BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO
Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream


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BARBWIRE SCORES SIXTH NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION AWARD

Barbwire Silver Anniversary 1988-2013 —>Now we go for gold
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.

   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.

— Leonard Cohen

"If voting mattered, they wouldn't let us do it."Travus T. Hipp, 1982

The Underbellyof the News—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential


We don't need no education: Leaks R Us
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-30-2014 Sparks Tribune


WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

Support Don Dondero next

Barbwire wins sixth Nevada Press Association award

We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series

Barbwire.TV
Watch NevadaLabor.com for show times.
Help us get the word out.

Support the project at http://resurge.tv#donate

SUING FOR SCHOOLS
Updated 8-30-2011
Reruns on Carson-Dayton 226

Additional programs
on Boulder City cable. Go to bcnv.org and then
go to the BCTV link.

If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves

The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.

The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.

Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.

Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.

You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.

You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.

Thanks.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew


Click here for selected on-demand re-runs from the Barbwire.TV archives

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success

Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file



Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more, nor less," said Humpty Dumpty during Alice's walk through Wonderland.

Words matter. Information is power. Which brings me to the corrosive campaign against most of the Washoe County School District Board of Trustees.

In a rare front-page editorial worthy of Tesla worship, the Reno Kazoo-Journal last week jumped on the recall bandwagon, echoed by bullet-headed D.A. Dick Gammick, R, and finger-to-the-wind Assembly Minority Leader Pat Hickey, R-Reno.

Nothing like leading from the rear, which is where their heads usually are.

Nowhere in recent self-righteous vitriol did anyone genuflect to the demi-god of full disclosure. Breach of the Nevada open meeting law motivates the tar-and-feathers tribe but demand for facts has been curiously absent of late.

The public discourse has been single-sided because state law forbids school board members from discussing personnel issues in public.

Ousted school boss Pedro Martinez, under no such restriction, first attributed the dustup to semantics about his status as a certified public accountant.

I guarantee it had more to do with CYA than CPA.

For experienced public officials to act as they did on June 22, something much more serious had to have gone down.

Any legal settlement with Martinez must not include a perpetual gag order.

Alas and alack, early reports indicate it will.

Without full disclosure, the community cleavage will continue to clot and rot.

The coming of the Tesla corporate welfare battery plant is being used as a club.

Tesla may need educated workers but is certainly not going to be paying to educate them.

We are.

So what are Tesla's biggest suckups doing? Working to further cripple an already beleaguered education system by ripping open the clots and continuing the bleeding.

Nevada ranks fourth among the least-educated states and is not likely to improve given the stingy corporate shills we elect like battered spouses who keep coming back for more.

The school board is not without sin. They basked in national glory when former superintendent Heath Morrison announced miraculous graduation rates, progress praised by the RGJ and Gammick last week.

This column, with help from the Reno-Sparks NAACP, debunked the Martinez-Morrison miracles as smoke and mirrors, proving it two years before the RGJ grudgingly admitted it after being shamed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. (See We Don't Need No Education at NevadaLabor.com/)

They should read their own paper over on Kuenzli Street.

This community can only heal after all facts are known.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

So the Barbwire hereby serves notice: Bring me your tired, your poor, your unattributed leaks and I will publish them no matter what your freakin' lawyers say.

The best defense is a good offense and I'm damned offended.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

WEB EXTRAS...

TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: FEEL UP YOUR FIRE METER. The Reno Gazette-Journal did big spreads the past three Sundays (Sept. 14, Sept. 21 and Sept. 28) on NV Energy smart meter fires. Welcome aboard. Barbwire readers were two years ahead on the fire meter issue. (Touch a Smart Meter, Go to Jail — 11 October 2012)

Last Sunday's blah editorial praised the Public Utilities Commission for opening an investigation.

What's next? Endorsing motherhood?

I've taken to regularly feeling up my gas and electric meters and those of my neighbors. Heat means your fire meter is about to go torch. Call NVE and pray or 911.

TOAST ALERT. Teachers' union gross profits tax petition supporters and opponents would do well to review the Barbwire of Feb. 28, 2013.

Passage of the tax initiative could easily lead to a successful court challenge that would at the same time blow out not only the revenue hike, but also term limits and the state's worst anti-union laws. Something for everybody.

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is.

PayPal monthly subscription software is now operational at the website.

A thousand thanks to those who already responded and keep sending show suggestions. I've gotten a lot of queries about ballot questions. The Jan. 30 column brought a surge of inquiries about the Nevada State Education Association corporate tax petition on this November's ballot.

Stay tuned.

"Media is the plural of mediocre."
                              — Jimmy Breslin

  Please forward additional ideas or vote on the above.

  I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/

The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet.

This is important. We've got a lot of work to do.

Get ahead of corporate-influenced news—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

 






Andrew Barbano is a 45-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

The Underbellyof the News—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

Smoking Guns...
Get ahead of corporate-influenced news—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

Taxpayers taken for Teslacide demo ride
Heavy demands for services & infrastructure but no money for them: Los Angeles Times debunks booster claims

Can megaresorts scam Tesla-style freebies?
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-23-2014 Sparks Tribune

St. Elon, Lord Pedro and Gov. Veto El Obtúsè
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-16-2014 Sparks Tribune
9-23 CRYSTAL BALL UPDATE: The above column accurately predicted Martinez's departure one week in advance

Tinkle-down economics: testing Tesla's testes
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-9-2014 Sparks Tribune

Labor Day 2014: Red, white and screwed
Silver State Lining: Nevada union membership 10th-highest in the nation
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune / 8-28-2014

Union decline and rising inequality in two charts
by Colin Gordon
Economic Policy Institute / 6-5-2012
Labor Day: State of the Unions
By Mark Robison / Reno Gazette-Journal / Sunday 9-1-2013

The above graph was used in journalist Mark Robison's extensive Hard Labor: Nevada unions tout role in helping workers, firms, economy (Sunday 2 Sept. 2012 Reno Gazette-Journal, page one, Reno Rebirth section of the print edition). Union men Jim Burrell, Paul McKenzie and Guy Louis Rocha did the movement proud.

WOMEN AND UNIONS — ORPHAN MAJORITIES
The Barbwire Labor Day column
Reno Gazette-Journal / 9-3-2012


We Don't Need No Education
The continuing Barbwire series

Barbwire: Nevada not really a state
No, we were not Battle Born in Kenya
Top 10 reasons Nevada lives in the 19th Century

Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-17-2013 Sparks Tribune

Low-income penalty: Nevada socks it to the working poor
BARBANO: Nevada is one big company town
Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 10-10-2013

State of Health
National health care comes up against a very sick state. WHAT'S IN IT FOR US?
Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 10-10-2013

...and more ammo yet

IMF Head Says Inequality Threatens Democracy. Here Are 7 Charts Proving She’s Right.
By Erika Eichelberger / Mother Jones/BillMoyers.com 5-30-2014
“The behavior of the financial sector has not changed fundamentally…since the crisis.
The industry still prizes short-term profit.”

The Post-Dated Recession: Pay me now or pay me later
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

The Post-dated Recession
By Joshua H. Silavent / Daily Sparks Tribune / 5-3-2011



Nevada Press Assn. Better Newspaper Contest

2013-14: BARBWIRE SCORES SIXTH NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION AWARD

BRONZE 2014
Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake / 4-18-2013

The 2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon / 5-30-2013

The politics of media ga-ga boosterism / 3-20-2014

2012: WE WON —> BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH
BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO NPA HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

Support legendary photographer Don Dondero next

2010 GOLD HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place three years in a row.
The winning entries
Suing for Schools: The 20-year shuck

Expanded from the 2-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune

RED flags flying low over Sparks
Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune

The wrath of self-righteous racism
Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune





The campaign against forcibly-paid newspaper obituaries
And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?

 

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

The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners
Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL
Barbwire / 11-30-2008
Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry
Barbwire / 8-3-2008
Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here?
Barbwire / 6-15-2008


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We Don't Need No Education
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Copyright © 1982-2014 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 45-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster 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.

Site composed and maintained by Deciding Factors, CWA 9413 signatory

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