Sometimes the Barbwire writes itself and reduces your humble scribe to the role of stenographer. Herewith examples of self-satirical moral obtuseness.
JUNGLE JIM’S GENDER GAP. I got an e-mail on Nov. 8 from (I’m not making this up) “Assemblywoman Jim Wheeler,” R-Douglas County, Nevada’s most high profile if not most intelligent freedom loving racist. (“I’d vote for slavery if my constituents wanted me to.”)
“This district has been a deep red one for a long, long time now. It’s a true rural Nevada district and one that thinks a little bit different (sic) than your average big city. Send a message that this campaign is here to fight for your values.”
He wants me to send him money so that he can whup them dastardly Democrats.
The Alabaster Bastion’s favorite Dastard is apparently having an identity crisis. Either Ms/Mr. Wheeler, his campaign managers, his e-mail program or all of the above are unsure of his/her plumbing. (Plumbing is basically the theme of this column. See below.)
Wheeler is running for state senate in whatever the ledge decides is his new district and just got his shill appointed to the Washoe/Carson senate seat next door. Don Tatro was juiced into office to fill an unexpired term in Nevada’s upper house over two eminently qualified candidates.
Mr. Tatro stated he’s not interested in running for a full term next year. He may have an identity crisis of ambition and re-think.
Rich white Douglas County is as bedrock moonhowler as most of its fellow Cow Counties with one distinction: It’s by far the richest, which makes the Alabaster Bastion doubly dangerous.
See my August/September 2021 series “Machine Guns & Racism in Nevada’s Alabaster Bastion” at Barbwire.US/
With Tatro, son of Mr/Ms. Wheeler’s longtime legislative secretary, Jungle Jim is poised to control 10 percent of the Nevada State Senate for the next 12 years.
If they both make it, Nevada’s new lieutenant governor may provide a serious case of karma. Douglas County Democratic Chair Kimi Cole just declared her candidacy for light-guv. If so, she would become Nevada’s first transgender officeholder.
Kimi is a very brave person. In Dastardly Douglas, they usually shoot Democrats on site.
Although legislative police and the senate sgt. at arms threw me out of the State Assembly peanut gallery in 2017 for the crime of wearing a hat (turned out they lied, there ain’t no such rule), I will be there, fedora and all, when Lt. Gov. Kimi Cole gavels the state senate to order in February, 2023. Just to see the look on Ms. Wheeler’s face.
MORE WHITE SPACE. The Zuckerman Empire just renamed Facebook to Meta, as in “I never META white person I didn’t like.” Trisha Melynkov-Ackerman, who as Patricia Ackerman was the 2020 Democratic nominee for the northern Nevada congressional seat, posted this in ZuckLand: “The whistleblower Frances Haugen has brought the evidence forward that Facebook is toxic and dangerous to well being. What compelled me to make this rare post is this Facebook name change. Meta in Hebrew means “DEAD”. I find this amusing and even prophetic.
Mrs. Ackerman lives in Douglas County and is a constituent of — drum roll, please — Ms/Mr. Wheeler.
SPARKS CITY HALL FUNNIES. WHO KNEW? In last week’s Trib, the usually staid City Council Meeting Highlights contained a couple of gems about labor pains.
Councilcritters approved a $125k reimbursement to the CIty of Reno for the Rail City’s share of a “construction contraction.” Call the maternity ward.
You gotta hang around Sparks to appreciate the pain of that one. The council proclaimed this week as “National Apprenticeship Week” and extolled the virtues of apprenticeships as “a pathway to well-paying jobs in the City of Sparks and nationwide.”
Well, except if a developer wants City Hall to approve construction with unskilled labor. Sparks long mandated that building within the city required journeyman electricians and plumbers — you know, workers trained thru…drum roll, please…apprenticeship programs.
But when they decided to bulldoze Victorian Square in 2015 so that a developer could turn downtown into rabbit warren apartments, the council, with Mayor Geno Martini and City Attorney Chet Adams’ acquiescence, removed the licensing mandates. (“And we didn’t even get kissed afterward,” Barbwire 12-14-2015 et seq.)
Like I said, sometimes this column just writes itself.
CORPORATE WELFARE UPDATE. Siegel Suites, which owns apartments everywhere, turned the former Sparks Nugget Roof Garden Motel into rentals. They are currently under congressional investigation for wholesale evictions during the pandemic “moratorium.”
JACOB MARLEY SCROOGES RENO AGAIN. Former Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Anjeanette Damon just published her first ProPublica investigative report about the predatory Jacobs Entertainment empire which has been bulldozing old motels and evicting poor people. (Great minds think alike. See “Jacob Marley’s Freakers Ball @ City Hall,” Barbwire 10-20-2021)
Anjeanette’s magnum opus will be linked to the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/ The most egregious revelation of the series thus far: Reno City Manager Doug Thornley acting as point man for Jacobs by calling motel owners to pressure them to sell. Some have courageously refused. Somebody needs to file a complaint with the Nevada Ethics Commission.
NOW, TO BUSINESS. On Sunday morning, a bevy of politicos showed up to picket with striking Teamsters drivers and support staff at the downtown Reno bus station. Special thanks to Assemblymembers Natha Anderson, D-Sparks, Bea Duran, Michelle Gorelow and David Orentlicher, all D-Clark County, Democratic National Committeeman and Assembly District 27 candidate Alex Goff (a member of my union, CWA) and Nevada State AFL-CIO Executive Director Susie Martinez.
The creme-de-la-creme, as always, was Reno Councilmember and mayoral candidate Jenny Brekhus, who biked there. Jenny’s the ONLY elected official who has been by the workers’ side every step of the way, now well into Strike 3 against the abusive, foreign owned bus mis-managers. Kudos.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, IRA. Thursday, Nov. 18, marks the seventh anniversary of the diminution of the ambition of overt racist Assemblymember Ira Hansen, D-Sparks. He was slated to become speaker of the house in the 2015 legislative session until the Reno-Sparks NAACP (with a little help from me) and the late Hall of Fame ex-Trib reporter Dennis Myers started reminding people of his 17 years of weekly bigotry on the pages of this newspaper.
I started the landslide here followed by Dennis in the Reno News & Review the next day. On Friday, I sent the story worldwide and Ira had to step down. He’s never even said thanks that I got him a quarter-page with a photo in The New York Times and writeup in The Guardian of London.
He’s now a state senator and should fit well with Tatro and Wheeler, especially when the moon’s full.
Take care of each other and be careful out there.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 52-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
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