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Photo: Debra Reid, Sparks Tribune



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

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


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


Gov. Lumbago's Slush Fund
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-3-2023


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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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Sen. Skip Daly, D-Sparks, kicked the governor's ass last week.

Greenhorn GOP Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago's minions came before the State Senate Government Affairs Committee to push for a government "modernization plan," dubbed "the Nevada Way" — a slogan apparently copied from UNR President Brian Sandoval's "Wolf Pack Way."

Either way, there were few cheerleaders.

"I'd really like to talk about the Nevada Way," said Sen. Pete Goicochea, R-Eureka, but "I don't understand it."

I do. It would give the guv a multi-million slush fund to play politics with, a throwback to old Chicago or Tammany Hall.

Senate Bill 431 "aims to make us more nimble, more strategic and more responsive," stated Gov. Lombardo's Chief of Staff Ben Kieckhefer.

Poor Ben. He was an excellent reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal, then got elected to three state senate terms as a Reno Republican. Alas, success has impaired him physically: His bullshit detector is broken. Daly's is not. (Appropriate terminology courtesy of the late Tribunite and Nevada Press Association Hall of Famer Dennis Myers.)

"The bill would allow for an increase in the state's Rainy Day Fund from the current 20 percent of general fund appropriations to 30 percent, with half the increase placed in a new 'Nevada Way' fund to be used at the governor's discretion," Nevada Current journalist Dana Gentry reported.

Zounds.

Before the legislature convened, the Rainy Day Fund was already stuffed with more than $900 million, highest in history. Nevada's general fund (state-generated money) for 2022-23 stands at $4.6 billion and will increase to $5.4 billion for 2023-2024. (The state will actually spend more than $24 billion a year starting in July. Most comes from that wasteful federal government, so God-fearing conservatives should send it back, right? Dream on, my precious snowflakes.)

So Gov. Lumbago wants lawmakers to give him control of perhaps half a billion a year which he can spend any way he damn well pleases.

"You have read the Constitution, right?" Daly asked Kieckehefer aide Jim Wells, noting that spending without legislative approval is against the law and violates the separation of powers.

"The way I read (the bill's) language is (once) 'we've got it, we can do whatever we want with it' " without any oversight, Daly noted.

Last week, I recalled author Jeff Greenfield's warning about new chief executives trying to re-organize the government and the wasteful chaos it creates. (See Jimmy Carter, Bush the Lesser and Czar Donaldov.)

I have longed preached that guys like ex-sheriff Joe Lombardo are possessed of exactly the wrong mindset to be a governor or president. All-powerful CEO's have a "my way or the highway" mentality. Do as I say or you're fired.

A sheriff can demote or ax an underling. A casino boss can fire a dealer who talks back or complains when he feels her up. A governor can't fire a senator. A president can't oust a congressman.

Daly gave the newbie guv a seriously needed cold shower.

HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER. Sen. Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, holds her dad's former seat. I knew Senator Joe. The G.O.A.T. would be proud.

Ms. Neal just introduced Senate Bill 394 which "would limit the Governor's Office of Economic Development to approving tax abatement packages of $500,000 or less."

No more rubber-stamping billions in corporate welfare freebies for the likes of Tesla. The bill passed the Senate on a strictly partly line 14-7 vote on April 25. So much for Republican fiscal restraint.

“It’s interesting how we can give benefits to the rich but we won’t sit down and give that kind of abatement to the poor. We won’t sit down and give a tax abatement in order to build supportive housing, which will take care of our homelessness problem. But we’ll give $200 million, $500 million to a billionaire so he can get wealthier and not pay taxes in the state of Nevada," Neal said.

Now you know why your potholes don't get fixed.

BANNED IN DESANTISLAND. Were I tempted to break my paranoid COVID quarantine, I'd go see "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" now in theaters. The girls coming-of-age film, based on author Judy Blume's oft-banned 1970 magnum opus, is getting rave reviews.

“I live in Key West — even though we like to pretend it’s not in Florida — we have the same governor,” Blume said, calling Ron DeSantis “a governor who wants to control everything, starting with what kids can think, what they can know, what they can question, what they can learn, and now even what they can talk about.”

Prohibition is the best promotion for any work, so Desantis should at least get free tickets.

EATING THEIR WORDS DEPT. Last week on Sam Shad's Nevada Newsmakers TV show, legislative lobbyist Mike Draper said trust has "dissipated tremendously" and in the last three years has disappeared. Lawmakers are all "starting at ground zero," Draper added.

Shad noted that longtime Republican operative Draper "says they're feeling the effects of term limits where it's a new group of legislators first experiencing the building and communicating with media and lobbyists, and the trust isn't there."

GOP heavyweight Sig Rogich fronted the term limits initiative in 1994-96. Seeing Democratic voters pouring into booming Las Vegas, Republicans pushed term limits to blunt the power of the vote. Critics predicted exactly what Draper now complains about, a part-time legislature woefully short on experience compounded by a greenhorn governor.

EATING SPENDING CUTS. The midwestern corn-state ethanol lobby won exemption from House Speaker McCarthy's proposed depression-triggering spending cuts. Expect more.

EATING DRUGS. The past week brought a heavy advertising barrage from Big Pharma giant Eli Lilly for what is heralded as the world's best-ever anti-obesity prescription which may become the "most successful drug ever." (I believe alcohol already permanently holds that title, but why quibble with Madison Avenue mad men.)

The fat buster is labeled "Mounjaro." The joke is on us and anyone who speaks even a little Italian is laughing.

Just reading it aloud without prompting, it readily comes out as "mangia" or "mangia-tah," Italian for...drum roll, please...the invitation to "eat" hearty.

EAT THIS. Insurance does not cover it so the mangia cure will cost about $1,200 a month.

Mama mia!

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet.

¡ 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.

The awful truth and then some
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-26-2023

THE TRUTH ABOUT FAKE NEWS. Tucker Carlson, a lesion on the body politick, has been excised, at least for awhile.

AIN'T NO FAKE NEWS IN THESE PARTS. Awhile back, I congratulated the corporate owners of the Reno Gazette-Journal for appointing veteran journalist Peggy Santoro as only the second woman executive editor in the paper's history. (The first was Barbara Henry almost 50 years ago.)

[[CORREXION: Ms. Santoro is the fourth female executive editor, preceded by Barbara Henry, Tonia Cunning and Kelly Scott. Ms. Henry joined the Reno Evening Gazette and Nevada State Journal as a reporter in 1974, eventually becoming managing editor. She became USA Today assistant national editor in 1982 and returned to Reno as executive editor of the newly-merged RGJ in 1983. Mea maxima culpa.]]

Peggy and her small staff are doing Pulitzer Prize quality work. I suggest you get the print copy of last Sunday's paper. It can win journalism's top prizes all by itself with its investigations of fatal sexism in the Nevada Army National Guard, brutal bullying of girls at North Valleys High and the murder of a battered young mother in Verdi.

Brava!

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TEAMSTERS. Last Friday, newbie Keolis Transit boss Phil Pumphrey told Regional Transportation Commissioners that in all his years working in other climes and with other unions, he has never seen the degree of activity manifested by Sparks-Reno Teamsters Local 533.

Mr. Pumphrey, that has everything to do with your French government-owned employer. RTCRide had experienced only one strike in a five-decade relationship with its workers' union, 21 years ago. For-profit Keolis came aboard in 2019 and the workers were forced into strikes three times just two years later. COVID-19 safety mandates were ignored as the transit provider upon which so many taxpayers depend morphed into a superspreader.

That compounded so many problems created by Keolis management.

The union members won all three 2021 strikes, a Hat Trick of victories.

Nonetheless, last year, the RTC board extended your contract into 2026. That's not set in stone. You have an opportunity to bridge the gap if your higher-ups will let you do it.

Transit system ridership plummeted from the day Keolis took over in July of 2019, eight months before the COVID-19 shutdown.

Last year, Sparks Mayor and commission chair Ed Lawson warned "We need to blow the thing up and build a better system."

Bringing in non-Nevada, or in this case, non-U.S. management, has proven a failure. It's time to return the transit system to those who pay for it.

The ball is in your court to do a better job.

Section 4.10 of your company's contract provides that the commission is free to terminate your relationship at any time. That's fair. Nevada is a fire-at-will state which is why workers unionize in order to protect themselves from such conditions.

Maybe you and Keolis need to join a union, eh wot?

Welcome to Nevada, Phil.

THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR GUV. Reno Fire Chief Dave Cochrane and Washoe County School District Trustee & Fire Inspector Joe Rodriguez ($1000 fine) have been found in violation of ethics laws for donning their public service uniforms during last year's political advertising.

Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago used stills and video of himself wearing his Clark County sheriff togs in numerous campaign ads. A complaint was filed before last year's June primary and the ethics watchdogs have yet to act. All they need do is a websearch to confirm the evidence.

As Chico Marx said so long ago in the 1933 Marx Brothers classic comedy "Duck Soup, "who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"

I sent an inquiry to the Ethics Commission weeks ago. Nada.

THE TRUTH ABOUT GOV. LOMBARDO AS JIMMY CARTER. In his classic campaign management manual "Playing to Win," Jeff Greenfield advised candidates what not to do if they attained office.

"Don't reorganize the government" was near the top of the list. He noted Jimmy Carter's futile attempts. His newly-created Department of Education played musical offices every few months during its early years.

Gov. Lombardo has a bill before state lawmakers to "modernize state government."

Good luck with that, Guv.

WILL YOU BELIEVE THE TRUTH WITH YOUR OWN EYES? Distinguished Nevada educator, prima ballerina, choreographer, poet and author L. Martina Young recently received another in a long line of career accolades.

She just became "the first and newest west coast artist invited to publish with New York’s Performing Arts Legacy Project." (Link with the expanded edition of this Barbwire at NevadaLabor.com)

Dr. Young just returned from attending NYC’s 2023 commemoration of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

"It was a splendid turnout of all things Labor Union Movement!!!" she wrote.

Starting with the Feb. 21, 2018 Barbwire, I have been including a Triangle Shirtwaist item at the end of every online Barbwire expansion guaranteed to chill every fan of the iconic TV show "Cheers."

One of the murderous Triangle Shirtwaist factory owners helped win an Emmy for the program's iconic opening credits.

The infamous 1911 fire claimed 146 lives and injured 71 others. The owners were fined a whopping $75 per death, less than $2,000 in today's dollars.

Most of the dead were young, immigrant Italian and Jewish women. Not worth much, apparently.
I found something eerily familiar about the recurring still photos of the greedy owners included in a PBS documentary. One looked identical to the smirky guy in the bowler hat with a beer in his hand on the Emmy-winning opening credits of the popular "Cheers" TV sitcom. "Cheers" producers never responded to my queries.

Some of those young victims came through Ellis Island during the same years as both sides of my family.

Kudos to New York for remembering. Thank you, Dr. Young, for representing Nevada.

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet.

¡ 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.

The Veep and the Bus Boy
Fire hazards and ego trips
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno
/
Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-19-2023 / Expansions in blue

If the Secret Service has come for me by the time you read this, please write me in jail.

I tried to warn Vice-President Kamala Harris' retinue that if the secret location of her Tuesday speech was the UNR Student Union's fourth-floor theater, she would be walking into a fire trap. That theater is unsafe. (Barbwire 12-12-2013)

The site was never disclosed because of "security concerns."

The Reno Gazette-Journal added that Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve would be joining her. [[ UPDATE: As did actress Rosario Dawson ("Men in Black II"; "César Chávez") ]]

A City of Reno press release made me worry more.

Schieve along with former Nevada governor and current UNR President Brian Sandoval on Monday announced a half-hour "business roundtable discussion" at 9:00 a.m. Tuesday in the rotunda room at the UNR Library (aka the "knowledge center," whatever the hell that means).

Which is right next door to the Crowley Student Union.

The Nevada (lithium) Battery Coalition, Mayor Schieve and Sandoval were slated to welcome Dilawar Syed, U.S. State Department.Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs.

It appeared an attempt to piggyback on the VP's event. The library rotunda is too small for the vice-president, media and the invitation-only crowd recruited by her staff.

It's a sad day when the vice-president of the United States has to hide from the public because of the ever-present threat from moonhowlers.

At least she's requiring proof of negative COVID-19 tests from anyone attending, which is more than I can say for just about anywhere in this town save a few medical facilities.

[[ UPDATE: Her speech was held at the nearby Nightingale Concert Hall. About 500 attended, none wearing masks. ]]

CHILLING PROSPECT. If anything should happen to President Biden and VP Harris, House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Mar-A-Loco, becomes president of the United States.

BILLY THE BUS BOY BUSTED. Veteran journalist Peggy Santoro was recently named Reno Gazette-Journal executive editor and has made it a much better publication.

Over the past week, the RGJ published a scathing series about the Washoe County Regional Transportation Commission and Executive Director Bill Thomas. Begun under former Executive Editor Brian Duggan in 2021, it's damning. (Gee, maybe they did read all the union stuff I sent them.) Reporter Jason Hidalgo's investigation demonstrates cronyism, favoritism, conflict of interest, low morale, blackballing and multiple executive resignations.

The RGJ devoted more than half of last Sunday's front section to the exposé (five and a half pages), following another front page story last Friday.

Reno Councilmember Jenny Brekhus comes off like Princess Cassandra, the legendary seer of Troy who warned her family not to let that huge wooden horse thru the gate. Like the doomed city, RTC commissioners hired the only executive director candidate with zero transportation experience.

Last year, current RTC chair and Sparks Mayor Ed Lawson said “We need to blow the thing up and build a better system."

Now is the time to start the process in order to avoid a repeat of 2021's Hat Trick Strikes.

PLAUSIBLE IRRESPONSIBILITY.
Conspicuous by its absence was any mention of the bus system's unsafe worker and passenger conditions, all created by hiring for-profit corporations to manage the system. Why? Plausible deniability so elected officials and guys like Thomas could say they have nothing to do with anything that goes wrong.

The current bus system was created in 1982 when the region was served by a creaky predecessor called Nevada Transit. The only efficient part of it was Elderport, a senior/disabled shuttle started and managed by legendary community activists Dorothy Pharis and Patricia Fladager.

Nevada Transit boss Jerry Hall saw an opportunity. Promising to "save Elderport," he got a sales tax increase placed on the November 1982 ballot. As with the more recent sales tax hike to build and maintain schools, voters were given no alternatives.

Hall folded Elderport and ousted Fladager and Pharis immediately after voters reluctantly imposed a new regressive tax on themselves. He shunted the funds to his new empire.

By the end of the decade, mismanagement led to a union organizing drive spearheaded by driver Lou Martino. Workers voted for Teamsters Local 533 which has represented drivers and support staff ever since. In the 1990s, the late Martino was elected the union's secretary-treasurer and principal officer.

The Regional Transportation Commission consists of one Sparks and two Reno councilcritters along with two Washoe County Commissioners. Somewhere along the line, they chose to subcontract transit system management to for-profit subcontractors. Big mistake.

Practically, that meant handing some outfit more than $400,000 a year to send three — count 'em — three whole executives to Sparks-Reno. Until 2021, there had been only one transit strike, under Martino in 2002.

Then came French government-owned Keolis Transit. Because of the toxic management style of Mr. Thomas combined with Keolis ignoring COVID-19 safety, the union went on strike three times in 2021, winning all three, a labor Hat Trick.

The union contract expires on June 30, 2024. Keolis has cost the transit system hundreds of thousands in damages due to chronic abuse of workers. After RTC gave him a raise last year, Mr. Thomas currently makes more than $350,000 a year.

Now is the time to unwind the wasteful subcontracting and bring management back home. How wasteful? A few years ago, RTC found that a position in its budget totally duplicated one at the transit contractor. Did they eliminate the job description to better use taxpayer money elsewhere?

Hell no.

They created a new job out of whole cloth so that they could preserve that line item.

Until Mayor Lawson's explosive comments, the only RTC commissioner to call for an end to subcontracting was the late Sparks Councilmember John Mayer.

Alas and alack, Keolis will be in charge until at least 2026.

In August of 2022, Bill Thomas and Ed Lawson supported allowing Keolis to exercise its first option to renew for 3 years under its 2019 10-year contract (3 years followed by 2 years, then another 2 years) starting July 1, 2023; approved by RTC commissioners.

Performance is periodically reviewed, so hope springs eternal.

The Reno Gazette-Journal series will be linked to the Barbwire expanded edition at NevadaLabor.com along with the complete history of RTC's adversarial relationship with its workers.

[[ MUCH MORE AT THE NEVADALABOR.COM TEAMSTERS WAR ROOM ]]

CLINGING TO THE LEDGE. Teamsters legislative days happen late next week. Details at NevadaLabor.com/

TWEET OF THE WEEK from Donald J. Trump: "I recorded this special message just for YOU. I'm committed now more than ever. Are you? Please watch & donate."

EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT! TRUMP COMMITTED! LOCATION NOT DISCLOSED. (UNR's Student Union Theater, perhaps?)

Should I send flowers to New York's Bellevue Hospital? Or the Nevada Mental Health Institute?

I can dream, can't I?

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for children afflicted by U.S. gun and environmental disasters, as well as those of Ukraine, Sudan and more than five dozen other war-torn lands.

¡ 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.

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$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later

How come nobody noticed 'til now?
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?

From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.
The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)
The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

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

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem
"The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24

By Michael Cooper / The New York Times 1-23-2019

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Copyright © 1982-2023 Andrew Barbano

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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