Barbwire: Raise Hell

The 10th Commandment and the 10th Amendment / 7-22-2026

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods" -- God
Moses and company got it right on those fabled stone tablets.
I just hit the BIG 8-0, a very motivational moment making one reflect on the big picture. I look at the world around us, a beautiful little place sullied by -- us, as Pogo the Possum warned so many years ago. ("We have met the enemy and he is us.")
Why? I accuse the worst of the capital (deadly) sins: greed. One can easily argue that all else flows from "I got mine and I want yours."
Greed is arguably the over-arching cause behind all the ills of this beleaguered world. Just imagine what we could do without greed-fueled wars?
This past week, the best example of such immorality comes from Arizona which often makes backwater Nevada look good by comparison. Global warming is a hoax according to some well-endowed glitterati who pay for well-funded PR departments -- like BigOil and its cruelty-prone president. Phoenix currently suffers from that hoax worse than anywhere in the country.
Reacting to our Mad King's dictates, new state restrictions on food stamps have thrown almost half a million needy families into near-starvation. Completely eliminating the program is now being seriously discussed by AZ officials.
Hungry on the street in 110-degree heat, oh my! Drug-related deaths in the Phoenix area skyrocket in high temperatures. Some overdose victims also need treatment for third-degree burns while sprawled on searing pavement. All of this merited an entire page of The Times this week. And it hit me hard.
Corporate greed cost me my perfect granddaughter in Phoenix a few years ago. Tara, a pepper of a little waif born to be a doctor, succumbed to Oxycontin which destroyed her big heart at 21. (Barbwire 9-6-2017, "The Grasshopper and the Dragonfly," Nevada Press Association first-place winner)
She's dead and the drug-dealing Sackler Family, which owned Purdue Pharma and paid doctors fat bonuses to spread Oxycontin far and wide, today remains worth between $5.2 billion and $11 billion. No Sacklers ever went to jail. Tara went to her grave. I just planted a new rose bush named for her.
SUICIDAL TENDENCIES AT AGE 250 -- U.S. foodborn illnesses skyrocketed after T-Rump/MuskAx cuts to CDC and FDA programs. Just like ignoring COVID. How many more millions must die worldwide because of these vampires? When will we ever learn?
SMOKING GUN DEPT. On the bleakly ironic backside, corporate greed is foisting national healthcare upon us. The Kaiser Family Foundation's KFF News Service just published a summary of companies pushing their low-wage workers to Medicaid in lieu of company-covered health insurance. The Nevada top 30, released in a state report last January, includes big biz (Amazon, Wal-Mart, Tesla), the LV and Washoe school districts and big casinos, including Reno's Peppermill, and (drum roll, please) Hilton resorts.
In the mid-90s, I was given a tape from a management meeting at the Reno Hilton, now the Grand Sierra. Department heads were advised to include information about applying for welfare as the casino downsized for winter with layoffs and part-timing. The 2026 state report amplifies this metastasizing corporate welfare. In 2009, the federal government became the biggest funder (50 percent-plus) of health care costs according to the Nevada State Medical Assn. The only remedy for decades of waste, fraud and abuse lies with a national health care program.
Current for-profit health care cots are one-third administration and profit. By comparison, managing Social Security (pre-Trumpian cuts) was just three percent. Our system is killing people. Vote for candidates who will stop the slaughter.
WTF DEPT. Our governor just got a big spread in the fake-news New York Times. In another PR coup for Nevada, Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago was body slammed by a body cam, busted on a Gomorrah South traffic violation, then allowed to drive away -- after ascertaining that the cop who pulled him over recognized his wonderfulness both in the statehouse and as the officer's ex-boss.
The guv's November opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, should be thanking his lucky stars that Giuseppe has such morally obtuse campaign managers. Bravado Billionaire Bros have helped swell Lumbago's campaign coffers, so he can feel warm and comfy feeding Nevadans a steady diet of depressing TV spots.
Were he a mensch and had any political smarts, during or even after the cop video made news, the guv should have ASKED TO BE TICKETED: "If, in your judgment as a sworn officer, I broke the law, write me up. I may be your ex-chief and your governor, but I must set an example of obeying the law."
What would it have cost him, a few hundred bucks in fines, probably waived? It also would have provided a million dollars in good publicity -- all the way to The Mighty Times -- for a guy whose TV ads don't match his record. Joe Lombardo vetoed a record-setting fire hazard of good legislation and turned the bills into kindling. While kids went hungry.
A mensch, a whole man, a fair and moral person would have known what to do. Not Giuseppe. Alas and alack, AG Aaron's response, apparently failing to note what would have been the right thing to do, fell flat.
iHOP JUMPS INTO FOREIGN AFFAIRS -- and falls flatter'n a flapjack. The International House of Pancakes is finally living up to its name, offering Tik-Tok phenom Dubai chocolate in pancakes and milkshakes. While I am sure that the food tastes great, it displays a moral obtuseness worthy of... aww, you know.
Dubai is part of the United Arab Emirates, major funders of the longrunning genocide in Somalia, east Africa. And they are doing it with money from our ballooning gasoline costs. The iHOP marketing department could find work in our guv's PR apparat.
WTF PART DEUX, A POIGNANT PUNCHLINE. I Googled that column about my granddaughter and this is what Ai actually returned: "NevadaLabor.com, the column of journalist Andrew Barbano, highlights Reno-based Dragonfly Energy as a key local manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries. The site sporadically references the company's regional prominence and innovation in local clean energy initiatives. For more details, visit nevadalabor.com." HUH?! I never heard of 'em.
Trust but verify, websurfers.

Get the latest boosters (COVID just broke out in Reno), protect yourself and your family by masking up, continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Popes Leo and Francis, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burma/Myanmar (Rohingya genocide) and eastern China (Uyghur genocide) among the world's more than 160 currently war-torn lands, including ours.

May we survive WW3 perhaps coming soon to a polling place near you. (States run elections according to U.S. Constitution Article 1, reinforced by the besieged 10th Amendment. Who cares? T-Rump has his own private army of taxpayer-funded neo-Nazi blackshirts. Be very afraid. And vote, dammit.)

¡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 57-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US,ConsumerCoalitionv.org,ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org and MississippiWestNV.org among others. He is a longtime member and former vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and a member of 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 Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024. For all the news you never knew you needed to know, head for BallotBoxing.US.

AT&T's License to Kill / 7-15-2026
"The Phone Company -- Pretending to make progress so we can charge you more" ("Saturday Night Live" intro 12-12-1981)
Ma Bell has gotten flat-out dangerous. I know first-hand.
Phone landline dinosaurs like me are an endangered species and that mean old monopoly lady is taking it literally.
BAD COMPANY -- Post WW2, General Motors took over LA's mass transit system and made service terrible to "prove" people were no longer interested. So buy lotsa cars, folks. Now there's talk of LA bullet trains on freeway rights-of-way built over old trolley lines.
Railroads perpetrated the same shuck. To eliminate union wages for dining and sleeping cars, they ruined service but started Greyhound to keep passenger revenue.
I give you AT&T's campaign to make landline service so bad they can justify killing it. The process is well underway and must be regulated or people are going to die.
I'm a guinea pig. The cell service in my neighborhood has long been so bad that I pay for a reliable landline.
Understaffed and overworked ATT techs have told me that many landline-only customers live in fear of having no way to call 911 when the phaseout happens by 2029. Guess what? It will happen in Nevada by the end of this year, at least according to the ATT Office of the President.
They may well deny it and I know firsthand that the myriad tentacles of the octopus don't communicate well. My landline and internet services have been down for weeks at a time lately. I have spent more than a 40-hour workweek chasing repairs. That's why the Barbwire failed to appear in the Tribune awhile back.
I worry most about the poor or elderly who may lose their lives without a landline.
The little folks have nowhere to turn so I'm starting one. I am launching the Nevada Consumer Coalition (ConsumerCoalitionv.org). I already have senior citizen activists looking for landline ratepayers, at least 4,000 in Washoe County. I need volunteers to contact community organizations. Political pressure is our last resort.
The twisted descendants of Ma Bell care only about profit and I just documented it the hard way -- with an old man's time and frustration. It made me wonder about those who don't have the grouchy knowhow I've gathered over decades of tilting at corporate windmills.
Under the guise of deregulation due to lots of competition, the phone industry is going to get away with murder. This will affect rural red Republican counties much more than urban blues or purples. This is not a partisan issue. It's a life or death issue. If it took me countless hours to restore services, what about grandma or somebody working three jobs to keep the lights on?
A few years back, I checked into regulation. The Nevada Public Utilities Commission only retains power over line rights-of-way. T-Rump gutted the Federal Communications Commission. So how about a state law tightening ATT's ability to lease space once they abandon landlines? Reno lawyer Lance Van Lydegraf just blocked with his body an attempt to install a big ugly cable box on his front lawn because NVEnergy did a deal with Spectrum cable for easement space. (Reno Gazette-Journal July 8)
Contact me at the e-mail below or (775) 882-TALK if you'd like to help. Talk to your neighbors, elected leaders and candidates.
Deregulation means never having to say you're sorry.
"We don't care. We don't have to. We are the phone company and we are omnipotent," Lily Tomlin snorted in her breakout role as Ernestine the Snarky Operator (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in, 1969).
Nothing's changed.
GIUSEPPE LUMBAGO, UNION BUSTER. ThisIsReno.com reported this week that "Nevada's Division of Human Resources proposed reclassifying thousands of state employees to (fire) at-will positions. The state later altered the online presentation of this proposal and denied records requests concerning the change." In other words, bust employee unions to cut pay and benefits -- for the already-smallest per capita state government in the U.S.
Gov. Lombardo has also stonewalled attempts to justify forgiving Elon Musk's Vegas train tunneling outfit almost half a million in workplace fines. The records of the secret meeting have disappeared, according to the Nevada Current (RGJ 6-8-2026).
GIUSEPPE JUICE. The guv recently got stopped in Gomorrah South for a traffic violation and wasn't ticketed. The ex-LV chief's former crew let him drive away. Maybe he was late for lunch with Mr. MuskAx. See the video at KOLOTV.com (July 13).
CATTLE RUSTLERS, UNITE! ThisIsReno.com also noted "Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam is exploring a merger of the Washoe County Sheriff's Office with the Reno Police Department. This move contradicts earlier denials about such a consolidation." The late great RPD Lt. Jim Hartshorne discussed that in 1982 when consolidation was hot and voters were asked to approve what is now the consolidated county jail.
Merging the likes of incarceration or dispatching made sense, Jim said, but the sheriff's office is "a different kind of policing. For instance, I've never investigated a case of cattle rustling." It was just a way to redirect resources toward the big money -- downtown Reno. Indeed, a special taxing district for more cops in the decayed core was instituted when the consolidation con failed.
Get the latest boosters (COVID just broke out in Reno), protect yourself and your family by masking up, continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Popes Leo and Francis, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burma/Myanmar (Rohingya genocide) and eastern China (Uyghur genocide) among the world's more than 160 currently war-torn lands, including ours. May we survive WW3 perhaps coming soon to a polling place near you.

¡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.)

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024. For all the news you never knew you needed to know, head for BallotBoxing.US.

Fixed fights bite fixers in the ass / 7-8-2026
"He combined meticulous reporting and a very meticulous comic voice, which is extremely rare." -- New Yorker Editor David Remnick
Those words encapsulated everything I have ever tried to do in my much more humble writing pursuit. They will now serve as the permanent guiding statement of this column and the Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniators Hall of Flames, the most exclusive club in Nevada journalism.
Remnick thus memorialized longtime New Yorker writer Mark Singer who died last month at age 75. Singer "got everything about Donald Trump right 20 years before he ran for president," noted Singer's obituary in the June 25 New York Times.
Assigned by former editor Tina Brown to spend several months with the Orange Crusher in 1997, Singer wrote that T-rump "had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul."
The reptilian urges of that lower life form have resulted in what rational experts now despairingly term "superpower suicide."
T-Rump only wants compliments, monuments and money, always eager to bend others to his will. Witness the recent soccer World Cup fiasco.
U.S. player Folarin Balogun was banned from the teams' Monday game against Belgium after a flagrant foul -- which our Mad King fixed with one phone call to the soccer boss, the same guy who pampered him with a ludicrous "peace prize" a few months ago.
Balogun played, failed to score, and the U.S. lost to Belgium 4-1. Guess what? Balogun is a birthright American citizen, born in New York to Nigerian parents who were temporarily visiting the United States. He is also black, a skin tone which MAGA Moonhowlers want excised from the land of liberty and justice for -- some.
Fittingly, last Saturday, the neo-Ku Klux Klan staged a white supremacist parade in Washington DC.
Why do I have this creepy suspicion that persons unknown made millions in prediction markets by betting that Balogun would be reinstated?
Last week, Colbert-cancelling sycophantic suckup CBS ran a 30-minute special, "The President's 1779 Awards," in which teenagers most adept at rote-memorization of the Constitution were rewarded with a visit to the Mad King in the Oval Office of his partially bulldozed castle. The debacle was hosted by Linda McMahon, T-Rump-appointed undertaker of the US Dept. of Education. The wealthy trash-sport mogul got rich producing pseudo-wrestling fixed fights. (It's getting harder and harder to write satire with this clown car in charge.)
Fight fixing is not limited to Republicans. Future U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Gomorrah South, made sure that no Democrat could ever win the northern Nevada congressional seat, CD-2.
Nevada's population growth scored us a second congresscritter in the 1980 census.
I was there in 1981 when state lawmakers were ready to create truly competitive statewide seats. A long slim western seat would start in Clark County, go thru Reno-Sparks-Carson-Douglas and end at the Oregon border. Ditto a much wider eastern seat. Republicans, Democrats and third parties would all have a fighting chance.
Overnight, that idea was killed and CD-1 became a blue dot in metro Las Vegas, which Harry used as a springboard to the U.S. Senate. CD-2 was comprised of all 16 northern counties and a piece of northern Clark. A perfect double gerrymander.
Now, 45 years later, CD-1 remains totally blue and no Donkeyite has ever won CD-2. Can former Miss Nevada Teresa Benitez-Thompson beat the fix against a heavily GOP stacked deck?
The best reps to have held the seat, Dean Heller and Mark Amodei, were pretty fair lawmakers when they served in the state legislature. Alas and alack, both were forced to drink the toxic Washington GOP Kool-Aid and debased themselves and their constituents.
A wise old trope advises that 'Democrats don't win elections, Republicans lose them." Fortune has smiled upon Teresa this year. The former State Assembly Majority Leader has drawn the bastard cousin of the Marx Brothers for an opponent. Oldtimers remember Groucho, Harpo and Chico. Now comes carpetbagger Flippo (his real name) who moved to these parts just to run as the anointed of the Orange Fixer.
I am hopeful but worried. I have been studying Silver State follytix for more than half a century. Congressional and Senate races are often studies in Vince Lombardi football -- the team making the fewest mistakes wins.
Especially in CD-2, Democrats have several times snatched defeat from the jaws of victory due to dumbass mistakes. But that's another column, parts of which I have written about in these pages for the past four decades.
Stay tuned.
Get the latest boosters (COVID just broke out in Reno), protect yourself and your family by masking up, continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Popes Leo and Francis, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burma/Myanmar (Rohingya genocide) and eastern China (Uyghur genocide) among the world's more than 160 currently war-torn lands, including ours. May we survive WW3 perhaps coming soon to a polling place near you.

¡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.)

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024. For all the news you never knew you needed to know, head for BallotBoxing.US.

Father, forgive them / 6-24-2026
Because I won't. Some guys don't deserve Christian forgiveness.
I was aghast when I learned last Monday that the T-Rump Gestapo (aka the Department of Vengeful Injustice) announced starting a campaign to wipe out the Americans with Disabilities Act.
All during the 1970's, I worked alongside crusading psychologist Herbert M. Schall decrying conditions at the Nevada Mental Health Institute in Sparks. Democratic Gov. Mike O'Callaghan (with a Sparks avenue named for him) got a funding increase from our terminally stingy legislature. Alas and alack, Big Mike was a lousy judge of character when it came to subordinates. God, he was angry with me on many occasions. (We patched things up years later.)
People were dying under inhuman conditions. Dr. Herb even got the attention of Ralph Nader's raiders, the Mental Health Law Project. Robert Plotkin came to town and investigated. At a well-attended public meeting at UNR, he announced that he had accumulated evidence for a major right-to-treatment case against the state. (The administration settled and promised to go sin no more. Lip service.)
Schall enlisted Lolly Giudici, from the downtown Sparks casino family, to start Citizens for Humanity in Mental Health. God bless them both. I remember them fondly.
Just thinking of this brings back the names of the abused and the dead from so long ago. Holly McQueen (the Reno high school is named for her doctor-father), was unruly on an outing. A state aide bashed her head against a van door.
Holly Marie Combs, quite insane and unruly, died for her condition. "I think they killed her," her lawyer told me. A Latino little boy named Jesse was left unattended, wandered away on a freezing night and was found dead.
One prominent psychiatrist performed a "cingulotomy"on a patient. It involves cutting the connecting tissue between the left and right halves of one's brain. The doctor told me it was "successful."
Dr. Schall called one day to let me know that the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAH) was doing a review. Herb advised me to schedule an appointment and threaten to sue, as "it's the only thing that gets their attention."
My late bro got his master's degree in social work and made his career helping fellow vets at V.A. hospitals.
"JCAH is not an agent of change," Big Lare advised. "They just review paperwork."
Nonetheless, I had a long talk with Frank Mims of JCAH, describing much of the above, especially accidents when patients were left unattended in bathtubs. A few weeks later, hospital administration announced a glowing full accreditation from JCAH.
Just a few days later, an unattended Doris Peltier drowned in a hospital bathtub. Mims came back to reinvestigate.
Local media, especially Ed Pearce and Buddy Frank at KTVN TV-2 reported extensively on all of the above. I remember Buddy's first story entitled "Public Relations vs. Patient Care."
Have things improved? Yes. President Bush the Elder signed the ADA into law on July 26, 1990. As he did with the Iran nuke agreement and so much else, our Mad King Donaldov wants to destroy it.
The nightmare begins again.
BOY SCOUT'S HONOR. The fake news New York Times recently reported that "A steady decline in pedestrian deaths in the U.S. has reversed...the boom in taller, heavier trucks and SUV's has changed what happens when a person is struck."
I've been categorizing the obvious for quite some time. Throw in bicycles for good measure. I am a former Star-scout level senior patrol leader Boy Scout. I remember the scout manual which advised us kids to ride AGAINST auto traffic so riders could best see what was coming at them. Common sense, right? Wrong. All riders today are advised to ride with traffic and can probably get a ticket for contrary behavior.
Some poor cyclickian soul was rear-ended by a vehicle and killed not far from my house a few weeks ago. Today's average car is a mini-tank, complete with its own TV lounge and even self-driving manslaughter options. I've seen many pedestrians walking the McCarran loop with grocery bags to put food on the table.
At least some of the latter have the sense to walk against traffic. Somebody from the velocipede end of reality, please send me a justification for blind-side bike pathways. And rear-view mirrors don't count.
Which brings me to another mystery I've been asking for many years...
CHEERS? Last week came news of the passing of superstar director James Burrows, co-creator of the venerable Bostonian bar-room TV series. Years ago, I noticed a familiar face on a PBS "American Experience" documentary. From the Barbwire of Feb. 21, 2018:
STILL EXPLOITED AFTER 107 YEARS: A human life was worth less than 75 bucks in 1911. That's what the perps paid per employee death. The program detailed America's labor holocaust, the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire which claimed 146 lives and injured 71 others. Most of the dead were young, immigrant Italian and Jewish women. Some passed thru Ellis Island in the same years as both sides of my family.
There was something eerily familiar about the recurring still photos of the greedy owners of that firetrap New York City sweatshop.
One looked identical to the smirky guy in the bowler hat with the drink in his hand on the Emmy-winning opening credits of the popular "Cheers" TV sitcom.
Judge for yourself. I have since uploaded those photos at the end of every column since then at NevadaLabor.com. I contacted American Experience producers in Boston and have yet to receive a response.

MELT ICE --> Mask up! Get the latest boosters, protect yourself and your family and continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Popes Leo and Francis, the Dalai Lama, new Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, and the world's more than 160 currently war-torn lands including ours. May we survive WW3 perhaps coming soon to a polling place near you.
As Lech Walesa's union members say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

¡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.)

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024. For all the news you never knew you needed to know, head for BallotBoxing.US.

MELT ICE —> Mask up! Get the latest boosters, protect yourself and your family, mask yourself up to melt ICE, and continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Popes Leo and Francis, the Dalai Lama, Sarah Mullally (the new Archbishop of Canterbury), and the world's more than 160 currently war-torn lands, including ours. May we survive WW3 perhaps coming soon to a polling place near you.

¡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.)

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024. For all the news you never knew you needed to know, head for BallotBoxing.US.

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

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.

Let it Be: An American Pope Francis2
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-23-2025, uploaded 4-22-2025

Ain't we a pair?
Dennis Myers & Andrew Barbano inducted into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-10-2024

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

My Golden Girl
50 years ago today

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

To Die For
My daughters were born 65 years ago yesterday. Alas, their youth was cut in twain.
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 1-17-2024

Web Xtras & Smoking Guns—>

Why the science is clear that masks work
By Zeynep Tufecki / The New York Times / 3-10-2023

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

For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now, subscribe to BARBWIRE CONFIDENTIAL—>Cheap. (HushHush!) Hie thee to BallotBoxing.US/

Peruse the Underbelly of the News —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now: Tell your friends and friendly enemies to subscribe to Barbwire Confidential for warm laughter, cheap thrills, hot scoops and occasional cold logic at BallotBoxing.US/ Cheap at twice the price. (Hush Hush!)

Barbwire dark foreshadowings unfortunately have a way of becoming reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/ It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment. Thank you kindly for your support.

$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

Wasting workers where everybody knows your name
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 10-18-2023

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Andrew Barbano is a 57-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He was the longtime executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and is a 25-year+ member and former first vice-presdient of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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