The rumors in the green felt jungle have proven true. Don Carano’s kids are fixing to take over Caesars Entertainment which will create the nation’s largest gambling den of iniquity (roughly 60 casinos in 16 states).
As Yogi Berra once advised, it ain’t over till it’s over. The Carano hotels are virulently anti-union and have recently suffered a string of defeats at the hands of the giant Culinary Union in both Reno and several other markets. (Ironically, Don Carano was once major legal counsel for the International Teamsters Union.)
Locally, long-smoldering kindling reached a flashpoint last year resulting in ongoing union demonstrations in front of the Silver Legacy, Eldorado and Circus Circus.
In recent years, the Sparks Nugget, Harrah’s (long a part of Caesars) and the Eldorado triplets have farmed out millions in remodeling projects to low-wage out-of-state contractors.
Nevada gambling regulators and the US Dept. of Justice will both address the big question: What constitutes an anti-competitive monopoly? Locally, the Caranos would control four of the six major hotel-casinos within the Reno city limits. (Four of eight if you include the smaller Atlantis and Cal-Neva.)
The children of John Ascuaga and the late Don Carano have not acquitted themselves well after taking over the family store. The Ascuaga kids failed to police illegal money laundering, breaking state and federal laws resulting in a $1 million federal fine. The Nugget was almost immediately sold to new owners and Michonne Ascuaga resigned her seat on the Nevada Gaming Commission.
The Carano kids drove daddy’s baby right into bankruptcy.
RED FLAG WARNINGS. Corporate raider Carl Icahn does not lose money. He took over Caesars after the Gomorrah South legend assumed crushing debt to acquire new holdings. With recession warnings everywhere worldwide, perhaps Mr. Icahn knows when to get outta Dodge and has found some suckers to allow him to quit winners. The merger still has to be approved by both regulators and corporate boards.
NEW BOSS LADY? Flight Attendants Union President Sara Nelson will demonstrate with Culinary workers in Las Vegas today. She may become the first woman to head the national AFL-CIO. I hope so.
CHA-CHING DEPT. Washoe County School Superintendent Traci Davis has hired attorney William Peterson, the same guy who intimidated a former school board into making Davis’ predecessor, Pedro Martinez, a millionaire.
Insiders fear that the latest fiasco will result in the school district becoming unable to buy liability insurance because of all the legal settlements of recent years.
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST. In a series of recent columns, I questioned the need for Senate Bill 398. Sen. Julia Ratti, D-Sparks, deserves high praise for trying to do something meaningful for renters. Her bill purportedly gave local governments more authority to foster low-cost housing. The words “rent” and “control” were not mentioned.
According to Sunday’s Reno Kazoo-Journal, southern Nevada Democrats killed the bill because “members of the (Democratic) caucus from other regions felt like their local governments had sufficient tools necessary to address the problem,” according to Assembly Majority Leader Teresa Benitez-Thompson, D-Reno.
I wallpapered the ledge twice with an online column asserting the SB398 was not a rent control bill.
It appears that the Democratic Assembly supermajority agreed with me that existing law allows municipalities to enact rent control, cost-based rent increase justification or whatever else they think will keep people from being thrown onto the streets.
The game’s afoot.
FREEDOM LOVING RACIST ALERT. Last week, I chanced upon a sports talk show broadcast from Reno’s Club Cal-Neva. The topic asked which UNR athletic figure is most hated, former Wolf Pack and 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick or former basketball coach Eric Musselman, now at Arkansas. Czar Donaldov hisself would have been impressed by the masterful combination of Lush Rambo-style straw-man fake facts with Trumpian false equivalence.
CORREXION: A couple of weeks ago I mis-remembered the name of the Tribune reporter who wrote the front page story about a local senior citizen whose 34-cent overdraft turned into $1,000 in charges from US Bank. (Barbwire 12-18-2007) Janine Kearney wrote the article.
CLARIFICATION. Last week, I noted that George Walker Bush’s ancestor, President Franklin Pierce (D, 1853-57) was the only president not re-nominated by his own party. Pierce was the only ELECTED president so dissed. (He spent most of his term dead drunk.) Several others were vice-presidents elevated after their president’s death in office.
KENNY DALTON UPDATE. The former Reno-Sparks NAACP president (1997-98) and retired firefighter remains hospitalized in Salt Lake City after successful kidney transplant surgery.
“I let him know of the many inquiries of concern for him and his condition,” current NAACP President Lonnie Feemster reported “He was moved by the outpouring of love and expressed his sincere appreciation. He was in good spirits and is recuperating well.”
Watch NevadaLabor.com and RenoSparksNAACP.org for updates.
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 50-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and first vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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