You learn to recognize the red flags of instant replay as you get older.
BIG DREAMS AND FLYING MACHINES in pieces on the ground: Activists are decrying Reno City Council approval of a huge new housing development in the flood plain at the base of Peavine Mountain. Be patient.
Developers smoked environmentalists in 2006 when county government chickened out on acquiring the sprawling Ballardini Ranch in southwest Reno and handed some Minnesota bandidos over $15 million in taxpayer money to drop legal action. The last pristine open space in the Truckee Meadows had bulldozers onsite, then came the Great Recession. The streams, birds and bunnies still run free. (See below.)
GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS. Reno-Sparks NAACP matriarch and former president Dolores Feemster has made a miraculous recovery and has returned home feeling and looking great.
Alas, if stories could always end that way. All Nevada labor mourns the loss of longtime Sparks resident and union leader Tony Mayorga who died Feb. 19 at Renown Med. The good man, just 65, worked with his hands all his life and earned his way to the top. He spent 18 years in the field on construction jobs before becoming training director in 1997 and president of Laborers’ Local 169 in 1999. He held both positions until his 2015 retirement.
“Beyond his family, colleagues and friendships, Tony’s impact will be felt for decades to come through the thousands of women and men he educated in skilled construction,” stated Local 169 Business Manager and State Assemblymember Richard “Skip” Daly, D-Sparks.
Mayorga received the César Chávez Distinguished Labor Educator Award at the 2015 Nevada César Chávez Celebration. He will be inducted into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on César Chávez Day ‘18 on March 31, thus becoming only the second posthumous honoree in the event’s history. Watch CesarChavezNevada.com/
WHOM TO BLAME DEPT. American Online (AOL) e-mail addresses are the most coveted by marketers and politicians because their longtime owners tend to be very established homeowners, officials, activists and voters. For the high-sounding reason of cutting down on spam, AOL has recently been blocking tons of e-mail addressed to its clients, much of it legit. Some of my paid subscribers have been blacked out.
I sniff greed. With Czar Donaldov’s biased Federal Communications Commission, net neutrality is dead. Corporations can now put express lanes on the information superhighway. Pay to play or sluggish you stay.
It is in AOL’s interest to get people complaining about delivery so that its sales department can begin offering expensive preferred access to the most coveted e-mail addresses on the web.
Complain.
CRYSTAL BALLGAMES. I don’t resemble Princess Cassandra warning about that big wooden horse outside the gates of Troy, but keeping an open mind like a good liberal, I often see history about to repeat. Over five years ago, I wrote that long-term cycles foreshadowed a GOP presidential win in 2016. (Barbwire Nov. 29, 2012) I followed up with additional forecasts all flinching toward Vladimir’s victory.
The rule of thumb has long been that the stock market is six months ahead of the economy. Last Dec. 27, I predicted that we would start a slide into Great Depression 2 in the third quarter of this year. The stock market crashed a few weeks later.
WHOM TO BLAME DEPT. PART DEUX. Stumbling thru legal notices, I found the name of one Bruce William Marr, recently deceased. I’ve called the law firm handling his estate as well as a listed phone number. No response. The Bruce Marr I communicated with in the late 1980’s was a Reno resident and nationally noted radio programming consultant. He discovered an obscure Nebraska disc jockey and recommended him to KFBK in Sacramento. His name: Rush Limbaugh.
STILL EXPLOITED AFTER 107 YEARS. I uploaded a bulletin to e-list subscribers before last month’s state of the union speech. I suggested watching a meaningful alternative, the PBS “American Experience” rerun of 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.
There was something eerily familiar about the recurring still photos of the greedy owners of that firetrap New York sweatshop.
One looks 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. I have contacted American Experience producers in Boston and have yet to receive a response.
I’m a cheery guy. Why won’t people talk to me?
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us>
Leave a Reply