Barbwire: Pinky & the Brain

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005
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On January 16, 1959, two babies were born.
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Larry Barbano, Frater Mei
12-18-1947 / 10-18-2023

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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.

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Pinky & the Brain taking over the world
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-2-2025
Updated 4-2-2025/ Expansions in blue

Rape is not a crime of sex, as therapists advise and "Law & Order" dramatizes.

It's all about power, a worse addiction than money, gambling, sex or smoking.

Czar Dastardo Donaldov and the Muskatel Mob are inmates of the same asylum. They get their kicks screwing with people's lives.

Tariffs are pure presidential power trip.

I am sick and tired of watching the legit news media play by obsolete ethics and sure-to-lose rules. It is madness for rational minds to attempt reasoning with irrational sociopaths.

They are an alien species that exploits the real Gulf of America, the chasm between the megabux one-tenth of one percent and their lessers like you and me.

When you have acquired more material wealth than you could spend in a hundred lifetimes, the only remaining thrill lies in ruling. Many rich folk thus try to buy their way into public office, usually by convincing the great unwashed to "vote for me and I'll set you free." (Props to The Temptations.)

Legendary newsman Dan Rather just uploaded a Turkish proverb: "When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace instead becomes a circus."

And a cartoon. Which brings me to...

PINKY AND THE BRAIN RETURN. "Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs" ran from 1993-1998 and 2020-2023. I was unaware until my wife Betty flew back home from babysitting the grandkids.

"I think you might like that show," she recommended, remembering my addiction to the weekly "Muppet Show."

The three title cartoon characters were basically Disney-cute animated updates of the Marx Brothers.

"Pinky and the Brain" was a recurring Animaniacs feature. It has gained new currency thanks to...guess who?

Their opening theme sez it all: "They're Pinky and the Brain, Pinky and the Brain. One is a genius, the other is insane. They're laboratory mice, their genes have been spliced...Before each night is done, their plan will be unfurled: By the dawning of the sun, to take over the world."

Sound familiar? Actor Maurice LaMarche's voice for the Brain was a spot-on Orson Welles from "Citizen Kane," a film about another guy who tried to take over the world.

I'll post some appropriate 'toons with this column at NevadaLabor.com, including a new one from Pulitzer winner Ann Telnaes who quit when the Bezos Washington Post blackballed her brilliant T-Rump skewerings.

(Props to former longtime Daily Sparks Tribune sales exec Kathy Johnson for sending the online thread.)

LINCOLN AND THE BRAIN. Triple-Pulitzer honoree Thomas Friedman recently recounted a cautionary tale of Honest Abe.

UPDATE 4-2-2025: AFER T-RUMP'S TARIFF SHOW TODAY, FRIEDMAN WROTE: "I just saw the future. It was not in America.

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE DEPT. "The last time we did tariffs of this level was Smoot-Hawley," stated European geopolitical strategist Tina Fordham. (Amanpour & Company, CNN and PBS 3-31)

"The last time we used tariffs at this scale, famously was Smoot-Hawley, which was followed by the Great Depression. So there is a kind of romanticism in this administration with that late 19th-early 20th century period. President Trump talks about it a lot, about his affection for President McKinley. There are references to the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny that take us back to this period, which the president really lionizes as perhaps being the peak of U.S. power in relative terms before the wars. I do think most of us in the policy world get concerned that turning back the clock is the right thing to do when faced with more competition," she concluded.

America does not deserve going down with T-Rump's ship, McKinley style.

I've been writing about Smoot-Hawley since college. In the learned scholarship of those much smarter than me, the Great Depression should have been just a garden-variety recession. However, President Hoover listened to rapacious banker Andrew W. Mellon, who advised doing nothing.

Then, Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which walled off America and gave the country the GD'ed GD. ("President Hoover, meet Smoot and Hawley" Barbwire 11-13-2024)

TRUE DEMOCRACY. Somebody needs to launch a website announcing all the latest protests against T-Rump and the drunk-with-power Muskatel Mob. Here are the latest.

WEDNESDAY, April 2, 12:30p.m.: Nevada System of Higher Education graduate assistant teachers will be joined by Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-LV, and Nevada State AFL-CIO Executive Secretary-Treasurer Susie Martinez at the Nevada Legislative Building in Carson City. Goal: Get the U-System to recognize their union. Contact: Garrett Strain, (817) 964-9836, https://ngsw-uaw.org

SATURDAY, APRIL 5. Cinco de Abril brings "a national day of action to tell Elon Musk and Donald Trump HANDS OFF. Hands-off Medicaid, hands-off our jobs, hands-off public lands and so much more" sez the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.

Show up between 12 noon and 3:00 p.m. PDT at the Carson City Legislature. Also Noon to 2:00 p.m. in Mesquite. A march will form at High Noon at the NewYork/NewYork Hotel on the LV Strip. A second rally begins at 1:00 p.m. in downtown Gomorrah South.

For RSVP linx and info about all demonstrations nationwide, go to www.mobilize.US/handsoff

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

Send back the Statue of Liberty
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 3-26-2025
Updated 3-27-2025/ Expansions in blue

So demanded French politician Raphael Glucksmann, who noted "Americans have chosen to switch to the side of the tyrants."

Exactly the words of a Ukrainian military commander a week or two ago.

The late French President Charles de Gaulle has proven prescient. The pompous ass who got America into the Vietnam War now looks psychic.

From Paris, NYTimes writer Roger Cohen last week reported that de Gaulle is once again big in the City of Lights. (NY Times 3-19-2025)

In 1959, de Gaulle stated "Who can say whether in the future political circumstances may change completely. This has already happened on the face of the earth."

Cohen reported that de Gaulle "even suggested that the United States and the Soviet Union 'after I don't know what political and social upheaval might find common cause.' "

Zounds. The Dien Bien Phool got it right from the grave. No wonder the Democrats are shell-shocked.

So what to do?

We can't wait for the reincarnation of JFK. But one Bernie Sanders plus one Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have the makings.

The Vermont independent senator and the New York congresslady have been playing to boffo crowds that are making the Orange Crusher jealous. They expected 3,000 in Denver and got over 30,000.

That's like filling UNR's Mackay Stadium three times over. So where do we go from here?

Last week, longtime Democratic activist Ed Miller invited me to address a local gathering of Democratic Socialists of America. Curiously, AOC is a member but socialist Bernie is not. Go figger. This column has its roots in that ad-libbed lesson.

Like liberalism, socialism has been demonized by moonhowler shills. It just means taking care of your people, your social fabric, your society. Liberal just means "open-minded." Real communism? Think "community" or kibbutz. Joint effort for the benefit of all.

Russia and China are neither socialist nor communist.

They are fascist robber baron dictatorships.

Russia has rightly been called a third world country with a first world army. Little Ukraine has been punching way above its weight to prove that the Russian Bear is a stuffed pig.

The DSA audience I addressed via Zoom was quite young. They share the vulnerability of their elders.

Bernie and 35 year-old AOC are thus a matched pair of avatars.

So what can the loyal opposition do when faced by powerful "little men in a big time," as a Jerusalem commentator called Israel's Bibi Netanyayhoo and Czar Dastardo Donaldov?

1. AGITATE, agitate, agitate! As abolitionist Frederick Douglass advised in America's slavery era. Echoing Douglass, civil rights legend John Lewis said "make good trouble.

2. ORGANIZE. Organize. Organize! Corporate America has been trying to unwind Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal since it was formed in the Great Depression. They started in 1947 when the new Republican congress passed the union-poisoning Taft-Hartley Act over President Harry Truman's veto.

Take a cue from the civil rights movement. Organize high-profile boycotts ala Tesla today. Corporations are cowardly and will cave.

The U.S. has the most oppressive labor laws in the western world. The last three Democratic presidents promised reform but failed miserably. So...

3. TAKE OVER THE DEMOCRATS. My late great Tribune colleague Travus T. Hipp was present at the creation of album rock on San Francisco's KSAN-fm.

He got calls from students at Cal Berkeley asking for career advice in the Watergate era of 1972-75.

Travus' reply — to Berserkely liberals — register Republican!

"You can buy the GOP for a dime on the dollar now," Travus advised.

"If you want a career in politics, the Republicans are wide open."

Several did and had successful and lucrative careers thru the connections they made. I know some mediocre Nevada lawyers and no-talent campaign "managers" who did the same thing in these parts.

4. "GET SOME KNOWLEDGE. Go to college. Stay there till you're thru. If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, think what they can make out of you." So advised The Greatest, Muhammed Ali. The late champ remains correct.

College gives you a chance to explore alternatives and horizons you never knew existed. That happened to me. It can happen to you.

5. LEARN HISTORY. READ. "A library is a poor man's university," advised Nevada's greatest lawmaker, the late Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas.

Knowledge is power. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," advised George Santayana.

Master your language, or two or three. Learn to speak and write clearly. Emojis and WTF hieroglyphics are cute but not at all clear.

6. KNOW WHO YOU ARE and what you stand for. When you make a commitment, keep your word.

7. NEVER PLAY THE OTHER GUY'S GAME. So advised fabled New York writer Damon Runyan from a century ago.

That's the mistake the mainstream legit news media make. Like Joe Biden, they continue to play by the old rules that T-Rump and the Muskatel mob violate every day.

"If some sharp comes up to you and wants to bet that he can pour cider in your ear without you knowing it, there's only one thing sure: You're gonna end up with an earful of cider." (Paraphrasing a Runyan story.)

T-RUMP and Muskatel are psychotic little boys having lots of fun playing with peoples' lives.

Don't react to them. Make them react to you. Throw them off their vicious greedy little game.

8. BEWARE KHADAFFI DISEASE. Know thy enemy. Our presidential Prophet of Profit is only out to destroy. Power brings money and there's never enough for these bastards.

After Libyan dictator Muammar Khadaffi was overthrown, he left his country with no institutions. No judiciary. No legislature.

From building permits to library cards, "Khadaffi ran everything," one report noted. He was the king that T-Rump and Muskatel aspire to become.

9. PRODUCE YOUR OWN MEDIA to appeal to your peers.

Do what you're good at.

10. 'Nuff said?

¡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

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)

I 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 "back in the Rule of Law Era."

The awful truth hurts.

¡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

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