BARBWIRE by ANDREW BARBANO Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream

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Our shining city on the hill is having trouble keeping the lights on.

This week arrived two toxic new coffin nails for the society and world that the myth of America once hoped to shape.

A study published by the British humanitarian organization Oxfam International concluded that the richest 85 individuals — 85 freakin' people ! — possess wealth equal to that held by the poorest half of humanity.

That's a ratio of 85 to 3,500,000,000.

Worse, the richest one percent of humans own 46 percent of global wealth.

That number will grow. Like the rapacious health care industry, Wall Street stands apart, immune and insensitive to the economy wherein real people live.

One recent estimate asserted that interest represents as much as 40 percent of the price of groceries.

We are eating money.

Historically, only two things possess the power to turn things around: war or depression.

War, better known as politics by other means, is very inefficient. Depression is a bit less so.

We've been trying less than all-out versions of both over the past decade or so, but neither has worked very well.

The late maverick world class economist Pierre Rinfret debunked the fallacious wonders of war spending as far back as 1966.

Wasteful U.S. war spending has inadvertently resulted in partially propping up an otherwise slumping economy since 2002, though mainstream media rarely delve that deeply.

A tank for Afghanistan doesn't provide the return on investment of a tractor plowing Nevada alfalfa.

So if sacrifice at the altar of Mars has failed to appease Mammon, what about depression?

Without the additional kerosene of the Federal Reserve's bond buying, the flicker of economic recovery sparked by President Obama's puny stimulus package would have petered out long ago.

This country took one brief detour toward justice from 1933 until 1947.

Then, a conservative backlash took over congress and began a long retrogression.

President Franklin Roosevelt's policies spread prosperity and started allowing workers just compensation for their labor.

The American middle class was born and flourished until the 1970s when the downhill slide began.

"This capture of opportunities by the rich at the expense of the poor and middle classes has helped create a situation where seven out of every 10 people in the world live in countries where inequality has increased since the 1980s and one percent of the world's families now own 46 percent of its wealth ($110 trillion)," Oxfam stated.

The joke's on the fatcats.

By one guesstimate from the height of the recent mini-depression, about $65 trillion (and perhaps much more) in speculative phony securities remain whizzing around the world.

No government is big enough to bail out such a potential collapse. The entire U.S. economy only books about $12 trillion a year.

Great Depression II could take a serious bite out of the bank accounts of that 46 percent.

As always, Nevada would remain at the end of the chain letter.

Our schools are falling apart with little hope of adequate funding and are thus increasingly a pathway to the prison system.

That dismal future is foreshadowed by the second coffin nail: Nearly half of U.S. black men and four of ten white guys are arrested at least once on non-traffic crimes by the age of 23.

Therein lie the seeds of revolution or dissolution of the formerly United States.

And so we must begin rolling the rock uphill all over again.

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

WEB EXTRAS...

RENDER UNTO CESAR: Northern Nevada César Chávez Celebration XII happens on the great labor leader's birthday, March 31, 2014.

Commit for tickets and tables now at CesarChavezNevada.com.

I'm planning a TV special about César Chávez's days in Nevada.

Stay tuned.

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is.

PayPal monthly subscription software is now operational at the website.

A thousand thanks to those who already responded.

Keep sending show suggestions.

Current frontrunners include (pardon the pun) wild mustangs as canned goods, education,  i-Guns and gay Olympics with César Chávez in Nevada recently surging.

  Please forward additional ideas or vote on the above.

  I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/

The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet.

This is important.

We've got work to do.

HONOR YOUR DON. Keep sending comments supporting legendary Nevada photographer Don Dondero (1920-2003) for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.

His life's work appeared worldwide, including the Tribune and most probably every newspaper in Nevada.

Enlist in the campaign to install Big Don.

Please send me your memories and endorsements via e-mail or to P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

The Barbwire got the late Reno Gazette-Journal columnist Guy Richardson elected in 2012.

Let's double down.

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

____________
Andrew Barbano is a 45-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Guns... We Don't Need No Education The continuing Barbwire series ...and more ammo.. Nevada Day Required Reading The Lady in the Red Dress The Barbwire's classic Nevada Day column written in 1983 The compleat history of the Silver State in 500 words SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Sparks Tribune 10-31-2013 and previously Barbano on the Barbwire plots new TV season Barbwire Special Web Edition / 10-21-2013 Barbwire: Nevada not really a state No, we were not Battle Born in Kenya Top 10 reasons Nevada lives in the 19th Century Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-17-2013 Sparks Tribune Low-income penalty: Nevada socks it to the working poor BARBANO: Nevada is one big company town Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 10-10-2013 State of Health National health care comes up against a very sick state. WHAT'S IN IT FOR US? Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 10-10-2013 USA at crossroads: New Deal or new Confederacy? Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-10-2013 Sparks Tribune UPDATE—>Bill Moyers: Shutdown is simply secession by other means ...and more ammo yet The Post-Dated Recession: Pay me now or pay me later Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune The Post-dated Recession By Joshua H. Silavent / Daily Sparks Tribune / 5-3-2011 Union decline and rising inequality in two charts by Colin Gordon Economic Policy Institute / 6-5-2012 Used in journalist Mark Robison's extensive Hard Labor: Nevada unions tout role in helping workers, firms, economy (Sunday 2 Sept. 2012 Reno Gazette-Journal, page one, Reno Rebirth section of the print edition). Union men Jim Burrell, Paul McKenzie and Guy Louis Rocha did the movement proud. Not included in the RGJ online edition. WOMEN AND UNIONS — ORPHAN MAJORITIES The Barbwire Labor Day column Reno Gazette-Journal / 9-3-2012 Nevada Press Assn. Better Newspaper Contest HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place three years in a row. The winning entries Suing for Schools: The 20-year shuck Expanded from the 2-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune Click here to view the show on your desktop RED flags flying low over Sparks Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune The wrath of self-righteous racism Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune Government contacts Nev. congressional delegation Nevada Legislature State of Nevada Secretary of State Carson City Clark County City of Las Vegas Douglas County Reno City Council Sparks City Council Washoe County Commission Washoe Registrar of Voters The campaign against forcibly-paid newspaper obituaries And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?   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 The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL Barbwire / 11-30-2008 Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry Barbwire / 8-3-2008 Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here? Barbwire / 6-15-2008 The 2008 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners The price of a piece / 6-17-2007 Boxing Pandora /9-23-2007 The Lady in the Red Dress 10-28-2007 1997 Pulitzer Prize entries The life and times of Travus T. Hipp The best who ever was

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Copyright © 1982-2014 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 45-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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