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[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2006 Dennis Myers.]]

Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator Time to bring back NAGPAC? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006

Update: Sunday, Dec. 31, 2006, 12:35 a.m. PST, 8:35 GMT/SUT — On Dec. 31, 1384, religious pre-Reformation reformer and champion of the Bible John Wycliffe, who inspired the Lollard movement and other later reformers like Luther and Calvin, died at Lutterworth, Leicestershire; in 1829, a group of scouts from Antonio Armijo's western expedition returned to his encampment, minus scout Rafael Rivera, who returned January 7 (during his absence, Rivera probably became the first non-Native American to set foot in the Las Vegas Valley); in 1882, the Lander Free Press was shutting down and moving from Battle Mountain to Elko where it planned to begin publication on January 5, 1883; in 1918, Winnemucca theatre owner H.C. Oastler reopened his American Theatre after it had been closed because of the influenza pandemic (the first program was Green Eyes starring Dorothy Dalton, plus the Pathé newsreel that included scenes of Woodrow Wilson leaving for the European peace conference and protest demonstrations in support of California labor leader and accused saboteur Tom Mooney); in 1918, the Silver State of Winnemucca reprinted from the magazine Goodwin's Weekly a poem lamenting Nevada's impending alcohol prohibition which was approved, incredibly, by Nevada voters in a 13,248 to 9,060 vote in the 1918 election; in 1930, in response to the Anglicans' July/August Lambeth Conference that approved birth control, Pope Pius XI issued Casti connubii (On Christian Marriage), an encyclical that claims the marriage act is principally for procreation: "The primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children."; in 1945, Bonanza Air Lines of Las Vegas was incorporated; in 1953, Hulan Jack of Harlem took office as Manhattan Borough president, becoming the nation's highest African-American municipal official; in 1955, in Susanville, California, excitement over plans to begin drilling for oil on January 1 were dashed when Houston's Ashworth Oil Company said it knew nothing about William Ray, who had started the excitement while posing as an Ashworth representative and then left town; in 1955, members of Teamsters Local 631 and three other unions ended a strike against Reynolds Electric at the Nevada atomic test site's Camp Mercury facility; in 1961, The Beach Boys played under that name for the first time at a Richie Valens memorial benefit concert in Long Beach; in 1962, The Beatles, unhappy to be in Germany when they had a hit record (Love Me Do) in England, performed for the last time at Hamburg's Star-Club, where they were billed second and heckled by audience members for their hostility and performance of dull middle of the road music (the tapes of the shows were later released as albums); in 1963, U.S. State Department official William Sullivan reported to his superior Averill Harriman that the National Liberation Front of Vietnam was effectively victorious in the war and governing the rural areas, a conclusion that was not disclosed to the U.S. public: "There is a People's Republic of the Viet Cong existing within the territorial limits of South Vietnam. It occupies most but not all of the territory known as the Delta Region of South Vietnam beginning a few miles south of Saigon."; in 1965, a record (That's My Life) by Freddy Lennon, who had separated from John's mother in 1940 when John was four and then resurfaced when The Beatles became famous, was released by Pye Records; in 1969, the U.S Army announced it would charge Sergeant David Mitchell with assault with intent to murder in the My Lai massacre (Mitchell was later acquitted after the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Edward Hebert, withheld evidence the committee had gathered from the judge in the court martial); in 1969, the Las Vegas Sun reported that Harrah's had donated its archives to the special collections department at UNLV; in 1984, the Reagan administration settled an antitrust suit first filed by the Nixon administration against American Telephone and Telegraph, but instead of breaking it up vertically to create competing entities, the administration granted an agreement that broke it up horizontally — letting AT&T retain long distance service while losing local basic service, resulting in no net gain of competition and rendering the entire antitrust action pointless (indeed, AT&T was allowed to enter the computer business); in 1985, Rick Nelson died in a plane crash; in 1993, Barbra Streisand gave her first paid concert in 22 years at the MGM in Las Vegas.

Update: Saturday, Dec. 30 , 2006, 2:26 p.m. PST, 20:26 GMT/SUT — On Dec. 30, 1880, Alfred Einstein was born in Munich; in 1882, the Nevada State Journal ran a report on the "pitiable condition" of laboring men in nine nations (but not the United States); in 1897, the Nevada Business College in Elko had 21 students enrolled; in 1899, a Reno man named E. Honeyman was believed to be a prisoner of Filipino defenders against the U.S. invasion of the Phillippines; in 1903, the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago, filled with 1,300 people, caught fired and burned, killing 600; in 1912, during a family celebration in Bloomington, Illinois, 11 year-old Adlai Stevenson was imitating the manual of arms with a 22 rifle that had been checked by an adult to make sure it was unloaded when the weapon went off, killing one of the other children at the gathering; in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established; in 1928, Bo Diddley was born in Pike County, Mississippi; in 1936, the legendary Flint, Michigan, sit-down strike against General Motors by members of the United Auto Workers began; in 1940, the Arroyo Seco Parkway (Route 110, AKA the Pasadena freeway), California's first freeway (which still exists) was formally opened; in 1952, the Tuskeegee Institute reported that for the first time since it started keeping track seven decades earlier, there were no lynchings during the year; in 1954, a court test of Nevada's "right to work" law loomed in a dispute involving the installation of pipe between Las Vegas and Lake Mead; in 1954, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission officials announced that they asked ten to twenty Tonopah residents to wear "radiation badges" to determine the level of radiation from atomic tests in Nevada; in 1965, Ferdinand Marcos became president of the Philippines; in 1966, governor-elect Paul Laxalt, who had earlier announced that state Gaming Control Board member Ned Turner would be retained as a board member until he reached his 30-year date for retirement purposes, declined to comment on rumors that he had changed his mind and intended to demote Turner to agent; in 1999, George Harrison was stabbed in the chest by an intruder at his London home

Update: Friday, Dec. 29, 2006, 7:54 a.m. PST, 15:54 GMT/SUT— On Dec. 29, 1889, Nevada Assemblymember (1942-46) Josie Woods, whose highly fictionalized story was dramatized in the Doris Day film The Ballad of Josie, was born in Clyde, Texas; in 1890, as part of the U.S. government campaign to stamp out the Ghost Dance movement begun by Native American prophet Wovoka in Nevada, U.S. soldiers massacred more than 200 Lakota (mostly women, children, and the elderly) at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota; in 1901, the Nevada State Journal wrote "There have been ten weddings in Elko county this month. Elko seems bound to take the lead in everything."; in 1910, a couple named Anderson, who had obtained a Reno divorce, found themselves married again when Judge Thomas Moran revoked their decree on grounds of fraud at the husband's request (the wife had left the state intent on remarrying, so it was possible she was unknowingly a bigamist); in 1929, the Baltimore Afro American published an editorial critical of the U.S. attack on Haiti, suggesting that such force would be better used to prevent lynchings of U.S. citizens: "If the marines must fight, we suggest that President Hoover order them to Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Georgia."; in 1954, Shell Oil announced plans for a new well in Nevada's Railroad Valley oil field; in 1954, Clark County brothel manager Margaret Burke announced that Roxie's, a "motel" that became an issue in political campaigns, would close permanently on January 3d; in 1954, a Saigon official was demanding strict censorship of Hollywood westerns because, he said, they were having a "disastrous effect" on the morals of juveniles in "free" Vietnam; in 1976, acting Nevada fish and game director Bill Parsons denied a rumor that his department would throw check stations around Pyramid Lake to make sure that people fishing in the lake had state fishing licenses; in 1977, saying that it was difficult for him to argue to federal officials that they should reserve water in Stampede Dam for downstream Nevada use when the Pyramid Lake tribe kept pointing out that Washoe County was wasting water (Reno had no water meters), Governor Mike O'Callaghan set in motion a study of water in Washoe; in 1996, opposition and government leaders signed a settlement of Guatemala's 40 years of U.S.-provoked warfare; in 1997, Reno's Nevada Club, which opened in 1946, shut its doors for the last time.

Update: Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006, 3:21 a.m. PST, 11:21 GMT/SUT — On Dec. 28, 1832, Vice-President John C. Calhoun, weary of attacks from the administration press, hostility from members of the Senate, and the open opposition of President Jackson, resigned and returned to South Carolina (where the state legislature in February appointed him to the U.S. Senate); in 1882, there was talk that another newspaper might start up in Elko which, together with Tuscarora's, would make four in the county; in 1900, the Nevada State Journal reported "The nineteenth century will cease to exist at midnight Monday" and suggested a celebration (note that this was at the end, not the beginning, of the zero year — they were better at arithmetic than we are); in 1903 or 1905, jazz great Earl Hines was born in Duquesne, Pennsylvania; in 1918, Lieutenant Colonel James Scrugham, former Nevada state water engineer, visited Carson City (where he would one day serve as governor) on a holiday furlough; in 1926, the Nevada State Journal carried an article by assistant highway engineer Howard Loy on his trip as a member of a party headed by Governor James Scrugham that explored Nevada's Hidden Forest (an isolated stand of timber on the west slope of Sheep Mountain in Clark County, now a part of the Desert National Wildlife Range); in 1937, Maurice Ravel died in Paris; in 1939, "Nevada Nell", a burro donated to the Boston Police Department by the Las Vegas Kiwanis Club, died; in 1947, Nevada sports fans were enjoying a full week — a football game between the Los Angeles Bulldogs and the San Francisco Clippers in the Las Vegas "Silver Bowl" (reportedly the first pro football game in state history), Phoenix's "Salad Bowl" between the University of Nevada and North Texas State football squads, and four University of Nevada basketball games in five nights, one of them against the powerhouse Nebraska Cornhuskers; in 1948, in San Gabriel, California, in the congressional district of U.S. Representative Richard Nixon, a child was born (but never quite grew to manhood); in 1954, longtime Nevada journalist Chet Sobsey reported that casino-caused turmoil in the state, including federal investigations and labor battles, was exhausting Nevadans' tolerance for the industry; in 1959, Why by Frankie Avalon hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1961, in the dead of night (late on the 28th or early on the 29th), a group of urban guerrillas stole into downtown Reno and painted a crosswalk from the door of city hall across Virginia Street to a saloon across the street, a commentary on the Reno city council's recent efforts to establish a mid-block crosswalk on casino row on Virginia Street; in 1968, The Beatles (better known as the white album) by The Beatles hit number one on the Billboard album chart and was there for nine consecutive weeks); in 1968, Touch Me by The Doors was released; in 1969, Led Zeppelin II hit number one on the Billboard album chart and stayed there for seven nonconsecutive weeks; in 1971, sixteen Vietnam Veterans Against the War seized the Statue of Liberty, barricading themselves inside, and hung a U.S. flag upside down from one of the statue's crown spikes; in 1971, former U.S. senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, appearing in Miami, called for recognition of the government of Cuba; in 1977, Clark County Manager Richard Bunker said his and the county commissioners' offices would be moved to the Valley Bank Plaza in downtown Las Vegas over the New Year's weekend; in 1983, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson drowned at Marina Del Mar; in 1989, Alexander Dubcek, the anti-Nazi guerrilla fighter who became leader of Czecholovakia in 1968 and tried to install "socialism with a human face" during the Prague Spring only to be deposed by a Warsaw Pact invasion, was returned to power as chairman of the Czechoslovak Parliament; in 1997, Reno's Nevada Club, the last major property operated in the old local fashion, closed its doors.

Update: Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2006, 1:04 a.m. PST, 9:04 GMT/SUT — On Dec. 27, 2005, Betty Joyce Luffman Donlevy Barbano died of cardiac failure brought on by pneumonia.

On Dec. 27, 1831, Darwin set sail on an around the world trip on the H.M.S. Beagle, a trip that would advance his theory of evolution; in 1884, Winnemucca's Silver State published a commentary defending the placement of the Nevada state university at Elko, a response to the Territorial Enterprise's commentary on the opposite viewpoint; in 1913, in Philadelphia, Jane Addams told Nevada suffrage leader Anne Martin that she would campaign in Nevada during the 1914 drive for a suffrage ballot measure; in 1922, fighting a 75- to 100-mile an hour wind, air mail pilot Claire Vance got the mail over the Sierra, though at times he was held almost stationary in the air, a phenomenon viewed by a crowd in Reno (the previous year Vance had flown the mail through a tornado and hail storm in Missouri); in 1926, a recount of two Goldfield precincts in an Esmeralda County commission race confirmed the victory of J.F. Bradley, who picked up an additional four votes; in 1931, Scotty Moore, "the guitar that changed the world," was born in Gadsden, Tennessee; in 1944, Lt. William Nellis of Las Vegas and Searchlight, after whom Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada is named, was brought down by ground fire while on a mission over Europe; in 1959, in Las Vegas, U.S. Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota said there was a very real possibility that Congress would increase casino taxes; in 1960, the Nevada Parks Commission, stymied by an attorney general's opinion that it could not take action on its own, decided to seek authority from the Nevada Legislature to lease the Virginia and Truckee Railroad roundhouse as part of a project to rebuild the railroad ten years after it stopped operating; in 1960, the Smith family was in the latest of what often seemed continual negotiations to sell Harold's Club in Reno, this time with Oliver Kahle of Lake Tahoe and Ben Jaffe of Las Vegas; in 1980, Double Fantasy by John and Yoko hit number one on the Billboard album chart and stayed there for eight weeks (their Starting Over single from the album was also number one); in 1979, Cincinnati adopted a city ordinance outlawing unassigned seating at concerts following the death of eleven concertgoers in the crush of people when the doors were thrown open to general assignment ticketholders at a Who concert at Riverfront Stadium on December 3d [PDA]; in 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator Time to bring back NAGPAC? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006

Update: Tuesday, Dec. 26, 2006, 3:11 a.m. PST, 11:11 GMT/SUT— On Dec. 26, 1946, the Flamingo Hotel, owned by gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, opened on what would become the Las Vegas Strip in Clark County. [Expanded from the Nevada Magazine calendar]

On Dec. 26, 1861, Charles Smith was appointed first Sheriff of Washoe County, Nevada; in 1896, stereoptical views were shown at services at Reno's Congregational Church; in 1911, Clara Earle, who was being sued for divorce on grounds of desertion in a Nevada court by her husband, Goldfield mine superintendent John Earle (who also owned mining properties in Arizona and Texas), beat her husband to the punch by obtaining a Chicago divorce decree that ordered him to pay $5,000 alimony and gave her their house in Chicago; in 1911, Richard Kirman and the Farmers and Merchants Bank gained controlling interest in Moana Springs and there were rumors that Kirman would take over the Moana interurban line; in 1922, Rodie Sheeke, brakeman on an ore train at the United Comstock mine operation on American Flat, was killed when the train failed to stop when it was supposed to and crushed him against an ore dump; in 1922, Governor-elect James Scrugham appointed three Churchill County men as military aides on his personal staff; in 1940, Nevada Governor Edward Carville agreed to a U.S. war department proposal to make the Nevada National Guard into anti-aircraft units; in 1940, a marathon battle by a Nevada veteran from the world war came to an end when the government agreed to pay him a compromise payment of $6,000 on his $10,000 war risk insurance (he had filed suit in 1918 to collect on the grounds of total and permanent disability, his case was rejected at the district court, circuit court and U.S. supreme court levels, then he started all over again in 1932); in 1946, mobster Benjamin Siegel hosted the opening of the Flamingo outside Las Vegas; in 1955, See You Later, Alligator by Bill Haley and the Comets was released by Decca; in 1956, Nevada Highway Patrol director Robert Clark said that at the 1957 Nevada Legislature he would again ask for a state highway speed limit; in 1964, I Feel Fine by The Beatles hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1966, Kwanzaa was celebrated for the first time in the United States; in 1967, the film Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles debuted; in 1976, a 9,000-acre Modoc County ranch was turned over to the Pit River Indians, making them the first California tribe with a reservation of its own, though tribal members said they were entitled to a 100-square-mile area of ancestral land bounded by Mount Lassen, Mount Shasta, Goose Lake and Eagle Lake held mostly by federal and state governments and some large corporations; in 1981, For Those About To Rock We Salute You by AC/DC hit number one on the Billboard album chart; in 2004, a 9 point-plus earthquake triggered a tidal wave that killed 220,000 people in south Asia.

Update: Monday, Dec. 25, 2006, 3:34 a.m. PST, 11:24 GMT/SUT — On Dec. 25, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on TV to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of a Communist superpower that had already gone out of existence. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On Dec. 25, 1621, Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Bay Colony in Massachusetts caught some people away from their workplaces, a violation of the church-imposed law outlawing Christmas observance, and sent them back to their jobs; in 1836, in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, the Pequod set sail from Nantucket; in 1868, President Andrew Johnson granted an unconditional pardon to all participants in the rebellion except high-ranking military and civil officials; in 1907, Cab Calloway was born in Rochester, New York; in 1910, U.S. arctic explorer Frederick Cook's defense against questions about his claim to have reached the north pole raised by Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen — based partly on Rasmussen's interviews with Cook's Eskimo guides — included the statement by Cook that Native Americans have a "well known tendency" to give answers they think will please their questioners; in 1932, Little Richard Penniman was born in Macon; in 1940, the Civilian Conservation Corps completed the 55-mile Las Vegas/Pahrump Valley truck trail that took a thirty-person crew 13 months to build; in 1945, federal officials said that a town to be called Davis would rise at the site of the construction of the $47 million Davis Dam on the Colorado River and that the town would have a population of 10,000 that would taper off to a permanent 2,000 after the dam was finished; in 1946, Jimmy Buffett was born n Pascagoula, Mississippi; in 1951, in the first assassinations of the civil rights movement, Florida NAACP leaders Harry and Harriette Moore were murdered on Christmas and their 25th wedding anniversary by a bomb planted in their home; in 1963, African- American leaders in Las Vegas and Reno were angry because Governor Grant Sawyer called a special session of the Nevada Legislature and did not place civil rights on the agenda; in 1965, Radio Caroline, a radio station that broadcast on a merchant ship anchored five miles off the British shore in defiance of the British Broadcasting Corporation monopoly, carried a recorded message from The Beatles; in 1965, Virginia Douglas, who as a girl named Virginia O'Hanlon inspired New York Sun editor Francis Church to write the famous Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus letter, celebrated Christmas at age 76 with her family in Old Chatham, New York; in 1965, The Dave Clark Five's Over and Over — one of the group's lesser known songs but also its only number one hit — went to number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1966, local high school student body presidents John Sande and Tom Reilly posed for publicity photographs in Reno with singer Roger Miller (Dang Me, King of the Road), who was performing at a December 27 show for local students along with singer Bobbie Martin and Dwight Moore's Mongrel Revue; in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, concluding the existence of the Soviet Union after 70 years; in 1998, the bodies of more than 30 wild horses were discovered in the Virginia Range east of Sparks, victims of a holiday shooting spree by U.S. marines; in 2006, James Brown died in Atlanta.

James Brown in 2003 on his hit Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud: I clearly remember we were calling ourselves colored, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black. The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society.

Update: Sunday, Dec. 24, 2006, 1:27 a.m. PST, 9:27 GMT/SUT — On Dec. 24, 1223, a group of monks, including Francis of Assisi, installed a nativity scene in a cavern on Mount Lacerone, supposedly the first nativity scene or the first celebration of Christmas (depending on who's telling it); in 1855, Latter Day Saints missionaries in what would become Clark County, Nevada, recorded their wish that Native Americans they had baptized would establish a camp on the site of what is now known as the Kiel Ranch property; in 1859, the Territorial Enterprise dissed the man who supposedly named Virginia City, pointing out that he had nothing to do with the discovery of the Comstock Lode: "And the name 'Virginia' City is warranted only by this fact, that James Finney, or 'Old Virginny,' had worked in the surface diggings at that place since 1853. He had sold out and gone to Gold Hill at the time the quartz was struck. So much for the 'bob-tailed horse';" in 1898, former Nevada supreme court justice William H. Beatty, who left the state after his court service, was being mentioned as a candidate for U.S. senator from California (Nevada State Journal: "The Lord knows that Nevada needs a friend in the Senate, even if he comes from another state."); in 1898, the road between Elko and Tuscarora was snowbound and all teams making the trip pulled wagons on runners, not wheels; in 1906, United Fruit ships at sea heard Oh Holy Night and Handel's Largo on the wireless, sent to them by Reginal Fessenden from Brant Rock station in Massachusetts, the first known instance of music being broadcast; in 1907, Isadore Feinstein Stone, the greatest journalist in U.S. history, was born in Philadelphia; in 1941, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a tiny eight-island colony of France off the coast of Canada northeast of Maine, was liberated from Vichy by Free French forces landed by sea, a rare instance of the Second World War coming to north America (U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull denounced the liberation as a violation of the Monroe "doctrine" and demanded the colony be returned to collaborationist control); in 1941, seventeen days after Pearl Harbor, Nevada Adjutant General Jay White said the administrative machinery was all in place in the state for operating the military draft, with Elko, Las Vegas and Reno serving as the sites for induction physicals; in 1954, it was announced that the Air Force would be reactivating its Wendover, Nevada, training base, the isolated base where the Army Air Force trained the crews that flew the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb runs; in 1957, silent movie star Norma Talmadge died in Las Vegas; in 1965, the Denver Post reported that former heavyweight champion Sonny Liston had put his Denver home on the market and was considering moving to Las Vegas; in 1966, attorney Robert Reid reportedly became the first African-American named a judge when the Las Vegas city commission appointed him an alternate municipal court judge; in 1969, Nevada Governor Paul Laxalt, who flew to D.C. with state casino regulators and casino exec Kirk Kerkorian on Kerkorian's plane after learning that the Securities and Exchange Commission had denied permission for secondary funding to International Leisure (owned by Kerkorian), said he had SEC assurances that corporate gambling operations would not be discriminated against (Clark County District Attorney George Franklin, however, said corporate gambling was giving Nevada a black eye); in 1974, two blasts of unknown origin occurred in Las Vegas, breaking windows in a shopping center; in 1992, President George Bush the Elder pardoned several of his cronies (including former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger) in the Iran Contra scandal, prompting special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to call it a continuing cover up; in 1994, Vitalogy by Pearl Jam hit number one on the Billboard album chart.

Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator Time to bring back NAGPAC? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006

Update: Saturday, Dec. 23, 2006, 6:25 a.m. PST, 14:25 GMT/SUT — On Dec. 23, 1986, the experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling as it landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On Dec. 23, 1819, Virginia City banker and millionaire J.M. Douglass was born in Scott County, Kentucky; in 1823, the Troy Sentinel in Troy, New York, featured the first known publication of Clement Moore's poem Account of a visit from St. Nicholas; in 1875, Elko County Senator George Shepard received the results of an analysis done by a San Francisco lab of a substance he found in Nevada that turned out to be soapstone that "will prove very valuable in the manufacture of crucibles"; in 1875, the "scoundrel element" was reported in Virginia City, Carson City, Reno and Winnemucca with 601 committees — vigilantes — starting to operate (one man named Burt had been lynched in Carson City); in 1898, the Elko Independent and the Nevada State Journal were debating whether Assemblymember F.S. Gedney of Elko County was bound by his pre-election pledge to vote against William Stewart for United States senator (senators were then appointed by state legislatures); in 1921, President Harding issued an amnesty for U.S. political prisoners from the Woodrow Wilson era, including labor leader Eugene Debs, who had been imprisoned under the hastily enacted Espionage Act for the crime of criticizing the Espionage Act and who polled a million votes for president while in prison; in 1933, lured by heavy deposits resulting from business sales traffic generated by DePauw University's homecoming, John Dillinger and his gang robbed the Central National Bank of Greencastle, Indiana, of a reported $74,782.09; in 1935, the Public Works Administration, a depression relief agency, awarded $165,000 ($2,277,812 in 2005 dollars) for the construction of a grammar school in Las Vegas; in 1935, property owners in the area of the cattle bridge that crossed the Truckee River at Park Street in Reno asked cancellation of plans to remove the span after the new bridge connecting Wells and Alameda was finished; in 1966, Governor-elect Paul Laxalt named Clark County health officer Otto Ravenholt to be director of the state department of health and welfare; in 1968, after eleven months of North Korean captivity, the crew of the captured spy ship U.S.S. Pueblo was released after the U.S. government apologized for the ship's activities; in 1997, the first Festivus holiday was celebrated, five days after it was invented on the television comedy series Seinfeld.

[[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 particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2006 Dennis Myers.]]

Update: Friday, Dec. 22, 2006, 9:49 a.m. PST, 17:49 GMT/SUT — On Dec. 22, 1812, Sacajawea died at age 25; in 1864, during the Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln from Georgia, saying"I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah." [New York Times/AP e-headlines]; in 1894, French General Staff aide Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted in a court martial of treason for delivering classified French military information to the German embassy in Paris and was later publicly stripped of his rank and deported to Devil's Island to remain in solitary confinement for the rest of his life; in 1917, thirteen months after Arizona Governor George Hunt was defeated for re-election by Thomas Campbell and twelve months after both he and Campbell took the oath of office, the Supreme Court of Arizona unseated Campbell and installed Hunt (Campbell defeated Hunt soundly in the 1918 election); in 1939, the members of the Yomba Shoshone tribal reservation (in the Reese River Valley in Nye County) voted to approve the tribe's corporate charter; in 1943, W.E.B. DuBois was made the first African-American member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters; in 1954, University of Nevada seismologist David Slemmons reported that the December 16 earthquake that hit remote Dixie Valley had been extremely sharp and that he had found a single crack extending 26 miles, a stream of water in the valley where none had been before and the side of a mountain that shifted 20 feet vertically; in 1958, a song that created a pop culture icon, The Chipmunk Song by David Seville, hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart, going on to win three Grammys at the first annual awards (Seville, whose name was actually Ross Bagdasarian, and his cousin William Saroyan had previously written the Rosemary Clooney hit Come On-A My House); in 1962, Telstar by The Tornadoes hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1969, John and Yoko met with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Update: Thursday, Dec. 21, 2006, 08:34 GMT/SUT, 12:34 a.m. PST — On Dec. 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On Dec. 21, 1913, the first crossword puzzle, created by Arthur Wynne, was published by the New York World (try your hand); in 1911, Negro leagues baseball great Josh Gibson was born in Buena Vista, Georgia; in 1918, Acting Governor Maurice Sullivan said an officer from Camp Lewis, Washington (where many soldiers were being held prior to their discharges) was coming to Nevada to see about employment prospects for released servicepeople; in 1925, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco announced he had asked Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone if he should defend four civilian Klansmen who aided Nevada/Northern California alcohol prohibition administrator Ned Green in raids and were sued as a result; in 1932, there was a newspaper report that attorney George Thatcher, answering a question from an audience member at a public meeting where he was explaining the Wingfield bank failures, answered a question in part with the sentence "If that happens, we might as well give the country back to the Indians" — and later learned that his questioner was Native American; in 1954, the Reno Evening Gazette reported "PARTY FOR POLIO plans are underway again this Christmas season. The party will take place a week from Tuesday at the State Bldg. The stores will be open that night, and parents can leave their children at the party while they shop. The VFW auxiliary is sponsoring the event, and pictured below are members of the Vaughn School, who will present a Christmas Phantasy. They are (left to right) Tommy Myers, Janice Canady..."; in 1966, Governor Grant Sawyer created a Commission for the Preservation of Nevada History and appointed Chet Christensen, Mildred Heyer, James Calhoun, Harold H. J. Erickson, Robert Armstrong, Grace Dangberg and Frederick Gale as members; in 1968, Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell hit number one on the Billboard album chart and was there for five nonconsecutive weeks.

Update: Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006, 12:21 GMT/SUT, 4:21 a.m. PST — On Dec. 20, 1989, President George H.W. Bush launched the first of the three wars he perpetrated in his four years at the top. In Operation Just Cause, the former CIA chief sent troops into Panama to topple the government of General Manuel Noriega, longtime puppet of the U.S. government. [BARBWIRE] See Poor Denny's Almanac, below.

George W. Bush/December 20, 2000: Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.

On Dec. 20, 1876, a war between Ruby Valley farmers and ranchers over cattle roaming over crops was turning violent, and the Elko Post reported that the farmers were enforcing the law: "It is done by emptying the contents of a double barreled shotgun into the sides of a trespassing animal."; in 1932, an earthquake now known as the Cedar Mountain earthquake that hit east of Mina in south central Nevada "broke hundreds of windows, plunged half a dozen towns in darkness, knocked plaster from the walls, toppled water tanks, cracked buildings and caused other damage with a series of tremors that were more severe than any felt here since the great earthquake of San Francisco in 1906", was felt throughout the state as well as in Utah and California, was preceded by a foreshock, and was followed by several weeks of aftershocks; in 1946, It's A Wonderful Life starring Donna Reed and James Stewart was shown for the first time; in 1956, in Washington, a special board composed of 11 generals determined that of 14.1 million acres controlled by the Air Force in the west, 5.5 million were in excess of actual Air Force needs; in 1960, the National Liberation Front, a military force of southern Vietnamese, was formed to free the south of Vietnam from a U.S.-created regime; in 1966, after Governor-elect Paul Laxalt made a public demand for the resignation of state gambling regulator Milton Keefer, Keefer said he had not made up his mind whether to serve out his term; in 1976, Gannett Newspapers, the predatory (and criminal — price fixing and fraud convictions) corporation, announced that it would "merge" with Speidel Newspapers, acquiring 13 newspapers in nine states, including the Nevada State Journal and Reno Evening Gazette (it would later shut down the Gazette) and the Reno newspapers began the partnership with a story in the Gazette that reported the benefits of the acquisition but not the downsides [EDITOR'S NOTE: A longtime RGJ insider confided that the late Speidel chief and later RGJ columnist Rollan Melton regretted engineering the deal that made him a very wealthy man. See below.]; in 1989, without obtaining authorization from Congress, President George Bush the Elder launched a war on Panama; in 2001, The New York Times published a front page story by Judith Miller, "Iraqi tells of renovations at sites for chemical and nuclear arms," without getting competing analysis of the information from skeptical U.S. intelligence sources, fueling the Bush administration drive for war.

READ MORE ABOUT THE DEPREDATIONS OF GANNETT AND MELTON REGRETS

Gazette-Journal Spikes Rollan Melton Column
Rollan Melton, a longtime, respected Reno journalist, says this is the first time in 21 years that one of his columns has been spiked.
Reno News & Review 11-24-1999 (Not available online)

"...Longtime Reno Gazette-Journal columnist Rollan Melton says his bosses at the paper killed a column of his in September that criticized Harrah’s hotel-casino and downtown redevelopment....there actually may be a couple of reasons the column was spiked, including the advertising money Harrah’s spends at the newspaper and the fact that since 1994, Sue Clark-Johnson, the Reno Gazette-Journal’s publisher, has sat on Harrah’s Entertainment’s board of directors...."

Dawn of the Dead
BARBWIRE BY BARBANO
Daily Sparks Tribune 7-22-2001

 

Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator Time to bring back NAGPAC? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006

Update: Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006, 11:55 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time/Standard Universal Time; 3:55 a.m PST —

NATCA warning: Reno-Tahoe airport traffic controllers dangerously understaffed
Ronald Reagan's union-busting chickens come home to crash

On Dec. 19, 1887, Ethan Allen Grosh, who, with his brother, Hosea, discovered silver near the future site of Virginia City, died of frostbite in the Sierra Nevada. [Nevada Magazine calendar]

On this date in 1732, Benjamin Franklin began publication of Poor Richard's Almanac, an annual pamphlet published from 1732 to 1757 under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, most of the contents of which he plagiarized; in 1776, The American Crisis by Thomas Paine was published (see below); in 1884, J.E. Gignoux of the state university in Elko was a candidate for director of the branch U.S. Mint in Carson City and had the support of Senator William Westerfield of Lyon County; in 1905, Harry Longbaugh and Butch Cassidy held up a bank in Villa Mercedes, Argentina; in 1914, Allied and Axis troops facing each other across no man's land on the front in World War One met in the middle to recover their wounded and began chatting and sharing smokes, a truce that (to the consternation of the upper officer corps) spread all up and down the front for several days with football games, sharing of supplies and swapping of souveniers, alarming officials of various nations by threatening to "prematurely" end the war; in 1933, the annual report of the commissioner of Indian affairs said the Native American population of Nevada was 5,083; in 1964, Come See About Me by the Supremes hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1966, plans were underway to construct a $15 million elevated mass transit system linking all the major casinos in Las Vegas; in 1977, the board of directors of the Columbia Pictures Corporation forced corporation president Alan Hirshfield to reinstate David Begelman as studio president after Begelman embezzled $90,000 from the company and forged actor Cliff Robertson's signature on a check; in 1998, President Clinton was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives; in 2002, the convictions of five men accused of assaulting and raping the Central Park jogger, Trisha Meili, were overturned after DNA evidence exonerated them.

From The American Crisis by Thomas Paine: These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

Update: Monday, Dec. 18, 2006, 3:42 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time/Standard Universal Time: On Dec. 18, 1858, the Territorial Enterprise began publication in Genoa, Nevada. The paper was later moved to Virginia City. [Nevada Magazine calendar]

On this date in 1777, the first U.S. thanksgiving holiday was held, declared by Congress to celebrate the capture of the British army at Saratoga, which convinced France to enter the war on the side of the rebellion; in 1890, the owner of a buckboard shipping line between Elko and Pioche announced that he would no longer accept intoxicated passengers; in 1892, The Nutcracker Suite debuted in St. Petersburg; in 1931, after a young couple arrived in Las Vegas to get married they had to get their car repaired, leaving them only $1.93, so Justice of the Peace Frank Ryan agreed to marry them and then mail their marriage certificate to them C.O.D; in 1931, Nevada Governor Fred Balzar was among westerners suing the Latham Square Corporation of Oakland for fraud and misappropriation of investor funds; in 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the "guilt" of U.S. citizen Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu for living in his home, upholding the validity of Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 providing for imprisonment of U.S. citizens without due process (Korematsu filed a friend of the court brief this year on behalf of a U.S. citizen, Yaser Hamdi, held by the Bush administration for two years without due process); in 1961, The Lion Sleeps Tonight by the Tokens hit number one and The Twist by Chubby Checker (at number four) broke the record for longest period on the Billboard Hot 100 record chart by hitting its 23d week; in 1993, the second MGM Grand hotel casino opened in Las Vegas; in 1997, during episode 10 in the ninth season of Seinfeld, a new holiday called Festivus was born in reaction to the annoyances of the holiday season (while creation of the holiday was on December 18, Festivus itself falls on December 23d); in 2000, George Bush received his last four electoral votes of the day from Nevada (whose electors voted later in the day than any other Bush state), putting him over the top with one vote over the necessary 270.

Update: Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006, 2:03 a.m. PST — On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful man-powered airplane flight near Kitty Hawk, N.C. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

Dr. Gordon Sato: I thought, If they can build an atomic bomb and call it the Manhattan Project, maybe I can help stop famine and call it the Manzanar Project.

On Dec. 17, 1907, former Colorado judge O.N. Hilton argued before the Supreme Court of Nevada for a new trial for labor leaders Morris Preston and Joseph Smith, framed for murder by mine owner George Wingfield; in 1918, the Ely Daily Times reported that a federal judge had made permanent his October 26 temporary injunction ordering county defense councils and the Nevada Defense Council not to try to enforce the councils' previously announced policy of labeling newsdealers who sold Hearst publications as disloyal; in 1921, the Nevada State Journal observed on the approaching use of women as jurors in Las Vegas: "The experiment at Las Vegas next month undoubtedly will be observed with much interest not only for its political effect but also for its efficacy in the dispensation of justice in that section."; in 1927, Gordon Hisashi Sato, founder of the Manzanar Project which employs simple principles and simple technology to solve hunger, poverty and pollution around the world and co-inventor of an anti-cancer drug whose earnings held fund the Project, was born in Los Angeles (the Project was named for the Manzanar concentration camp where Sato and his family were imprisoned); in 1934, there was speculation that electricity from Hoover Dam would revive mining in Clark County, particularly in mining camps where commercially marketable non-metallic minerals were present, such as Alunite 22 miles south of Las Vegas; in 1954, plans were announced for a plaque memorializing African-American slaves who were used to operate a mine at the southern sympathizer mining camp of Rough and Ready in Nevada County, California, in the 1850s; in 1961, the Reno YWCA held a "Hanging of the Greens" festival that included French carols by Santa Fe chef Louis Erreguible (now owner of Louis' Basque Corner) and Tom Myers and Jim Moberly singing Swing Low; in 1961, the Blue Hawaii soundtrack hit number one on the Billboard album charts and stayed for twenty weeks on the monaural chart and four weeks on the stereo chart; in 1969, the two-decade U.S. Air Force study of unidentified flying objects, Project Blue Book, was ended after investigating 12,618 UFO sightings and finding rational explanations for all but 701 of them (among the sightings that remained unexplained: May 7, 1950, at East Ely; July 24, 1952, at the Carson Sink and August 26, 1952, at Lathrop Wells); in 1974, a state government report said "Toward the end of this century, existing water supplies for the Las Vegas Valley are expected to be fully used and supplemental sources will have to be developed."; in 1974, a month after winning a union election at the Desert Inn, the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks Local 3061 filed an application seeking a representation election for 165 casino employees of the Landmark Hotel (owned by Howard Hughes); in 1979, in an innovative experiment, the CBS program Lou Grant broadcast an episode in which Grant's reporters tried to solve an old Hollywood murder, and the program was taped in the style of a film noir mystery with lazy jazz themes, tough talking narrator and even some once-popular Hollywood stars like Laraine Day and Margaret Hamilton.

Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator Time to bring back NAGPAC? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006

Update: Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006, 12:21 a.m. PST — On Dec. 16, 1770, Beethoven was born in Bonn; in 1773, Bostonians dressed as Native Americans threw tea into Boston bay to protest the tax on tea being too low and to demand that the tax be raised; in 1879, the Silver State in Winnemucca and the Nevada State Journal in Reno blasted U.S. Postmaster General David Key's recent order barring mail deliver at rail stops that have no post offices: "Nevada is a country of magnificent distances and there are stretches of country along the Central Pacific Railroad where postoffices are thirty or forty miles apart. Before Key got the idea in his head that mail routes were established for the convenience of not the public, but to give him opportunity to display his authority and ignorance, letters and papers addressed to persons at stations and side tracks, where there is no postoffice were thrown off by the mail agents, who are generally gentlemanly and accommodating. A subscriber writes us from Moline, Elko County, a station on the Railroad, where there is no postoffice, that since Key's new order went into effect, he has to go to Elko, thirteen mills [sic] east for his mail, which before was thrown off at the side track by the clerks on the postal cars." (Silver State); in 1899, a petition by workers at the De Lamar, Nevada, mine requesting a four-hour cut in working hours with the same rate of pay was accepted by the company; in 1924, masked men invaded a Nashville hospital and seized a fifteen year old African-American boy named Samuel Smith and lynched him; in 1932, the Nevada County Commissioners Association called on Congress to hasten repeal of alcohol prohibition; in 1944, a quarter of a million German troops retreating across France suddenly turned and attacked the Allies in the Ardennes Offensive, driving a deep bump into the Allied lines, giving the action its popular name of the Battle of the Bulge and costing the two sides nearly 200,000 lives; in 1954, Clark County Commissioner George Albright said the commission would consider stopping construction of new resort hotels by refusing liquor and gambling licenses; in 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ignorance of the law is an excuse, overturning the conviction of a Los Angeles woman who violated an ordinance requiring ex-convicts to register with the police on the grounds that someone has to know about a law before being convicted of breaking it; in 1957, lawyers for rank and file Teamsters who were suing to prevent union president-elect Jimmy Hoffa from being seated said they would call AFL-CIO President George Meany as a witness; in 1960, president-elect John Kennedy announced he would nominate his brother Robert to be attorney general of the United States; in 1973, O.J. Simpson ended his season with 2,003 yards rushing, higher than any single season total in football history; in 1976, television producer Dick Manoogian told the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors authority that it would have to come up with at least half the needed $319,000 to broadcast 11 University of Nevada-Las Vegas home basketball games in Los Angeles; in 1998, on the eve of his impeachment vote in the House of Representatives, President Clinton said he was ordering bombing strikes against Iraq because, he claimed, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — "nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons" — and U.N. arms inspectors fled the country because of the Clinton attacks (George Bush later lied about this incident as part of his campaign for war: "This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors.").

Update: Friday, Dec. 15, 2006, 11:37 p.m. PST; UPDATED Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006, 4:09 a.m. PST/12:10 GMT/SUT —

Union ironworker cheats death in University of Nevada-Reno construction accident

An ironworker is recovering at Renown (formerly Washoe) Medical Center in Reno after a Thursday accident which left spectators in shock that they had witnessed a fatality.

An eyewitness reported to NevadaLabor.com what "looked to be a large piece of metal dropped by a crane, though it was still attached with a cable. It was on the ground as though it had fallen."

Employees of Q&D Construction and Martin Iron Works were lifting steel on the new "Knowledge Center" (better known as a library) when the 700-pound steel beam fell about eight feet directly onto a worker at ground level.

He was hooking a series of steel beams onto a cable for lifting by the crane. One beam came loose from its hook and fell toward him. His life was probably saved because he was standing amid other beams lying on the ground which provided about two feet of clearance between the falling steel and the earth.

Workers at the site as well as nearby eyewitnesses thought at first that the man was dead with injuries too gruesome to describe.
He was transported to the regional trauma center where he was diagnosed with a femur broken in two places, a broken wrist, two broken ribs, a fractured skull and a blood clot on his spine. He underwent surgery to place a rod in his injured leg, but doctors expect that no other surgery will be needed. They will let his skull close itself.

About 30 years old, he is a veteran of more than 10 years on the job and is a third generation iron worker. He has been reported as alert although in pain. The single father of two children faces a long recovery.

Collections to help his family are being taken at the Martin Iron Works and Q&D trailers at the library construction site, at the Ironworkers job shack at the UNR student union construction site and at the Steel City construction trailer at the new power plant being built at Tracy east of Sparks.

Donations may also be made at Martin Iron Works at 530 E. Fourth Street in Reno, at Q&D Construction at 1050 S. 21st Street and Ironworkers Local 118 at 1110 Greg Street, both in Sparks. The union's phone number is (775) 331-8696.

Assistance from union members will be sincerely appreciated by the family.

Update: Friday, Dec. 15, 2006, 6:54 a.m. PST — The Barbwire Strikes Back
Gomorrah South shall not besmirch the honor of the Sparks Tribune

On Dec. 15, 1873, a second Boston Tea Party, led by feminist Lucy Stone, was held in support of voting rights for women; in 1900, the Elko Independent reported "Considerable real estate is changing hands in Elko and throughout the county. The purchase price in every instance makes the assessed valuation of the property look very small."; in 1906, assemblymembers Robert Skaggs of Elko and H.W. Huskey of Washoe, both Silver Democrats, were running for speaker and both said they were confident of victory (Skaggs won); in 1906, the Nevada State Journal reported that within a few days the county grand jury would issue a report calling for a new courthouse to replace the "antiquated building that now serves the purpose"; in 1924, someone identified as "Dr. Polly" and "imperial representative" W.M. Cortney addressed a Ku Klux Klan meeting in Ely, Nevada; in 1934, the U.S.S. Nevada was in San Francisco Bay with a Reno man, Ensign Jack Tomamichatel, on the crew, and a Nevada day was held on the ship with state officials in attendance; in 1935, Unitarian theologian Charles Francis Potter critiqued actress Mary Pickford's recent religious conversion and found it wanting: "Religion to her is simply a blind reaching for a magic power to help her forget the troubles brought on by herself."; in 1935, Las Vegas won the 1936 state convention of the Young Democrats of Nevada; in 1939, ground was broken for the Jefferson Memorial; in 1944, after the Sparks Tribune reported that there was a forgotten 1919 Nevada law requiring the disincorporation of any city that failed to cast 250 votes in a state supreme court race, Wells city attorney Milton Badt asked Attorney General Alan Bible to study whether Wells would have to be disincorporated (Wells cast 231 votes for William Orr, running unopposed for justice); in 1952, the Sands Hotel Casino opened in Las Vegas; in 1956, Market Town in Las Vegas was surrounded by a picket line and Vegas Village Market was shut down as a result of a labor dispute between the grocery stores and retail clerks and butchers, and the union was closed-mouth on whether other markets would be targeted; in 1957, Las Vegas City Manager A.H. Kennedy said he would soon reveal his conclusions about a dispute between a casino using the name Fortune Club and another casino that wanted to call itself the Fortune Club;in 1960, the City of Reno Urban Renewal Agency was running newspaper ads seeking rentals "for persons displaced by redevelopment activity"; in 1961, a U.S. Geological Survey report said that overuse of water in Las Vegas was so great that water levels and artesian pressures had fallen as much as 100 feet in some areas of the valley since 1906 when development of ground water began; in 1962, The First Family, a comedy album of skits about the Kennedy family and the fastest selling album in recording history, hit number one on the Billboard monaural album chart and stayed there for twelve weeks; in 1962, lawyer David Goldwater, Governor Grant Sawyer, state bar president John Bartlett, state Supreme Court Justice Gordon Thompson, Lieutenant Governor-elect Paul Laxalt and Las Vegas reporter Ed Oncken participated in an all-day program at the University of Nevada in Reno on whether Nevada judges should be appointed instead of elected; in 1964, the North Las Vegas city council discussed annexing Las Vegas' Rancho High School because the smaller city had no high school teams for which to root (I'm not making this up); in 1976, Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun agreed to give handwriting experts connected to the "Mormon will" trial on the Howard Hughes estate access to documents he owned that were written by Hughes.

From Poor Denny's Almanac — Ku Klu Klan spokesperson W. M. Cortne; Ely, Nevada; December 15, 1924: The Klan has a membership of better than 3,000 in the state and the organization has made good headway in White Pine County. It is our aim to make the membership 10,000 before August 1st. The organization is not anti to any one church, color, race, creed, or people but is being built upon love towards our fellow man and not hate. This organization has or never will take the laws of the land into their hands but will support and help the duly authorized officers of the law in the proper performance of their legal duties. It is our aim to make White Pine County, in proportion to its population, one of the best Klan counties in the state of Nevada. This organization is absolutely not a political organization. We go down the line regardless of political affiliation and stand first, last, and all the time for clean politics. Organizing of the women in White Pine County as an auxiliary to the K.K.K. is well under way and we look for strong support in this direction.

Update: Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006, 11:17 a.m. PST — On Dec. 14, 1875, the Elko Post reported that Elko had a population of 876, largest community in Elko County, followed by Cornucopia (near Tuscarora) with 452; in 1882, deputy state fish commissioner T.J. Tennant was on his way from the capital to eastern Nevada with cans of perch, catfish and white bass to stock the waters of Elko, Lincoln, White Pine and Nye counties; in 1918, Nevada governor, university regent and Elko County district attorney Grant Sawyer was born in Twin Falls; in 1922, Don Hewitt, producer of the Kennedy/Nixon debates and creator of 60 Minutes, was born in New York City; in 1922, Hal Mighels of Carson City's Appeal moved to Fallon to become editor of the Standard; in 1931, the U.S. Senate was locked in an unusual contest for president pro tempore, Democrats voting solidly for Senator Key Pittman of Nevada and Republican regulars and insurgents split, with no one able to command a majority; in 1936, pension officials said there were 52 retired Nevada teachers receiving fifty dollars a month, with another 47 more eligible to retire but still teaching; in 1949, two University of Nevada students were convicted of petit larceny in Reno justice court, whose records were monitored by the Nevada Board of Regents (on February 17 the regents expelled the two); in 1959, Heartaches by the Number by Guy Mitchell hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1960, the U.S. Catholic Bishops Committee accused Hollywood of making "a bold departure from previously accepted moral standards" in its movies and the American Legion called on theatre owners not to book Spartacus and called on "good Americans" not to patronize the movie because the Legion disagreed with scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo's opinions (John and Robert Kennedy crossed a Legion picket line to attend the film); in 1960, a Clark County recount ordered by a court at the request of county GOP chair Alvin Wartman, who was seeking to overturn John Kennedy's Nevada victory in the presidential race, quickly produced an additional hundred votes for both Kennedy and Democratic U.S. Representative Walter Baring as a result of a clerical error in transferring vote totals from a voting machine to log sheets; in 1960, members of the Washoe Fair and Recreation Board were described as "shocked" and "thunderstruck" when estimates of the cost of building a proposed convention center came in more than twice as high as the expected $3 million — and that did not count land acquisition; in 1961, the state motor vehicles department was distributing a complete copy of all vehicle registrations in Nevada to local law enforcement, the first time the information had been made available to local police agencies; in 1966, a three-day meeting of Native American leaders from Nevada, Utah, South Dakota, California and Arizona held to discuss grievances with U.S. Indian Commissioner Robert Bennett and U.S. Representative Ben Reifel of South Dakota (a Sioux), ended in hostility with few issues settled.

Update: Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006, 7:20 a.m. PST — WORKERS BEWARE: The Nevada Labor Commissioner has become the business commissioner, no matter what the law says. (12-14-2006)

Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator Time to bring back NAGPAC? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006

Update: Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006, 12:00m PST — On Dec. 13, 1867, the Central Pacific Railroad reached the Nevada state line near the present site of Verdi [Nevada Magazine calendar]; in 1883, the Nevada State Journal reported that "The Tuscarora Times-Review is mistaken in believing that Elko is the only county where license is paid for dealing 'stud-horse' poker. There are two games in Reno, and they ante $75 per month each."; in 1888, J.B. Francis, owner of the Weiland Bottling Works in Reno sold out to owners of a Battle Mountain brewery and the new owners, named Blossom and Cohoon, were planning to extend the Weiland beer operation to Elko and move their Battle Mountain works to Winnemucca; in 1901, shares were being sold in Reno in the Hesperian Crude Oil Company, which reported that it had located "immense beds of shale carrying more or less parraffine(sic) oil" in Elko County that contained "the same fossils of marine life and...the same smell of gas as has the lime that is found in the Pennsylvania oil fields"; in 1919, officials decided that Nevada road signs advertising Canadian Club, Schlitz, Annie Busch, Old Crow and other such products would have to be removed because the new state alcohol prohibition law enacted by voters "makes it unlawful for such offensive information to be displayed in public"; in 1928, An American In Paris by George Gershwin debuted at Carnegie Hall; in 1934, state water engineer George Malone said he would recommend a package of legislation to the 1935 Nevada Legislature to protect the state in connection with the Hoover Dam project, then nearing completion; in 1935, Boulder City chamber of commerce president J.C. Manix said five newsreel companies had been invited to tour the Boulder Dam project and would be arriving the next week for two-day visits; in 1936, construction began on Reno's new municipal swimming pool, funded by the Public Works Administration, a New Deal relief agency; in 1954, in a Galveston hospital, Alabama Attorney General Silas Garrett was arrested for first degree murder in his bed on a warrant issued by Russell County, Alabama, reportedly for the murder of Albert Patterson, who defeated Garrett for re-election and was subsequently murdered in corruption-ridden Phenix City (events dramatized in the Allied Artists movie The Phenix City Story); in 1954, the executive committee of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's home state Republican Party of Wisconsin took the side of President Eisenhower over McCarthy, warning the senator that no man is bigger than the party; in 1954, Washoe County District Attorney Jack Streeter proposed that the state government of Nevada take over legal gambling and operate it as a state monopoly; in 1973, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter appeared on What's My Line? (no one guessed his name but they did figure out he was a state governor); in 1976, George Harrison, Billy Preston and Ravi Shankar met with President Ford at the White House; in 1977, responding to a request from Albert Demers of Common Cause for night meetings of the Washoe County commission to increase public involvement, the commissioners refused; in 1981, authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. Martial law formally ended in 1983. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]; in 1988, after the United States denied entry to Yassir Arafat, preventing him from speaking at the U.N. on his recent concession that Palestine should include "two states, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state," the United Nations General Assembly moved to Geneva to hear Arafat; in 2001, without seeking approval of Congress, which had approved the treaty, George Bush said he was pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so he could pursue a star wars missile defense system; in 2004, Nevada's five presidential electors — one more than in 2000 — voted in Carson City for George Bush and Richard Cheney.

Update: Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006, 8:55 a.m. PST — On Dec. 12, 1189, Richard the Lionheart departed for the third crusade, killing and destroying everything in sight along the way before he even arrived in Palestine; in 1870, a news report revealed the arrogance of large powers during the era of "the great game" — "There is a rumor that Bismark favors giving England the protectorate over the Suez canal, in consideration that England shall permit Russia to do as she pleases with Turkey."; in 1870, Joseph Rainey began a ten-year career as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina, the first African-American House member; in 1897, the comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids by Rudolph Dirks debuted in the New York Journal (a 1914 dispute between Dirks and Hearst resulted in a court decision allowing Dirks to take his characters with him, so soon there were two versions of the same comic strip — Hans und Fritz, later The Captain and the Kids by Kirks for Pulitzer's New York World and The Katzenjammer Kids by Harold H. Knerr for Pulitzer's Journal); in 1911, the Exempt Fireman's Association of Virginia City, formed on November 26, 1876, with a membership of 150, held its first meeting since 1900 and only six members attended; in 1914, the International Hotel that dominated Virginia City for nearly four decades burned to the ground; in 1924, Governor James Scrugham received a mummy of a child that had been excavated in Nevada and sent to the Museum of the American Indian in New York, which had now decided to return it and other Nevada artifacts; in 1925, the Motel Inn in San Luis Obispo, designed by architect Arthur Heineman and believed to be the first motel, opened with two-room bungalows available for $1.25 a night; in 1932, there was continued fallout from the collapse of the Wingfield banks in Nevada: The Washoe County clerk filed suit to claim $20,883.26 in public finds in the Riverside Bank in Reno (whereupon the bank was taken over by state bank examiner E.J. Seaborn) and the Elko county commission on the advice of the state attorney general made a demand for immediate payment from the Henderson Banking Company in Elko for $125,331.15 in public funds; in 1932, fighting the fire in twenty-degree below zero cold, Elko firefighters were unable to keep the Caudill Hotel from burning to the ground; in 1932, alcohol prohibition agents found a still on the John Watten ranch ten miles west of Carlin and three miles south of the Victory Highway (later U.S. 40); in 1934, while a congressional committee investigating corporations involved in war trade heard Irenee duPont predict that fleets of airplanes carrying poison gas and incendiary bombs would destroy the civilian populations of great cities in future wars, President Franklin Roosevelt convened a conference to plan how to remove the corporate profits from war (Roosevelt: "The time has come to take all profit out of war."); in 1935, without ceremony, the highway across Hoover Dam opened (Fred Simpson, on his way from his home in Van Nuys to the Grand Canyon, was the first person across); in 1943, Sparks Tribune editor Edwin Mulcahy, who was also the chief clerk of the Nevada Assembly, published an editorial calling for a special session of the legislature to deal with the issue of servicepeople voting from their theatres of service; in 1943, Reno's Junior Chamber of Commerce asked the public to report (to the Junior Chamber) their neighbors who spread "Axis-aiding" rumors; in 1964, You've Lost That Lovin‚ Feeling by the Righteous Brothers was released.

Columnist Jack Mann/December 12, 1993: The really dumb non-sequiturs of the second half of this century are routinely attributed to Yogi Berra, who never actually had much to say. They are largely attributed (and often coined) by columnists and television sportscasters who weren't around when Yogi wasn't saying them.

Update: Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006, 1:12 a.m. PST — Read Ariel Dorfman's chilling analysis of Chile today from the 12/12 New York Times and a Barbwire comment about how prescient Jacobo Timmerman has proven from 20 years ago.

Update: Monday, Dec. 11, 2006, 2:51 a.m. PST — On Dec. 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On 9/11 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, in a coup backed by President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State and fellow war criminal Henry Kissinger and the CIA, overthrew the democratically-elected government of Chile, second-oldest democracy in the hemisphere after the United States. A CIA hit squad based on Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer, which just happened to be anchored nearby, helicoptered to the La Moneda Presidential Palace and murdered Dr. Salvadore Allende, the president. Gen. Pinochet went on to a life of wealth and impunity, even committing a double political murder (with a car bomb) in Washington, DC, in 1976. He also hired fugitive Nazis to establish a WWII-style concentration camp on Pelican Island, off the Chilean coast. (You will find dozens of books on this at your local library, the best of which is by Jacobo Timmerman, the late crusading Argentine newspaper editor.)

One of the first Barbwire columns in 1988 involved Andrew Barbano's confrontation of Chile's consul general in Reno. Pinochet died on Dec. 10, 2006. Read the 1988 Barbwire commentary, then contrast the comments of BBC/Guardian reporter Greg Palast with the disgusting pair of whitewashes from today's New York Times, all linked thereat.

Jesus of Nazareth warned of the whited sepulchres of Pharisean hypocrisy. Nothing has changed in 2000 years.

Keep up the good fight.

Be well. Raise hell.

On Dec. 11, 1640, in a step toward separation of church and state, Parliament received the "roots and branch" petition signed by 15,000 English citizens and calling for the entire Church of England hierarchy to be removed, a step the Commons approved but the Lords did not; in 1816, most of the U.S. Territory of Indiana became the State of Indiana (in an anomaly among statemaking, a small portion continued to exist as the Territory of Indiana alongside the State of Indiana, becoming attached two years later to the Territory of Michigan); in 1884, reporting on Native Americans who escaped from Yakima, Washington, the Silver State newspaper in Winnemucca observed that in the aftermath of the Bannock war, peaceful Paiutes were treated like hostile Paiutes and removed to Yakima, then promised they could return to Nevada, a promise not kept, and that most of a congressional appropriation for them administered by whites was unaccounted for, and that a cavalry inspection of the Pyramid Lake reservation resulted in a claim that there was no suitable place for them there; in 1884, the Territorial Enterprise expressed apprehension that the Nevada Legislature might meet for the first 60 days allowed; in 1911, at hearings before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on whether to abrogate the U.S./Russia trade and navigation treaty because of the Russian government refusal to allow the travel of Jewish U.S. citizens to Russia, witnesses said mistreatment of U.S. citizens "by the Czar" was not limited to Jews but also fell on Catholic priests, Protestant ministers and missionaries of all kinds (Oscar Hammerstein, said one witness, was not permitted to enter Russia to engage talent); in 1931, Rita Moreno, the only woman performer to win an Oscar, Grammy, Emmy and Tony, was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico; in 1936, Gardnerville attorney George Montrose, former printer of the Masonic Pioneer of Masonic, California, donated a hundred-year-old Washington hand printing press to the University of Nevada student press club; in 1939, Senator Tom Hayden was born in Detroit; in 1943, Oliver Pratt was named chair of the price committee of Carson City's war price and rationing board; in 1944, Booker T. Jones (Booker T and the MGs) was born in Memphis and Brenda Lee was born in Lithonia, Georgia; in 1961, Please Mr. Postman by the Marvellettes hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart (It became one of six songs in rock and roll history to be number one in recordings by different artists when the Carpenters recorded it in 1975.); in 1966, the Nevada State Journal reported that it would join the practice agreed on the previous day by the competing wire services, Associated Press and United Press International, to drop the use of Viet Nam in favor of Vietnam in news stories, the change to take effect on December 12; in 1966, Clark County Democrats James Gibson and Floyd Lamb were running against each other for the chair of the influential Senate Finance Committee, with Mahlon Brown, Warren Monroe, Emerson Titlow and G.F. Fisher backing Lamb and Helen Herr, Vernon Bunker, M.J. Christensen and Al Alleman supporting Gibson, and with questions about whether Lamb's seniority should count since he moved out of Lincoln County (where he served as a senator from 1956 to 1966) to Clark County (where he served as a senator from 1966 to 1983); in 1971, Anticipation by Carly Simon was released.

[[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 particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2006 Dennis Myers.]]

Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator Time to bring back NAGPAC? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006

Update: Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006, 12:24 a.m. PST — On Dec. 10, 1948, the U.N. General Assembly adopted its Universal Declaration on Human Rights. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On this date in 1520, under an oak tree near Wittenberg, Martin Luther burned books of religious law, books by his enemies, and the papal bull Exsurge Domine (Condemning The Errors Of Martin Luther) that demanded he recant his heresy; in 1826, John Kinkead, governor of Alaska and Nevada and Nevada Territorial treasurer, was born in Smithfield, Pennsylvania; in 1874, one day after U.S. Representative George McCrary of Iowa introduced the expected legislation to extinguish Sioux title to the gold-rich Black Hills, the Nevada State Journal came out in opposition to the measure; in 1898, under a treaty ending the Spanish American war, the United States purchased the Philippines (which it had earlier pledged to free from colonialism) for $20 million to be a U.S. colony; in 1943, the Southern Pacific work shops in Sparks dropped their no-smoking rules; in 1953, the Nevada Board of Regents voted unanimously to bar communists from employment at the university on the ground that "a member of the Communist Party is not free to teach the truth" and also approved a statement for faculty members (and the regents themselves) to sign saying that "I am not a member of the Communist Party or affiliated with such party"; in 1954, two Clark County grocers appeared before the Nevada board of regents to object to University of Nevada complaints filed against several groceries for selling adulterated meats; in 1957, Assemblymember George Van Tobel of Clark County called Governor Charles Russell indecisive and insensitive to public opinion for failing to appoint anyone to fill a newly created state district court judgeship for juvenile cases in Clark County; in 1965, at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the Grateful Dead played a benefit for the San Francisco Mime Troupe; in 1967, a plane carrying Otis Redding and the Bar Kays crashed into Lake Monono in Wisconsin, killing the passengers (Redding's hit Dock of the Bay, which he wrote after being inspired by Sgt. Pepper and on which he was backed up by Booker T and the MGs, was released after his death); in 1984, South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Prize for peace.

Update: Saturday, Dec. 9, 2006, 3:50 p.m. PST — On Dec. 9, 1965, Branch Rickey, the man who integrated baseball by bringing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, died. [BARBWIRE]

On this date in 1843, the first holiday card (idea by Henry Cole, design by John Collcott Horsley) went on sale in London; in 1885, the Territorial Enterprise reported that tobacco grown on the Truckee River ranch of George Alt in Glendale had been sent to Virginia City, and that the plant also grew wild all over Nevada — "on the plains, in the ravines and on the mountain sides among the sagebrush, naturally without any artificial irrigation. It may yet prove to be an important and lucrative industry among the undeveloped resources of Nevada"; in 1905, The Man From Nevada; or Nick Carter's Cowboy Client was published by Cotsen Children's Library; in 1906, the Nevada State Journal reported on the efforts of whites to develop mining inside the Walker Lake Indian Reservation, including Charles Schwab and Malcom McDonald, who located a mine and started the town of Avelon about twelve miles south of Schurz; in 1918, Acting Governor Maurice Sullivan, serving in place of Governor Boyle who was at two conferences in the east, was ordered to Washington by the U.S. Army provost marshal (Nevada's lieutenant governor was the state adjutant general), so Sullivan alerted Senate president pro tempore William Keddie of Churchill County to serve as acting governor; in 1933, Nevada State Museum archeology associate Margaret Wheat spoke to the Nevada Homemakers Club in Reno on Paiute culture (Wheat's 1967 book Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes became the all-time best seller of the University of Nevada Press); in 1934, Governor-elect Richard Kirman of Nevada was at the bedside of his daughter Claire, in critical condition with peritonitis at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara; in 1934, Las Vegas High School beat Fallon 14 to 0 to win the state football championship; in 1935, crusading Minnesota editor Walter Liggett, a critic of Governor Floyd Olson's alleged links to local gangster Isador "Kid Cann" Blumfield, was gunned down and his wife identified Kid Cann as the murderer (another journalist, Howard Guilford, had been assassinated in Minneapolis on September 6, 1934); in 1935, President Roosevelt denounced "depression profiteers" in a Chicago speech, then traveled to Notre Dame in Indiana to receive an honorary degree where he discussed the U.S. colony of the Philippines; in 1952, the State of Nevada was scrambling to find a way to get Las Vegas' annual allocation of electricity from Shasta Dam to Las Vegas by June 1 or lose it, and was planning talks with California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric to try to find a way; in 1953, a growing number of state legislators were calling for a special session of the Nevada Legislature to deal with the school crisis spawned by the baby boom; in 1953, Nevada Bank Examiner Grant Robison said the Federal Reserve had approved the new Bank of Las Vegas; in 1957, a sale of the troubled Nevada State News fell through (the newspaper, formerly the Nevada State Labor News, had served as a labor voice during ballot battles over right to work, and it was eventually acquired by anti-labor forces); in 1960, St. Louis crime figure John Vitale took the fifth amendment dozens of times before a senate investigating committee when he was asked if he and two other reputed mobsters were the undercover managers of heavyweight contender Charles "Sonny" Liston, and committee chair Estes Kefauver's threats to hold Vitale in contempt did not persuade him to talk; in 1965, the Nevada State Journal denounced citizen efforts to increase casino taxes in the state; in 1966, a day after the Lybrand, Ross financial firm told the Nevada Legislative Commission that the state would have to impose new taxes or face a $45 million deficit by 1976, Assemblymember Bud Garfinkle of Washoe County called for a study of a state-run lottery for Nevada; in 1966, former Fremont part owner Richard Levinson and former Flamingo and Riviera part owner Willie "Ice Pick" Alderman testified before a U.S. grand jury investigating skimming in Las Vegas; in 1967, Jim Morrison became the first rock performer arrested on stage when he criticized a police officer during a New Haven concert and police officers came on stage and led him off, charging him with breach of the peace (the charges were dropped); in 1970, Pat Hart, the popular owner of Virginia City's Brass Rail Saloon and landlord of Dutch Myers' one-day-a-week barber shop, was killed in a car wreck between Carson City and the Comstock; in 1970, Pyramid Lake Tribal Council chair James Vidovich and the tribe's attorney charged that Derby Dam was built across reservation land and that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had failed to produce any proof of an easement or other legal authority to build there (the dam was constructed in 1903-05 to divert Truckee River water from Pyramid Lake, without the tribe's permission for the diversion); in 1970, attorneys for Lt. William Calley, Jr., said they would invoke the Nuremberg defense and argue that he was acting under orders when he led the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai; in 1970, Clark County commission chair James "Sailor" Ryan, saying that the county was being damaged by claims that billionaire Howard Hughes was running the county, called on Hughes to appear publicly to "clear the air"; in 1972, Seventh Sojourn by the Moody Blues hit number one on the Billboard album chart and stayed there for five weeks; in 1976, Las Vegas private detective Don Baliotis sued Storey County officials for false arrest, charging that they arrested him for setting a fire at the Mustang Ranch brothel when they had no probable cause to suspect him; in 1994, President Clinton fired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for expressing the view that masturbation should be discussed in school as a part of human sexuality education; in 2005, Carolyn Anne Olsen graduated from the University of Texas in Austin after three and a half years of study with two degrees in Spanish and journalism.

Update: Friday, Dec. 8, 2006, 4:50 p.m. PST — Nevada State AFL-CIO leader makes plea for family of union brother killed in Las Vegas Trump Tower construction fall  (12-8-2006)

Update: Friday, Dec. 8, 2006, 12:46 a.m. PST — On Dec. 8, 1866, the Gold Hill Miners Union formed the first miners' union west of the Mississippi.

Killer trench contractor fined, defrocked for 5 years

HACK! Vegas judge torches public smoking ban initiative passed by voters in November

Popular Sparks Councilmember and retired educator John Mayer to undergo kidney cancer surgery
Mr. Mayer has been the only consistently pro-labor member of the Sparks City Council for more than a decade. We wish him well.
SPARKS TRIBUNE: Sparks City Councilman John Mayer is pushing for improved health insurance for all city employees just as he faces his own health concerns. Full story

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   You may say I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one.
                  — John Lennon

On Dec. 8, 1864, Pius IX, who would later kidnap and raise a Jewish child and who was the only head of state to recognize the Confederate government of Jefferson Davis, issued a list of "errors" that locked the Catholic Church for decades into opposition to human reason, philosophy, public schools, secular schools, separation of church and state, Protestantism, socialism, liberalism, criticism of popes, moral law and freedom of worship (among the "errors" denounced: "Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true" and "The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church" and "In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship"); in 1866, the Gold Hill Miners Union was formed (in Virginia City, Nevada); in 1886, the American Federation of Labor was founded; in 1893, the Nevada State Journal reprinted a report from the San Francisco Chronicle on the arrival of a group of Native Americans from Nevada in the bay area to be "exhibited" at a fair; in 1937, Joe DiMaggio cruised Reno looking for local residents he had played with in pro and semi-pro ball; in 1941, the new CBS television network broadcast the audio from President Roosevelt's "date of infamy" speech to Congress, using a U.S. flag as video (with an offscreen fan to make the flag flutter); in 1941, in Washington, census officials said Las Vegas was growing so fast that they were giving up on their formulas and would no longer try to estimate the city's population; in 1944, with the end of the war still most of a year away, a few returned veterans — thirteen, to be exact — were enrolled at the University of Nevada under the new G.I. Bill of Rights; in 1959, Native American leaders from the Pyramid Lake tribe visited Squaw Valley to do a "snow dance" for the forthcoming winter olympics; in 1963, Frank Sinatra, Jr., was kidnapped from a motel at Lake Tahoe by Barry Keenan (later, after a prison term, a wealthy developer), Joe Amsler and John Irwin (the kidnapping was the subject of the HBO movie Stealing Sinatra); in 1973, trying to quiet public uproar over his use of massive public funds for improvements to his private home in San Clemente, President Nixon promised to leave the home to the people of the United States on his death (after resigning, he sold the home and kept the money); in 1976, Nevada's state government filed suit in an effort to obtain a court declaration that the state owned the bottom of Pyramid Lake (which is entirely within a tribal reservation) and the Truckee River; in 1980, Geffen Records chief David Geffen visited John and Yoko in the recording studio and told them that Double Fantasy had just gone gold, after which the couple finished Walking On Thin Ice and departed for their home at the Dakota where John was assassinated; in 1987, after an Israeli tank plowed into a row of cars carrying tired Palestinians returning from work in Israel to the occupied territories, the intefadeh began, quickly joined by 6,000 people that night, soon spreading across the territories, then across Israel; in 2003, Newsweek (in an edition dated December 15) published a cover story that fed anti-trial lawyer sentiment without telling readers that the magazine itself was the target of lawsuits of the kind being denounced in the article and without telling readers that the principal source for the story, corporate lawyer Philip Howard, was a member of a law firm representing the magazine.

Dave Matthews on Imagine: Very often, songs of protest or songs that have some sort of social message are just dated and unlistenable. They're earnest and they're bullshit. But this is an absolutely stellar song. It's wrenching. Even if he'd written only Imagine, he would have been the greatest songwriter of all time. Nobody in a position of power had ever made that clear a statement.       It's very hard to look at that song and not say "Well, you know, he's right" even though he wasn't saying "I'm right." He's just asking you to think about something, which is the genius of it: imagine if everything we take for granted as unchangeable was not there, imagine what the world would be like. And he does it in such a beautiful, humble way that you have to be an insane person not to go Touche.

Update: Thursday, Dec. 7, 2006, 7:44 a.m. PST — On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the home base of the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, drawing the United States into World War II. More than 2,300 Americans were killed. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]; also in 1941, the battleship U.S.S. Nevada survived the Japanese attack, becahing herself at the mouth of the harbor.

President Ulysses Grant, message to Congress, December 7, 1875: "In a growing country, where real estate enhances so rapidly with time as in the United States, there is scarcely a limit to the weath that may be acquired by corporations, religious or otherwise, if allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded to, without taxation, may lead to sequestration without constitutional authority, and through blood. I would suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation."

On Dec. 7, 1859, the Monroe Sentinel in Wisconsin reported "A writer says the new silver mines east of Sierra Nevada in the Comstock vein since Sept. 1st, amount to $60,000. He says indications of other extensive silver veins appear, and the country around Carson Valley is destined to become one of the richest mineral regions in America."; in 1861, in an editorial discussion of President Lincoln's recommendation to Congress that slaves be freed but also deported "back" to Africa or some other "place or places in a climate congenial to them", the New York Times said that such schemes assumed the willingness of other nations to accept the "absorption of four million black barbarians" and that a more gradual process would cause less disruption to the economy of the rebellious southern states (presumably when they reentered the union): "That there is anything in the care to prevent its fulfilling, in freedom, the same duties that are exacted from it in bondage, no unprejudiced mind will assert. Besides, it is not necessary to assume an immediate leap to absolute freedom. There may be intermediate stages of serfage or apprenticeship." (italics in the original); in 1872, the Nevada State Journal carried a report on a sermon delivered by the U.S. Indian Agent for Nevada, Reverend C.A. Bateman, at a Congregational Church in Sacramento in which Bateman praised President Grant's policy toward Native Americans: "the president has proved himself the right man in the right place. He has reformed the Indian policy and appointed agents who were Christians, and who would do all that was in their power to benefit the Indians. The Indians have been led to believe an agent to be next to the evil one himself, but now they are beginning to find that Grant's agents have an interest in their welfare and a care for their souls." (The next year, Bateman filed a report recommending reduction in size of both the Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake tribal reservations); in 1904, the Nevada Board of Regents voted against funding to build a dam on campus; in 1933, the movie Gallant Lady starring Ann Harding was released by Twentieth Century Pictures (later merged with Fox) and became a footnote in Nevada history when former Reno city councilmember Roy Frisch, scheduled to testify against Reno underworld figures James "Cinch" McKay and William Graham, went to see the movie at the Majestic Theatre and vanished on the way home, never to be seen again; in 1934, the United States was engaged in saber rattling against Japan, threatening an arms race unless the large powers were allowed to decide the size of the Japanese navy; in 1934, Reno tavern owner Sam Francovich bit into an oyster and found a pearl appraised by a local jeweler at $2,000; in 1934, author Edgar Rice Burroughs was seeking a Nevada divorce in Las Vegas; in 1941, five days after members of the House and Senate called for war against Japan (Las Vegas Review-Journal/December 2d: "U.S. Solons Threaten War On Japan"), Japan struck first, and the Review-Journal put out at least three special editions during the day, one of them reporting that several Las Vegans in the military were stationed in the war zone, such as Army Capt. C.D. Baker (later mayor) who was at Canton Island; in 1941, acting even before the United States, Nicaragua, Canada, the Dutch East Indies and Costa Rica declared war on Japan; in 1941, Heber Brown, leader of the United Welders, Cutters and Helpers union, cancelled an impending national strike because of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. Navy asked for press help in spreading the word of the cancellation; in 1941, U.S. Representative James Scrugham, former governor of Nevada who had just been elected to his fifth House term, was in Las Vegas conferring with officials of the Defense Plant Corporation and Basic Magnesium Inc. about defense housing when he heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked; a large crowd gathered in Reno at the Nevada State Journal office to read posted bulletins; the Nevada manager of the Bell Telephone Company asked that long distance telephone calls be kept to a minimum because of the heavy load of traffic after the attack; the University of Nevada athletic board cancelled an impending trip to Hawaii by the football team for games with the University of Hawaii and Honolulu town teams; Reno police were at train and bus depots to tell servicepeople in transit that all leaves were cancelled; Reno Fire Chief George Twaddle announced plans to form an emergency volunteer fire brigade; the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said all needed measures had been taken to protect Hoover Dam and that the highway across it might be closed; military police at Camp Siebert near the dam were under "wartime orders"; the Newlands reclamation district was given permission to hire new guards to protect against sabotage; Governor Edward Carville said he would issue an order to any Japanese living in Nevada to report immediately to police and he and other officials announced plans to "place Nevada under complete surveillance"; officials of the Southern Pacific Railroad said "measures have been taken to insure protection of every bridge, shop and important link in our lines in Nevada and California"; increased security was thrown around the naval ammunition depot in Mineral County; Reno airport officials said they would strictly enforce the nationwide revocation of private pilots' licenses; the authority of amateur radio stations around the state and nation to operate were suspended; Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Nevada offered their services to local communities; and Reverend J. Winfield Scott of Fallon was waiting for word on the fate of his sons John and Rodney who were serving on the U.S.S. Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor (Charlie Chaplin's anti-Hitler movie The Great Dictator happened to be playing at the Wigwam in Reno); in 1943, Sparks Mayor Daniel Fodrin said the city had been unable to purchase, under wartime conditions, a new or used car to replace the police department's old car; in 1944, Rheem Manufacturing of Chicago announced it had leased part of the Basic Magnesium plant in Nevada for the production of rockets and mortar shells; in 1944, the Ely Rotary heard an explanation of the new G.I. Bill of Rights; in 1954, a report by state parks chair Thomas Miller to Governor Charles Russell said a petrified forest in northern Washoe County was being regularly looted (news reports of Miller's report accommodatingly gave exact directions for how to find the forest); in 1958, in her newspaper column Eleanor Roosevelt praised NBC for broadcasting a program on Native Americans: "[T]his land once belonged to the Indians, so few of us today know anything about what has happened to them...We owe the Indians real gratitude, and we have given them very few signs of our gratefulness. There are many Indians today still living as primitively as they have ever lived, and we have never done enough for health and education among them. We now strive to give them full citizenship without having prepared them to make use of it. It might almost be said that we have done them more harm by introducing them to whiskey than we have ever done them good in any other way."; in 1976, Robert Gagnier, director of the State of Nevada Employees Association (which represented most state workers) called a proposal allowing lie detector tests of state employees "Hitlerian regulation."

Update: Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006, 3:40 a.m. PST — Nurses lockout ends in Gomorrah South: Back to the bargaining table, for now.

On Dec. 6, 345, Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, Lycia (Turkey), reportedly admired for his generosity and protection of the wronged (so that he became a model for Santa), died — or at any rate this is the traditional date on which his death is marked; in 1864, in his annual message to Congress, President Lincoln reported that the organization of Nevada and its admission to the union had been completed; in 1908, the Washington Post reported "The greatest evil with which Nevada has to contend at present is gambling."; in 1924, the Ely Daily Times published the text of the county's new resolution directing the district attorney to enforce abatement of the red light district; in 1934, the comic strip This Curious World (similar to Believe It Or Not) carried an item about prehistoric footprints on the grounds of the Nevada State Prison; in 1935, responding to a suggestion by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) offered a cash prize to the winner of a competition to replace The Sidewalks of New York as the city song (W.C. Handy said "I'm going right down to my office and get to work. The Sidewalks of New York‚ is all right in its place, but it's still stamped as a political song."); in 1935, meat cutters in Boulder City and Las Vegas formed a union; in 1941, Nevada Surveyor General Wayne McLeod criticized repeated federal "withdrawals" of public land in the state; in 1944, the U.S. Maritime Commission reported that a new U.S. ship to be named after Virginia City would be dedicated by Mildred Peope of Virginia City; in 1944, for the first time since 1927, the Washoe County Commission began requiring permits for carrying concealed weapons, a reaction to three recent instances of gunplay causing deaths in Reno (and the Reno Better Government League called for an enlarged police force); in 1950, six tribes comprising the Northern Paiute Nation filed a petition with the U.S. Indian Claims Commission for lands in Nevada, Oregon, Idaho and California taken from the Nation between 1865 and 1882 (the claims commission was formed by Congress in 1946 to retroactively compensate crimes against Native American tribes after embarrassing postwar comparisons were made between the U.S. treatment of Native Americans and Nazi treatment of the Jews and others); in 1954, Las Vegas police office Paul Deweert and Las Vegas Sun reporter Colin McKinley tracked three jail escapees to an abandoned mine tunnel and captured them (the officer held the rifle on the suspects while the reporter went for help); in 1956, Hollywood or Bust, the last of the Martin and Lewis movies (partly filmed in Las Vegas), was released; in 1957, the AFL/CIO expelled the Teamsters; in 1963, Harold Gibbons, Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa's executive assistant, and four other Teamster officials resigned in protest against Hoffa's actions and statements after the assassination of President Kennedy; in 1969, a free concert staged by the Rolling Stones at Altamont Speedway in California became a fiasco at which four people died, including one knifed by a Hells Angel (those rocket scientist Stones had hired the Hell's Angels to provide security); in 1970, Gimme Shelter, a documentary about the Altamont mess that included footage of the knifing, was released; in 1973, U.S. Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan became vice-president of the United States; in 1976, toddler Ian Locklear, a four year-old with a 160 to 169 intelligence quotient, enrolled in a University of South Florida exceptional students program, was running for student body president; in 1988, Roy Orbison died in Nashville; in 2002, Jack Harelson of Grants Pass, Oregon, was fined $2,500,000 for archaeological theft for his role in looting Elephant Mountain Cave, an ancient site on the Black Rock Desert north of Reno.

Update: Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2006, 2:49 a.m. PST — On Dec. 5, 1933, national (alcoholic beverage) prohibition came to an end as Utah [who'da thunkit?] became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment. [New York Times/AP slightly vague e-headlines]; in 1916, the last mail stage robbery in the west took place in Jarbidge Canyon. [Nevada Magazine calendar].

On Dec. 5, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull, Malleus Maleficarum, an endorsement of a German anti-witchcraft book, fueling witchcraft inquisitions in Europe; in 1861, bills to outlaw slavery were introduced in Congress (even with the Confederate states unrepresented, the measures failed, delaying emancipation until approval of the 13th amendment in December 1865); in 1875, the Nevada State Journal carried an account of Major General John Pope's report to the war department on the number of Native Americans living in U.S. territory (not counting Alaska) and it claimed that there were 100,000 "civilized" Indians, 180,000 "semi-civilized" Indians, and 81,000 "barbarous" Indians; in 1916, President Wilson, who began the practice of delivering the state of the union speech verbally before Congress, may have regretted that decision when, midway through this year's speech, a group of women hung a banner from the gallery: "Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?"; in 1922, U.S. Marshal J.H. Fulmer traveled from northern Nevada to Las Vegas to serve contempt papers on Charles Ingram in connection with an incident in which a man named R.G. Richter was tarred and feathered by Las Vegans during a Union Pacific labor dispute; in 1933, alcohol prohibition was repealed, tripping an astonishing free fall in the crime rate, including the steepest decline in the homicide rate in recorded history; in 1935, Nevada Power Company filed a lawsuit to try to stop the City of Las Vegas from proceeding with a bond sale to raise money for the construction of a municipal power plant; in 1955, a boycott of the municipal bus system in Montgomery was begun to protest African-Americans having to sit in the back of the buses (uncertain whether blacks would respond to the boycott call, Martin King looked out his window in the morning to see the 6 a.m. North Jackson route bus pass and saw that it was empty except for the driver); in 1955, the Congress of Industrial Organizations and American Federation of Labor merged and formed the AFL/CIO; in 1957, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was permitted to present an assembly at Las Vegas High School (and, on December 6, at Rancho High) on the "peacetime uses of atomic energy"; in 1960, the G.I. Blues soundtrack hit number one on the Billboard album charts and stayed two weeks on the stereo chart and eight weeks on the monoraul chart; in 1964, Don Robertson and Hal Blair's Ringo by Lorne Greene, a song about a gunfighter — presumably John Ringo of Tombstone — that appeared on Greene's album Welcome To The Ponderosa and became a hit because it was released amid Beatlemania, reached number one on the Billboard chart; in 1973, the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas opened; in 1976, Time magazine published excerpts from a sensational book about Howard Hughes by James Phelan which reported that Hughes left Las Vegas for the Bahamas to avoid dealing with a power struggle within his corporation between longtime aide Robert Maheu and a new group of aides; in 1998, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that boxer/rapist Mike Tyson was selling his homes in Las Vegas, Trumbull County, Ohio, and Farmington, Connecticut.

Update: Monday, Dec. 4, 2006, 3:14 p.m. PST — NEWS FLASH
Nurses locked out, picket lines up in Gomorrah South

Update: Monday, Dec. 4, 2006, 3:12 a.m. PST — On Dec. 4, 1945, the Senate approved U.S. participation in the United Nations. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator Time to bring back NAGPAC? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006

On Dec. 4, 1869, the Reno Crescent reported that the Sutro Tunnel Company had been incorporated and the tunnel was at 200 feet; in 1875, William Tweed, former political boss of New York, escaped from debtors' prison and fled to Spain where he worked as a seaman for a year until being recognized and recaptured; in 1898, in an editorial the Nevada State Journal, which was suing U.S. Senator William Stewart to collect campaign-related bills, called Stewart a pathological liar; in 1898, several legislative candidates, including Patrick Flanigan of Washoe County (elected to the senate) and Lemuel Allen of Churchill County (elected to the assembly), failed to file their campaign disclosure statements under Nevada's Purity of Elections Law; in 1914, John Coble, one time employer of Wyoming outlaw Tom Horn, killed himself in the lobby of the Commercial Hotel in Elko, Nevada; in 1934, FBI officials said that they had been holding Helen Gillis, widow of "Baby Face" Nelson, for six days without announcing it and refused to say how or where she had been taken or what if any charges had been filed against her; in 1935, the Nevada Colorado River Commission reported to Governor Richard Kirman that if the state built transmission lines to supply power to western and northern Nevada, the cost of electricity to consumers would be reduced; in 1941, in Washington, U.S. Senator Berkeley Bunker said no decision had been made on whether to construct a new town to house workers at the new magnesium plant; in 1947, Nez Perce and Yakima tribe members met near Walla Walla to sign legal complaints against the violation of the 1855 treaty (signed on the same site) guaranteeing their salmon fishing rights that would be impeded by the construction of the McNary Dam on the Columbia River; in 1961, Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler was released; in 1965, Turn! Turn! Turn! by the Byrds, music by Pete Seeger, lyrics by Ecclesiastes, hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1969, CWO Hugh Thompson, who tried to stop the massacre at My Lai and did succeed in rescuing some villagers from U.S. troops, testified at the army investigating panel and then answered questions from reporters, providing more openness on the case in a day than most military and administration officials had done since the story broke; in 1993, Frank Zappa died; in 2002, High Hopes, an episode of the Steven Spielberg science fiction television series Taken, was set at Groom Lake in Nevada.

Update: Sunday, Dec. 3, 2006, 1:57 a.m. PST — On Dec. 3, 1984, more than 4,000 people died after a cloud of gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On Dec. 3, 1847, over the objections of white abolitionists, Frederick Douglass began publication of his newspaper the North Star, which soon eclipsed other anti-slavery publications including Garrison's Liberator; in 1898, the Nevada State Journal reprinted a report from the Carson City News that U.S. Senator William Stewart had gone on a drunk in Carson yelling comments "too obsene and lewd to print. Ladies at the county building block were obliged to leave the walk to get out of hearing of Stewart's insulting remarks" (the News suggested Stewart should have been jailed); in 1924, the Ely Chamber of Commerce decided that since Ely was located on the "Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean highway", that the chamber would advertise Ely's virtues in the PPOO national organization's 1925 booklet; in 1926, Agatha Christie vanished from her home near Berkshire, England, and (after 15,000 volunteers helped conduct a search) reappeared at a resort several days later, then went into seclusion without offering an explanation; in 1934, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the University of California, which argued it had the right to expel conscientious objectors who refused to undergo military training; in 1934, Lander County Assemblymember Ed Lauritzen, an independent, proposed creation of a state lottery in Nevada; in 1935, the planned Navajo Capitol at Window Rock in Arizona was nearing completion; in 1935, at a meeting of the Las Vegas chamber of commerce, a letter was read from state water engineer Alfred Merritt Smith proposing desert reclamation (converting desert land to farm land by importing water) in southern Nevada to grow dates, citrus fruits and other produce; in 1943, U.S. Postmaster General Frank Walkers reported that Nevada was leading the nation in female mail carriers per capita (all of the state's 14 women carriers worked in the small counties); in 1946, Acting Governor Vail Pittman, owner of the Ely Daily Times, purchased the Ely Record from Charles Russell, who was headed to D.C. to become Nevada's U.S. representative (in 1950, Russell would defeat Pittman for the governorship); in 1952, two days after Stalin denounced "Jewish nationalists", 13 former Czech Communist Party officials — 11 of them Jews — were executed; in 1965, Rubber Soul by the Beatles was released in England (a truncated version was released in the U.S on December 6); in 1967, the legendary Twentieth Century Limited train, which began running between Chicago and New York on June 17, 1902, made its last run (the Limited was featured in films like North by Northwest and The Cotton Club); in 1968, Elvis, a television special now known as the "comeback special" that included his first live concert in seven years, was broadcast on NBC and — together with a Brigitte Bardot special the same evening — creamed the other two networks and won wide praise from critics ("something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home"); in 1971, You're Sixteen by Ringo was released; in 1979, eleven fans holding general admission tickets for a Who concert (holders of such tickets find unassigned seats on a first come/first served basis) died in the crush of stampeding fans when only two of the doors of Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium were opened, creating a lethal crush (members of the band were unaware of the melee; the city later outlawed the general admission tickets known as "festival" seating); in 1983, Can't Slow Down by Lionel Richie hit number one on the Billboard album chart; in 2002, documents turned over to attorneys for rape and molestation victims of Boston priests were released by those lawyers to the public and they showed a coverup by Boston Catholic Diocese leaders; in 2003, Washoe County and Sparks police raided a home on Palm Springs Drive in Spanish Springs Valley, clearing the way for U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, while similar raids were conducted in Reno on Sullivan Lane and Isle of Skye Drive, three among many ATF raids of alleged Hells Angels headquarters around the west (no charges were filed in connection with the raids)

Update: Saturday, Dec. 2, 2006, 8:27 a.m. PST — On Dec. 2, 1954, the Senate voted to condemn Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R Wis., for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute." [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On Dec. 2, 1823, President Monroe declared the doctrine that bears his name, saying the U.S. would regard any effort by European nations to extend their influence in the western hemisphere as a threat to U.S. safety and promising not to interfere in European affairs, a policy that has no standing in international law and has been repudiated by most of the western hemispheric nations it was supposedly intended to help; in 1897, the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano condemned French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus as representative of a Christ-killing, traitorous race: "The Jewish race, the deicide people, wandering throughout the world, brings with it everywhere the pestiferous breath of treason. And so too in the Dreyfus case...it is hardly surprising if we again find the Jew in the front ranks, or if we find that the betrayal of one's country has been Jewishly conspired and Jewishly executed."; in 1937, Harry Upson was elected president of the Reno Musicians Union; in 1937, the Navy had a drill rig at the mouth of Dry Cat Creek to try to find an additional water supply for the Hawthorne ammunition depot; in 1937, four years after repeal of federal alcohol prohibition, 57 people involved in an interstate bootleg alcohol operation were on trial in Las Vegas and an eighteen year-old woman testified that she had seen stills at the Rains and Corn Creek ranches; in 1939, U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., was born in Searchlight; in 1942, the U.S. Office of War Information reported that a Vichy broadcast had been recorded announcing that Dijon had been fined ten million francs (about $200,000, or $2,476,073.62 in 2006 dollars) "following an attempt on the life of a German military officer"; in 1942, soon after the first eyewitness reports of what was going on in the German death camps reached the outside world, which refused to believe them, Jews around the world held a day of prayer and fasting for European Jews; in 1942, Las Vegas school superintendent Maude Frazier said that because there were no army instructors available, plans for a reserve officers training corps in the Las Vegas schools had been abandoned; in 1952, the Sahara Hotel Casino opened in Las Vegas; in 1957, You Send Me by Sam Cooke hit number one on the Billboard chart; in 1963, it was announced that the Liston/Clay fight, originally scheduled in Las Vegas for February 17, had been moved to February 24 because the convention center was not available for the first date; in 1965, in Anniston, Alabama, where in 1961 a bus carrying freedom riders had been burned, producing iconic civil rights-era photographs, an all-white jury convicted a nightrider named Hubert Strange of murdering African-American Willie Brewster, the first known time that a white southern jury had convicted a white person of a racial murder (Strange was left speechless by the verdict but his tearful lawyer J.B. Stoner denounced the jurors as "white niggers"); in 1965, Nevada economic development director Robert Warren said Lieutenant Governor Paul Laxalt had a "poor understanding" of the state program after Laxalt claimed that Governor Grant Sawyer's administration was following a "shotgun" approach rather than a "rifle" approach; in 1970, four years after he arrived in Las Vegas by rail and was never seen again, a Howard Hughes spokesperson said the billionaire had "temporarily" left the city; in 1972, Australia voted for the Labor Party, bringing to power Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who in his first week in office withdrew Australian forces from Vietnam, abolished the draft, began a program to grant land rights to aborigines, banned sports teams from South Africa, launched diplomatic talks with previously unrecognized China, announced a price justification panel, launched a more independent (of the U.S. and Britain) foreign policy, announced anti-Rhodesian policies, released draft resisters, reopened issues of equal pay for women that had been quashed under the previous government, added reimbursement for the birth control pill to national health insurance (and lifted the sales tax from the pill), provided a passport to communist journalist Wilfred Burchett that had been withheld by earlier governments and cancelled a passport held by a Rhodesian diplomat, refused to use the prime minister's Bentley (a gesture later imitated by California Governor Jerry Brown), approved the uncensored release of the previously censored film Portnoy's Complaint, and junked the British royal honors list for Australia; in 1976, the home a mile southwest of the Tonopah Highway and Kyle Canyon Road of an elderly couple who were prominent as cat breeders (Persian and Himalayans) burned down before the Clark County fire department could arrive, killing two hundred cats; in 1976, Local 5 of the National Association of Guardian Employes filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to represent guards and watchmen at the Las Vegas Jockey Club, but the U.S. Department of Labor was raising questions about whether the group was a valid union because of the failure of its locals to file required federal reports; in 1980, four U.S. religious workers, three of them nuns, were kidnapped, raped, and murdered by members of the U.S.-supported Salvadoran army; in 1990, Aaron Copland died; in 2004, George Bush defeated John Kerry.

In memoriam Ita Ford Maura Clarke Dorothy Kazel Jean Donovan Died 12-2-1984, El Salvador

Update: Friday, Dec. 1, 2006, 9:43 a.m. PST — On Dec. 1, 1827, early western historian Myron Angel (History of Nevada and Biographical Sketches of Its prominent Men and Pioneers, 1881) was born in Oneonta, New York; in 1877, a stone crossing from the Reno Savings Bank to the Farmers‚ Cooperative Store was nearly completed, which made for fewer mud crossings; in 1880, the Nevada State Journal praised a new book it had received, The Chinese and the Chinese Question by James Whitney, and quoted his conclusion: "[I]f our christian civilization, if our enlightenment, if our free forms of government, if our prosperity and power as a people, are to be preserved and perpetuated for ourselves and our children, then the Chinese must be expelled from our borders at any hazard, and at any cost. The Pacific Coast at an early day, and our entire country at a remote time, must be the inheritance of the Caucasian, or it must be the inheritage of the Chinese."; in 1919, Governor Emmet Boyle and U.S. Senator Charles Henderson spoke at a banquet of the Reno Commercial Club, which was considering becoming a chamber of commerce; in 1936, Assemblymember James Farndale of Clark County urged action to stop the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light from importing workers to Nevada from Los Angeles to work on the Pioche power line: "There are over 100 men working on the job and only two men have been hired from Clark County."; in 1941, officials of the Colorado River Commission said that demand for power from Hoover Dam would exceed supply within two years, and Nevada was considering ways to pay for installation of an additional generator; in 1939, 1,800 Jews in Hrubieszow and Chelm, Poland, began a nine-day forced march to the Soviet border during which most died (four survivors were able to later provide the names of a few dozen victims; the names of the rest have been lost to history); in 1950, PFC Chester Roper, son of Carrie Roper of Reno, was taken prisoner in Korea (he later died in a prison camp); in 1950, air force pilot Bruce Shawe, Jr., of Gardnerville was shot down over north Korea and captured alive to be held prisoner for nearly three years and released after the armistice; in 1952, in a speech to the Politburo, Stalin denounced "Jewish nationalists" and directed particular attention to Jewish physicians, leading to the outrage of the "Doctors‚ plot" that he claimed was concocted against himself, and the execution or imprisonment in gulags of hundreds of Jewish doctors, a massacre ended with Stalin's death on March 5 with even Soviet officials proclaiming that the charges had been false; in 1957, the City of Reno's condemnation committee declared a Reno landmark, the Chinese joss house (house of worship) at First and Lake streets, to be unfit for use and scheduled a December 9 hearing for the owners to show cause why the building should not be removed; in 1957, Dr. Marvin Sedway of Las Vegas was made a member of the American Optometric Association's ethics committee; in 1958, To Know Him Is to Love Him by the Teddy Bears hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1971, nearly two-thirds of the student body of St. Mary's College in South Bend boycotted classes or started the process of withdrawing from enrollment or threatened legal action to protest the college's decision not to merge with Notre Dame, making a single co-ed institution (Notre Dame later opened to women on its own); in 1977, newly disclosed FBI files showed that the Las Vegas bureau office laid plans to infiltrate antiwar groups at the University of Nevada campuses to disrupt their activites (it's not clear what actually happened with the plans because the files indicated that the intrepid agents seemed to have trouble finding the antiwar groups); in 1977, Governor Mike O'Callaghan said the fact that his aide Harriet Trudell had solicited freebie meals at the Las Vegas County Club from a member of the Nevada Board of Regents did not bother him and he had no plans to do anything about it; in 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev denounced religious oppression in the Soviet Union.

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[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2006 Dennis Myers.]]

 

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