I’ve been right more often than the Bible over the past 40 years.
That’s mostly because I’m a lot closer to reality than ancient writers of morality metaphors for illiterate goatherds or pyramid construction slaves 3,500 years ago. (They REALLY needed a union.)
If you think the above intentionally inflammatory, you are entirely correct.
Please don’t become angry with me for pointing out the obvious. You’ll feel better raging against those who have cleverly manipulated you to become so belligerent.
America today is filled with good people harboring a vague feeling that they have been royally screwed but don’t know who to blame.
They are thus very susceptible to demagoguery, better translated as rabble rousing. If you are part of said rabble, you should indeed feel the stirrings of righteous rage. Insulted. Dissed. You have been, as have I.
As poet Leonard Cohen advised, “Everybody knows the fight is fixed. The poor get poor. The rich get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows.”
If anything can get us unfortunate fixees into high dudgeon, it’s realizing that we’ve been ripped off and that our children are paying a brutal price.
Which brings me to Nevada 2015.
The Barbwire first pointed out last July that Silver State per-pupil education funding has been flat at best, backsliding at worst when adjusted for inflation.
It can’t be true, can it?
Major corporate media have unanimously chanted the economic development breakfast club mantra that Nevada is newly invested in education. (The suits love to meet at the crack of dawn to prove how hard they work.)
How many times have you heard that we gotta get us an educated workforce for the jobs of the future?
We’re not doing so, but at least we’re producing press releases about it.
Despite repeated inquiries, the Nevada Department of Education has failed to respond to my requests for actual per-pupil expenditures starting in 2007, the year before meat-ax school cutbacks began under Gov. Jim the Dim.
No wonder. The awful truth hurts. (Barbwire 7-7-2015)
If only slightly, the Reno Kazoo-Journal finally caught up last week, complete with lots of front-page visual aids, of course.
Local schools are bursting at the seams, and we have no money to build new ones.
Surprise, surprise.
Despite glowing comments by Gov. Veto El Obtúsè and other economic-development shills, the booster-goosers spurred runaway growth without provision for its cost. Schools, parks, roads, police and fire protection: You name it, we’re neglecting it.
Taxpayer-subsidized expansion is not paying for itself.
As I have advised many times, get yours now and then get out because the bandidos are paving over the pretty little valley by the mucky Truckee.
Unless you enjoy an upper middle class income or more, your kids will pay a pretty price, damaged and deafened by cacophonous classes in sardine cans.
Who cares as long as it’s good for business, right?
Welcome back to 1978.
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.
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