People everywhere display a serious weakness for believing something just because it pre-dates their birth. Some institutionalized superstitions have become very profitable and so powerful that they cause wars.
Voter registration is deemed good but was actually developed to keep poor southern blacks and whites and northern European immigrants (my relatives) from voting. As Tribune alum Dennis Myers pointed out in the April 7 Reno News & Review, registration has worked exactly as intended.
I quoted Myers’ article last Tuesday when Reno-Sparks NAACP President Patricia Gallimore and I did a live half-hour on New York City radio. I noted Myers’ linkage of low turnout (for which registration is not a cure) to the criminal justice system. Had disenfranchised black people been allowed to vote, Al Gore would have won Florida in a landslide in 2000 and U.S. blood would not still moisten the sands of Araby today.
I have had a lot of requests and am working to get the entire program available for webstreaming.
Myers’ sterling research got me thinking about other con jobs that have acquired credibility through little more than longevity. Union people know there is no “right to work” in the U.S. Constitution or any other, but the PR label has done its job of weakening unions by forcing them to work free for non-members.
Employees injured on the job are covered by “workers compensation” insurance, which is actually a dirty commie socialist big government plot. It was instituted to keep employees from suing their employers over unsafe working conditions.
A decade ago, the Nevada State Medical Association phonied up a PR campaign asserting that doctors were leaving Nevada in droves because of “the skyrocketing cost of malpractice insurance.” It was a bright, shining lie, but now any Nevadan injured by the few (less than five percent) incompetent physicians can’t win enough in court to hire a lawyer. Which explains why lawyer advertising today solicits auto accidents.
Conspiring to fix prices is illegal except for insurance companies thanks to the McCarran-Walter Act. (Yep, named for our late and unlamented flaming racist McCarthyite Democratic Sen. Patrick McCarran.) It’s a rigged game that both Obamacare and Hillarycare failed to fix. So if your premiums are going up, blame mostly dead Nevada voters.
The Las Vegas Sun won a Pulitzer a few years back for documenting the rash of worker deaths on high-rise LV Strip construction. Workplace safety inspection and enforcement were largely absent. Who cares? Workers can’t sue.
This Thursday, April 28, organized labor pauses for Workers Memorial Day to remember those injured and killed on the job.
As Mary Harris “Mother” Jones famously said, pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
HALL OF FAME former Assemblymember Bob Price, D-North Las Vegas, still resides in Tahoe Pacific South Meadows, an acute care facility in the same complex as Renown South Meadows, 10101 Double-R Blvd. (89521). Thanks to everyone who has called or written to cheer up the longtime Sparks resident. You may send well-wishes to the above address or call (775) 326-6148.
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 47-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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