nevada. This came almost exactly a year after state government granted Tesla $1.4 billion. What can you do to fix this?"

Sanders understood the problem, stating that "it's not as simple as I will say it, but I would work to see that states lose some portion of federal benefits when they grant huge tax incentives such as you are describing which hurt needed services."

Sanders also said that he would support automatic union recognition if 50 percent plus one worker sign cards saying they want a union.

President Obama promised to support such legislation when he ran in 2008, but the White House never got behind the now long-dead Employee Free Choice Act.

Sanders also opposed a recent proposal to enact a national "right-to-work-for-less" law, adding that if workers get the benefits of a union contract, "they should contribute."

He noted his longtime opposition to treaties such as the Clinton administration's North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the current Trans Pacific Partnership, both of which allow shipping U.S. jobs to low-wage countries. He added that he knows some Republican senators who have problems with the TPP and it may not pass in this session of Congress.

Sanders advocated for a $15 per hour minimum wage, noting that a working male today makes $700 per year less than he did in 1973, adjusted for inflation. Sanders added that women have also lost ground, especially over the past decade.

NevadaLabor.com Editor Andrew Barbano asked Sen. Sanders if he would support a fix to Obamacare which has put union health plans in jeopardy and is forcing union workers to pay a tax for which they receive nothing. [1]

"Absolutely," Sanders replied.

Sanders answered every question from the audience which ranged from moppets to retirees. One young man noted that since he will be 18 by the general election next year, he will be allowed to participate in Nevada's February caucus. Sen. Sanders noted that Iowa likewise allows youth participation. He added that he's running ahead in New Hampshire, is getting closer in Iowa and if he also does well in Nevada and S. Carolina, victory will be possible.

In the Dec. 3 edition of Rolling Stone, he stated that "Nobody denies, Hillary Clinton least of all, that she is an establishment candidate."

Sanders signed Barbano's Dec. 3 Rolling Stone cover. Hot damn!

____________________________________

[1] 2-19-2020 — Obamacare was passed with an individual mandate that everyone carry insurance. Conservatives went to court calling it unconstitutional. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts found it constitutional under government's power to tax, terming the mandate a tax by another name. President Trump's 2017 trillion-dollar tax break mostly for the wealthy eliminated the mandate, raising cries that without it, Obamacare is again unconstitutional. Some people are never satisfied that they've done enough damage. In the 2-19-2020 candidate debate in Las Vegas, Sen. Sanders said that as president he would never sign a bill that reduced anyone's coverage. He did so as a direct response to Culinary Union pressure not to support Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who both favor "Medicare for All."

Weekend at Bernie's with Eugene McCarthy's grandchildren
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 11-10-2015 Sparks Tribune / Updated 11-12-2015

Education Dysfunction Part LXXV—>
Year-end or end of times?
Smoking gun: throwing more money at public schools actually works
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 12-27-2016 Sparks Tribune

Hope you and yours enjoyed enthralling Thanksgibleting.
Happy High Holly Days to all
Merry Christmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus/Chanukah
Frohe Weihnachten und beste Wuensche fuer 2017

11-24-2016 — 142 years ago on Thanksgiving Thursday,
Barbed wire was patented (11-24-1874).
Stick with The Barbwire to sharply point out the awful truth. Always.
Get ahead of corporate-influenced news—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential
All the news you never knew you needed to know—>TOP SECRET, HUSH HUSH

Education Dysfunction Part LXXIV—>
We don't need no education
What's a little cancer or brain damage as long as graduation rate projections remain rosy?
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 12-13-2016 Sparks Tribune

On Nov. 24, 2014, after revelations by The Barbwire/Sparks Tribune, the Reno News & Review and the Reno-Sparks NAACP, Assemblymember Ira-Hansen, R-Sparks, resigned as speaker-designate of the Nevada State Assembly.

On Nov. 6, 1860, former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln defeated three other candidates for the U.S. presidency. (New York Times)

11-4-2016: On this date in 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States, as the country chose him as its first black chief executive. (New York Times)

On this date in 1868, in Louisiana, Republican J. Willis Menard defeated Democrat Caleb Hunt 64.32 to 35.68 percent, making Menard the first African American elected to the U.S. House, but Hunt challenged the result before the House, which refused to seat either candidate; in 1874, Pablo Laveaga of Humboldt County was elected Nevada’s first known Latino state legislator (he also later served as Humboldt County treasurer and was a Reno tavern owner); in 1908 in the era when U.S. senators were (by federal law) appointed by state legislatures, Nevada began an experiment in getting around the federal requirement by letting the public cast votes in a straw poll for senate candidates with state legislative candidates pledged to support the winner (Democrat Frank Newlands defeated the Socialist and Republican candidates and the legislature appointed him); in 1908 in a referendum on whether to retain the state police force, created by the legislature to help break the unions in Goldfield, the force was retained by a vote of 9,954 to 9,078; in 1914, Nevadans voted 10,936 to 7,258 in favor of voting rights for women; in 1916, the New York Times quoted National Socialist Party secretary Julius Gerber, “We expect to elect Victor Berger and [Winfield] Gaylord from Milwaukee. We may have one Socialist congressman from Indiana. Our workers in Nevada are enthusiastic over the chances of electing Grant Miller a senator, but I regard that as unlikely.”; in 1934, an evening Democratic torchlight parade was held in Reno three days before an election in which Democrats were expected to sweep everything before them (speaking in Sparks the day before, Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Fred Alward said, “Kirman already is elected”, referring to Democratic nominee for governor Richard Kirman); in 1948 staffers of the Chicago Tribune, which had issued 150,000 copies of its “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” edition before receiving any vote returns, scrambled like crazy after radio reports of eastern returns showed a close race, sending distribution trucks and employees in their private cars into the street to get the copies back (many were hauled to the dump; one copy recently sold for $2,167); in 1953, episode 10 of season 6 of NBS’s Fireside Theater was “Man of the Comstock” by David Dortort (teleplay), Frank Wisbar (story), a script about a mining lawyer that Dortort later retooled into the series Bonanza; in 1964 on a pledge of no wider war in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson was elected president over Barry Goldwater, 61.1 percent to 38.5 percent; in 1983, Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy for the presidency; in 1986, after personal pleading from retiring U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada and over vehement objections from his political advisors who said Laxalt’s seat was already lost, President Reagan made an election eve appearance in Las Vegas to try to save the senate campaign of Democrat-turned-Republican James Santini, who was defeated the next day by Democrat Harry Reid.

George Bush/November 2d 2000: "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it’s some kind of federal program."

On this date in 1863, the first Nevada Constitutional Convention began; in 1880, the morning Nevada State Journal waved the bloody shirt on that day’s election: “Every traitor who shot bullets at Union soldiers in the late war, will vote for [Democratic presidential nominee Winfield] Hancock, and the loyal men who received them in their bodies, and who yet live will vote for [Republican nominee James] Garfield” (Nevada was apparently loaded with traitors, since Hancock won the state); in 1916, women’s leaders in Nevada were touting the slogan they were using in their drive to defeat Woodrow Wilson for reelection—”He kept us out of suffrage.”; in 1918, Theodore Roosevelt, the frontrunner for the 1920 Republican presidential nomination, spoke to a Negro war relief rally at Carnegie Hall, calling for equal civil rights (a policy he never advocated as president), his last public appearance before his death; in 1920, KDKA in Pittsburgh reported the results of the Harding/Cox presidential race in the first radio broadcast; in 1926, after Republican candidate for treasurer Clara Cunningham was killed in a car wreck during the last month of the campaign and the GOP agreed not to require reprinting of the ballots, Democrat Ed Malley was elected—a fateful choice, since he was later removed from office after embezzling funds from the state treasury; in 1936, three days before the election, the massive Literary Digest poll came out, with Alf Landon leading Franklin Roosevelt 1,293,669 to 972,897 (the poll showed 1,003 Nevadans supporting Landon to 955 for Roosevelt); in 1948, Democrat Walter Baring defeated Republican incumbent Charles Russell in the race for Nevada’s only U.S. House seat; in 1954, John F. Kennedy, a stockroom employee of the Gillette safety razor plant in South Boston, was elected to the first of two terms as Massachusetts state treasurer after spending $200 on the primary and general election campaigns; in 1967, on the second day of a two-day gathering of President Johnson’s elite group of advisors known as “the wise men” (Dean Acheson, George Ball, General Bradley, McGeorge Bundy, Clark Clifford, Arthur Dean, Douglas Dillon, Abe Fortas, Averill Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Robert Murphy and Maxwell Taylor), the group told Johnson to stay the course in Vietnam but do a better job of public relations (eight months later the same group told Johnson the war was a failure and he should disengage as best he could); in 1982, Harry Reid of Las Vegas was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives; in 2004, Illinois state Senator Barack Obama was elected to the United States Senate over Republican Alan Keyes with a 43 percent victory margin; in 2010, Democrat Harry Reid won a comfortable six-point victory over alleged Republican Sharron Angle in his U.S. Senate reelection campaign.

Sean Hannity/November 2d 2010: "The country’s most watched Senate race between Sharron Angle and Harry Reid is sure to be one for the history books. With one day to go, it’s looking more and more likely that Sharron Angle will unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid."

Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial/November 2d 2000: Sen. Harry Reid lurches toward tonight’s Election Day finish line, more unpopular than ever with Nevadans, unable to make a convincing case for voters to return him to Washington. [Reid won with an easy six-point margin.]

EDITOR'S NOTES: Once again, journalist Dennis Myers has outdone himself. I didn't even know (or maybe I forgot; one grows old) that Winfield Scott Hancock had run for president. This was apparently the forerunner of Karl Rove swiftboating John Kerry, as Hancock was a major Civil War union general. Earlier this election mayhem, I noted that Hillary is the Dem's weakest nominee since Cox, something of which we are daily reminded. And thanks for the shout-out to Nevada's iron-jawed angels about Woodrow. JFK a stockboy? Surely you jest. Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.

JOURNALIST MYERS RESPONDS: John F. Kennedy—the middle name was Francis—first ran for office in 1952, when John F. (for Fitzgerald) Kennedy was running to move from the House to the Senate. Francis lost state treasurer while Fitzgerald won the Senate seat. Francis came back two years later—Massachusetts then had two year terms—to win state treasurer and was reelected thereafter until 1960 when his eyes got too big for his stomach and he ran for governor. It didn’t help that he was one of six John F. Kennedys on the ballot for various offices in the state that year.

Franklin Roosevelt/November 1, 1940: "Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion."

On this date in 1890 the Second Mississippi Plan, a group of legal mechanisms for removing African Americans from the political process—including a poll tax, a literacy requirement, and an “understanding” clause—was approved, spreading to other states and also excluding poor whites (the First Mississippi Plan was the use of massive violence and brutality); in 1912 Democrats held rallies around the state to mark “Wilson Day”, a commemoration they declared to honor Democratic presidential nominee Woodrow Wilson in Hawthorne, Gardnerville, Las Vegas, Pioche, Carson City, Virginia City, Lovelock, Elko, Reno, and Winnemucca, though the Goldfield celebration was held without a scheduled speech by U.S. senate candidate Key Pittman, who rushed to Sausalito after receiving a wire telling him that his wife had been stricken with ptomaine poisoning and summoning him to her bedside; in 1918 with Nevada Democrats questioning his patriotism in his U.S. Senate race—he voted against entry into the world war—U.S. Representative Edwin Roberts was running ads in the state to defend himself while he was in D.C. as the war wound down (see below); in 1926 Time magazine published assessments of U.S. senate races around the nation, including this: “Nevada. Raymond T. Baker, Democrat, v. Senator Tasker L. Oddie, Republican. Mr. Baker, rich, romantic, fashionable, is popular enough among Nevada’s 33,000 voters to be given a slight edge over his opponent, who is rich but not romantic.” (Oddie, who was not rich, won); in 1942, Negro Digest began publication; in 1945 Ebony magazine was founded; in 1951 Jet magazine began publication; in 1954 the Nevada governor’s race wound down with Democratic candidate Vail Pittman on the defensive and denouncing Republican candidate Charles Russell and Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun, whose newspaper had provoked a Nevada Tax Commission hearing on whether the Las Vegas Thunderbird was owned by Jake and Meyer Lansky and had also used electronic eavesdropping of Democratic Lieutenant Governor Clifford Jones to disclose influence peddling; in 1956 120,984 Nevadans were registered to vote in the November 5 election; in 1996 Al Jazeera began broadcasting, often drawing criticism from Arab governments because of its unwillingness to tailor coverage to local sensibilities, winning praise from the west (except for the Bush administration, because of its unwillingness to tailor coverage to administration sensibilities) and generally living up to the hopes of its founder, Qatar reform Sheik Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani: “I believe criticism can be a good thing and some discomfort for government officials is a small price to pay for this new freedom.” (in 2005 the London Daily Mirror reported a memo leaked from the British prime minister’s office saying that George Bush considered bombing the Al Jazeera headquarters as part of the Iraq war; a U.S. missile did strike the Al Jazeera Baghdad bureau on April 8 2003, killing one reporter and wounding another, and Al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj was silenced by being jailed in Guantanamo for six years without charge).

Statement of U.S. Representative Edwin Roberts of Nevada/November 1 1918: TO THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEVADA: For nearly two years I have been made a target for abuse by certain administration newspapers and politicians who have sought to discredit me in the eyes of the people I have had the honor to represent during the past eight years. You know and I know that when I was elected the people expected me to go the limit to keep them out of war. I kept my promise, and for doing so I have been viciously assailed and maligned from one end of the state to the other. During the past eight years I have never attempted to camouflage the people. I have always regarded the powers with which I am entrusted as merely delgated powers and will never forget that they belong to the people and not myself. Owing to the stress of business in Congress, and the important national work that required the attention of all members, I found it impossible to come home to make a personal campaign and visit with friends and those who have differed with the positions taken by me on national measures. It has been impossible, therefore, to attempt a state trip as much as I so desired. I have never during a somewhat extended public career found it necessary to abuse or misrepresent an opponent, and I do not intend to start now. I want to feel when the present campaign is over that I have played the game fairly and have never tried to strike below the belt.

Congratulations to the Cleveland Indigenous Native Directionally Inspired Athletic Nondiscriminatory Stickballers.
Be careful in Chicago. Be well. Raise hell.

Call center industry flourishing in Nevada
"Preceding and especially during the recession, the call center industry settled in Nevada, finding a gold mine of talented, unemployed labor."
Las Vegas Review-Journal 10-28-2016

On this date in 1860 in the opium wars fought by the British to force the Chinese to accept the opium trade, British soldiers destroyed Beijing’s summer palace; in 1898 during the Spanish American War, U.S. troops supposedly liberated Porto Rico (“liberation” became colonialism); in 1913, The Girl From Utah, an Edwardian musical about a woman who ran away to London to avoid becoming one of the wives of a Latter Day Saint, opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London and the next year at New York’s Knickerbocker Theatre on August 14, 1914 with the addition, among others, of the Jerome Kern song They Didn’t Believe Me that became a favorite of soldiers in the world war (the song closed the 1969 antiwar movie, Oh! What a Lovely War); in 1929, the Judicial Committee of England’s Privy Council, then the highest Court of Appeal for Canada, overruled the Canadian Supreme Court and declared that Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby and Nellie McClung were people, which meant they could run for office (the council said excluding women from public office was “a relic of days more barbarous than ours”) and this date is now Persons Day in Canada; in 1938, actress and Miss Nevada Dawn Wells was born in Reno; in 1956, a few days after President Eisenhower described U.S. Senator George Malone of Nevada as one of three Republican senators he could not count on (the other two were Joseph McCarthy and William Jenner) and that the three had “little place” in the GOP, U.S. Representative Cliff Young of Nevada denied making a comment attributed to him in the Mineral County Independent that “It is a fact Senator George Malone has opposed and voted against many policies of the Eisenhower administration—even more so than Senator Joseph McCarthy” (the Independent stood by the quote); in 1968, the U.S. Olympic Committee, unwilling to stand up to the demand of the International Olympic Committee, suspended the great African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos (who had trained at Lake Tahoe) from the Mexico City games for giving the black power salute on the victory stand after winning their events, a protest that sportswriter Brent Musburger later described as “a couple of black-skinned storm troopers”, a statement for which he has never apologized (U.S. African-American olympians Bob Beamon, Ralph Boston, Lee Evans, Larry James and Ron Freeman subsequently found additional ways to protest during the Mexico City games); in 1968, U.S. journalists used words like “plague” and “mar” to portray Carlos and Smith’s gesture at the Mexico City olympics as a flaw—” ‘Black Fists’ Mar Olympics”; in 1996, Bill Clinton, speaking in Houston before an audience of his rich campaign contributors in his reelection campaign, denounced himself for the small tax increase they had to endure under his program, which he blamed on the Republicans and on fellow Democrats who had gone out on a limb to vote with him: “Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know I think I raised them too much too.”; in 2012, after a years-long legal effort by the press against the Boy Scouts of America, the BSA “perversion files” recording accusations of sexual abuse against 1,247 scout leaders over a twenty-year period were made public, prompting changes in BSA procedures and a reluctant apology from BSA president Wayne Perry.

Oakland Rapists: Softshoe fascism on steroids
Nevada adopts an official state religion: The NFL
Also: Bernie Sanders and Trump Jr. blow into Reno
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-18-2016 Sparks Tribune

Don't ask Renown for marijuana to help your chemo
Corporate welfare's bitter fruit: Union-busting, prevailing wage-violating Syufy burns Sparks City Hall again
Teamsters 533 CEO Debbie Calkins on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-4-2016 Sparks Tribune

On this date in 1864, mine owner and Nevada governor James Nye requested and received two companies of U.S. Army cavalry troops from Fort Churchill to break a miners’ labor union in Virginia City; in 1953 at a time when the U.S. government was plotting the overthrow of the peaceful democratic governments of Guatemala and Iran, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles made a speech in St. Louis about “communist leaders who openly repudiate the restraints of moral law”; in 1957, the Dodgers played their last game in Brooklyn; in 2007, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, who invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia and then had to deal with the backlash, tried to make amends by introducing Ahmadinejad this way: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. …”

On this date in 1918, Eugene Debs was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for violating the Espionage Act by making a speech critical of the Espionage Act.
On this date in 1988, labor leader Dolores Huerta was beaten by police in front of Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.
(Courtesy of veteran Nevada journalist Dennis Myers of the Reno News & Review © 2016 Dennis Myers)

On this date in 1900, the Nevada Democratic and Silver political parties accomplished fusion, guaranteeing that its nominees would win most offices; in 1923, the International Criminal Police Commission better known as Interpol was formed in Vienna (contrary to its name, it is actually a private organization rather than a government agency); in 1940, the blitz—a sustained bombing campaign—began, with 497 German bombers over London on the first day, killing 436 Londoners and injuring 1,666 (over the course of the 246-day campaign, bombing of many British cities killed 43,000 civilians and injured 51,000); in 1945, the Voice of Vietnam radio broadcast went on the air, its initial report the reading of the nation's September 2d Declaration of Independence from France, which had been written and patterned after the U.S. declaration by Ho Chi Minh with the advice of U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Archimedes Patti; in 1954, six years after his shocking loss of the U.S. presidency and four years after his election to a third term as governor of New York, Thomas Dewey announced he would leave public life; in 1960, Norman Vincent Peale presided over an anti-John Kennedy rally at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C. called by a group that opposed a Catholic for president, Citizens for Religious Freedom; in 1964, during an NBC broadcast of the 1951 Susan Hayward movie David and Bathsheba, Lyndon Johnson’s campaign broadcast a television spot showing a little girl in a field counting up to ten while she picked the petals off a black eyed susan, which blended into a countdown as the image zoomed into the girl’s eye where an atomic bomb was seen exploding, followed by Johnson’s familiar voice: “These are the stakes, to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die”—a spot which ran only that single time and then was pulled off the air (although the spot never mentioned Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, the climate of that year’s campaign and Goldwater’s talk of relatively casual use of nuclear weapons meant it would be seen as an attack on him); in 1972, on the first day of school, Clark County superintendent of schools (and future governor) Kenny Guinn was forced to cancel elementary school “until further notice” after a group of parents won a court order halting implementation of an integration plan. Nevada Attorney General (and future governor) Robert List and school district lawyer Robert Petroni melodramatically flew to Washington to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the integration plan, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund entered the case against List and Petroni, and protest marches were held on the Las Vegas strip, at the county courthouse and in the downtown casino district; in 2002, George Bush claimed that the International Atomic Energy Association had issued a report asserting that Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon, which was false, though journalism covered up the lie (the Washington Post reported it in the 21st paragraph of its story and MSNBC posted it on its web site but then quickly removed it).

Have a happy and non-laborious Labor Day weekend.
Be safe. Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.

Walk a mile in Colin Kaepernick's cleats
"In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."—Toni Morrison
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 8-30-2016 Sparks Tribune / Updated 8-31-2016

Adios: Sam Lumpe, 1940-2016
The César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Famer and retired member of Sheet Metal Workers Local 26/AFL-CIO passed away in Reno on Aug. 24. All testimonials will be most welcome for inclusion in a complete remembrance of our brother Sam which will be posted here soon. At his request, there will be no memorial service. He is the second hall-of-famer (with the United Auto Workers' George "Battling" Nelson) to pass this summer. Requiescant in pace.

Adios: Librado Chávez muerto
Librado "Lee" Chávez, brother of César Chávez and frequent participant in Nevada César Chávez Day activities, has passed away in California. This comes two months after the passing of Mrs. César Chávez, Helen. Details as they arrive. Requiescant in pace. (8-16-2016)

Justice Hugo Black/New York Times Co. v. United States /June 30 1971: " In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do."

On this date in 1869, Camp Ruby in White Pine County, slated for abandonment by the U.S. Army, was auctioned off and purchased by Thomas Short; in 1908, an object, believed to be a 220-million-pound asteroid or comet, fragmented from heat and pressure at about 28,000 miles above Earth, the resulting fireball releasing the energy equivalent of about 186 Hiroshima explosions toward the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, the blast decimating eight hundred square miles of forest, pressing eighty million trees against the surface of the planet, their radial direction pointing at ground zero (no human is known to have died in the blast, though animal life was annihilated); in 1913, Fredrick Whitburn, Lander County Clerk, was made a member of Lander Lodge no. 8 (he later enlisted in the army during World War One and was killed in action in October 1918); in 1923, Clarence Williams' Blue Five featuring Sidney Bechet recorded Wild Cat Blues; in 1937, F.F. Walter, an emissary from U.S. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, arrived in Nevada to settle new wage rates and other matters for unhappy Boulder Dam workers, and he met with them promptly after he arrived and supervised a vote in which they rejected a 48 hour work week and elected to work a 40-hour week; in 1947, a motorcycle rider in Twin Falls was hospitalized after he was run down by a house being towed by a truck from the shuttered Minidoka wartime concentration camp; in 1971 with justices Burger, Harlan, and Blackmun dissenting, the United States Supreme Court lifted an injunction against publication of the Pentagon papers by The New York Times and Washington Post, which also freed The Boston Globe and St. Louis Post Dispatch to publish (of 17 newspapers publishing the papers, the Nixon administration took action only against the four with editorial page policies opposing the war in Vietnam); in 1977, a U.S. House communications subcommittee announced that it was stepping up its investigation of whether television networks had begun to control the sports they carried; in 1991, UNLV withdrew from the Western Athletic Conference; in 2006 in Las Vegas, Ringo, Paul, and Yoko appeared together for the debut of Love, a stage show built around Beatles music.

George Bush/June 29 2006: I’ve reminded the prime minister—the American people, Mr. Prime Minister, over the past months that it was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship."

On this date in 1835, slaveowner William Travis raised a company of 25 men to fight for independence for northern Mexico because of the new Mexican constitution’s abolition of slavery; [EDITOR'S NOTE: Travis and his pro-slavery followers, including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, died at the Alamo]; in 1906, Anazasi ruins at Mesa Verde were declared a national park; in 1940, Dick Grayson’s family of high wire artists were killed by mobsters and Dick became Bruce Wayne’s ward; in 1944, the “liberty ship” H.G. Blasdel (named for Nevada’s first elected governor) was in convoy EMC 17 on its way to Omaha Beach when it was torpedoed by the German submarine U-984 about thirty miles south of the Isle of Wight (the liberty ships were rapidly built, mass-produced emergency ships constructed to a standard design from prefabricated pieces, called the “ugly ducklings” by President Franklin Roosevelt); in 1964, syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop published a column that sought to blame the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—a major arm of the civil rights movement—for the murder of the Mississippi Burning three: “Provoking the military occupation of [the south] is in fact the avowed aim of John Lewis, leader of the Students [sic] Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee…The organizers who send these young people into Mississippi must have wanted, even hoped for martyrs. And now, alas, they have got what they wanted.”; in 1992, a 5.6 earthquake occurred on a previously unknown fault at Little Skull Mountain, 12 miles from Yucca Mountain in Nye County; in 2009, President Obama held a reception commemorating the Stonewall riots and urged his gay supporters to judge him “not by promises I’ve made but by the promises that my administration keeps” (in the audience was Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, an Air Force officer facing discharge after someone informed his superiors that he is gay).

Who owns Nevada's PBS TV 5-and-10-cent store?
Who shot JR? Ralston show axed without notice.
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 6-28-2016 Sparks Tribune

Advertisement for Easton, Crane, and Pike Co. of Pittsfield, Massachusetts/Stars and Stripes/June 28 1918: "Lafayette, when he came to this country and offered his sword to the American Colonists fighting for liberty, little dreamed that the day would come when a newspaper named The Stars and Stripes, and printed in the American language, would circulate in France among so many native born Americans as now make up the subscription list of The Stars and Stripes." (Editor's note: Even that long ago, writers realized that United Statesians speak American, not English.)

On this date in 1868, Frances Slaven (later a Nevada school principal and suffrage leader) and John Williamson (later a Nevada senator) were married; in 1905, the Sutro tunnel (on the Comstock Lode) was wired for electricity; in 1914, Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sofia in Sarajevo, setting in motion a chain of events that caused another world war; in 1914, exiled heavyweight champion Jack Johnson successfully defended his title against Frank Moran at the Velodrome d’Hiver in Paris; in 1924, U.S. Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, arguing before the Democratic National Convention for a weak endorsement of the League of Nations that involved a national referendum, was booed and jeered by the delegates; in 1956, a two day picket line at Nellis Air Force Base was taken down after the base agreed to comply with the Davis/Bacon Act’s wage requirements; in 1969, New York City police staged a brutal raid of the Stonewall Inn gay bar, which backfired on them when the crowd that was ejected from the tavern turned around and trapped police inside, a folk singer was then pulled by police into the bar and beaten, and police and protesters rioted the rest of the night and on two subsequent nights, fueling the gay rights movement (police violence against homosexuals was then common across the nation, though New York City had been retreating from that policy); in 1971, four years after Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted, one year after it heard the case, the U.S. Supreme Court with its usual promptness overturned his conviction; in 1980, a meeting of domestic violence activists from around Nevada was held in Washoe Valley, resulting in the establishment of the Nevada Network on Domestic Violence; in 1998, executives of the Cincinnati Enquirer retracted and apologized for a report about Chiquita Brands AKA United Fruit Company (alleging mistreatment of its plantation workers, cocaine shipments, pollution, illegal land dealings, anti-union activities, bribery) that many of its newspeople still believed was accurate, because of questions about the methods used to obtain information (an Enquirer reporter later pleaded guilty to hacking into the corporation’s voice mail system, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Chiquita for bribing foreign officials, and The New York Times reported that “some of the allegations cannot be dismissed so easily, despite the questions raised about the reporting method”).

Irony Alert: Muhammad Ali's funeral on 6-10-2016 was held 70 years to the day of Jack Johnson's death in a 1946 North Carolina car crash

LAST CHANCE TO SEE IT AND WEEP
From Amy Roby 6-3-2016: For its final showing, Always Lost will be displayed in the Main Gallery of Western Nevada College-Carson City from June 3-July 29, 2016. Gallery hours are 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Saturdays. The gallery will be closed in honor of Independence Day on July 4, 2016.
2014 Nevada Press Association Award Winner
Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
I publicly wept when they looked at me.
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 4-18-2013 Daily Sparks Tribune

ON THE AIR — Reno-Sparks NAACP President Patricia Gallimore and First Vice-President Andrew Barbano will guest on The Crisis Magazine Radio Program, Tuesday, 19 April 2016 at 10:10 a.m. PDT. The hostess will be Crisis Publisher Laura Blackburne. The call-in number is (516) 877-9843. Established in 1910, The Crisis is the official publication of the NAACP. The program will air live on WTHE 1520-am in the New York City/New Jersey/Connecticut metropolitan area. A recording of the show will be available in a day or two at the station's website. Turn on, tune in and tell a friend.

Barbwire Confidential: Hush-Hush!
[4-8-2016/U-News Exclusive ] —> On Thursday, April 14 at 1:45 p.m. PDT in Washoe District Court Dept. 7, 75 Court St. in Reno, Judge Patrick Flanagan will consider disqualification of Republican Jason Guinasso's candidacy in Assembly Dist. 26 (southwest Reno/Incline Village). Stay Tuned.

On April 4, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 39, was shot and killed in Memphis, Tenn. (NY Times); last words of Dr. King, to Ben Branch/April 4, 1968: "Ben, make sure you play Precious Lord, Take My Hand in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty." (From veteran Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' daily Poor Denny's Almanac/PDA)

Poor Denny's Almanac — Thursday, 31 Mar 2016 00:00:02 PDT

César Chávez: "The Raiders are my team. You know why? In the first boycott, they were the only team where all the players endorsed it."

Ronald Reagan/June 5, 1968: "They are immoral to boycott grapes."

Happy Easter!
Consume only low-calorie chocolate bunnies and cholesterol-free eggs.

¡VIVA CHÁVEZ!
In 1986, César Chávez spoke to Nevada workers at the Musicians Union hall in Reno

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

César Chávez Celebration XIV / Celebración de César Chávez XIV
Wednesday 30 March 2016 / Miércoles 30 de Marzo 2016
Circus Circus Reno

Get ahead of corporate-influenced news—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

7-COME-11!
Barbwire wins seventh Nevada Press Association award

Those with crystal balls shouldn't throw stones
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 3-15-2016 Sparks Tribune

One Thousand Expected to Picket Las Vegas Strip Palms Resort March 18
Culinary Union Local 226 / 3-14-2016

In Union Case, Feds Charge Trump Las Vegas with More Illegal Unfair Labor Practices
Culinary Union Local 226 / 3-9-2016

Remembering the first female U.S. presidents
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 3-8-2016 Sparks Tribune

Poor Denny's Almanac [PDA] 8 March 2016 — On this date in 1904, U.S. Senator Francis Newlands of Nevada spoke in the senate about his bill to guarantee an uninterrupted vista from the Capitol to the Washington monument; in 1926 long time Nevada residents claimed that if a boundary survey was done, the boom town of Leadfield in California’s Inyo County would be in Nevada, and Governor Scrugham said he was investigating with an eye to seeking action by the legislature; in 1929 federal alcohol prohibition agents descended on Las Vegas, arresting Mayor J.C. Hess, Police Commissioner Roy Neagle, and the alleged operators of more than 20 soft drink stands and resorts; in 1939 in Salt Lake City, a Works Progress Administration educator who spent six months living with Native Americans described what the Associated Press called the “weird ceremony”—a “strange and secret semi-Christian rite known as the narcotic ‘dance of the peyote’.”; in 1956 a U.S. Navy investigation was completed into the sexuality of Navy physician Thomas Dooley (who would later be proposed for Catholic sainthood) and the results of the investigation were used to force Dooley out of the service; in 1961 Elvis addressed a joint session of the Tennessee Legislature, telling lawmakers that he would always live in the state (the Salem Capitol Journal in Oregon ran a snotty editorial referring to an “address by that great authority on public affairs, Elvis Presley. Exactly how this will improve the lot of Tennessee sharecroppers wasn’t explained.”); in 1965 without provocation, two battalions of U.S. Marines invaded Vietnam, landing at Danang, the beginning of U.S. ground forces taking over the war from Saigon’s forces; in 1968, twenty year old Danny Lee Smothers of Carson City, Nevada, died in Quang Tri province, Vietnam (panel 43e, row 61 of the Vietnam wall); in 1969, twenty year old Larry Donald Brown of Caliente, Nevada, died in Kien Hoa province, Vietnam (panel 30w, row 72); in 1970 twenty one year old William Robert Rogne of Fallon, Nevada died in Quang Duc province, Vietnam (panel 13w, row 98); in 1992, the New York Times invented the Whitewater “scandal” with a story by Jeff Gerth that withheld exculpatory information and used emotionally loaded language, setting off almost a decade of prosecutorial and journalistic tail-chasing.

Poor Denny's Almanac [PDA] 7 Mar 2016 08:36:30 —

Ray Charles: "Can you imagine the whole Georgia Legislature standing up for me? I cried. ... That’s how much it meant to me. I felt kind of stupid standing there crying, but I couldn’t help it."

On this date in 1875, folks at Virginia City’s St. Paul Church sent seven cases of clothing and $140 for relief of Kansans, where crops had been decimated by grasshoppers; in 1908, federal troops sent by President Roosevelt left Goldfield after they broke the mining unions, and a second detachment of the new state police force formed to replace the troops departed for Goldfield; in 1923, the New Republic published Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods On a Summer Evening”, which became one of the most beloved of U.S. poems; in 1939, after taking over the loyalist government of Spain, General Jose Miala turned his forces to fighting communist republicans instead of the fascist rebels; in 1943 in Radoszkowice, Byelorussia, a Jewish community established in the 16th century was liquidated; in 1944, historian Emanuel Ringelblum, archivist of the Warsaw ghetto, and his family were tortured and killed; in 1949, the U.S. House Armed Services Committee was busily processing a secret bill giving U.S. intelligence agents new powers, and committee chair Carl Vinson, R-AZ, said no details of the bill would be given to Congress, no record of the committee hearing was kept, debate on the bill would be limited, amendments would not be permitted, and little time would be provided on the floor for questions before the vote; in 1958 on CBS’s Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater, a playlet written by Sam Peckinpah called The Sharpshooter starred Johnny Crawford and former Boston Celtic and Brooklyn Dodger Chuck Conners, a lightly edited version of the program later serving as the first episode of The Rifleman; in 1968, nineteen year old Sterling Price Johnson of Carlin, Nevada, died in Quang Tri province, Vietnam (panel 43e, row 45 of the Vietnam wall); in 1968, Robert Kennedy made his last comments in the U.S. Senate on Vietnam (see below); in 1979, Ray Charles performed Georgia On My Mind before the Georgia Legislature, which a month later designated it the state song; in 1983, with New York City the capital of AIDS cases, President Reagan and Mayor Koch ignoring the epidemic, gay leaders across the nation deemphasizing it to avoid stirring up anti-gay sentiment, and the public still mostly ignorant that there was an epidemic, the New York Native published 1,112 and counting by Larry Kramer, an article that described AIDS in stark, realistic, and alarming terms, jump-starting gay and public concern about the epidemic.

Listening in: Teamsters Union and Regional Transportation Commission fight over audio recorders
KRNV TV-4 / 3-7-2016

Big Brother Buses? (Reno-Sparks Teamsters) Union, bus agency in eavesdropping fight
Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Associated Press 3-6-2016

On March 7, 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff's posse. (NY Times)

On March 6, 1857, in its Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court. (NY Times)

Sunday, 6 Mar 2016 18:17:56 (Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' daily Poor Denny's Almanac [PDA]) — On this date in 1836 in a ninety-minute early morning battle, Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna’s forces defeated the pro-slavery forces inside the Alamo; in 1836 while Santa Anna inspected the plaza of the Alamo, six of the defenders including David Crockett were found hiding under some mattresses and were brought before the general, who ordered them executed, and they were killed with swords (Santa Anna also freed a surviving slave belonging to Col. William Travis, in keeping with the purpose of the war—to decide the abolition of slavery in northern Mexico); in 1879, the Nevada Legislature approved a bill allowing scientists to take “any bird, fowl, fish, or animal” out of season; in 1928, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Colombia (his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was described by novelist William Kennedy in the New York Times Book Review as “the first piece of literature since the book of Genesis that should be required for the entire human race”); in 1936, Walter Brennan won the first supporting actor Academy Award, the first of three Oscars he won during his career (he remains tied with Jack Nicholson for number of Oscars and is still the only actor to win three supporting actor Oscars); in 1942, the administration building of the still-under-construction Basic Magnesium wartime plant in Henderson was destroyed by fire, and the next day the construction chief said he suspected sabotage; in 1946 France recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a state within the French union, with Ho Chi Minh as its chief of state (the French violated the agreement twelve weeks later); in 1962, Governor Grant Sawyer appointed attorney Procter Hug Jr. to the Nevada Board of Regents to replace casino owner Newt Crumley, who was killed in a plane crash; in 1968, twenty one year-old Jere Douglas Farnow of Las Vegas, Nevada, died in action in Quang Tin province, Vietnam (panel 43e, row 18); in 1968, twenty one year-old James Herbert Smith Jr. of Las Vegas, Nevada, died in Quang Tri province, Vietnam (panel 43e, row 35); in 1974 after the Hearst family distributed food to the poor to comply with ransom demands in the Patricia Hearst kidnapping, California Governor Ronald Reagan expressed a wish that the recipients of the food experience “an epidemic of botulism”; in 1998 in Aleman vs. Judges of the [county] circuit court, et al., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld an unusual conviction—reportedly the only valid conviction of a man previously acquitted on the same charge, on ground that because the judge had been bribed to grant the acquittal, the prisoner (Chicago hit man Harry Aleman) had never actually been in jeopardy in the first trial and therefore double jeopardy did not apply.

Saturday, 5 Mar 2016 19:43:29 (Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' daily Poor Denny's Almanac [PDA]) — On this date in 1877 after the appointment of Rutherford Hayes as president following his defeat in the election (which provoked widespread anger), rumors swept the nation that Samuel Tilden—who actually won the election—would take the oath of office in New York and then go to Washington; in 1903 a state legislative act was approved making Fallon, Nevada, the seat of Churchill County; in 1924 President Coolidge declared an amnesty for all U.S. deserters in the world war who had deserted after the armistice, about a hundred men (those who deserted before the armistice had been amnestied by President Harding); in 1924 in response to a plea from the Philippine legislature, President Coolidge said he did not believe the time for independence of the Philippines, conquered by the U.S. in an 1899-1902 war, had come: “The government of the United States would not feel that it had performed its full duty by the Filipino people or discharged all of its obligations to civilization if it would yield at this time to your aspiration for national independence.”; in 1943 in the Ukraine, Jewish Council chair Shmuel Zalcman was dragged to his death behind a horse drawn cart as 1,300 Jews from the Khmel’nik ghetto were exterminated; in 1947 in Nuremberg, the “ministries trial” or “justice trial” began, a war crimes trial of judges and other legal officials of the German judicial system conducted by the United States alone, unlike the other Nuremberg trials that were conducted under the authority of all the allied powers (this trial was the basis for the movie Judgment at Nuremberg); in 1962 Reno’s city manager sent a letter to the University of Nevada in Reno informing campus officials that the city council had rescinded a vote changing the name of Center Street to University Avenue because having cross streets with similar names (University Terrace/University Avenue) would create problems for the fire department; in 1968, eighteen year old David Louis Bidart of Reno, Nevada, died in Phuoc Long province, Vietnam (panel 43e, row 3 of the Vietnam wall); in 1968 at an appearance in Hampton, New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon made some comments about Vietnam that some journalists interpreted to mean that Nixon said he had a “secret plan” to end the war, and the term became a chronic political problem for him as president even though he never said it; in 1981 President Reagan called for an end to legal aid for the poor; in 1992, U.S. Senator Robert Kerrey [1] of Nebraska withdrew from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, singing Eric Bogle’s “And the Band Played ‘Waltzing Matilda’ ”, a haunting antiwar song that laments the criminal sacrifice of soldiers by their commanders at Gallipoli and the loss of public awareness of that sacrifice (see below); in 2003, the Bush administration submitted forged intelligence documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency as evidence of its claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Africa (the IAEA detected the forgeries and the U.S. claimed it had no knowledge they were forged).

And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
by Eric Bogle

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murray’s green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It’s time to stop rambling ‘cause there’s work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he’d blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I’ll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless,[1] the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, “What are they marching for?”
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who’ll go a waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who’ll go a waltzing Matilda with me?

[1] EDITOR'S NOTE: Sen. Kerrey lost a leg leading Navy Seals on a dangerous mission during the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970, by President Richard Nixon.

Hillary Clinton commits the ultimate typo:
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 00:15:38 +0000 (GMT)
From: "HillaryClinton.com" <info@hillaryclinton.com>
To: barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
Subject: CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Andrew -- Polls just closed on the East Coast, and already, we've won Virgina and Georgia.

I pray for and fear for the health and career of the poor staffer who blew it.

Community Teach-In for Gun Sense – Thursday March 3, 5:30 p.m., Bethel AME Church, 2655 Rock Blvd, Sparks NV
RSVP to Temple Sinai

TV or not TV — Oscar blackouts and PBS blacklists
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 3-1-2016 Sparks Tribune

9:00 p.m. PST / 05:00 GMT/ZULU 2-28-2016

For Immediate Release

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
Todd Koch, President
Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada
775-356-8567

LABOR DISRUPTION AT TESLA GIGAFACTORY
Local workers protest Nevada tax breaks being spent to hire New Mexico workers

SPARKS, Nev. — Local construction workers will protest Monday morning, February 29, 2016, at the Tesla Gigafactory construction site (in Storey County east of Reno-Sparks). Hundreds of workers are expected to walk off the site in protest of Nevada tax breaks being spent to bring workers from New Mexico to work at the Gigafactory construction site.

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed legislation giving Tesla $1.4 Billion dollars in tax incentives to build the Gigafactory in Nevada.

“This legislation was passed with limited protection for Nevada’s construction workers,” said Todd Koch, President of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada.

“Nevada’s tax dollars should be used to provide jobs for Nevada construction workers not New Mexico construction workers,” he added.

New Mexico contractor Brycon Corporation has been bringing lower paid, out of state construction workers to the site instead of filling these jobs from Nevada’s skilled workforce. Nevada’s families were hopeful that the Gigafactory was going to be the turnaround they had been waiting for after the recent six year construction decline.

For more information, contact Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada President Todd Koch at (775) 356-8567.

Read much more about it —>

Protesting workers return to Tesla job site
Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP 3-1-2016

Construction workers at Tesla site walk off the job in protest
Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP 2-29-2016

Taxpayers taken for Teslacide demo ride

Striking workers: Beware Storey County Sheriff

Screw the courts and screw the dealers: Wynn continues to rip off tips
Las Vegas Review-Journal 2-24-2016

Thanks to all Nevada Caucusians

ATTRACTIVELY ACTIVE CAMPAIGN — Laws of Attraction and Titanic star Frances Fisher campaigning for Bernie in Nevada with her chauffeur and chaperone, Annalise Gardella of Reno. (Frances Fisher photo)

Nevada caucuses: Star-studded or star-crossed?
Interview with Titanic star Frances Fisher campaigning for Bernie in Nevada
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 2-23-2016 Sparks Tribune

History foreshadows a GOP November win
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 2-16-2016 Sparks Tribune / Updated 2-19-2016

Las Vegas Culinary Union Plans Nonviolent Civil Disobedience and Mass Arrests at Palace Station
Sheriff Joe "Arpaio" Lombardo Denies Culinary Union Members Constitutional Right to Peaceful Protest / 2-12-2016

Psycho-spying the presidential pretenders
Psychological profiles of candidates and presidents
Previous analyses of Justice Clarence Thomas and President Obama proven correct
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 2-9-2016 Sparks Tribune

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2016 — On this date in 1941, Betty Joyce Luffman was born to Lesley and Alton Luffman in Enid, Oklahoma.

Donald Trump: from ivory tower to Hightower
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 2-2-2016 Sparks Tribune

Primary colors: NAACP supports statewide faith organizing campaign

Michael Moore hospitalized, asks the public's help as his new film approaches release

Michael Moore begs President Obama to visit the poisoned people of Flint, Michigan
Sign the petition!

If only Shakespeare had written the Constitution
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 1-26-2016 Sparks Tribune

Leading questions and lead-headed leaders
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 1-19-2016 Sparks Tribune

Michael Moore begs President Obama to visit the poisoned people of Flint, Michigan
Sign the petition!

Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend traditional event schedule

In Sparks, politics isn't personal, just business
Conflict of interest means never having to say you're sorry
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 1-12-2016 Sparks Tribune / Updated 1-14-2016

If you can't trust Dear Abby, whom can you trust?
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 1-5-2016 Sparks Tribune

Open season on law-breaking dangerous drones
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 12-29-2015 Sparks Tribune, Updated 12-30-2015

Hunka Hunka Bernie Love

SOLIDARITY — Communications Workers of America members and their families from throughout northern Nevada pose with Sen. Sanders after his speech. NevadaLabor.com editor Andrew Barbano, far right, holds up his copy of the Dec. 3 edition of Rolling Stone with Sen. Sanders on the cover. The senator signed it immediately after the photo-op. Primo.

Sanders promises penalties for state corporate welfare

Sparks, Nev. (U-News) [Copyright © 2015 NevadaLabor.com] 4:55 p.m. PST 12-27-2015, 00:55 GMT 12-28-2015 — Campaigning in northwestern Nevada, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, told a standing-room-only crowd at the Northern Nevada Labor Temple that he would work to inhibit state vs. state corporate welfare.

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local 26/AFL-CIO Business Development Director Rob Benner asked "Senator, I assume you've noticed the 'Fix Tesla First' sign on the wall. Another electric car company, China-owned Faraday, has just received $334 million in tax breaks to come to Nevada. This came almost exactly a year after state government granted Tesla $1.4 billion. What can you do to fix this?"

Sanders understood the problem, stating that "it's not as simple as I will say it, but I would work to see that states lose some portion of federal benefits when they grant huge tax incentives such as you are describing which hurt needed services."

Sanders also said that he would support automatic union recognition if 50 percent plus one worker sign cards saying they want a union.

President Obama promised to support such legislation when he ran in 2008, but the White House never got behind the now long-dead Employee Free Choice Act.

Sanders also opposed a recent proposal to enact a national "right-to-work-for-less" law, adding that if workers get the benefits of a union contract, "they should contribute."

He noted his longtime opposition to treaties such as NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership which ship jobs to low-wage countries. He added that he knows some Republican senators who have problems with the TPP and it may not pass in this session of Congress.

Sanders advocated for a $15 per hour minimum wage, noting that a working male today makes $700 per year less than he did in 1973, adjusted for inflation. Sanders added that women have also lost ground, especially over the past decade.

NevadaLabor.com Editor Andrew Barbano asked Sen. Sanders if he would support a fix to Obamacare which has put union health plans in jeopardy and is forcing union workers to pay a tax for which they receive nothing.

"Absolutely," Sanders replied.

Sanders answered every question from the audience which ranged from moppets to retirees. One young man noted that since he will be 18 by the general election next year, he will be allowed to participate in Nevada's February caucus. Sen. Sanders noted that Iowa likewise allows youth participation. He added that he's running ahead in New Hampshire, is getting closer in Iowa and if he also does well in Nevada and S. Carolina, victory will be possible.

In the Dec. 3 edition of Rolling Stone, he stated that "Nobody denies, Hillary Clinton least of all, that she is an establishment candidate."

Sanders signed Barbano's Dec. 3 Rolling Stone cover.

Hope you and yours had Happy High Holly Days

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

Faraday's fair name befouled in fallow fields of North Vegas
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 12-22-2015 Sparks Tribune

FIX TESLA FIRST — Unions protest Faraday giveaway
Las Vegas Sun 12-16-2015

"Democrats are pushing for a workforce diversity requirement in the legislation, looking at the way that Faraday’s workforce can represent and benefit the diverse population in North Las Vegas," the Sun reports.

BREAKING NEWS 3:00 p.m. PST 12-17-2015: Republicans have introduced an amendment to Assembly Bill 1, not yet posted online, to prohibit unions from taking part in the workforce training program included. The Sparks City Council must be advising them. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: 2:49 a.m. PST 12-18-2015: STILL NO AMENDMENT POSTED. Skullduggery be afoot. Beware.

Another corporate welfare special legislative session begins
Building trades unions demonstrate: "Fix Tesla First"
Union workers protest no accountability for promised local jobs at Tesla corporate welfare site. Same old story, different players.
Officials again chant the old used car salesman's mantra: Get 'em in, mislead 'em & get 'em outta here

Outside of the capitol, a handful of protestors from the Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada urged lawmakers to “Fix Tesla First.”

“During the Tesla deal, we only got 50% local hire requirement. There was no protection for local business and contractors,” says Rob Benner.

The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (is) also urging lawmakers to be cautious in drafting provisions for Faraday Future. (A letter stated) in part: "For a non-Nevadan company whose product remains unseen and performance and skills (are) unproven, it is only just and responsible that they adhere to protections to put our people and planet first," PLAN Executive Director Bob Fulkerson wrote.

—Information from KRNV TV-4 12-16-2015

Text of handbill distributed by workers at the legislative building —

FIX TESLA FIRST
What did the citizens in Northern Nevada get for $1.4 billion?

50% local hire requirement. 100% Nevada taxpayer money.

Lack of enforcement for required reports

A strain on our aging infrastructure

More overcrowding in our schools

No requirements for local businesses and local contractors

No reporting requirements for percentage of local businesses

Washoe County taxpayers are faced with raising $819 million to pay for school overcrowding and repair needs.

In September 2014 the State of Nevada entered into the biggest tax giveaway in its history, giving away 1.4 billion dollars to Tesla.

Even though we were promised there would be transparency and oversight, Tesla has been slow to file all of the reports that were required. Storey County has not filed all of the reports required by Senate Bill 1.

Before Nevada enters into another huge tax give away with another electric car manufacturer, tell Governor Sandoval to FIX TESLA FIRST!

This message brought to you by the Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada

FIX TESLA FIRST — Unions protest Faraday giveaway
Las Vegas Sun 12-16-2015

Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you any wool?
"Shear me in cold winter, a corporate welfare fool."
Nevada legislators flock to special session for Faraday
Las Vegas Review-Journal 12-16-2015

Sometimes, even the moonhowlers get one right
Tesla numbers cast doubt on rosy Faraday projections
Audit shows Tesla project falling far short of 2015 forecasts
Victor Joecks / Nevada Policy Research Institute 12-17-2015
Is the moon full?

Blast from the past
Taxpayers taken for Teslacide demo ride

Barbwire Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive

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

NEWS BULLETIN & ALMANIACAL ARCHIVES

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

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

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