Amid the weeping and gnashing of teeth about the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles abandoning its cell-phone appointment system, no one remembered that the state intentionally caused longer lines four years ago by killing DMV Express.
This year, the Sandoval administration never asked lawmakers to re-open those Sparks and Reno storefronts that saved time and hassle.
The dimbulbs instead requested restoration of 75 positions, $109 million for computer upgrades and a new Las Vegas HQ. Next time you get summoned to the pit and the pendulum, bring a novel by Poe or Kafka.
FISSIONABLE FICTION. Israel has long possessed The Bomb, a fact absent from preachments about the proposed Iran nuke deal. The ayatollahs know that only atomic weapons generate respect in this totally militarized world. Witness how we cower before North Korea.
Iran the greatest threat? Nonsense. That’s madman Kim Jong Un’s job. Best that we don’t tick him off by relegating him to number two.
LIFE IMITATES ART. Germany finally found a way to conquer Europe without firing a shot. First Greece, then Spain, Italy and Portugal. Can Ireland and Iceland be far behind?
I’ve previously recommended the 2009 Clive Owen/Naomi Watts thriller “The International” that accurately predicted all this.
Just before his assassination, an honest banker says “control the debt, you control countries.”
And Puerto Rico.
SOMETIMES I HATE WHEN I’M RIGHT. Looks like my dire predictions about Gov. Sandoval’s vaunted taxpayer funding of private/religious schools (Barbwire 6-16-2015) are coming true sooner than anticipated. If ever there was a government-spawned racket, this is it, a mini-version of the scandalous federal student loan program.
Based upon Arizona’s experience with fraud, it looks like our doofus state treasurer will have to act as a local IRS. If the giveaway survives court challenge, 2017 lawmakers will have to fund a huge new regulatory bureaucracy to augment the treasurer’s cosmetic contraption, which will be overwhelmed by auditing expenditures.
DAILY BLOW. Jon Stewart hit the wall. With Daily Show audience slumping, he needed to jump to a major network as Bill Maher did when he took “Politically Incorrect” from cable to ABC. Maher was eventually ousted by corporate weasels and returned to cable.
All major and almost all minor media – including the various permutations of quasi-public broadcasting – are dependent on tax-deductible corporate dollars. There is thus only one political party and only one acceptable point of view: corporate. Pushing the envelope means a pink slip.
Stewart couldn’t go up so he got out.
STRUMPETRY. Enter the Democrats for Trump logo contest at NVCaucus.com/ I’ll buy lunch for the winner.
BLASTS FROM THE PAST. “If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it,” opined Travus T. Hipp in 1982.
Looks like it matters.
“The voting rights landscape today most closely resembles the period before 1965” when the recently-gutted Voting Rights Act was passed. So wrote author Ari Berman on the landmark law’s 50th birthday. (NY Times August 6)
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 46-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us>. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.