BARBWIRE by ANDREW BARBANO Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames

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Andrew Barbano Editor/Publisher 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. — Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016 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

 

Betty J. Barbano 2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005 Remember her laughter On January 16, 1959, two babies were born. They became sisters in both life and death. Larry Barbano, Frater Mei 12-18-1947 / 10-18-2023

How to become a Nevada welfare queen
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 3-12-2025 Updated 3-13-2025/ Expansions in blue

Greatest Hits Dept. NPA Hall of Fame WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT Barbwire nominee Dennis Myers elected to NPA Hall of Fame BREAKING NEWS—> New Barbwire Winners! Jake Highton & Guy Louis Rocha 2024 honorees BUENO! 4 down, 4 to go Support Don Dondero and David Toll and Foster Church and Norman Cardoza next. Send endorsements Eee-yo-leven! Barbwire wins 11th Nevada Press Association award GOLD 2017-18 2018 First-Place Winners From the depths of despair to the den of iniquity & holy of holies "Excellent work. These are some of the most moving columns I've read." — NPA contest judge/9-29-2018 The Grasshopper and the Dragonfly 9-6-2017 Kicked off the Ledge 4-18-2017 NATIONAL NEWS FIRST-BREAK Back to the Future in Mississippi West Nevada 10-18-2017 Gold 2017 Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo 10-4-2016 We Don't Need No Education Toxic turf threat ignored 12-13-2016 Kate Smith & Lady Gaga 2-14-2017 Bronze 6-pack In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill 4-28-2015 On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary (above) 11-24-2015 Leading questions, lead-headed leaders 1-19-2016 Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake 4-18-2013 2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon 5-30-2013 The politics of media ga-ga boosterism 3-20-2014 More statewide and national award winners We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series 1997 Pulitzer Prize entries Barbwire.TV: 15-year overnight success Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008 The Barbwire's Greatest Hits BEATING LUSH RAMBO AT HIS OWN GAME: Highlights from radio days mp3 file 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 Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential TOP SECRET— HushHush!

When you see glistening PR people, suspect Vaseline.

Last week, a Grand Sierra Resort executive guested on KTVN TV-2's "Face the State." She represented Gomorrah South mogul Alex Meruelo. The less-than-Elon billionaire wants local taxpayers to hand him $89.7 million to help fund a major expansion of his property.

Meruelo has failed before. He lost a vote to score $2.1 billion for a posh new palace for his Phoenix NHL hockey team. I wouldn't bet against him here in Mississippi West.

Washoe County voters should have a say regarding such a major drain on already-starved schools, parks, roads, police, fire and paramedic services. Which is why it will never see the ballot. Taxpayers can occasionally win one if they elect the right leaders. (See below.)

SEVEN THE EASY WAY: How to cash your corporate welfare project.

     1. PROMISE JOBS, JOBS, JOBS, even if it's a lie. Nevada's original welfare queen the mining industry, has raped and pillaged the state for more than 150 years. And left untold toxic black pits and sludgy holes for greenhorn tourists to fall into. Every time they want to dig-baby-dig, they promise jobs-baby-jobs. Rubes and pols always fall for it.

In fairness, it's a stacked deck, so why not skim a little for the po'folk? Mining has successfully prevented modification of the federal Mining Law of 1872. Multinational conglomerates, furriners all, thus have a license to steal.

     2. DEAL FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE DECK. Depression-era Nevada legalized gambling in 1931. The deal was that gambling would be taxed to pay for things like schools, parks, roads and first responders. The promise was broken many decades ago. Like mining in the rurals, gamblers turned the metros into company towns, The regressive and punitive sales tax has been the principal source of Nevada government funding for decades (after the now-endangered federal government, of course.) The low casino tax hasn't risen since 2003.

     3. DON'T BELIEVE PROMOTERS OR CONSULTANTS. Meruelo is as petty as Ebenezer Scrooge. From the 10-23-2019 Barbwire: "The annual Hot August Nights nostalgiafest has long rented the GSR valet area for $40,000 a season. GSR once split the fee between all the valet parkers who run farther and sweat more because of it. GSR now scams $36,000 and only splits $4k. I hope they still provide sunscreen."

When Sparks City Hall was striving to go bankrupt to pay for the Marina, they hired a qualified economist to review the deal. Alas, he was honest and reported that it would just not pencil out. So they fired him and got a more pliable prosti...er, economist. The Marina was built and drained the city of taxes for many years. Target even ended got a brand new store built for free, courtesy of us.

     4. ROLL YOUR OWN. As Ronald Reagan said about the Russians, "trust, but verify." Have a second consultant check the other's math.

Not long after her major upset election in 1979, Reno's greatest mayor, Barbara Bennett, lamented that city hall was "infested with special interests." How infested? High officials were retiring rich. Bennett even suspected that a major contractor was bribing a night janitor to open locked files and copy competitor bids. Curiously, the crook always came in at the last minute with the lowest ante.

Reno still owes millions for the Carano downtown railroad trench. Reno and Sparks have squandered approaching $1 billion for downtown redevelopment since the 1970s. They remain ugly.

I've watched this for over half a century. Place sane persons into an insane asylum and they soon show signs of madness. Such are Nevada city halls.

The latest PR blitz from Meruelo means he's probably got the votes on the council. No less than UNR President Brian Sandoval and School Board President Beth Smith contributed a Reno Gazette-Journal guest editorial praising all the goodies they expect. Trust but verify — and get a bulletproof, ironclad contract signed.

     5. IN A VAN, DOWN BY THE RIVER. Sandoval never learns. When he was governor, he gave the store away to Elon Muck's battery plant. The region still suffers from the resultant uncontrolled growth similar to the 1978 coming of the MGM Grand (now the Grand Sierra). High rents spawned high homelessness. Some lower level casino execs were even camping on the river, trying to find an apartment. (I filmed and interviewed them.)

Musk promised jobs-jobs-jobs and since the Storey County battery plant was funded at the public teat, it meant that area-standard wages had to be paid under law. Alas and alack, unions had to fight fang and claw for everything in Musk's wild west. A short while later, Sandoval hosted another Musk-style love fest on the steps of the capitol for a Gomorrah South project. Unions showed up with a huge banner: "FIX TESLA FIRST." The LV hustlers got the tax break and went belly-up. Tesla was never fixed. Workers lost tons of pay.

     6. JESSE VENTURA FOR GOVERNOR. For years, the NFL Minnesota Vikings pushed for a new taxpayer-built football palace. The votes were finally brokered at the legislature. Then lightning struck: In 1998, non-partisan former actor and wrestler Jesse Ventura won election, largely thanks to same-day voter registration. And a take-charge personality.

He said "I'm not signing that. Private enterprise should pay for the stadium." He didn't sign, did not seek a second term, and the Viking welfare queens got their palace.

     7. CRIME DOESN'T PAY —> for taxpayers. In 2019, the late, great Tribune triple hall-of-famer Dennis Myers reported "with its workforce at 7,059 employees, taxpayers are paying $34,042 per (Tesla) job."

Dennis quoted a London Guardian report to which I contributed: "Elon Musk’s vision of a clean-energy revolution, (that) was the pitch. These days, many residents in Sparks -— a sunbaked, low-rise city of 100,000 people located 20 miles from the factory —- express humbler dreams: food, shelter, health care.”

Not much has changed, except the welfare queen candidate. Meruelo's deal would create 526 whole jobs at $170,532.32 each.

Let's vote, dammit! Stay tuned.

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue praying for Pope Francis, Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡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.)

Or, as they say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

 

 

 

Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 56-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 and former vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and a member Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

TURNING TRICKS QUESTION: Is Nevada’s corporate welfare paying off?
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 7-18-2019

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

Red Scares and Nobel Red Flags
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 3-5-2025 /
Updated 3-5 & 3-6-2025/ Expansions in blue

A once- and a future president in younger days

The greatest labor leader of the 20th Century just came out of retirement to help us.

Once-imprisoned Solidarity Union leader Lech Walesa, who became president of Poland after the Berlin Wall fell, just sent a heartfelt letter to our heartless homewrecker. (Thanks to Barbwire Confidential subscriber Kayse J for the timely tip.) Here is the Nobel Peace Prize honoree's missive in its entirety:

Your Excellency, Mr. President:

We watched your conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky with fear and distaste. It is insulting that you expect Ukraine to show gratitude for U.S. material aid in its fight against Russia.

Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who have been shedding their blood for over 11 years to defend the free world’s values and their homeland, attacked by Putin’s Russia.

How can the leader of a country symbolizing the free world fail to recognize this?

The Oval Office atmosphere during this conversation reminded us of interrogations by the Security Services and Communist court debates.

Back then, prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the communist political police, told us they held all the power while we had none. They demanded we stop our activities, arguing that innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms for refusing to cooperate or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Zelensky was treated similarly.

History shows that when the U.S. distanced itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately endangered itself. President Wilson understood this in 1917 when the U.S. joined World War I. President Roosevelt knew it after Pearl Harbor in 1941, realizing that defending America meant fighting in both the Pacific and Europe alongside nations attacked by the Third Reich.

Without President Reagan and U.S. financial support, the Soviet empire’s collapse would not have been possible. Reagan recognized the suffering of millions in Soviet Russia and its conquered nations, including thousands of political prisoners. His greatness lay in his unwavering stance, calling the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and confronting it decisively. We won, and today, his statue stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy.

Mr. President, military and financial aid cannot be equated with the blood shed for Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the world. Human life is priceless. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and freedom — something self-evident to us, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet Russia.

We urge the U.S. to uphold the 1994 Budapest Memorandum which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s borders in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons.

These guarantees are unconditional. Nowhere do they suggest such aid is a mere economic transaction.

Signed,

Lech Walesa
former political prisoner
President of Poland

NOBELS FROM PRISON, PART DEUX. Formerly imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize honoree Maria Ressa just wrote a book ("How to Stand Up to a Dictator") about how elected demagogues turn their countries into dictatorships. (See Hungary, Turkey, Russia, India? Israel? US?) Ressa was a high profile Filipino journalist when the murderous Rodrigo Duterte came to power.

Ressa told the PBS News Hour that T-Rump's first few weeks are "exactly what we lived through, except accelerated. It's incredible how fast it's going."

"Within six months of Duterte taking office, all of the checks and balances had collapsed. He was all-powerful, the most powerful leader the country had ever known. And crucial to that is silencing the press and the justice system, the court system and I think that's what we're beginning to see right now."

Duterte authorized death squads to kill anybody they didn't like under the guise of a War on Drugs. He slaughtered tens of thousands.

"If you do not hold the line at this crucial moment — this is the moment when you are strongest — you will only get weaker over time," Ressa warned.

OSCAR GETS A BRAZILIAN. In last weekend's Barbwire Confidential, I predicted that if the Brazilian film "I'm still here" won an Oscar, the headline of this segment would go viral. It won as Best International Feature.

The film details how a murderous military junta wiped out Brazil's democracy in 1964. After their ruinous economy caused their downfall two decades later, democracy returned only to recently be challenged by T-Rump's pal Jair Balsonaro. He failed. The film has caused reopening of many cases of the "desaparecidos," ("the disappeared")

WALESA IN NORTHERN NEVADA. In his first state visit to the US in the early '90s, Walesa recorded video endorsing union organizing. I used it for a tri-lingual Northern Nevada Central Labor Council TV campaign: English, Spanish and Polish. It resulted in the original and eventually successful unionization at what is now Renown Regional Medical Center.

CHICKEN POX: The Oscars apparently chickened out on squeezing the Orange Crusher and I could have written a better opening skit than Saturday Night Live's flat show. Ditto the T-Rump sanitized opening monologue. Corporate fear metastasizes.

UPDATE: Overt racist Shane Gillis' opening schtik had only one T-Rump line: "Even if you didn't like him, that was fun (in a TV debate). We had fun, right?" Nobody laughed. "Look, I get it. You guys are pretty liberal here." He lamented that we will never see Czar Dastardo Donaldov in a debate again. It ain't necessarily so. Gillis apparently forgot that in 2024, T-Rump said "vote for me and you'll never need another election." Sieg heil, president for life. [If you love to suffer, watch the SNL smarmfest for yourself. First, get out your Tums, then go to the TVLine.com review.]

CHICKEN POX, PART DEUX: Guardian/UK headline: "$5 a dozen — Major egg companies may be using Avian flu to hike US prices, new report finds."

For decades, I've written how monopolistic corporations learned from BigOil: Raise prices on any bad news, then slowly ratchet them down after rape and pillage — but NEVER near original levels.

THE DISEASE GOES VIRAL. Republican Nevada Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago wants to emulate fElonius Mush by empowering a Nevada DOGE. (Italian for "fuhrer." Sieg heil!) State Controller Andy Matthews, R, whose job it is to write state government's checks, just asked Carson City lawmakers to establish a Nevada inspector general for a mere $2 or $3 million a year. Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve trolled the idea of a Nevada DOGE.

Good idea, young lady. Start by investigating how Reno City Hall is owned by a bulldozing casino outfit, The J (for Jagoffsky) Resort.

Nevada has the smallest state government in the country, totally inadequate for one of the fastest growing states. Generous corporate welfare has long resulted in chronically deficient funding of schools, parks, roads, police and fire protection. If there's a scandal to be outed, us fake news types are pretty good at that. Witness the recent Lovelock Internet expansion debacle.

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue to pray for Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡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.)

Or, as they say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

 

 

 

Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 56-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 and former vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and a member Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

 

Down there among the swamp critters
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 2-26-2025 / Updated 3-5-2025/ Expansions in blue

Not long before his death, the Rev. Billy Graham was asked that if he could correct one problem with America, what would it be?

"Racism," he responded without hesitation.

The holy man was unfortunately quite correct. And not much has changed since he said that.

If you want to identify one malady to blame for what ails America, racism cross-cuts everything. If seething anger about inequality and desperation is the wellspring of Czar Dastardo's dominance, it's rooted in racism.

Where does it spring from? More than four centuries of justifying slavery.

Much of Adolf Schicklgruber's rhetoric bashing Jews and leading to the rise of the Nazis came from rationales for racial oppression that the Swastika Swamp Thing borrowed from the southern Confederacy.

Based in part on the WW2 heroism of the famed Tuskegee Airmen fighter pilots, President Harry Truman ordered complete integration of the armed services.

It remains the only racially integrated part of America to this day, if not for much longer.

Enter King Dastardo Donaldov who fired a four-star Air Force general as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff just because he could.

We all know the reason: General CQ Brown Jr. is manifestly disqualified from the leading the armed forces because he is afflicted with brown skin.

The Czar replaced him with a retired lieutenant general who has two attributes: he's a paleface and he knows where to place his little lily lips.

SEND YOUR PERSONAL GOOD VIBRATIONS, emanations, prayers and/or projexions for the seriously afflicted among us including Sen. Dina Neal (see below) and Pope Francis, a great man currently fighting for his life in a Rome hospital.

As a recovering Catholic (props to Sinead O'Connor), I fear that the church may suffer a replay of the 1960s.

When the greatest pope of modern times died, the hidebound College of Cardinals backlashed at Pope John XXIII's modest reforms by electing the taciturn Paul VI.

Francis has wisely stocked the pond with a younger and more diverse group of red hats.

Nonetheless, I fear election of another Paul VI who will continue the church's plunge toward irrelevance and retrogression.

SEN. DINA NEAL, D-North Las Vegas, remains in Renown Medical Center where she was admitted last week to undergo emergency heart surgery.

Don't try calling those corporate welfare queens at Renown for patient information because they won't even confirm what day it is.

If you represent the dirty commie liberal fake news media and ask for top secret stuff like "is the senator still an inmate," they flip you (no joke) to the freakin' marketing department.

Thereat, you are informed that you have the right to remain silent until A.I. beeps and accepts a message.

Then, if you are lucky, an alleged human being calls back to tell you that they won't tell you anything. Not even what day it is.

Renown is not as big a Nevada corporate welfare queen as fELON Musk, gambling and mining, but even the big time bandidos treat you with less disrespect.

CURSE OF THE HIPAApotamus herd. "HIPAA" is the federal law regulating patient privacy. Critters like Renown are submerged in the swamp of HIPAA silence.

Save for fELONious Mush and his pimply shock troops, of course. They will soon get to see everything, including pix of your privates.

Renown might just as well put up a big animated neon sign (they can afford it) which flashes "NO COMMENT" 24/7.

RUNNING ON EMPTY. Universities are apparently running out of ideas for graduate student research topics.

There's a world renowned prof at a Massachusetts college who is an expert in the science of swearing. Huh?

Maybe he could give me some creative suggestions on how to get thru to denizens of the HIPAA swamp.

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE DEPT. A couple of weeks ago, I printed a story about the economic warnings raised by the meteoric rise in the price of gold. It's worse than I thought.

"Concerns about the impact of (T-Rump) tariffs are leading to a gold rush," the fake news New York Times reported this week.

Couple that with Czar Dastardo's announced desire to invest US Treasury money in a cryptocurrency scam he controls, and it's red-flag Mayday.

I saw an interview with an expert in Bitcoin and similar scams spawned as drug money laundries.

"Only invest as much as you can afford to lose," the promoter warned.

Hmmm...where have I seen that before? Oh, yeah — posted on the wall of the legendary and late lamented Harolds Club in downtown Reno. In the seventh floor casino, a sign read "Gambling involves risk. We suggest that you only gamble as much as you can afford to lose."

Zounds.

A casino giving good advice to its own detriment!

Harold Smith Sr., the founder, was an addicted gambler himself. Harolds was also the only casino in the history of the world (or close to it), that had a clock on the wall.

One of the unbreakable rules of casino management exploitation is to keep the suckers in another world where time matters not.

Harold Sr. has warned us across the decades of the dangers of casino addiction, including BitchCoin and its brethren.

STRANGE COINCIDENCE. In another public relations coup for Nevada, Reno has just slumped to number 18 on a list of most unaffordable U.S. places to live.

Which explains all those bullshit TV spots fouling local airwaves telling people that rent control will bring destruction and eternal damnation.

This comes as Sen. Neal and her colleagues try to reign in the rape and pillage of landlords and other corporate welfare queens.

Go to Rentvolution.org to read the long lost and sad saga "Reno City Council Passes Rent Control." (Barbwire July 17, 2019)

Nonetheless, hope springs eternal for the exploited among us. [A reader responds]

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue to pray for Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡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 56-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 and former vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and a member Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

A SUBSCRIBER RESPONDS —> "So you want private contractors to build new homes but you want government to decide how much the homes sell for? And you wonder why there is a housing shortage?" — RENO

BARBANO: It ain't that simple. First of all, the issue is rent gouging, not single family dwellings listed for sale.

Sen. Dina Neal has a bill stating that one corporation can't buy more than 100 Nevada single family dwellings. This is a response to Wall Street being so awash in cash that they are disrupting the normally semi-efficient market by outcompeting families to scoop up houses at any cost. If they become rentals, and the homes are financed, they just jack up the price on renters. Buy and flip. Welcome to Real Estate Bubble, the sequel.

I know some local landlords who don't raise rents on longterm tenants. They are a rarity. Reno City Hall tried to pressure a motel owner across the street from the former Sands ("J" stands for jackoff) which was pushing the owner to sell to them. The owner refused and further refused to gouge her longtime tenants for "market rates" which had no bearing on her operation. That's just plain un-American. The city manager pretty much had to quit after that hit the fake news media.

I was involved in the rent control campaigns of the late 1970s during the last boom caused by the simultaneous opening of MGM Grand and a bevy of other casinos and hotels. Some casino execs were actually living in tents on the river. (I filmed them. Very expensive tents.)

I came up with a 5 percent rent control trigger. When availability exceeds 5 percent, all bets are off. When it goes below, rent increases must be based on actual costs, just like current utility regulation.

These days, we live in a Tesla-fueled boomtown rife with speculation and the market monkey-wrenched by corporate welfare subsidies. Build and flip. I wish our town fathers (and mothers) would at least impose some design standards on new apartments. Reno now looks like cold war East Berlin. Witness those rabbit warrens near your office.

Combine all this with the fact that Nevada renters have few (if any) easily violated "rights," and you have the current situation ripe for exploitation. I'm working on a whistleblower complaint about an apartment building falling apart. Reno City Hall has thus far stonewalled. The same big corporation has several locations in Sparks.

Thanks for your comments. Stay tuned.

QUARANTINO

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 2-19-2025 / Expansions in blue

The title of this column is taken from a book guaranteed to become a world-class bestseller.
But this column's not going anywhere. Neither is this newspaper nor any of its compadres. Ditto the CBS, NBC, PBS, ABC or FOX TV networks.
Steve Jobs and his Appleistas put computers in the hands of just about everybody from the masters of Wall Street to the bushmasters of Africa. At first, it looked like democracy was finally going to proliferate everywhere. Information is power, right? The iPhone empowered the little people. What's not to like?
Well, as Disney's greatest cartoon inventor, Gyro Gearloose, once memorably observed, "there's no machine so smart that somebody won't be too dumb to use it."
As with sugar, spice and everything nice, the iPhone has done great good and great harm. Bandidos quickly figured out how to abuse it in order to swindle the gullible and create a new form of drug addiction ingested thru the eyes rather than the mouth.
The iPhone transferred the well-researched technology of slot machine addiction to a mass audience. That glorified postage stamp-sized screen has turned billions into algorithm robots, easily seduced and addicted whether by money or politics. (Like there's a difference, eh wot?)
Enter legendary British lawyer and author Charles Mackay.
"Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation," Mackay wrote.
He chronicled and foreshadowed the herd seduction of "this monster mannunkind" (props to poet e.e. cummings) from Tulipomania to Beatlemania and Bitcoin.
In the chapter "Popular Admiration of Great Thieves," he takes us from Robin Hood thru the 19th Century Robber Barons to the viciousness of Czar Dastardo Donaldov and the avariciousness of Baron Elon and his fELONious cadre of pubescent pimply poltroons.
"Whether it be that the multitude, feeling the pangs of poverty, sympathise with the daring and ingenious depredators who take away the rich man's superfluity, or whether it be the interest that mankind in general feel for the records of perilous adventure, it is certain that the populace of all countries look with admiration upon great and successful thieves," Mackay noted.
"Perhaps both these causes combine to invest their career with charms in the popular eye. Almost every country in Europe has its traditional thief, whose exploits are recorded with all the graces of poetry, and whose trespasses 'Are cited up in rhymes and sung by children in succeeding times.' " (as Shakespeare wrote in "The Rape of Lucretia.")
I especially enjoyed the madness of Tulipomania. In the 1500s, tulips were as popular as Bitcoin today. Imported from Turkey ("tulip" comes from a Turkish word meaning "turban") speculation in tulip bulbs (pardon the fruity pun) went bananas.
By the 1600s, "a trader in (Holland) was known to pay one-half his fortune for a single root, not with the design of selling it again at a profit, but to keep in his own conservatory for the admiration of his acquaintance."
Tulips as the status symbol of the wealthy. Cut to the golden toilet and escalator of Trump Tower.
Mackay told the tale of a sailor who made a delivery to a wealthy man's house. The seafarer liked onions, and took what looked like one from the kitchen. He left to eat his lunch of onion and herring when the homeowner and the police showed up as he gulped down the last morsel.
As the bulbist lamented, the lunched tulip bulb was so valuable that it "might have sumptuously feasted the Princes of Orange." Oops.
See any parallels between tulip bulbs and T-Rump's tawdry schemes like Trump trading cards? Our new king has announced he wants the U.S. Treasury to invest in his version of unregulated Bitcoin, the imaginary and unregulated Internet money.
You can fool some of the people some of the time and that's usually enough.
Guess what? "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" was first published in 1841. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Collective amnesia is a malady for which the former American colonies have become notorious. (Thanks to my union brother Mike Grimm [IBEW 1245/AFL-CIO] for sending me Mackay's book. He thought I might find it useful one day.)
SHORT SHOTS: Czar Dastardo and his hussars want to defund those dirty liberal fake news organizations known as the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR). ("Sesame Street" is again jeopardized.) PBS gets about 15 percent of its support from the feds, the rest comes from tax-deductible entities and individuals, me included.
But the government money is the foundation of the networks. With T-Rump's assault on non-profits coming next, they are rightly worried.
While we still have KNPB TV-5 in this region, I suggest you watch "The Disappearance of Miss Scott" this Friday, Feb. 21. It will air three times, first at 9:30 p.m., then at 2:00 a.m. and finally Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
"Hazel Scott was not only the most famous jazz virtuoso of her time, but the first African-American to have her own television show," PBS states.
At 9:00 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 25, TV-5 airs an installment of "The American Experience" about something dear to my heart. "The NAACP and Its Architects" is the story of "the most powerful civil rights organization ever created." Repeats at 2:00 a.m.
Spread the word and tune in.

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue to pray for Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡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 56-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 and former vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and a member Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

Rise of the Reptilian Brain Trust
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 2-12-2025 / Expansions in blue

"When your enemy is destroying himself, never interfere." — Napolean Bonaparte

Well, sportsfans, America's latest grisly TV game show, Species Survivor, is getting boffo ratings. And you were worried we would not have something carnal to do now that there's no football, right?

With the Mar-a-Loco cast of psycho-telegenic buffoons and poltroons pretty well in place, the children in the Billionaire Boys Club are making the world their plaything. They really get off protruding and probing into the primal reptilian reaches of their brains.

They would do better to look out for their fellow endangered relatives in swamps other than DC.

Our new king stopped work just as the magnum opus National Nature Assessment neared completion. The long-labored study documents erosion of biodiversity and focuses on "the dependence of the economy on nature," according to one of them their liberal scientific types with brown skin who talks funny. It's the economy, stupid, but who cares? ("The dumbass marks fell for the con and let us win the election, so it's time to cash in, dudes.")

BigOil executive suites are awash in champagne. Ditto the gilded dachas of the world's richest man, Czar Putin, and the posh palaces of Xi Xin Ping and Kim Jong Un.

In addition to pandemic death and dismemberment from cutting off myriad programs worldwide (Monkeypox/Bird Flu warning!), Czar Dastardo Donaldov's minions are working on making him president for life. He already has won the favor of many American idols.

The czar's new best bud, bloody Venezuelan President for Life Nicolas Maduro, apparently dispatched a hit squad to kidnap, murder and chop up a dissident hiding out in Chile. He was found in a suitcase, encased in quick-decompositional quicklime under five feet of concrete.

Forget about Law & Order. Our new king knows a ratings winner when he sees one. Beware that you might become the ripoff American sequel.
Hit TV, especially hit-man TV, is a copycat game. So who will be the first victim to become bloody proof that the guy with the small hands has a long reach? Is the Sparks Nugget Sports Book already posting odds?

After paving the way for ethnic cleansing in what he openly terms a Gaza "real estate development," our new king wants to import beleaguered white racists from South Africa. He just can't stand seeing white people in the minority. What's next, sterilizing anyone brown, black or Democrat? ("Aw, yew know, they breed like rabbits, LeRoy.")

And just in time for the critical February ratings sweeps, we have a budding constitutional crisis.

The only way to organize against these despots lies in defeating them on moral grounds. Political arguments just don't work against greedy psychos and religious zealots who will accept no god who is not made unto man's image and likeness.

I am repulsed by the God-whisperers who consider T-Rump the messenger of the Almighty sent here to smite down whatever and whomever their sect hates.

I was disgusted but not surprised by the responses of two holy men in last Sunday's Reno Gazette-Journal religion page. The question: Is there only one god?

The Catholic said his. The Muslim asserted likewise. As did several others among the enlightened. Long division is the name of the game. There are always real or imaginary enemies within or without. If there isn't one, we'll make one, right LeRoy?

Dictators always want to keep the Great Unwashed scrambling on the floor for crumbs dropped from the banquet tables of their betters. Those critters somehow seldom look up at who's starving them, save for rare exceptions like Marie Antoinette.

I was as wrong about the T-Rumpian timeframe as I was about the women of America coming out in record numbers to save the country last November.

I wonder if The American Monarch for Life has already called director Francis Ford Coppola about directing a sequel, "Apocalypse Now, the Series."

The Bleached Blonde Demi-God just loves the smell of burning democracy in the morning. Talk about a heart of darkness. Reptiles R US.

This unwashed, unlearned peasant can only ask you to ask something more of yourself in dissent, and please do so daily.

And ask whenever you see injustice: Have you no decency left?

I cannot elaborate better than the immortal words of attorney Joseph Welch to madcap demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisc., and his lawyer, future T-Rump mentor Roy Cohn.

"On June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch's attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: 'Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.' When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, 'Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?'

"Overnight, McCarthy's immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man." (From Senate.gov)

The game's afoot. The Decent vs. the Reptiles. Loser is lunch. Which side are you on?

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue to pray for Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡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 56-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

 

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

The Spaghetti Wall
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 2-5-2025 / Expansions in blue

"As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron." — H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Touché for the masterful wit who coined the immortal observation which still survives as "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
I went broke on last year's election by overestimating the resolve of American women to show up and vote against government-sanctioned invasion of their bodies, aka institutionalized rape.
The 2024 election was a case study of "do something, even if it's wrong."
Which recalls the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it."
Well, folks, you got it. And in just two weeks, all wrong.
Remember when that totally unconstitutional witch hunt called the January 6 Committee heard testimony about Czar Dastardo throwing a temper tantrum and hurling a plate of spaghetti against a White House wall?
Today, President T-Rump Part Deux is throwing so much spaghetti against the wall that no sane person can keep up let alone clean up. The marinara fog of war befuddles us all. Exactly the strategery of the bandidos in charge.
The pasta plague serves well as a metaphor for our current government kitchen fire. Elon Mush has turned a bunch of high school kids loose on the federal purse strings. They are now busily wheedling into the personal information of just about everybody in these parts living or dead.
That database is arguably the most valuable asset in the world -- a free ticket to marketing, political and megalomaniacal paradise. Information is power which generates money. Music to the Czar's pointy ears.
I can envision those pimply kids developing algorithms that not only target voters, investors and potential customers, but also build an enemies list the likes of which Richard Milhous Nixon never dreamed about in his wildest fantasies. Czar Putin's mouth waters.
I have neither space nor desire to produce even a checklist of the first half-month of democracy's armageddon. So I'll just go home again.
When Czar Dastardo fixates on something, like a spoiled rich child with a shiny new distraction, he loses interest in all else. Remember when he dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb in history on a few unfortunate Afghanistan ragheads? Less than three months into Depredation One, on April 14, 2017, he ordered the strike. White House aides marveled at his childish fascination on being the firstest with the biggest. You'da thunk Afghanistan was a virgin.
He describes himself only in superlatives and goes bananas when anyone calls his hands too small. (Stormy Daniels, call your office.)
Not only is El Presidente a legendary microbiologist and infectious disease specialist (upwards of 1.1 million U.S. COVID deaths so far), he is also a world class hydrologist. Which takes me back home to exciting Fresno and environs.
As the old saying goes, "whiskey's for drinkin'. Water's for fightin' over."
He has backed up his ill-informed bile about the Los Angeles water system's inadequacies in the face of unprecedented firestorms and came to the rescue with too much, too late.
Dr. Hydrology Catastrophe drew down two San Joaquin Valley reservoirs in a P.R. stunt to send water to the southland with the major fires already fully contained. He never bothered to check if the water could even reach Los Angeles 200 miles away. it couldn't come close and flooded a dry lakebed. Wasted.
I feel a twinge of sorrow for a lotta guys I grew up with who now control their family's farms, many of which have morphed into huge taxpayer-supported money machines.
The guy they voted for wasted humongous amounts of the water they need for this summer's crops. The western U.S. is basically a desert and only government-funded water programs made it bloom. Witness Fallon Nevada.
Racist talk show host Rush Limbaugh, to whom the Czar awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom, got his start and enjoyed his biggest ratings in California's central valley.
T-Rump has handily carried the Bakersfield-Fresno-Sacramento California gash. A lot of his bedrock moonhowler supporters are my classmates and relatives.
Who just got the ultimate cold shower.
Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
WHAT WOULD REAGAN SAY DEPT. "Mr. Dastardo, tear down that spaghetti wall."
INVESTMENT ADVICE. I'm the last guy you should listen to about this stuff, but I'm following the lead of my esteemed psycho president. It's well known that Czar Dastardo judges his popularity by the stock market. Simple minds, simple pleasures.
Punxsutawney Phil is a better predictor of the economy than Wall Street but I know our dear dicktater considers it his gospel. (Such a religious man.)
So, if you want to see what savvy Wall Streeters think of current economic prospects, check out the price of an ounce of gold since the first of the year.
On Jan. 1, it was $2,623.96 per ounce. As of last Monday, $2,877.10. That's a little over 9 percent in one month, or an annual percentage rate of 108.00 percent. Credit card loan sharks don't come near that yield. It means only one thing: Big boy investors worldwide are hedging their bets big time in anticipation of more economic uncertainty, courtesy of us.
RIDDLE OF THE DAY. (As if we needed more head scratching) What do you get when you cross Mr. Potatohead with a dildo? A dicktater. Seig heil.

AND REMEMBER, YOU CAN'T SPELL FELON WITHOUT ELON.

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue to pray for Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡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 56-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

Dastardly depredations of Czar Dastardo
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 1-29-2025

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who turn darkness to light and light to darkness, who replace bitter with sweet and sweet with bitter." — Isaiah 5:20
Some look with amusement at the abusement spewing from DC. Others look with shock and awe. That's entertainment, baby.
The hard fact is that lots of people are going to die because of the current capital freak show. Capital punishment, indeed.
In a typical bout of bully boy spite, Czar Donaldov canceled U.S. Marshals Service protection for people he detests. Dr. Anthony Fauci hired bodyguards. Dastardo just loosed more than 1,500 brownshirts on the body politic, some of whom may well believe that their get out of jail free card is also a license to kill. Seig heil.
Federal health agencies have not only been hit with a gag order, but they can't share info with each other, a situation made worse now that the godhead has pulled U.S. out of the World Health Organization.
Bird flu is burgeoning and we are caught with our collective pants down when we should have our sleeves rolled up. Do the Dastard and his dark knights care? Not a bit. Anything to place the great unwashed into a state of permanent fear. Snitch on your neighbor who may have closet counter-revolutionary DEI tendencies! Kim Jong Un is flattered.
If a new pandemic doesn't tank the economy, tariffs will, opening up lots of businesses and real estate for the Billionaire Boys Club to acquire figuratively and literally dirt cheap.
Can the day be far off when all those pesky Palestinians have been either butchered or deported to a distant desert hellhole? Vladimir the Impaler may have good reason to return Dastardo's compliment about the Ukraine invasion and anoint his groupie with a genius label.
Bad Vlad may have expanded his empire just in time for Trump to join the fun. New resorts will sprout on the Black Sea and the long-delayed Moscow Trump Tower will open as Eric Trump breaks ground on the Trump Eastern Mediterranean Riviera Resort Casino and Golf Complex.
Like the ancient Hebrews while Moses was otherwise engaged up on that mountain, Google just kissed the golden ass by re-labeling Mt. Denali and the Gulf of Mexico on its maps. Such shenanigans kill people.
I don't know if Google ever fixed it, but for years they listed Dog Valley Road near Verdi as an alternative to Interstate 80. People got stuck in blizzards wholesale on the narrow dirt and gravel trail.
Apple and Google promised to fix the deadly misinformation in 2022. I can't confirm that they followed thru after the media brouhaha faded.
Czar Dastardo has apparently replaced Andrew Jackson with William McKinley as his favorite president. Jackson was most famous for giving the finger to the Supreme Court: "The chief justice has made his decision. Now let him enforce it." Impeachable? Hell yeah. But slave plantation-owning Old Hickory was popular with the white peons.
Tariff-loving McKinley glommed Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines as spoils of the Spanish-American War. He hijacked Hawaii shortly thereafter. All because war hawks wanted to go shoot somebody and accused Spain of sabotaging the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor. Like the bombing of the Reichstag in Berlin a few decades later, no one really know who did what with which and to whom. In 1976, legendary Admiral Hyman Rickover attributed the sinking to coal fire.
Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst and the yellow press sold a lot of newspapers ginning up support for war. T-Rump just re-labeled Denali for McKinley. Again. (But Gulf of America? What's next, Lake Superior becomes Lake Ivanka?)
I hope no one names a mountain for Czar Dastardo. McKinley's second term did not end well.
ECONOMIC SUICIDE. "Almost 1 in 5 U.S. workers is foreign-born," Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote last week.
"Most of these workers are here legally, although as we’re already seeing, that may not be as much protection as you think. Most estimates suggest that unauthorized immigrants make up around 5 percent of the work force," he added.
"Losing a large fraction of these workers would be a serious blow to the economy, especially because immigrants, legal and not, play a much bigger role in some industries and occupations than they do in the economy as a whole...Immigrants — many of them undocumented — make up most of the farm labor force."
They also account for almost a third of the construction trades.
"So at a time when Americans are still angry about the price of groceries and, with more justification, about the unaffordability of housing, Trump’s immigrant crackdown seems set to hobble food production and home construction," Krugman said.
SHORT SHOTS. Don't feed your pets raw meat or raw milk. Cats have been dying of bird flu which means they can be a conduit to humans. El Dastardo's solution to that burgeoning problem has been to make sure health agencies can neither address it, research it nor talk about it. Kinda like he chose to ignore Covid-19 because he was afraid it would hurt his image.
Peerless predixion: He will blame immigrants for spreading the illness.
Jimmy Carter was a great campaigner but a micromanager. If someone came to him with "a problem," he would jump on it. Bad idea. Once a president has validated theexistence of a problem, it balloons in importance.
In his first two terms, California Gov. Jerry Brown pioneered the modern approach: Ignore it and it will most probably solve itself or someone else will. Just write press releases. Then came the Medfly.
T-Rump treated Covid the same way to much deadlier result. His inaction was directly responsible for at least 200,000 needless American deaths according to the most conservative estimate. And perhaps more than double that among the more than 1.1 million dead. So far.
RAY OF HOPE DEPT. A 1,000 year-old seed is now a 12-foot tree growing in Israel. It has no modern counterpart. Hope indeed springs eternal.

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue to pray for Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡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 56-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

Inattention abstention on coronation day
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 1-22-2025 / Expansions in blue

If you paid attention on Monday, you paid too much no matter your preferences, prejudices or peccadilloes. I phlaked out.
For many, the bright blue high desert Monday proceeded from the philosophical to the poetic to the prosaic to the prophetic to the phlegmatic.
I resembled that last label. I knew that no matter who did what with which and to whom, all would be waiting Tuesday.
I took the day off. Got a little recycling out in time for the Teamsters to come around. I'm glad somebody was paying attention and getting overtime for the trouble. The fake news New York Times arrived before dawn.
If I have a lesson to impart, it's that one measure of success in life should be how well we manage our passions and/or compulsions. I have been a political junkie at least since age eight. That's when I first remember pestering my mom about how she should vote. (Insufferable child!)
Last Monday, I immersed myself in television inconsequentials: Various versions of shoot-em-ups and trite sitcoms.
Meanwhile, the nation and world were suffused and distracted with the good, the bad and the ugly. (In sync with the day, that Clint Eastwood title was available.) I checked my consciousness at the doors of the Long Branch Saloon, the OK Corral or the Top Gun School.
I was so disengaged that the most enjoyable were reruns of stuff I had seen multiple times. Typical short attention span American.
If there's a moral to my Monday battery recharge, it's the myth of Sisyphus: By Tuesday dawn's early light, we all continued rolling the rock back up the hill.
MOUNTAIN OF GOO. The local Waste Management monopoly will not accept plastic bags for recycling (stay tuned). Barbwire spies have reported that many retail stores have removed their recycling drops. Zounds!
A lot of the biggies publicly insist they are taking care of business. I've had tips otherwise. If you have been returning plastic bags to your store but now find that service zapped, lemme know who and where.
I get everything delivered. I've had all the shots and have never caught any of the plagues permeating the body politic. (Yet)
Annoying commentary is best produced by us anti-social misfits anyway. (It's better than honest work, fergawdsakes.)
This plastic project was spawned by an overworked, slightly surly grocery delivery guy. I asked if he would take in my stash of recycling bags for extra money on top of my usual generous tip. (Hey, I'm a union man. Hard work should be rewarded).
I was shocked when he said "they don't do that anymore." Zounds. Let's work on this.
We need to save all those petroleum trees that BigOil cuts down to make plastic stuff.
NVExtortion ALERT. I've been fighting NVEnergy's greed since it was Sierra Pacific Powerful. It took 21 years (from 1960 to 1981) to get a consumer advocate's office established under Nevada's attorney general. (Back when I was younger and foolisher, I managed the initiative petition drive and subsequent lobbying campaign to get it established.)
Now, billionaire Warren Buffett's monopoly is trying to emulate California, attempting to persuade Nevadans to fund an in-house wildfire self-insurance policy for the company. Last week's Tribune front page story carried nary a mention of the utility monopoly's stockholders shouldering any of the cost or the risk. Remember, WE -- us peons -- are always the company's insurer.
NVE also wants to start an insurance management subsidiary for the project. More cushy jobs for highly-paid execs, perhaps? Who gets the interest on investments? Will it be included in financial statements to facilitate borrowing money at lower interest rates? Will the benefits flow thru to ratepayers? Who controls the subsidiary's costs? Will they be subject to full disclosure and regulation?
Perhaps most instructive in veteran reporter Amy Alonzo's major story was the company's refusal to comment as to whether NVE electrical infrastructure had ever caused wildfires in the past.
Google "Pinehaven Caughlin wildfire Reno 2020" and see what you get. They continue to proceed according to the golden rule of modern follytix: You can fool some of the people some of the time, and that's usually enough.
The more things change, the more they stay the same at Nevada's monopolistic money machine. Whether back in the rape-and-pillage days of captains Neil Plath and Joe Gremban or today's smooth suede-shoe good ole boys, the greedy soul of the NVE pirate ship has done no penance for its sins. Stay tuned to the NevadaLabor.com Energy War Room.
POLIO MAKES A COMEBACK. The cult of vaccine denial now has a new label, "health freedom." (Except for abortion, of course.)
"As vaccination rates decline, adults may become vulnerable to 'childhood' diseases," the NYTimes headlined this week. Childhood vaxx rates have plummeted since 2020. Polio -- POLIO! -- now sits between measles and whooping cough. Based on the last election, red state kindergarten vaxx "exemptions" are more than double those in blue states.
IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE? IT HAS. A couple of decades ago, a young Washoe County area utility worker contracted polio while performing his below-the-street labors. He remains a quadriplegic.
MILESTONE. Last week, I got a Barbwire Confidential subscriber near London, UK. Welcome aboard!
POETIC JUSTICE DEPT. Anti-gay singer Anita Bryant's obituary recently appeared in The New York Times the same day as that of transgender artist and author Pippa Garner who termed her transition just another creative experiment.
The most fantastical: a chassis-reversed '59 Chevy which appeared to be driving backwards at full speed. Her book of whimsical creations included low-rider rollerskates, a birdbath Jacuzzi and "a device for shooting garbage out your kitchen window."
She made t-shirts emblazoned with "Iraqi Horror Picture Show," "These are my remains" and my favorite, "I'd rather butter myself than better myself."
GENDER EQUALITY: Both got front page promos and two-thirds page obits.

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue to pray for Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡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 56-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

The Goats of the Ides of January
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 1-15-2025

Everybody knows that you're in trouble.
Everybody knows what you've been through.
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
to the beach at Malibu.
Everybody knows it's coming apart.
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
before it blows.
Everybody knows.

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

As Los Angeles burns, a whole lotta scapegoating's going on so we may as well get down and dirty with the smelly herd.
Ray Charles once sang, "the danger zone is everywhere." Indeed.
So where lie the roots of what ails us? (Goats may be living lawnmowers but I'm not worried about edible roots. Just the ones shoved down our throats and up our psyches by snake oil-peddling pimps and thieves.)
GOAT ZERO: The fabled Industrial Age.
I can't get away from a tale told to me by a retired Greyhound bus driver who bought a house in Hidden Valley from my late wife. Her clients invited us to a celebratory dinner and I started coughing and wheezing before the first beer.
The ex-driver related a story from his earlier days, perhaps in the 1950s. Driving thru the region of my birth, California's San Joaquin Valley, he was using his handkerchief. A lot.
Two senior citizen ladies happened to be seated right behind him. They noted that when they were girls in the late 19th/early 20th Century, nobody talked about allergies and such. Not a problem.
The ladies on the bus laid the gnarly sniffles squarely at the feet of the polluting Industrial Age. Wise women. At about the same time as that bus ride, BigOil was developing research about what their products were doing to the environment. The goo moguls correctly forecast that expansive sales of their black gold would warm the planet for the worse.
Then, they decided to cover up the research and promote themselves as cleaner than drifted snow on Christmas morning. They still do.
Climate change and its precursor, global warming (which our once-and-future president still insists do not exist), has caused mass displacement, starvation and migration. Couple that with the lucrative worldwide arms trade facilitating wars which cause further migration, and you end up where we are today.
Throw in a plague or seven rooted in this monster mannunkind's disruption of places we should not go (Ebola or MPox anyone?), stir in megalomaniacal pols (T-Rump and Xi Xin Ping ignoring Covid), and here we are: A world burning up figuratively and literally.
Wannabe dictators need scapegoats to enhance their power. Our golden toilet entrepreneur Czar Donaldov, the King of Gilt (props to Maureen Dowd), has recently been shopping for a disease to blame on immigrants.
He was elected to form a government but has instead been casting a television show. His highest appointments must look great on camera, qualifications or criminality be damned. (That's not an exaggeration. He chose his cabinet picks by watching video of their onscreen presence.)
As Saturday Night Live legend Billy Crystal often lampooned actor Fernando Lamas, "it's more important to look good than to feel good. And you look marvelous." (Crystal just lost his longtime home in the LA holocaust.)
I have had readers ask me for rays of light and referred some to my Nov. 13 Barbwire, "President Hoover, meet Smoot and Hawley."
Dictators usually begin wars of empire after they have totally silenced, subjugated or assassinated any opposition. T-Rump wants to go the likes of Hitler and Putin one better by starting early. Canada? Greenland? Panama? Denmark? What's next. Vatican City?
Republican President Herbert Hoover had a stellar career as an able public servant. He managed European relief after World War One. Hoover was pushed by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon to ignore the chaos caused by the 1929 Wall Street crash. The market would right itself, quoth Megabucks Mellon. (His grandkid Timothy was T-Rump's biggest early contributor, eclipsed only by Elon Mush.)
Alas and alack, a garden variety recession was turned into the Great Depression after Hoover signed the smothering Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930.
T-Rump may indeed impose some heavy tariffs, at least on countries or industries which can't buy him off with multi-million dollar Mar-A-Loco memberships and such.
We, the poor unenlightened unbelievers outside the King of Gilt's cult, can only do everything we can to blunt the damage until Smoot-Hawley 2025 craters the economy once again. Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.
Buckle up, we're in for a bumpy ride.
SHORT ATTENTION SPAN R US. Lately, I have seen many comments pegging 2010 as the time that the Democratic Party started losing its working class support.
Hateful Republicans started the 2010 "Tea Party" in backlash against anything and everything about that Black president who got elected just in time to clean up the 9/11 and Wall Street real estate bubble disasters left by Bush the Lesser.
Their wave-the-flag protests remain effective to this very day. Who doesn't remember fondly the Boston Tea Party's tax increase protest? Except it was a demonstration against a British TAX CUT which would have put colonist tea smugglers out of business. Same thing happens today with black market gasoline. Steal it and sell it to filling stations without charging any taxes on the transactions. The avoided levies are the profit. Same with imported tea in 1773.
The Boston Tea Party is like the Alamo, another misplaced reverence. American heroes Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were actually in revolution against Mexico's BANNING of slavery. Take that, John Wayne and Walt Disney. Fantasyland indeed.
CESAR XIX APRIL 2. Last year's César Chávez Celebration had the Circus Circus banquet facilities bursting at the seams. This year's event, the 19th since the legendary labor leader was first honored by the City of Reno in 1986, will be held at the Grand Sierra. Nominations are open for the hall of fame, union organizer, union project and employer of the year. Monitor CesarChavezNevada.com for details.

Get the latest boosters, mask up, stay safe and continue to pray for Ukraine and the currently 160 worldwide war-torn lands, including ours.

¡Sí se puede!

Happy High Holly Days to you and yours.

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.)

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Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 56-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. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

 

Breaking News —> Masks work! And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid. Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024