BARBWIRE: Washoe will decide presidency in 2024

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ANDREW BARBANO
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Washoe will decide the presidency in 2024
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 9-27-2023/ Expansions in blue

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The Dean's List

The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

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You are more important than you ever thought you could ever be, dear fellow denizens of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream.

I've been practicing (and malpracticing, in the auguste opinions of defeated opposition) Nevada follytix for over half a century. I proceed from a healthy respect for history, an unfashionable pursuit as we abandon English and revert to ancient hieroglyphics, aka emojis.

It it can't be placed on a bumper sticker...er, meme...it won't sell.

So here's your meme/bumper sticker/subject line for November 2024: "Small Nevada county decides presidency."

One of the first things I learned in my first statewide election, 1970, was that to win statewide, a Republican must win the north by enough to eclipse a Democrat's Gomorrah South edge.

Last year, Steve Sisolak and Catherine Cortez-Masto came up from Las Vegas with big leads. Both carried Sparks-Reno-Washoe. Failing to respond to Republican attacks, Gov. Sisolak didn't carry Washoe by enough to win the north. Sen. Cortez-Masto did. Simple. Put it on a bumper sticker: "Jane flies, Tarzan flops." (Barbwires Nov. 16 and 23, 2022)

The Barbwire predicted a 2016 GOP win in February with 17 moonhowlers in the race. This did not come from psychic predictions or polling, just experience combined with a healthy respect for scholarship. ("History foreshadows a GOP November win," Barbwire 2-16-2016)

LIFE IMITATES ART. Brilliant screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is currently wowing Broadway with his staging of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

He wrote both the popular 1995 film "The American President" and its television spinoff, "The West Wing." In 2005, the final season of the latter, he wrote a scenario in which Nevada provided the margin of victory for the first minority president of the United States, played by Latino Jimmy Smits ("NYPD Blue," "LA Law"). Alan Alda ("M*A*S*H") played his conservative GOP opponent. Recognizing the Republican's foreign policy experience, the Democrat appointed his former adversary as secretary of state.

Fast-forward to 2008-09. Barack Obama wins and appoints his vanquished primary rival, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state.

Well-founded analysis of the long cycles of American history foreshadow a Democratic win next year. So why will Washoe become the deciding factor?

The Silver State is now a critical swing state. The GOP candidate will carry all 15 of Nevada's small counties and the Democrat will sweep Las Vegas and environs. That means Washoe decides.

The Fox-fueled propaganda machine controls the minds of fully a third of the electorate. Democrats are having nightmares over splinter candidates siphoning off enough from President Biden to give the Orange Crusher an edge. It won't suffice. Those who think Ralph Nader pulled enough from Al Gore in Florida in 2000 have been proven wrong, as Nader drew votes from both major party candidates. Gore actually won the state outright but Clarence and the ammosexuals stopped the count.

Non-partisan voters actually split between Bush and Gore. While more Nevadans are today registered non-partisan, they will divide between the elephantine and Donkeyites next year, as always. Most simply don't want to "waste their vote."

Sparks-Reno-Washoe will thus have more political power than we've ever had before and may never have again.

I strongly suggest you register to vote, get involved and use your power. Democracy is on life support.

Expose yourself to a diversity of media and points of view. Talk to pols and their purveyors.

Us backwater hillbillies will have center stage. Put on a good show and give Aaron Sorkin something new to write about.

BAD MOON ON THE RISE. "Doonesbury" will no longer appear in the Reno Gazette-Journal or Gannett's almost 400 newspapers in its USA Today network. The RGJ gods own 217 dailies and 175 weeklies.

Combine that with the influence of the Fox Noise conglomerate and Sinclair Broadcasting's 294 television stations, stir in oily Koch money and the moonhowlers of the political jungle have to be feeling well-greased.

Sinclair controls NBC TV-4, FOX-11, NSN-21 and a host of smaller over-air signals in northern Nevada plus NBC-3 and others in southern Nevada. Envious of Murdoch Fox profitability, they have been polluting their local newscasts with biased, corporate-ordered news-ish-looking items for years.

My heart hurts for all the responsible journalists on Vassar Street forced to see their efforts undercut by company propaganda. I'm not saying don't watch, I'm saying watch other stations, too. You will find the contrast enlightening.

Reno Gazette-Journal staff apparently had no say in the comics re-shuffle announced last Sunday. It's easy for a corporation to trash the most powerful social commentary in the country by including a bunch of others.

How powerful does Doonesbury remain after lo, these many years? The weekly re-runs ala "Peanuts" have never lost their punch. Good writing holds up over decades. Doonesbury was the first comic strip to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Creator Garry Trudeau has since won three more.

The Sunday strip has always been first-run and retains mass influence. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks channeled Doonesbury on the PBS Newshour a couple of weeks ago. Doonesbury had correctly lampooned madcap Republican House of Representatives members as "performance artists." Brooks used the same term describing the impolite screamers who are working to shut the government down in a few days.

Back when we were a daily, the Tribune published Doonesbury despite the same strips appearing concurrently in the RGJ. The more the merrier. (Hey, Sherm. It's available.)

Go online? Not everyone is wired. The Internet or postage-stamp-sized iPhone screens are not like holding the paper for comics or news.

Given all of the above, I now know how Princess Cassandra felt.

Please don't let that wooden horse through the gates.

LET'S HEAR IT! The Tribune's own Kayla Anderson just outdid herself. A couple of years ago, she scored two Nevada Press Association awards. In the 2023 voting just released, she brought our newsroom a gold, silver and bronze. Impressive hat trick, young lady. Well done.

Keep up the good work and the good fight.

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

¡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 54-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 1988.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

President Biden is supposed to be the most powerful man in the world because he controls the most formidable military. Alas, that mantle has now passed onto the egocentric shoulders of Nevada's champion corporate welfare queen, Elon Musk.

Last year, the richest man on the globe scuttled Ukrainian drones attacking the Russian fleet because he didn't want to piss off his pal Putin. The unimpeded Red Navy then easily launched multiple missiles against Ukrainian cities.

Musk's SpaceX controls over 5,000 satellites in orbit and apparently our privatization-mad conservative government has contracted out military communications. Life on earth is now one big, deadly expensive electronic game.

How important are wartime communication systems? The first thing Gen. Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf did in the 1991 pushover Kuwait War was disable Saddam Hussein's military communications.

Ukraine has survived because the United States provides eye-in-the-sky intelligence in every arena, from Russian troop and armor movements to aiming artillery and missile strikes. But Czar Elon can stop anything he doesn't like, apparently. Joe Biden just got demoted.

Democracy is on the defensive worldwide. Der Fuerher Donaldov fits right in with the dictators he admires. Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban just announced his support for Trump's re-election, stating that the Orange Crusher can stop the Ukraine war. Sure. Get out the white flags and assemble the firing squads.

Trump called Czar Vlad the Impaler "a genius" for moving Russian forces to Ukraine's borders and threatening surrender or die.

Trump marveled at "all that land" his idol Putin was going to get. Visions of hotels and golf courses danced thru his head.

BARBWIRE EXCLUSIVE. AT&T is reportedly bailing out of landlines and ain't doing too good in the wireless biz, either. A few weeks ago, I tested my secondary cell.

"The number you have called is not in service at this time. Please check the number, hang up and try again," said the robo-lady from Voicemail Hell.

WTF!

I ended up talking with a young man somewhere back east who informed me that untold numbers of AT&T wireless accounts had been mistakenly disconnected because of a computer "upgrade."

Blaming computers is the modern equivalent of "the dog ate my homework." In this case, I believe Ma Bell — big, fat, rich and lazy.

To quote Ernestine, the smarmy switchboard operator created by the great Lily Tomlin, "we don't care, we don't have to, we are the phone company and we are omnipotent."

AT&T controls 40 percent of the U.S. communications market. With the dawn of artificial intelligence, that old joke may well come true.

BARBWIRE EXCLUSIVE, TOO. The losing streak continues for Ma Bell. Longtime AT&T Nevada President Stephanie Tyler retired last week, as did veteran executive Randy Brown. Ms. Tyler's portfolio also included Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii.

A native Nevadan who worked up through the ranks, Ms. Tyler ascended to the top job in 2010 after a sojourn as AT&T's chief lobbyist in the big leagues — the California Legislature, then DC. She took a year off to manage Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election campaign.

She was well trained for it here at home starting with her dad Brent Tyler, the best political pollster and best damn Republican I ever knew. Her mom, Anne, had been a dealer at the old Riverside Hotel. Brent was also a sales exec for Sparks-based Young Electric Sign Company, fabricators of the Reno Arch.

Stephanie was an aide to Republican Lt. Gov. Sue Wagner, then worked the ledge for AT&T before serving one session as a state senator representing Reno.

I told her that I am going to get a law passed banning all Silver State retirements. Nevada needs all the experienced help she can get, dammit!

Maybe I can recruit Stephanie as my lobbyist.

SHOUTOUT DEPT. Max congrats to Nevada Consumer Advocate Eric Witkoski and his boss, Attorney General Aaron Ford, for scuttling NVEnergy's attempt to include corporate sports sponsorships in people's power bills.

They even tried to hand ratepayer money to the Las Vegas Raiders after that pirate ship looted Nevada for a few billion.

Reminded me of the days when I worked with some of the best utility experts in the country against NVE's predecessors. Dr. William Belmont once related the story of Confederate region power monster Southern Company, the nation's second largest utility.

The CEO's wife was curiously chartering jetliners and flitting about the country working on "redecoration of corporate offices." They expected ratepayers to foot the bill for her crew's huge travel expenses.

Couldn't she just fly first class on Delta? It made no sense until Belmont's watchdogs compared her travel bills with the Alabama University football schedule. Junket game over.

Let NVE score all the executive sports perks its brahmins desire, but let the stockholders pay for it.

TOLJASO DEPT. Superstar NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers blew his entire season when he blew out his knee during his new team's first game.

The New York Jets play on artificial turf which the NFL Players Association now at long last wants banned throughout the league.

I've been warning about that hazardous pseudo-grass for almost a decade. Golden Eagle Park in Sparks is infected with the largest expanse of plastic greenery in the country, according to city hall.

Its appeal is obvious: Cheap, looks great on TV, low maintenance. And did I mention it's cheap?

The big difference in injury rates between natural grass and petro turf has been well documented. It's much worse for kids, those most susceptible to long term maladies like cancer and brain damage from the plastic green blades laced with ground-up used tires. Analysis has revealed a toxic cocktail of about 100 chemicals in the crumb rubber wasteland. See CONSUMERCOALITIONV.org/

When will they ever learn?

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Death by a thousand cuts
The incredible shrinking phony phone book
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 9-13-2023
Updated on the Ides of September & 9-17-2023 GMT / Expansions in blue

Whatever might the Orient Express, trolley cars and the new phone book have in common?

All such were intentionally neglected into the ground by their corporate overlords.

America's rapacious railroads weren't making enough money on their passenger lines, so they intentionally made the service so bad that people stopped using it. Thus advised my Uncle John who was once the Southern Pacific Railroad agent in Reno.

They kept the passenger business, he told me, but not on the rails. Which is why Greyhound bus depots began popping up next to railroad stations starting about 70 years ago.. They retained the passenger revenue without all those posh dining and sleeping car accommodations staffed by A. Philip Randolph's union members.

Mass transit suffered a similar corporate assassination. After WW2, Los Angeles enjoyed a world class trolley system. You could dwell in the burgeoning sprawl without needing a car, a situation that Detroit would not allow to continue.

So automakers, led by General Motors, bought up mass transit lines and made the service so bad that people stopped using them. What to do with all those cable car rights-of-way? Why, build freeways, of course. Which means people would need automobiles. Lots and lots of them. (Cough-hack-wheeze.)

Now that L.A. is so choked with bad air and gridlocked roads, a new idea has manifested: cable cars. Efficient, cheaper, cleaner. But where to lay the tracks? Why, on freeway rights-of-way, of course. Back to the future.

Alas, the venerable telephone directory is approaching the fate of the freeway Dodo bird.

In 2010, the AT&T Reno-Sparks-Washoe phone book was over two inches thick. The one which hit the deck this month measures less than half an inch.

Researching this story, I talked to a young woman answering the phones at a community organization focused on helping senior citizens. "I haven't opened a phone book in 20 years," she exclaimed.

As with once-glamorous rail passenger service and mass transit, AT&T and its minions have run the enterprise into the ground. Print media have indeed suffered in the age of the Internet but from top to bottom they have proven that you can't cut your way to prosperity.

I started flogging the phone company half a century ago when I advised a Republican legislative candidate to adopt a consumer dimension. Nevada Bell was planning to start charging for phone number information calls, a service for which customers were already paying. They backed down thanks to the media attention but eventually made it so expensive that AT&T finally announced last January that the service would cease.

Maddeningly, their obituary also states "Good to know: You'll still be able to obtain Operator and Directory Assistance services through traditional home phone service at pay-per-use rates."

Recently, that could be around $2 a call. No current rates are available.

Confusing, eh wot?

Exactly the point.

This sad summary of consumer abuse was sparked by a call to KTVN TV-2's talk line from a Sparks woman who had not received her new directory.

"Us senior citizens that don't have cell phones, that don't have computers, when are we going to get a phone book? I just can't imagine what the holdup is," she said.

TV-2 anchor Ryan Canaday referred her to "The Real Yellow Pages" phone number. She will be disappointed.

Whole categories of services have disappeared. Wide swaths of information that used to generate heavy profits are missing. Try to find a union or a TV station in the Yellow Pages. The only listing under "Television Stations and Broadcasting Companies" is (drum roll, please) little ole me, my old talk show number for Barbwire.TV.

Which explains why I get so many phone calls, especially from senior citizens, looking to call a TV or radio station. Just five radio and one TV station appear in the new white pages.

About 20 years ago, AT&T pulled a Southern Pacific, reducing white page listings to microscopic. The Reno Gazette-Journal trashed them and demanded re-printing a book that people could read. Editor Bruce Bledsoe's righteous rage went unheeded, of course.

A few years ago, the amazing shrinking phone book stopped including residential listings at all. AT&T's contractor published a thin supplement in tiny type that ratepayers could order. If they knew about it. Even that was eliminated just before the pandemic — when it would be most needed.

The 2010 directory contained 505 white pages, followed by 1,118 Yellow Pages. Reno-Sparks was much smaller before Tesla was given $1.3 billion in taxpayer corporate welfare money to plop down here and make us pothole-wealthy.

The 2018 residential booklet carried all of 21 pages of little listings.

I asked AT&T how I might obtain the white pages database. They told me that's not their department. I called the "Real Yellow Pages" contractor and they said the same thing. Catch 22.

Non-internet capable seniors (or the disabled or disadvantaged) trying to find necessary services have nowhere to turn.

Worse, many basic institutions are now absent from the phone book altogether. According the 2023 edition, the University of Nevada-Reno, Washoe County and the cities of Reno and Sparks have no phone service. Ditto Renown and St. Mary's hospitals. The 2010 phone book carried 32 upfront pages of useful community information before the paid listings.

According to a 2022 UNLV study, 10.7 percent of Washoe County's 65-plus population has no computer access. (I had no luck finding cell-phone stats.)

Unfortunately, the Nevada Public Utilities Commission is pretty much out of telephone regulation. I'm looking into filing a petition with the Federal Communications Commission.

Closer to home, there may be a consumer fraud issue given the fact that people allow publication of their phone numbers with an expectation that others will be able to reach them. Without a published book, they are paying for a service they don't receive.

Governments are spending taxpayer money for phone services which should be publicly available by all means possible. Currently, only people with Internet capability or those willing to pay for information calls, can find their public servants.

AT&T's number database is somehow, somewhere given to subcontractors nationwide, whitepages.com, for example. If they are not providing listings for all of their paid customers who want their numbers published (e.g., Renown and St. Mary's medical centers), the ratepayers should be given full refunds for all the years this has been going on. Failing that, this can constitute the basis for a national class action lawsuit.

A phone book shot full of holes is not just a nuisance, it's a ratepayer ripoff that can cost lives. Stay tuned.

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

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$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later
How come nobody noticed 'til now?
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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?

From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.

The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)

The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

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

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem
"The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24
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SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

Andrew Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

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

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

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