Barbwire: Trump's Death Sentences

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Donald Trump's Death Sentences
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 3-19-2025
Updated 3-19-2025/ Expansions in blue

Czar Dastardo Donaldov imposed capital punishment on me on Friday the 13th of March, 2020.

With four or more COVID-19 targets on my back, I went on the lam. So far, I've won. It has not come cheap. I had to pretty much fold my business and forgo most human contact. These days, I go to medical appointments and a rare late lunch at a mostly-deserted cafe. Masked up, of course. (Another Damned Democrat!)

Others have not been so lucky. Some believed Dr. Orange Crusher that the plague would evaporate with warm weather. Or that drinking bleach or fish tank cleaner would cure you. What if we got a dollar for every time T-Rump bragged "who knew that I knew so much about...(fill in the blank)?"

One of his first-term cabinet appointments put it brutally: "He's not an educated man." He paid a ringer to take his entrance exam at the University of Pennsylvania. From there, he got a degree in Animal House. Officially, it was economics, but given his current tariff arousal, he spent his time in a toga with frat bros. of Senator John Belushi-Blutarski.

We've had our share of T-Rump victims hereabouts. Sparks High graduate Tony Stempeck had just taken over Casale's Halfway Club from his mother Inez, who had died a month earlier at 93. His grandparents founded the landmark as a grocery store in 1937, "halfway between Reno and Sparks," now the oldest restaurant in town.

Tony Stempeck was 63. The fourth generation is now in charge. (NY Times 11-5-2020)

have lost friends and neighbors, but I've been haunted for more than five years by the words of one grieving daughter in Texas.

Her father loved going to their local bar to hoist a few with his buds on Friday evenings after work. He skipped a week, then heard El Presidente say that COVID was no more harmless than a cold or mild flu and would go away with warmer weather. He headed for the bar as usual. And suffered horrible death a week later.

"He only made one mistake in his entire life," his tearful daughter said, "he believed Donald Trump."

A tight-knit Italian-American New Jersey family lost five members in just a few days. Based on their name, Fusco, they may well have been my distant cousins.

T-Rump first ignored, then made a big deal of refusing entry to a northwest port for an ocean liner which had one COVID victim aboard.

He bragged that America remained COVID-free because of his decisive wonderfulness. (See Xi Xing Ping, below.)

Meanwhile, airlines brought legions of Chinese passengers to Vancouver, Canada, for U.S. entry.

At the same time, east coast flights from Italy arrived with 40,000 potential Typhoid Marys. The land of my ancestors was the earliest hit among western nations. T-Rump issued press releases.

In China, his pal Xi Xin Ping ignored the plague until it was too late. China's fearless leader even forced the first courageous Wuhan doctor who sounded the alarm to publicly apologize for putting out "false, alarmist" information. The young doctor died of COVID shortly thereafter.

As one commentator noted, "woe to the underling who dares send bad news to Beijing."

Xi then turned on the propaganda machine to show how well he was protecting the populace. He has never disclosed the numbers of dead or infected and stonewalled international investigators looking for the source.

T-Rump copied Xi's act. One couple actually drank fish tank cleaner. Both were hospitalized, the husband died. The perils of believing Donald Trump.

"But despite the pleas from those who cannot forget COVID and who seek more research, more empathy, more attention, the more pervasive attitude is 'We don't need to care anymore,' said Mary Fissell, a historian at Johns Hopkins University." (NY Times 3-11-2025)

Almost 112 million Americans have contracted the plague in the U.S. More than 1.2 million have died, over one in 10 and still counting. How many can T-Rump be directly blamed for?

Peter Jay Hotez, M.D., Ph.D, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University in Texas, was asked that question. He replied that a conservative estimate is that at least 200,000 Americans need not have died if Donald J. Trump had acted like a president.

So we re-elected a paranoid psycho convicted criminal and measles are back to kill you and your kids. The facts speak for themselves.

Auto salesmen know that customers most satisfied with their "great deals" are those "we've buried the deepest." Nobody likes to admit they've been screwed. Welcome to the United States of Buyers Remorse, coming soon to your 'hood.

The plague abides. Long COVID continues countless debilitation. May you and yours survive.

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS. It seems like every day, a new anti-T-Rump demonstration is announced.

Add two: This Thursday March 20, the American Postal Workers Union Local 936 will demonstrate against dismantling the USPS; 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., 2000 Vassar Street Reno Main P.O. Info: (775) 788-0684.

The National Assn. of Letter Carriers hits the bricks at 11:00 a.m. this Sunday the 23rd at the downtown BELIEVE Plaza in front of Reno City Hall. Info: (775) 250-8348.

APWU represents postal clerks, truck drivers, mechanics and custodians — the folks who keep the mail moving, then hand it to letter carriers for your house.

If T-Rump and his Muskovite headhunting cossacks succeed, the only way you will be able to mail a Christmas card to Aunt Eudora in Wabuska will be via carrier pigeon.

PSYCHIC OR WHAT? News item: T-Rump fires Kennedy Center board, puppets on his replacement board appoint himself their godhead as boss.

Will he give himself the Mark Twain Prize for Comedy? Or a special ironic dark comedy trophy to his idol Putin?

Accepting in 2010, Tina Fey thanked "the Kennedy Center, or as it will soon be known, the Tea Party Bowling Alley and Rifle Range."

Accepting in 2018, Julia Louis-Dreyfus referred to pre-Trump as "the Rule of Law Era."

The awful truth hurts.

Get the latest boosters, mask up and continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Pope Francis, Ukraine, Gaza and the world's more than 160 currently 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

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

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!

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:

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!

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.)

_________________________

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

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