Barbwire: Monsters Ball

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

On January 16, 1959, two babies were born.
They became sisters in both life and death.

Larry Barbano, Frater Mei
12-18-1947 / 10-18-2023

txtEDIA 25A

UPDATE: WORLDWIDE LEADER? ACT OF GOD OR JUST A GARDEN-VARIETY IMPOSSIBLE DREAMER? ALL OF THE ABOVE? VERY POSSIBLY. Was Andrew Barbano the only advocate for an American pope? Google apparently says YES! At minimum, the Barbwire stumped and broke Google trying to find out. See for yourself. And please lemme know what you think.

Big news. Prayers answered: Pope takes on T-Rump head-to-head.

Now, from the Holy of Holies to the Den of Iniquity—>

CLINGING TO THE LEDGE: MONSTERS BALL
RAPE AND PILLAGE IN CARSON CITY—>Nevada lawmakers juiced to pass worst corporate welfare bill since 1872 Mining Law
Going thru the motions and calling it in /Updated 11-16-2025 GMT

   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 — Leonard Cohen

Beware the Ides of November
The fix is in: Pro-tax giveaway lawmaker allowed to vote by phone but ledge is closed to Zoom/call-in testimony from voters
Battle still raging over film tax credits in Nevada Legislature's special session
By Mark Robison / Reno Gazette-Journal 11-15-25

It's the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The fundamental rules apply
As time goes by — Casablanca
Supporters of film tax subsidies make case for why Northern Nevada should get on board
By Mark Robison / Reno Gazette-Journal 11-14-25

On Fri, Nov 14, 2025 at 3:58 AM PST <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> wrote:

LINKED IN / FACEBOOK post to the Hon. Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas
Speaker, Nevada State Assembly

Dear Mr. Speaker: I am a longtime Nevada union member and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ Not long after Nevada lawmakers handed Tesla the biggest tax giveaway in state history, northern Nevada unions made a 35-foot 4-foot high banner: It demanded "FIX TESLA FIRST" at future corporate welfare announcements. Labor once again had been romanced and not even kissed afterwards.

You stand at the precipice of enacting Tesla on steroids. Please review the record of the failure of, and damage caused by, tax subsidies going back to the state's founding.

Beware the prophets of profit promulgating promises from false gods. See "Monsters Ball" at the front page of NevadaLabor.com/

Andrew Barbano / 56-year Nevadan

Uploaded to targeted e-lists

-30-

Hanging by a Thread: Nevada Hollywood Corporate Welfare Scam breathing harder than porno film
Nevada State Assembly tied 21-21 / By Ben Margiott and crew / KRNV TV-4/KRXI TV-11 / 11-14-2024

YOU GO GIRL!
Sophomore pol reads the rulebook and makes gambling-industrial complex look amateurish. Somewhere, Sen. Joe Neal and Assemblymember Bob Price/IBEW 357 watch and smile.
Reno Assemblymember Selena La Rue Hatch objects to film tax giveaway, exposes strong opposition
By Mark Robison / Reno Gazette-Journal 11-13-25

Barbwire Tragic Trilogy
Count Dracula sucks eternal / 11-12-2025
Rail City Rat-trap rent-traps / 11-5-2025
Lady in Red: Raped Again / 10-29-2025

Count Dracula sucks eternal
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 11-12-2025 / Updated 11-14-2025 GMT/ Expansions in blue

Greatest Hits Dept.

BREAKING NEWS—>

BOXCARS!
Barbwire wins 12th Nevada Press Association award

Hi yo Silver 2025
3-12-2025
4-17-2024
4-3-2024

Nevada Press Assn.
Hall of Fame
5 down, 3 to go

7-31-2025 Barbwire Winner
Congratulations to Barbwire nominee Norman Cardoza, 1977 Pulitzer Prize winner, Reno Gazette-Journal

2024 Barbwire Winners!

Jake Highton & Guy Louis Rocha 2024 honorees BUENO!

Barbwire nominee Dennis Myers elected to NPA Hall of Fame (2019)

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 (2012)

Support Don Dondero
and David Toll and
Foster Church next.
Send endorsements

Eee-yo-leven!
Barbwire wins 11th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017-18

2018 First-Place Winners
From the depths of despair to the den of iniquity & holy of holies

"Excellent work. These are some of the most moving columns I've read."
— NPA contest judge/9-29-2018

The Grasshopper and
the Dragonfly
9-6-2017

Kicked off the Ledge
4-18-2017

NATIONAL NEWS FIRST-BREAK
Back to the Future in
Mississippi West Nevada
10-18-2017

Gold 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo
10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
Toxic turf threat ignored
12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Bronze 6-pack
In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill
4-28-2015
On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary (above)
11-24-2015
Leading questions, lead-headed leaders
1-19-2016

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

More statewide and national award winners

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

1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
BEATING LUSH RAMBO AT HIS OWN GAME: Highlights from radio days
mp3 file

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

Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential
TOP SECRET— HushHush!

As you probably know, Bram Stoker got the model for his famous count from Vlad III aka Vlad the Impaler (1431–1476), Prince of Wallachia in modern day Romania.

     I remember first reading about him back in college on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Wall Street always admires the ruthless.Bad Vlad once legendarily deterred an invasion by impaling thousands of his own subjects on stakes to greet the marauding hoards -- who turned tail and ran. A darkness deep within the human soul admires cruelty as a virtue.
The Journal reported that a folk song memorialized the non-invasion, "Vlad Tepes, where are you when we need you?"
     Never underestimate the potential for cruelty of the soul-less, possessed by the urgings of the most primal vestiges of their reptilian brains.
Yes, I'm talking T-Rump and his Steven Miller storm troops.
     "When there's a fight, Democrats cut and run," my double hall-of-famer Tribune colleague Travus T. Hipp once complained. An unfair generalized pejorative? Yes. Too-often appropriate? Alas, also yes.
     Maine independent and former Republican Angus King joined six Democrats, including Nevada's Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez-Masto, to side with T-Rump and the MAGA moonhowlers to end the government shutdown.
     Can't say as I blame them too much. T-Rump the Impaler was perfectly willing to let babies starve to get his way. Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing, right -- son of Fred the Slumlord? How come none of those well-paid Democrat campaign operatives bothered to tell Emperor Bulsha Tartist how many of those starving babies were white?
     Play the race card? Perish forbid. Leave that to the likes of Clarence Thomas.
     How'd we end up like this in the formerly-United States of America? Journalist Katy Tur hit the nail on its orange head in an interview with David Letterman after Hillary went down in flames.
     "Why did Trump win?" Letterman asked regarding her book about the 2016 campaign.
     "He entertained them and he looked strong," Tur replied.
Correct. Primal. Tribal. Predictable.
     Why was Saul named King of Israel by acclamation? He was the biggest, baddest warrior in the tribe.
"Saul stood head and shoulders above any other man," the Bible states.
     Be careful what you wish for. You might get it. Saul went down in flames of sin, as did his successor, David. Yep, the kid who stoned that guy Goliath.
Conservative columnist David Brooks, in T-Rump's favorite fake newspaper, wrote this last week: "Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Nayib Bukele, Elon Musk, Mohammed bin Salman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Viktor Orban and all the rest of the global authoritarian wolf pack (are) performance artists.
     "People like Trump and Putin are not politicians; they are artists who create alternate realities. They tell stories, invent alternative facts, enact daily dramas, construct show trials and reinvent religions — they build a world. In their world, the people who felt humiliated are now dominant and doing the humiliating. Russia felt humiliated by the West in the 1990s. Many working-class American voters have felt humiliated by coastal elites for decades. In this alternative world, the snobs suffer. People support an authoritarian not because they like this or that policy but because they embrace the authoritarian’s artistic vision.
     "Performance artists like Trump and Putin can be dishonest, offensive and outrageous, but there is one rule: They must never be boring...In the minds of the authoritarian wolves...it’s not between left and right or rich and poor; it’s between the warriors and the weenies." (NYTimes.com 11-7-2025)
     Which goes a long way toward explaining why T-Rump's administration, courts and congress, are largely sheepish weenies sucking up to power.
Alas and alack, Drac's descendants will suck them dry first. With a little hot mustard for dessert.

ALA CARTE COPS DEPT. Why should Sparks stop at charging non-Rail Cityites an ambulance fee? Small-town sheriffs do it all the time, citing out-of-staters for speeding, guilty or not.
     Unbeknownst to the great unwashed, lawyers and insurance companies use a rate card that calculates what your life is worth. A teenager killed by a drunk driver is worth less than a middle-aged business executive based on lifetime earning projections. Cold blooded? You betcha. Business is business.
     They don't tell you about the rate cards in their TV ads. So if the world is going ala carte like pay-per-view TV, governments can do the same. Publish rates for dwindling community services, especially first responders, parks, roads and schools. Motel burglary in progress? 500 bucks. Rape? A cool thousand.
     Can't say as I blame the Sparks Fire Chief. He's low on manpower in a starved department. Nevada is addicted to corporate welfare, starting with the gambling and mining industries. Sparks taxpayers paid for the moving and construction of a Target store from Oddie Blvd. to the Sparks Marina/Legends development. Target still sucks money from city services to this day. Examples metastasize as sense of community becomes obsolete in favor of the law of the jungle in the age of T-Rump.

RIGGED GAME, PART 666: Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago will not call a special legislative session unless lawmakers have already sold us out and a win is guaranteed for fat cat studios from Wholly Rude California.
As the cliché goes, if Sen. Joe Neal wuz alive, he'd be turnin' over in his grave.

LIGHTEN UP DEPT. I laughed out loud at Dear Abby last week. A woman was concerned for the unborn daughter of a dingbat friend who was seriously considering naming the kid with words that sounded good. Like Chlamydia, Cliché, Chalet and Bidet. Reminds me of an old joke" "What do you get for the girl who has everything? Penicillin."

Get the latest boosters, protect yourself and your family by masking up, continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Popes Leo and Francis, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia and the world's more than 160 currently war-torn lands, including ours.

¡Sí se puede! Or, as they say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

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 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

Rail City Rat-trap rent-traps R Us
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 11-5-2025 /
Updated 11-14-2025 GMT/ Expansions in blue

Elon Musk, you miserable bastard, thank you.

     You chain-sawed Kim Burrows after just a few months on the job with the U.S. Forest Service. She went back to KRNV TV-4/Fox-11 and just enterprised a kickass piece of journalism. Acting on tip, she investigated a hellhole 4-plex apartment house at 2nd and East B Stree...er, I mean (ahem) Victorian Blvd. in downtown Sparks.
     It's the joint with the mini-mart out front, both owned by the reincarnation of Fred T-Rump. Yes, President Bulsha Tartist's slumlord dad immortalized in infamy in a Woody Guthrie song. The great American singer was unfortunate enough to have the guy he called "Old Man Trump" as his landlord back in Great Depression 1. (Sequel soon. It's a family thing with America's nouveau riche.)
     "Records show that Singh 8 LLC owns the Midget Market on Victorian Ave. as well as the four-plex and two other apartments behind the mart," Burrows reported this week. Singh does not return phone calls or answer the door at his house.
     "Garry, a tenant for 35 years, said, 'He don't take care of his property,' referring to the landlord. Residents say the complex has a history of issues, including a heater that was only fixed last year after about five years of disrepair, a bathroom faucet that doesn't work, boarded-up oven spaces, falling ceiling tiles in the laundry room, and pest infestations," she reported.
     One residence went without power for four months and the one with the boarded-up oven space has no stove, the carcass of which sits outside. The videos are disgusting. The renters are trapped. Paying a grand a month or more for one-bedroom rabbit warrens leaves them with nothing to save up for a better place.
     With all the video of exposed wiring, I've gotta hunch Freddie Singh has lots of fire insurance. At least that will get rid of the rats and roaches.
I've been writing this same story for half a century. It starts with the hard cold fact that Nevada renters have no rights. Never have. Back in the 1970s, self-described slumlord State Sen. Cliff McCorkle, R-Reno, disagreed, making a big deal of Nevada law which says landlords must make their rentals "habitable," meaning only for those in the habit of paying rent on time, cockroaches be damned. (I understand you can deep-fry them.) Nothing's changed.
     Reno actually passed rent control in 1979. (Barbwire 7-17-2019) After a few phone calls, the Reno City Council quickly repealed it. Read the full story at Rentvolution.org, including a followup by Ben Margiott, a Burrows colleague.
     I tried to start a renters' website a couple of years back where tenants could complain publicly without fear of reprisal. (I would make sure that their gripes were genuine before upload.) It failed miserably even after Margiott's excellent story.
     One guy said it all: "If you print what I said, my landlord will know it's me and evict me."
     The outrage is matched only by the morally obtuse indifference of Sparks City Hall. Just about every complaint from the prisoners of Freddie Trump's Singh-Singh has been met with "not my department." Sparks ordered that heater fixed but disclaimed the rest as "maintenance issues."
     Whaddya expect from a city that in 2015 removed all construction worker qualifications in city codes so that the developer of the former Victorian Square could mince downtown into Japan-style rabbit warren cubbyholes? (Complete sad story at NevadaLabor.com)
     Acting on a tip, I've been looking into the Siegel Suites apartments on E. 7th Street in Reno. They had wholesale violations in 2023 which were addressed under citations by Reno Code Enforcement (although recent reports allege backsliding. Stay tuned.)
     However, at least Reno busted the place for multiple violations and got some things done. Not so with the Rail City. Not their department. Perhaps Sparks has made itself so "business-friendly" that code enforcers are hamstrung because just about everything is "not their department."
     I await a response.
     As to the Midget Mart inmates, Burrows reported "Kevin (who is disabled) shared 'I can't do anything because he (Freddie Singh-Singh) won't help us anywhere. He's got us trapped here and if we don't like it, we can move. And that's what he tells us every month."
     Well, Kevin, the "habitable" part of the law is on your side. I know lawyers have been contacted on your behalf. I will see if I can martial community groups to perhaps informationally picket the Midget Mart. Like his namesake, Freddie T-Rump Singh listens to his wallet.

CLINGING TO THE LEDGE. Don't expect relief until we got a new governor. Regular readers may remember that I praised State Sen. Ira Hansen, R-Sparks, for supporting SB391, a bill by Sen. Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, to limit Wall Street speculators from owning more than 100 Nevada homes. I testified in favor. With Hansen's support, it was voted out of committee. (Former Trib columnist Ira and I both detest corporate welfare.)
Alas and alack, Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago ordered Ira and all senate Republicans to kill Neal's SB-391 on the senate floor. Our sensitive governor advocated limits of merely 2,500 homes per corporation. What a guy.

¡Sí se puede! Or, as they say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

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 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

Lady in Red: Raped again
This history of Nevada in 500 words was honored with a 2017 Nevada Press Assn. first-place award
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 10-29-2025 / Updated 11-14-2025 GMT/ Expansions in blue

Out west lives an eccentric old lady. Sometimes you can glance at her and see flashes of what she was when she was young and unspoiled, wild and free. But there is an old sadness in her eyes.

     Men came and violated her one night more than a hundred years ago. The fear is still there. Once in awhile, she still walks the streets of Washington, DC, and, occasionally, she still gets invited in — but only to be used again.
     The old lady has little left to give them. The once-voluptuous resources are long gone. But the big boys never understood. She wasn't like them. She was headstrong and independent, never easy to understand, and just wanted to be left alone. She's still that way.
     The old girl is all that's left of a shotgun wedding perpetrated in 1864. Late one night, they scissored off some of Arizona and patched it onto a few odd sections they stole from Utah.
They trussed young Nevada up in this ill-fitting girdle to make her presentable back east.
     But it didn't feel right. It didn't look right. She had never worn a corset before. She couldn't breathe bound up that way. It didn't feel free.
No matter.
     She was delivered up to Washington in order to form a more perfect Union and to provide a convenient dowry of two northern-voting U.S. senators.
She protested breathlessly, screaming that she had already given enough to the Union cause, financing with her family jewels a civil war that was no fight of hers. She pleaded to be left alone. The corset was already beginning to chafe.
     But the wedding between the old man in the striped pants and the kicking girl in the red dress took place on Oct. 31, 1864, Hallowe'en.
The marriage of convenience did not go well. She was abandoned. They didn't leave her with much — just a lot of arid space and a few petered-out pockets of low grade ore for men to take advantage of whenever market conditions were right.
     Life was hard. She was forced to use everything God had given her just to stay alive. When the Great Depression came around, she had nothing left.
Starvation stared her in the face. Her children cried out for help. What to do?
     She couldn't sell any land — the husband in the striped pants who abandoned her still owned most of that. Nothing of value was left in her pockets. But she had children to feed. What to do?
     The red dress.
She had kept it all these years since the wedding. Even wore it once or twice when the occasion warranted.
     She would put on her red dress. People might notice her again. She could go back in style. She knew how attractive a red dress could look.
Maybe strangers would come calling to see her and even spend some money. That would help her children.
     It was worth a gamble.
She put on the red dress and hit the streets.

Happy Birthday, old gal.
------------------
NOTE TO READERS: "The Lady in the Red Dress" first appeared in the Daily Sparks Tribune on Nov. 4, 1990, and occasionally on or about the anniversary of our admission to the union on Oct. 31, 1864. The tale is best told when read aloud, preferably in front of a roaring fire.

In 2017, this history of Nevada in 500 words was honored with a Nevada Press Association (NPA) first-place award.

"Does dear Nevada have anything left to exploit or will we continue selling our future into indentured servitude to the gambling-industrial complex and the mining overlords," I asked in 2011.

MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS. "Unless you dwell in the higher-income classes, you should move elsewhere to educate your children," I wrote in 2013.
     The billion-plus Tesla giveaway compounded pressure on already-stressed local governments. Reno, Sparks, Washoe County and the school district today consistently run in the red. In short, all the maladies of a major metro have been imported to the little valley on the banks of the mucky Truckee.
     Now, the big boys in Gomorrah South are pushing to give away Tesla-style money to Hollywood studios, one foreign-owned (Sony). The dumbest investment you can make is hoping to profit from a declining industry. Not surprisingly, no candidate running in opposition dares mention increasing casino and mining taxes. (Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, lies dead. There is no successor.)
     Nevada today is a poster child for what afflicts this country. Fat cats enjoy the fruits of their gluttony while the rest of us scramble for crumbs dropped from their banquet table. Instead of looking up at our exploiters, they keep us fighting with each other.

REMEMBER THE HARBINGER. A celebration of "the life and legacy of labor legend and Nevada State Archivist Guy Rocha" happens at the Nevada State Library and Archives, 100 N. Stewart St., Carson City, at 10:00a.m. on Friday, Oct. 31 -- Nevada Day. My dear friend and double hall-of-famer died last month, a year after my nomination of him to the NPA Hall of Fame succeeded. Though ill, he attended his installation.

HELP THE LADY IN RED'S CHILDREN. Bring some non-perishable foods for Reno and Carson City charities trying to mitigate the depredations of MAGAworld.
Friday, Oct. 31, 11:00a.m. to 1:00p.m.
Reno: 5320 Kietzke Lane (grassy area outside Rep. Mark Amodei's Office)
Carson City: 400 S. Carson St (legislative building sidewalk)

The parade is Saturday in the capital city.

Happy Birthday, Lady in Red. We continue to do what we can. And remember.

¡Sí se puede! Or, as they say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

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 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

The End Continues
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 10-22-2025 / Updated 10-26-2025 GMT/ Expansions in blue

Greatest Hits Dept.

BREAKING NEWS—>

BOXCARS!
Barbwire wins 12th Nevada Press Association award

Hi yo Silver 2025
3-12-2025
4-17-2024
4-3-2024

Nevada Press Assn.
Hall of Fame
5 down, 3 to go

7-31-2025 Barbwire Winner
Congratulations to Barbwire nominee Norman Cardoza, 1977 Pulitzer Prize winner, Reno Gazette-Journal

2024 Barbwire Winners!

Jake Highton & Guy Louis Rocha 2024 honorees BUENO!

Barbwire nominee Dennis Myers elected to NPA Hall of Fame (2019)

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 (2012)

Support Don Dondero
and David Toll and
Foster Church next.
Send endorsements

Eee-yo-leven!
Barbwire wins 11th Nevada Press Association award

The Grasshopper and
the Dragonfly
9-6-2017

Kicked off the Ledge
4-18-2017

NATIONAL NEWS FIRST-BREAK
Back to the Future in
Mississippi West Nevada
10-18-2017

Gold 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo
10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
Toxic turf threat ignored
12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

More statewide and national award winners

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

1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
BEATING LUSH RAMBO AT HIS OWN GAME: Highlights from radio days
mp3 file

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

Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential
TOP SECRET— HushHush!

The late great talk radio host and Tribune columnist Travus T. Hipp frequently warned that "softshoe fascism" was loose in the land.

Well, we've now gone all the way on prom night, children. T-Rump's stormtroopers are neo-Nazi jackboots. Even Hitler's thugs didn't wear masks.

The chaos, death and destruction foisted upon the world by President Bulsha Tartist are not byproducts. The mayhem is the point.

Chaos and disorder promote devolution, not evolution. What if the U.S. government NEVER reopens? Then it's Wild Wild West Part Deux, from Sea to Shining Bloody Sea.

It's been coming for a long time. Our election of a white supremacist federal government completes a circle begun in 1865. The South has risen again.

If we continue on our current trajectory, what might a dystopian zombie of the formerly-united states of America look like?

Try journalist Joel Garreau's bestseller "The Nine Nations of North America." Ironically, it was published in 1981, the year King Ronald the Vague took office. His happy-face dereliction paved the way for his madcap successor who oppresses us today.

There are two roughly definable "nations" already ensconced in the public perception: Dixie and Quebec. The other seven are a crazy-quilt. We live in The Empty Quarter, a translation of the Al-Rub' Al-Khali Desert in the southeastern Arabian Peninsula.

Garreau cleverly notes that western-America's endemic irritation with Washington starts roughly along a line where The Breadbasket morphs into a long rise toward the mountain west. Which just happens to be exactly where the government controls most of the land. The Empty Quarter. (Map with the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com)

When Germany tried to cut a deal with Mexico in World War One, they did their homework. If Mexico would side with Deutschland, Mexico would get back New Mexico, Arizona and California. Those areas (and Texas) were lost in the 1846-48 Mexican War. Our neighbors to the south had outlawed slavery and Dixie just didn't cotton to that there nonsense.

Largely due to Hollywood, most Americans don't know that Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie died at the Alamo fighting for slavery.

The template has long existed for Garreau's "nations" because of long-established economic, ethnic and sociological ties.

The Mexican War became the dress rehearsal for the Civil War. Are we living in a high-tech instant replay? Don't say it can't happen here. There is already pressure to chop off eastern Oregon and graft it onto Idaho. Ecotopia Oregon shrinks to enlarge the Empty Quarter.

The "border" between Mexico and the southwest U.S. never changed the culture.

If our democracy collapses, the regions will have no choice but to reorganize themselves roughly along the lines of Garreau's blueprint. It will be as inefficient as the current border between Ireland and Northern Ireland but I hope it can avoid shooting.

Before the Brits left the European Union, trucks could cross the border between the two pieces of the Emerald Isle within 20 minutes. Now, it's most of a day each way. We should be forewarned.

Alas and alack, foresight has never been short-attention-span America's strong suit. Without a strong central government to referee bouts between the children, nationhood decays toward border wars.

Be very afraid.

ANDRIOLA VS. THE NAACP. In a guest commentary last Sunday in the Reno Kazoo-Journal, Republican Washoe County Commissioner announced the latest volley to keep voters from voting. She announced a "pilot program that puts us on the road to election risk management."

My heavens, how long can we continue risking elections?

Remember, President T-Rump told us last year that if we elected him, "you will never need another election."

Under the label "voter roll maintenance," the Washoe goal will actually be to reduce participation. The fewer that vote, the greater Republican advantage.

Historically, Republicans vote at higher percentages than others. I will ask for more information but I've seen this movie.

A few elections back, some GOP-controlled states announced that they were "cleansing" their voter rolls. The computer algorithm was so loose that people with similar names in different states had their voter registrations cancelled so that the mythical hybrid person could not vote twice.

As Tribune triple hall-of-famer Dennis Myers once noted, voter registration is the most efficient method ever devised to keep people from voting.

Heavyweight investigative journalist Greg Palast makes a strong case that the latest GOP suppression campaign cost Kamala Harris at least 3.565 million votes and thus the presidency last year.

Such shenanigans are not new. Nevada Democrats have long had volunteer lawyers ready on election day to help people denied their right to vote.

One local couple had been turned away at the polls. The lawyers went to court and a judge issued a court order commanding that election workers allow them to cast ballots.

By then, the polls had closed. Really didn't matter. Provisional ballots are rarely counted.

Which partially explains why the national NAACP is hosting an online "National Election Protection Training Webinar." It happens 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Tuesday Oct. 28. Link with the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/

ADIOS, GUY ROCHA. A bulletin from the Sparks-based Northern Nevada Central Labor Council announces a celebration of "the life and legacy of labor legend and Nevada State Archivist Guy Rocha." It happens at the Nevada State Library and Archives, 100 N. Stewart St., Carson City, at 10:00a.m. on Friday, Oct. 31 -- Nevada Day.

¡Sí se puede! Or, as they say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

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.)

NOTE: Column title stolen from Rob Reiner's "Spinal Tap2: The End Continues." Molto grazie!

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

When death is nobody's fault
Bullied 12 year-old commits suicide
I warned of danger 13 years ago. Who will answer?
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 10-15-2025 /