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ANDREW BARBANO
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Photo: Debra Reid, Sparks Tribune



   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows...
Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

By Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) & Sharon Robinson
© 1988 CBS Records, Inc.


I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
— Leon Russell, 1942-2016


Robbing Peter to Play Paul
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-31-2022 / Updated 8-31 & 9-1-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT and the beast wouldn't go to sleep.


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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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Ambition burned through Adam Laxalt's visions as sugar plums danced in his head like plump law firm partnerships.

The boy was shell-shocked that midnight dreary in late 2018. He had failed to turn the trick his grandpa had flipped which led to wealth, fame and power: Winning the Nevada governorship in a 1966 upset.

Young Adam had to find another enchanted apple, a core of magic mojo to re-envigorate the family name in his ancestral stomping grounds. Only problem was the pesky fact that his ancestral roots lay in Virginia, not Nevada. (No matter. Carpetbaggers have always done real good in these parts.)

What to do? Copy grandpa's act once again. He began to frequent libraries, something at which he had never shown much aptitude in school.

He went thru miles of microfilm about how former Governor Paul Laxalt came out of retirement to defeat the heavily favored Lt. Gov. Harry Reid for U.S. Senate in 1974, a rare Republican bright spot in the disastrous year of Watergate.

Slowly, an idea began to form. Forget the governorship. Jump right to the senate.

Copy Grandpa Paul's act again. Never forget your makeup. Look like a distinguished leader on TV. Hope people overlook your distinguishing failures. Grandpa flopped in the hotel business and Carson City's Ormsby House remains a ghostly shell, a mausoleum museum of management incompetence by Paul's political personality cult. (Some of his insiders actually termed it so.)

As both supporters and detractors often noted. Paul Laxalt was not the smartest of the Laxalt brothers but he damn sure was the prettiest.

Handsome Paul had no choice but again running for office in the hope lightning would strike and save him from bankruptcy.

Many years later, curious facts emerged. Paul Laxalt's total personal investment in the hotel-casino was a whopping $60 thousand. The rest was financed by questionable Chicago banking interests.

Harry Reid made the mistake of attacking while he led in the polls, albeit correctly questioning the highly suspect Ormsby House funding and demanding full disclosure of all interests.

Grandpa's non-response was masterful, parrying Reid's thrust as an attack on the fabled Laxalt family. "What does he want," Paul Laxalt asked, "a financial statement from my sister, a Carmelite nun?"

Ouch.

Gowabunga! Adam Laxalt would simply ignore his 2018 loss to Gov. Steve Sisolak and run for senate just like grandpa. Any attacks on his creaky resumé would be spun as personal insults to family.

He would campaign as a pro-family conservative with a cute wife and kids. How dare that woman from Las Vegas remind people of his f-minus achievements in college.

If she keeps it up, he always has grandpa's silver bullet ready to fire: He's ONE OF US and the Gomorrah South amazon is not. Worked in 1974 and will work now, or so he hopes.

The Barbwire thus predicts that "one of us" will surface in campaign ads before November.

SILLY SEASON. This year's major campaigns have already descended into nasty nonsense which will continue perhaps until Thanksgiving and, heaven forfend, beyond.

Laxalt supporters are proving so inept that one front group's TV spot trashing first-term incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto orders Mme. Senator to "Stop reckless Washington spending to stop inflation." Huh?

If reckless Washington spending will stop inflation, why should she stop?

HONOR THY FATHER. Laxalt the Lesser has loyally copied grandpa's playbook almost completely, right down to deploring attacks on his family. He runs ads with his wife and kids and his hardworking single mom.

But he disses dear old dad. As I noted last week, Adam Laxalt's father is the late U.S. Sen. Peter Domenici, R-New Mexico, who had an extra-marital relationship with his colleague Paul Laxalt's young daughter. Personal peccadilloes aside, Sen. Domenici was a distinguished moderate much admired by his colleagues from all points on the political spectrum. It is a disservice to his memory to pretend he doesn't exist.

Adam Laxalt's privileged childhood was apparently positively impacted by his father's influence. The good senator deserves at least acknowledgment by his son.

Doing so may not quite follow Grandpa Paul's script, but it would be the right thing to do.

Adam Domenici-Laxalt should not rob Peter in his quest to play Paul.

BEWARE SECRET PLANS. Remember Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's secret plan to end the Vietnam War? Nixon said he would only disclose it after the election. Actually, he and Henry the K (aka Dr. Strangelove), worked to subvert peace talks and keep the war going so that Nixon would not be deprived of the major issue of 1968. [1]

As stinging singing satirist Tom Lehrer once noted, satire died the day Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo wants to be governor and advertises a detailed plan to cut Nevada taxes. It's apparently a Nixonian secret. (Maybe it's a Republican virus.)

I suffered thru his vapid website which fortunately didn't take much time. No tax cut plan of any kind. Websearches likewise. Like everyone else, he supports education but ignores Nevada's Scrooge-like school budgets. But he'll damn sure protect our rights to fabricate our own unregistered guns, by golly.

Nonetheless, he promises he "will always govern as a pro-life governor."

CELEBRATE LABOR DAY at Reno's Idlewild Park, 11:00a.m.-4:00p.m. this Monday. Years ago, I recommended that union leaders bail out of Virginia City which had allowed its Labor Day parade to become a celebration of the Confederacy. I'm glad to see the new Laborfest. Live music, food trucks, beer garden, kids zone and a huge Mother Jones inflatable to scare the children. Info at RenoLaborFest.com/

ADIOS HARRY SPENCER. My longtime Sparks Tribune colleague in columny died August 20 at age 95. Harry was a walking Nevada history book. I hope his family compiles and publishes an anthology of his remembrances.

HELP MIKE GUERRA. Here's the URL I found when donating to the ailing RTCRide bus operator's assistance fund: gofund.me/c1fed539/ Please be generous.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

[1] After meeting Kissinger, at the time foreign policy advisor to New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, director Stanley Kubrick patterned the title character of his classic 1964 anti-war film on strange Heinrich.

Dirty cellos playing oxymorons for peccadillos
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-24-2022
Updated 8-26-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

The rancorous campaign for Catherine Cortez-Masto's U.S. Senate seat has been rather undistinguished until now.

Mme. Senator may have at last done one thing for the history books, a true political innovation.

OXYMORON ALERT: She's now airing a POLITE hatchet job against her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt.

She thus raises the burning question: Can you be too laid back to be in politics if you're too unlaxxed to attack Kid Lax?

Her new spot is the second best ad of this year's campaigns, second only to one hitting Laxalt's big money from BigOil by portraying him as operating a campaign contribution filling station.

The latest commercial undresses him nicely with lotsa scandal. Inexplicably, Mme. Senator pulls one punch, so low-key that even NBC News missed it. The ad says Mr. Laxalt is the “son of a lobbyist. The grandson of a senator. Raised at one of DC’s most elite private schools...Flunking out of college, but that’s not a problem. Laxalt was immediately allowed into another elite university.”

That's political kissy face? Jawohl.

Adam Laxalt is actually the son of the late (lobbyist?) Sen. Peter Domenici, R-New Mexico, and Michelle Laxalt, the daughter of late Nevada Governor and U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt. No biggie, save for the fact that Sen. Domenici was married to the mother of his eight children at the time of his relationship with young Ms. Laxalt.

Scandalous? Not by the standards of today's holier-than-thou GOP. Alas, in the age of media follytix, everything is fair game and everything counts. Joe Biden has trouble getting into his suit coat in a gusty wind? Front page guffaws.

Maybe Sen. Cortez-Masto's media gurus think revealing her opponent's pedigree would actually help his candidacy. I don't really care about that or his lineage. The only real news in all of the above is why the sin of omission about Domenici's peccadillos?

State Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, frequently quoted his own mom: "You can't run from the truth," she wisely advised.

And "politics ain't bean bag" as the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill once put it.

Latest polling shows Sen. Cortez-Masto and Mr. Domenici-Laxalt in a dead-even race. [1]

Politics does not reward the shy.

I AIN'T SHY and have even been known to occasionally give credit where it's due. The Reno Gazette-Journal just made the best decision anybody at their parent conglomerate has handed down in many, many moons. The out-of-towners appointed veteran journalist Peggy Santoro as executive editor. She has certainly paid her dues at the RGJ over three decades.

What I like the most is that her longevity brings with it personal institutional memory as a longtime denizen of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream. That's increasingly important as we have long been a way station for green reporters to build some cred to jump to bigger markets. Can't blame them for helping themselves but we need all the help we can get here in the provinces.

As the late Tribune Hall of Famer Dennis Myers once told me, "if we tried to correct every media error we see, we'd have time for nothing else."

Seasoned Nevadian journalists like Santoro and KOLO TV-8's Ed Pearce and Terri Russell are rare treasures, endangered species.

So maxx congrats, boss lady. Now I can get back to bashing the Kazoo-Journal upside the head when needed.

SPEAKING OF DUES PAID. Deputy Reno Police Chief Oliver Miller is in the running for the top job being vacated by Chief Jason Soto's announced retirement. As I noted last April 20, I've worked with him on community issues for years. He began his career with Sparks PD in 2000 and has paid his dues and earned his shot at the top job. Contact your favorite Reno councilcritter.

RENTVOLUTION.ORG. Culinary Local 226 has eschewed suing North Las Vegas for blowing the union's rent control initiative petition off the fall ballot. Any court victory would come too late with ballots already at the printers. The 50,000-plus organization will instead double down with its formidable election machine. Organized labor is deadly when we organize.

Does it work? Tenacious grass roots organizing by Barbara Bennett persuaded a reluctant Reno City Council to pass the only rent control law in Nevada history in 1978, which they quickly and cravenly repealed. It nonetheless resulted in the election of Mrs. Bennett as Reno's greatest mayor in 1979. (Barbwire 7-17-2019)

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS DEPT. Sparks RTCRide driver Michael Lansborough has recovered from open heart surgery and has not only returned to work but also won appointment to the Teamsters Local 533 executive board. Thanks to everyone, including Barbwire readers, for chipping in when his family needed it.

Alas, his fellow driver Mike Guerra is in very poor health and likewise incurring heavy medical bills. As with Lansborough, a GoFundMe page has been launched by Amanda Nelson and her union colleagues. Link with this column at Barbwire.US/

You may also send checks or money orders payable to Mike Guerra's mother, Olivia Baker, addressed to her attention at Teamsters Local 533, 1190 Selmi Drive No. 100, Reno 89512. Thanks.

GETTING DOWN AND DIRTY. Cellist Rebecca Roudman, leader of a rock band called Dirty Cello, e'd me in hopes of publicity for their jam at Piper's Opera House in Virginia City this Saturday evening.

They glory in their pandemic survival instincts. “There’s a viral video of us performing with a parrot at the Oakland Zoo," she wrote. "We played at an apple orchard where someone called the sheriff, and we even played multiple concerts at nudist resorts where we kept our clothes on but the audience wore nothing but masks.”

A rock band with a lead cellist? Shades of the late great Harry Chapin! Tickets at DirtyCello.com/ Tell them you heard about it from Barbano on the Barbwire. Wonder if they are available for fully clothed picket line duty.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

1. UPDATE: On August 24, the Reno Gazette-Journal published a poll showing Cortez-Masto at 45 percent to Domenici-Laxalt's 38. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent, meaning each score may vary up or down by 4.4 percentage points.

Trump & Khomeini: Soul-less Brothers
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-17-2022
Updated 8-21-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

Czar Donaldov and the undead ayatollah have both committed murderous mayhem in the past week.

A Trump acolyte attacked FBI HQ in conservative Cincinnati and was shot to death for his trouble. One of the unholy man's true believers tried and narrowly failed to carry out a hit on author Salman Rushdie.

The irony of the latter is that many true believers have danced to the gruesome guru's assassination tango without reading a word of Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses."

 They just took their godhead's word for it.

We are such suckers for anything around before we were. Take the Bible. Please.

I went to Catholic schools from the fourth thru 12th grades. My greatest teacher was Brother Hugh Kennedy (yes, one of THOSE Kennedys). Many of my classmates reviled the tall gap-toothed geek. I owe him a great debt.

He taught me that religion can be quite useful for teaching great moral lessons — if you take the tall tales with more than a grain of salt. Like half a salt shaker.

On the first day of junior religion class, the good brother informed us of the official position of the church: "EVERYTHING in the Bible is true."

People remember well-woven tales. Remember the prophecy that the Messiah would speak only in parables? According to gospel, Jesus did not speak to the multitudes except in parables — stories — so that the prophecy could be fulfilled. (Keep in mind that the four gospels were written between 100 and 300 years after the death of Yeshua of Nazareth and no original texts have survived.)

Take fairy tales literally at your peril. Alas and alack, small minds become true believers, perpetual children looking for a salesman (emphasis on "man") who offers simple solutions to complex problems. Charlatans like Trump and Khomeini sell a lot of used cars to such folks.

Brother Hugh pointed out biblical contradictions. For instance, according to ancient tradition, Moses hisself wrote the first five books of the Old Testament. Except he dies in book two. I guess anything's possible if you've got God's cell-number.

Brother Hugh pointed out quirks large and small. Forty days and forty nights? Forty, like 3 and 12, were "some of the ancient Hebrews' magic numbers," he smiled. Did that morph into the Holy Trinity?

The good brother practiced what he preached. The wise man from the wealthy family left the comforts of academic life and volunteered for work in Africa where he died of some disease at age 53. He was the greatest holy man I ever met.

One of Rev. Billy Graham's stock sermons was "why I believe in the Bible," in which he "proved" that Bible stories accurately predicted future events. "The Bible right, the experts wrong."

So everything in the Bible is true, right? Which means that God has ordained that some abortion is acceptable.

Huh? Jawohl.

Go read the Book of Numbers chapter 5. (Written by Moses, remember?) If a jealous husband suspects his wife has been unfaithful, he can take her to a priest who puts her through a foul ritual wherein she is required to drink dirty water "before the Lord." If she has committed adultery, "her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry and she will become a curse....The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin."

I've gotta hunch that section was used to justify the Salem witch trials.

So the Bible confirms that God performs abortions. Take that, Ayatollah Alito and fellow black-robed blackguards.

Also check out Genesis 2:7, wherein Moses again channels The Almighty: God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that the man became a living being." Life begins at birth? Who knew!

The Bible right, the experts wrong.

What lies at the root of our millennia of oppressing women? Brother Hugh provided an answer.

In ancient Hebrew thinking, someone who was sick all the time was thus afflicted by God. (Think Job and lepers.) Women bleed every 28 days. That's as good a justification as any to make them a permanent underclass.

I despair and fear for the future of this blessed little world. The only salvation I see lies with women taking control. (Can't say Nevada's first-in-the-nation female majority legislature has made any great strides in the past four years, but hope springs eternal.)

All we can do is what we can. George Carlin, another recovering Catholic and a great moralist, used to close his standup shows admonishing the assembled multitudes to "take care of each other."

That's the essence of Christianity and so many other moral codes, oft perverted by false prophets like the Czar and the Evil Eye. Be kind.

WHIPS AND CHAINS DEPT. My longtime Sparks Tribune colleague in columny Harry Spencer has done history a service by placing on the record the criminal sadism of University of Nevada-Reno Hall of Fame Coach Jim Aiken who physically beat his athletes unto bruising and bleeding.

I went thru similar experiences at my high school. We too had a sadistic football coach who was strong as a bull. Coach Grady once slapped me silly and my ears have never stopped ringing. He once bashed a kid with a heavy wooden bookend, just about giving him a concussion for the sin of talking in study hall. Grady kept a big ring of keys in his pocket to bash guys in the head with for the slightest offense.

One of my classmates was so traumatized that he needed psychiatric care when he enrolled at Fresno State. But like Aiken, Grady won lots of games. Praise the Lord.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

For Sale: Unsafe at any speed, $40,000
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-10-2022
Updated 8-10-2022 / Expansions in blue

Today's column got started in a Reno bar decades ago.

I was drinking with a bunch of lawyers. The conversation was wide-ranging until somebody uttered the magic words: "Jeep case."

That opened the floodgates. All had war stories about their many Jeep cases, even criminal defense, corporate or estate-planning specialists.

I never forgot that free seminar in consumer abuse.

Then came last Thursday's Reno Kazoo-Journal front page story about a local teen who spent the last two years refurbishing a 1984 Jeep CJ-7 which he donated to the Hot August Nights nostalgiafest charity auction.

Some blithe spirit paid $40,000 for the shiny rolling death trap. Adding insult to injury, U.S. taxpayers subsidized the tax-deductible purchase. Be careful what you Make-A-Wish for.

I dropped everything I was doing and posted the following at the Reno Gazette-Journal website: "Your story can kill people. If you will call me, I will put you in contact with some top gun trial lawyers who have tried and won 'Jeep cases.' Just about every personal injury lawyer of long standing has had one or several. The post-WW2 commercial/consumer Jeep had to be engineered for consumer comforts. (Ask a few WW2 vets about how many soldiers died or were seriously injured because those cute little Jeeps flipped like pancakes.) The young man has already exacerbated the problem of the original manufacture by adding higher suspension. Raising the center of gravity means easier rollover, especially for an inexperienced driver. (See the DJ Benardis death case your paper covered extensively.) The road to hell is paved with good intentions and the teen mechanic and Hot August Nights are heading straight for a cliché ending and a plethora of lawsuits. Please call me."

Benardis was a local high school football hero with a scholarship to play for Notre Dame. He was killed when his Jeep rolled near the Reno spaghetti bowl.

The Reno newspaper last week noted that the young mechanic and his family had "taken the car for a few test drives, and they’ve given it their seal of approval for on- and off-road excursions."

Zounds.

The RGJ's accompanying photo showed a typical macho RV with chassis well above the wheel wells, a raised center of gravity and recipe for turning a vehicle into a rolling stone. Ironically, "60 Minutes" last Sunday aired a piece on military vehicle rollovers featuring today's Jeep, the Humvee, another high-centered death trap with the requisite WW2 Jeep-emulating grille.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," the RGJ reporter responded, adding "I will discuss this with my editor." [UPDATE: I have yet to hear back. I discussed it in detail with her editor before I e'd her.]

I sent the paper a CJ-7 website filled with the bravado of macho dudes not afraid of a little rollover risk or being thrown thru the windshield.

Just about any automobile can flip. American movies and TV are filled with such stunts. Careful and experienced drivers have a better chance of survival.

Maybe the story of that fine young man's early death combined with that of last week's $40k coffin can save a few lives.

If only people make a wish to remember
.
FREEWAY FREAKOUT. I've found an entertaining way to scare people about the horrors of artificial intelligence without pointing to Republican governors. I write down TV closed-captioning nonsense.

"Northbound I-80" was recently termed "North Bong 80" on TV-11's Oakland news. Not to be outdone, TV-4 described the Tahoe classic boat "concourse d'elegance" as "con Coors day a gonz."

Understandable. Bongs and beer can make people gonzo.

RENTVOLUTION. After last week's debacle in Gomorrah South, the Reno City Council remains alone in infamy as the only local government ever to have voted for rent control (1979, promptly repealed. Barbwire 7-17-2019)

The North Las Vegas City Council just agreed with its city clerk in refusing to place the Culinary Union's rent control initiative on the November ballot. The next step is also predictable: court, also like Reno long ago. And the little people suffer. Stay tuned to Rentvolution.org/

GOOD NEWS FROM RENO CITY HALL. Longtime Councilmember Neoma Jardon has resigned to become boss of something called the Downtown Reno Partnership. The "non-profit" is largely funded by downtown redline tax money which would otherwise go to frills like schools, roads, parks and first responders.

Earmarked taxing districts were all the rage in the 1970s. Reno and Sparks have several, all attractively named corporate welfare fronts by which casinos may ensure that their taxes are diverted for their own benefit. Just like the convention authority.

Jardon's most recent claim to infamy was chairing the tax money wasting Regional Transportation Commission, currently comprised of four Republicans, including Sparks Mayor Ed Lawson, and non-partisan Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve. On Jardon's watch, bus system employees went on strike three times in 2021 with Teamsters Local 533 winning each time. Worker abuses remain epidemic and very costly. Who will Reno councillors name to replace Jardon? I know of two sensible choices, neither of whom has much chance.

CALL YOUR MOTHER. The Sparks-based Northern Nevada Central Labor Council just announced a new attraction for its Labor Day LaborFest at Reno's Idlewild Park: A presence that once struck fear into the hearts of every union-busting swine in North America.

The Mother Jones Museum in Mt. Olive, Illinois, is sending a giant inflatable made unto the image and likeness of Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1837-1930), a legend of 20th Century union organizing.

"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living," she famously shouted to the rooftops. (Today's venerable hell-raising magazine is named in her honor.)

She spoke to the Sheet Metal Workers Union in Sparks on January 6 (!), 1912. The NNCLC has asked me to delve into the Barbwire archives for more Mother Jones Nevada connections. All submissions welcome.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Or, as Mother Jones might say,

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Outlive them all
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-3-2022
Updated 8-5-2022 / Expansions in blue

"I'm black and you're a Jew. How do you intend to make it in this town?"
— Bill Russell to Red Auerbach c. 1956

"I'll outlive them all," the legendary Boston Celtics coach replied.

Good advice both in the concrete and the abstract.

Boston is still flamingly racist. As is the small town called Nevada. Beantown and Mississippi West have just gotten good at euphemism, winks and nods.

For a peek underneath the PR mask, read John L. Smith's splendid biography of the greatest public servant I've known in my 53 years in these parts.

"The Westside Slugger: Joe Neal's Lifelong Fight for Social Justice" will shiver your timbers. (University of Nevada Press 2019, cover photo by former Tribune photo editor Debra Reid from the Barbwire archives)

In my autographed copy, Smith termed me the Westside Slugger's corner man. High praise indeed.

My friend Sen. Neal, D-North Las Vegas, died on New Year's Eve 2020 at 85. Last Thursday would have been his 87th birthday. On Sunday came news that Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols and basketball great Bill Russell had likewise graduated to greater glory.

All infused our lives with one great lesson. All that will outlive you is what you achieve. In accomplishments large and small lie the seeds of greatness.

"One life affects so many others," Clarence the guardian ange (Henry Travers) l informs a despondent George Bailey (James Stewart) in director Frank Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life."

The Beatles closed the circle: "In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." (Somebody play that song for Czar Putin. Please.)

Ancient Egyptian mythology held that all would be judged by a simple standard. Your heart would be placed on one side of a scale with a feather on the other. If the feather outweighed your heart, woe unto thee.

I'm a Trekkie but I didn't know until she died that Nichols shared TV's first ebony and ivory kiss with Captain Kirk in a 1966 episode. No big deal by today's standards. Back then, pushing the envelope could get you canceled.

Powerful singer Leslie Uggams broke new ground as the only African American on Mitch Miller's popular weekly musical TV program. (NBC 1961-64) She could never interact on camera with the otherwise all-white cast.

"If I did, the southern stations wouldn't run it," she once recalled.

I remember how different it felt when black actors were finally allowed to appear on TV commercials in 1971. I cast a black actress on a local Subaru commercial a few years later.

Ms. Nichols was self effacing about her Star Trek stardom. "I played the receptionist," Lt. Uhura once quipped.

We remain so tribal. War and violence are the norm rather than the exception worldwide. I have little faith in my fellow men. My only hopeful solution is long range: Women need to become the majority in power in all walks of life.

Speaking of which, three female political leaders will be feted at a Washoe Democrats dinner August 26 at the Grand Sierra. Former Sparks Councilmember and State Senator Julia Ratti will be honored along with former Miss Nevada and term-limited Assembly Majority Leader Theresa Benitez Thompson and likewise timed out County Commissioner Kitty Jung. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto will deliver the keynote address. Info at WashoeDems.org/

Those outstanding leaders and the two late superstars have received well deserved praise. Accordingly, I offer a belated birthday present to Sen. Neal.

Most norte Nevadians don't know that he was a longtime columnist for the Las Vegas Sentinel, a publication oriented toward southern Nevada minorities. Biographer Smith notes that Neal's commentary for many years was the lone liberal voice in Gomorrah South media.

The good senator already stands in the Nevada State Senate Hall of Fame and the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame. So let's make it a hat trick for the great writer and constitutional scholar.

Sen. Neal, welcome to the Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniators Hall of Flames, a giant to walk with giants.

RENTVOLUTION.ORG. The Culinary Union today will ask the North Las Vegas City Council to reverse the city clerk's decision to bounce the union's rent control initiative petition. Sen. Neal's eloquence will be missed. Stay tuned. [UPDATE: NLV City Council sez no, as expected. Next stop, court, as expected.]

BACK TO THE FUTURE. Labor Day parades were once the norm in many Nevada communities. Not any more.

Northern Nevada workers will begin to remedy that on Sept. 5 with a Labor Day job fair and community picnic extravaganza at Reno's Idlewild Park. Watch NevadaLabor.com for details from the Sparks Labor Temple. Speaking of fervor...

THE CATHEDRAL OF FOOTBALL. Teamsters Local 533 is hosting a day with the UNR Wolf Pack at Mackay Stadium on Sept. 10. Union members can bring up to three immediate family members at $25 each which includes tailgating, food, game tickets and a souvenir t-shirt. Reservations by August 10. Union members should call (775) 348-6060 ext. 101 ASAP. First come, first served.

If you want to avoid the parking hassle, you might take an RTCRide bus from downtown to the game. Driven by a Teamsters member, of course.

For those who consider football a religious experience, this game is for you. The Wolf Pack's opponent is the Incarnate Word Cardinals.

To borrow the late Al Maguire's favorite term, these guys ain't East Cupcake State. The Division 1 San Antonio Catholic school is coming off a 10-3 Southland Conference championship season. We will need all the help we can get. Football is a recognized religion in Friday Night Lights Tejas, so they've got God on their side. Twice.

Which begs the burning bush question: Will beer be available at the game? Yes. All the beer you can buy. But you must feel guilty while drinking it.

Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

How to live forever
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-27-2022
Updated 7-28 & 8-5-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

"In the future, every single thing we see on the Internet is going to be fake."

Thus spake a major high tech investor on the PBS Newshour last Saturday.

Early warning avatars surround us. On the smartphone application TikTok, you can make yourself dance like a cartoon or modify your body to look like JLo or The Rock. Or both. (Aargh!)

Harmless? Hardly. It means that Donald Trump can live forever. (Aargh!)

So spake the most notable futurists of our time: ABBA.

The legendary Swedish rock group has been with us for half a century in some form. "Mama Mia," a Broadway show incorporating most of their hits, is playing Tahoe this month. It was made into a Hollywood film a few years ago in which ex-James Bond Pierce Brosnan, ahem, "sings." (Aargh!) Made megabucks anyway.

ABBA's latest incarnation hits the U.S. this week. It was a smash in its London debut last May. It cost $175 million and employed Star Wars guru George Lucas' latest holographic technology.

The four singers, now in their 70s, became young again. They recorded music and moves for weeks enabling "ABBAtars" to be created using body doubles and computer animation magic. British audiences rose as one to dance and pretty much never sat down. The superannuated entertainers actually showed up at the premiere.

Great fun, eh wot? And pretty reasonably priced.

And unreasonably scary. People believe what they see. Decades ago, the late "Superman" actor Christopher Reeve, paralyzed due to an equestrian accident, made a TV commercial advocating better funding for neurological research. Therein, a virtual Reeve rises from his wheelchair and walks.

Doctors across the country were besieged with phone calls from those similarly injured: "I want the therapy Christopher Reeve got."

Much of the sick success of Donald Trump can likewise be attributed to such desperate hope which makes people vulnerable to pimps and thieves.

In 1971, KOLO TV-8 reporter Thayer Walker interviewed a local mobile home salesman who announced his major platinum find near Topaz Lake. The shyster was, of course, seeking investors. Back then, TV-8 was a CBS affiliate and local news followed the most credible man in the country, legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite.

One viewer jumped out of his chair, convinced to invest a large chunk of his savings with the glory hole hustler.

"Grandpa," warned his family, "we know that guy. He's a crook."

Gramps said they were wrong because he swore he saw Cronkite hisself conduct the interview and Uncle Walter would never have allowed anyone dishonest on his newscast. (He actually believed Cronkite had said he endorsed the project.) Alas, the power of media confusion. If it's on TV it must be true. Grandpa, of course, lost everything and the mobile home salesman moved to Gomorrah South to mine more suckers.

Multiply that by billions and you begin to see the dangers of a media-sotted society, a dys-reality wherein everything has been faked, even reality itself. How many people have you met who "know" that the 1969 moon landing was a Hollywood production? (Hollywood naturally exploited the popular urban myth and made a movie about a faked moon landing. Art imitates life.)

How about the shuck that the World Trade Center was actually blown up by Americans, not Osama's terrorists? Misplaced trust, a very human flaw, is Christmastime for crooks and dictators.

"Though we never thought that we would lose, there's no regret. If I had to do it all again, I would my friend...take a chance on me."

The ABBAtars have warned us.

DOROTHY'S JOURNEY TO OZ AND BACK. Groundbreaking Reno Municipal Court Judge Dorothy Nash Holmes has retired. Last week's front page Reno Gazette-Journal story glossed over her four years as Washoe County's first and only female district attorney (1991-94) and ignored her authorship of the 1995 grand jury report documenting how the Renown octopus stole our county hospital. (With a little help from three corrupt county commissioners.) NevadaLabor.com remains the only place on the web you may access the document.

The good ole boy network simply couldn't stand having a woman DA. One of her yayhoo deputies even got drunk one Friday night and put a bullet through the office wall. (She showed me the damage.)

Her prosecution of corruption finally did her in, succeeded by Republican Dick Gammick. Other than constantly complaining he wasn't paid highly enough, the ill-tempered Gammick's greatest achievements over the next 20 years were infamous. He refused to meet with the NAACP and dismissed slam-dunk charges against a dozen execs of the Reno Chevrolet dealership for embezzling customer factory rebates.

Dorothy's mother was longtime Nevada journalist Vickie Nash. You navigated the Yellow Brick Road very well, lady. You did your mom and all of us proud.

RENTVOLUTION.ORG. The North Las Vegas City Clerk has bounced the powerful Culinary Union's rent control initiative petition. Stay tuned. [UPDATE: NLV City Council sez no, as expected. Next stop, court, as expected.]

HUG HIGH2 RIBBON CUTTING next Tuesday, August 2, 3:00 p.m. If you attend, make sure to take in the Feemster Family Resource Center named after the late Reno-Sparks NAACP matriarch Dolores Feemster and her son, the late former Reno City Councilman Darryl Feemster, Sr. My dear friend and colleague Dolores was a fixture at the old Hug for decades where most of her children attended. She continued counseling students well into her retirement. School administrators knew that when all else failed, call mother Dolores. In that sense, she never retired all.

The new Hug is at 3530 Sullivan Lane in Sparks, north of McCarran and the Wildcreek Golf Course. Get there early. It's a narrow street. Reservations strongly recommended.

As Dolores and Darryl would advise, take care of each other and be careful out there.

Pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Nevada: Company town, corporate dumpster
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-20-2022
Updated 7-28-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

"The Lord created the world. Mankind built the cities. And the Devil thunk up the small town." — Wise old saying

Part of Silver State survival lies in learning local code.

For instance, when a pol uses the tired slogan "one of us," it means that whoever opposes him (and it's usually a him) is somekinda furriner or a prevert, probably from Las Vegas.

Same mentality applies when Carson City sneers at Reno/Sparks and when the rural 14 diss all of the above as "the big cities." Gomorrah South? That's a foreign country. Real folks don't go there.

One of the first things I learned about Nevada's Cow Counties was don't dare pretend to be one with them. You're not and never will be. Same thing with Sparks and Reno.

"Reno is very cliquey, very clannish, you've got to fit in. So wear a tie and get a haircut," my ad agency boss Bob Brown ordered when he moved me north from Las Vegas in 1971. I was aghast that Mississippi West still had whites-only hotels.

Brown, a former Las Vegas Review-Journal editor, was a buttoned down Republican conservative. My other boss was 179 degrees different. Former pro gambler Jerry May had once made a living winning money from casinos for notorious Reno mobster and Golden Hotel owner Bill Graham (not the rock promoter).

"There's nothing wrong with Reno that about 12 selected funerals can't cure," the card-counting Big Kahuna in the pink shoes told me.

I lived through those funerals only to find that the deceased were simply replaced by their kids. The downtown casino overlords made sure that no Las Vegas-style strip would ever grow up here to challenge their power. Thus the infamous "red line" surrounding downtown, beyond which unlimited gambling licenses were not granted.

Incest makes ugly. Just go look.

Another of my earliest lessons came with the realization that Nevada was actually a small town, just spread over a huge geography. Still is.

I also learned that the north has a heart where the south is often cold.

"You've got to give the town time to know you," super cool auto salesman Bert Strochsheim told me in 1971. "Treat it right and when you need it, the town will take care of you."

Another long ago lesson: The company town will forever exploit the great unwashed. Us. Nevada's "extractive" industries, gambling and mining, will enjoy extremely stingy and sometimes zero taxation while foisting upon the little folks the costs of community.

Which is why 2016 Washoe County voters were given no choice other than a regressively higher sales tax to fund new schools. The school district's citizens committee considered several options, including a hotel room tax, but wilted under the power of the overlords.

Big business extracts, exploits, exudes and execrates this High Desert Plantation. Mining has raped and pillaged the land with impunity for more than 150 years. Now comes news that the sprawling Tesla-Panasonic battery factory east of here will get state permission to further foul the air. You didn't see that on the news? Once again, you gotta translate the code.

Tesla will still be required "to maintain compliance with state and federal regulations and ambient air quality standards," according to the Orwellianly named Nevada Bureau of Environmental Protection. (Reno Gazette-Journal 7-17-2022)

They failed to mention the reason Tesla's dirty factory can slide where they could not in most other places.

Nevada air is already so clean that major polluters can build dirty plants here and remain below federal ceilings. Witness NV Energy's filthy coal-fired generator at Valmy, Humboldt County.

But the current Reno Gazette-Journal staff simply hasn't been around long enough to translate the code. So the residents of the company town cough up big corporate welfare tax breaks that are hard to swallow as we struggle to breathe.

IMMORTALITY. Last week, I nominated two of Nevada's original (1977) Pulitzer Prize winners for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame. Why editorial writers Foster Church and Norman Cardoza are not already in the Silver State's rogues gallery remains a mystery. This year's inductees will be announced at the organization's annual convention and awards banquet scheduled for September 24 in Las Vegas.

Alas, Church and Cardoza's chances of winning this fall are somewhat remote. NPA now tries to install honorees close to home. Fair enough. When my first nominee, the Kazoo-Journal's Guy Richardson, won in 2012, the honors were bestowed in Pahrump just north of LV. All five of my 2022 nominees are northerners: Church, Cardoza, David Toll of Gold Hill and Jake Highton and Don Dondero of Reno.

That doesn't mean I can't install Norm and Foster in a much more exclusive club right now. The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniators Hall of Flames has just two qualifications. Your writing had to have had max impact. And you gotta be dead.

Foster Church died in Oregon on June 1 at age 80. Cardoza, now in his nineties, still lives in Reno. So he hereby becomes the second inducted while still writing on this planet, the first being the late Tribune alumnus Prof. Highton. That brings the membership to boxcars, an even dozen including the abovementioned Bob Brown. Stay tuned.

MORTALITY. Word arrived last week that attorney and former Reno-Sparks NAACP President Jeffrey Blanck has died. Watch NevadaLabor.com for memorial service information and other details. May my friend and colleague Jeff rest in peace.

Pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands. Take care of each other and be careful out there.

¡Sí se puede!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. He is retained by no political campaign. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Web xtras and smoking guns —>

The wages of sin
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-13-2022 / Updated 7-15-2022 GMT

Poison Annie's Revenge Executed
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-6-2022 / Updated 7-7-2022 GMT

The Fall of Camelot
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-29-2022 / Updated 6-29-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

"At your highest moment, be careful. That's when the devil comes for you." — Denzel Washington

Fight against white elephants
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-22-202
Updated 6-23 & 6-27-2022 GMT / Expansions in blue

KEEP ON ROLLIN'. Teamsters locals across the country are representing cannabis workers. I have suggested that they market union-made hemp t-shirts by grabbing the hashtag #hashtogs.

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$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later
How come nobody noticed 'til now?
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?
From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.
The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)
 The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" — Chico Marx disguised as Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" (1933)
Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem
"The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24
By Michael Cooper / The New York Times 1-23-2019

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Copyright © 1982-2022 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and a longtime member 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.

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

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