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ANDREW BARBANO

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Is anybody running this show?
Expanded from the 4-6-2008 Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune
Updated 4-10-2008

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS. Déjà vu happens all over again at the appropriately named Pickett Park in front of Washoe Medical Center, renowned for screwing its workers, this Thursday from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Aggrieved nurses and their supporters will picket the hospital stolen from the taxpayers in 1985.

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN — Washoe Med nurses picket during a one-day strike on 6-23-2001. The issues were the same as during a 1990 organizing drive and remain today: Understaffing which erodes patient care so that the conglomerate may profit and proliferate on the backs of health care consumers and taxpayers.
Washoe Med: Renowned for Ripping Us Off
Inhospitable Reno hospital terrorizes its nurses for daring to picket for an hour.
Barbwire Special Web Edition 4-10-2008
Take it to the streets today!

The bandidos who run the place have been employing every union-busting technique in the book against their long-suffering nursing staff.

Washoe Med nurses picketed during a one-day strike on June 23, 2001. The issues were the same as during a 1990 organizing drive and remain today: Understaffing which erodes patient care so that the conglomerate may profit and proliferate on the backs of health care consumers and taxpayers.

NevadaLabor.com remains the only source of the 1995 Washoe County Grand Jury Report on the theft of the county hospital by its current owners and the ongoing pickpocketing of the public which resulted from the ensuing empire-building.

So peruse the history of the travesty at the website, then show up to pick up your picket sign. For more information, call (775) 229-9127or 219-9549.

GOV. JIM THE DIM DOES IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. Gov. Gibbons really need not try any further to prove to us, his beleaguered constituents, that he really doesn't get it.

On March 28, he issued a press release "announc(ing)the increase to Nevada's minimum wages that will take effect this summer."

He had nothing to do with it. The minimum wage hike happened as a result of a petition drive and two election campaigns funded by the Nevada State AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions.

Gibbons' "announcement" of something he didn't work for is a PR fraud perpetrated upon the public.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Reno News & Review reports in its current edition that Gibbons got quite a publicity splash about his "signing an order supposedly making state budget information transparent and searchable online."

Except that it's not going to happen until the legislature funds it, perhaps next year, perhaps not.

"All it will take, ironically, is for the governor to do what he hates to do most: Spend money," southern Nevada columnist Jon Ralston wrote.

JIM THE DIM'S CHANCE FOR REDEMPTION. The University Board of Regents voted last week to hike tuition at the state's freshwater colleges. Granted that under the state constitution the university system is semi-autonomous, but the nuances of the law have never stopped Gov. Jim the Dim, or his idol in the White House.

Gov. Gibbons said there would be no tax or fee hikes while he was in office. That's why we didn't have enough health inspectors to catch the unsafe and unhygienic practices going on at many of the state's medical clinics.

Gibbons is nothing if not consistent. He has insisted on gutting state programs by being inflexible during the current budget crunch. The regents have reacted by goosing the students.

Jim the Dim should now come to the students' defense by pushing back on the tuition hikes by threatening other university budget cuts if the regents don’t cave on the tuition hikes.

It's time for this fiscal conservative macho warrior to show some chops rather than just churn self-serving press releases.

TODAY'S THE LAST DAY of the First United Methodist Church's three-day commemoration of the death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Services at 8:00 and 10:00 this morning will proceed on the theme of "The life, the death and the unfinished business."

The Reno News & Review editorial on King is worth perusing. It reads, in part, "Since Rev. King was murdered, we have, as one of his biographers put it, engaged in remembering him by forgetting him. All the safe manifestations of his legacy — particularly the 'I have a dream' speech — have been endlessly substituted for his real meaning. His harsh criticisms of indifference toward class divisions and the working poor ('The poverty of the poor in America is more frustrating than the poverty of Africa and Asia. The misery of the poor in Africa and Asia is shared misery…') and of the U.S. government ('the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today') have been cored out of the King who is taught in our schools."

COMING SOON: Next Saturday, the Nevada Sagebrush Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Northwest Reno Library will present a genealogy workshop from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. If you plan to research your family tree, roots, weeds, fruits and nuts, organizers ask that you bring birth, death and marriage records or the dates thereof; family bible notations; land, probate, will or pension records, census data, obituaries, cemetery documents and newspaper items. Anyone is welcome to attend throughout the day. The library is located at 2235 Robb Drive. For more information, call (775) 747-7148 or 746-5925.

Once you've determined all the people and places from which you proceed, there's only one thing to do: proceed to party! And there is no more appropriate party than the Truckee Meadows Community College Multicultural Festival on April 19 at the Dandini Campus, 7000 Dandini Blvd. It's open to the public at no charge.

TALE OF TWO CITIES. "Per pupil spending up slightly in Nevada" — headline of the Reno Gazette-Journal's front page above-the-fold story last Wednesday, April 2.

"Nevada still near bottom in per pupil spending" — The same story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal the next day.

Go figger.

Be well. Raise hell.



Smoking Guns

NevadaLabor.com Health Care War Room

DoctorLawyerWatch.com

The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.


      RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006


 

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Copyright © 1982-2008 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 39-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; a member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO; political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP; and producer of the annual César Chávez celebration. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune since 1988.

 

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