Nevada opened for business this week in full swagger and strut.
CLINGING TO THE LEDGE: On Monday evening, Gomorrah South Assemblymember Venicia Considine, D-Clark, hosted a preview showing of “Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty.”
Silver State civil rights legend Ruby Duncan, now 90, twice organized thousands to march down the Las Vegas Strip to push state government to do something about poverty in the apartheid Nevada of yesteryear. They paralyzed business and received national attention. Thereafter, Nevada kids started eating better.
Duncan had been fired as a hotel maid in 1964 for organizing her fellow workers to protest against brutal working conditions and low wages.
In 1971, opening a decade when Nevada would know unprecedented prosperity while being showered with federal money, the state decided little kids should starve (like congressional Republicans today).
Redoubtable Ruby said no, took it to the streets and won. She has a Las Vegas school named after her.
The highly honored film premieres on PBS March 20. Watch local listings and the Barbwire. Links and references at NevadaLabor.com/
“The Westside Slugger,” Nevada Hall of Fame journalist John L. Smith’s biography of the late great State Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, contains extensive chronicles of the state’s turbulently racist adolescence. We still haven’t grown up.
DINA NEAL CARRIES FORWARD. Sen. Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, represents her dad’s former legislative district. Last week, she rightly questioned Nevada’s huge new corporate welfare tax giveaway to Tesla and its duplicitous boss, Elon Musk
Trashing the secret negotiations to give away $330 million to the supporter of racist “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams, Neal said that such skulduggery “shouldn’t protect large corporations and prevent the legislature from understanding the full impact of taxes that would be abated to make an economic development deal…It is time for the legislature to re-examine the delegation of authority for tax abatements” (to state bureaucrats).
DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN. When Republican ex-Gov. Brian Sandoval cut the original billion-plus deal with Musk, both promised that Tesla would hire local workers at decent wages. Nevada’s biggest welfare queen soon broke his word, importing low-wage employees and generating serious union problems at the Storey County sprawl. There will likewise be no area-standard wage requirements on the new deal.
UNINTENTIONAL SEXY SELF-SATIRE DEPT. Last week, veteran Nevada journalist Dana Gentry published a piece at Hugh Jackson’s Nevada Current website which was picked up in last Sunday’s Reno Gazette-Journal. It once again displayed Nevada’s hypocritical contradiction “banning” sex work in its major metros while allowing the Cow Counties to profitably milk the permissiveness.
This distinction without a difference has long facilitated all facets of a thriving sex trade, from abject slavery to teen high roller hookers.
It also leads to periodic spurts of political righteousness.
Thus it was last week when our lawmakers reviewed proposals to get tough. Penalties for buying sex would now cost attempted customers $800 instead of $400 in Sparks, Reno and Gomorrah South.
Assemblymember Shondra Summers Armstrong, D-LV, warned “We have the Super Bowl coming next year to Las Vegas and we have a thing which I hate — ‘Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’, she said, referencing Las Vegas’ signature ad campaign,” Ms. Gentry reported.
“That to me is an invitation that people believe that they can come to our town, abuse our girls, bring other people in, abuse them and it’s cool,” Armstrong added.
Well, yeah.
A representative of the R&R Partners ad agency decried trafficking in underage girls. Methinks they protesteth too much.
R&R was founded by longtime Republican operative Sig Rogich, the father of Nevada term limits. (Barbwire 2-22-2023). R&R originated and still makes tons of money on its “Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” media campaign.
UNINTENTIONAL IRONY DEPT. Eminent journalist Gentry is the daughter of legendary casino boss Ash Resnick who ran Caesars Palace gambling back in the wiseguy days. I’m sure he met Ruby Duncan.
INTENTIONAL HYPOCRISY DEPT. Many major hotel-casinos statewide have long employed in-house hookers. When I lived in LV, I would sometimes go to shows at Caesars. I became curious about frequent pages over the casino public address system for “Princess Fatima.” I asked a bartender about it. He said it was a call for a cigarette girl to come to the casino pit.
When I later told a casino owner’s wife that story, she looked at me as though I was a virgin choir boy.
“It’s a call for any cocktail waitress who wants to take the next high roller trick, report to the pit.”
Of course, few hardworking cocktail servers were such multi-taskers but I have interviewed former painted ladies who practiced the in-house trade both north and south. As long as Nevada is ruled by the “extractive” vices of gambling and mining, there will only be cosmetic sex trade busts for public relations purposes here on the High Desert Plantation.
ANOTHER PUBLIC RELATIONS COUP FOR NEVADA. Washoe County’s for-profit superspreader mass transit system has spread our infamy all the way to France.
Paris-based Mediapart just published a story about the depredations of Keolis Transit. Regular Barbwire readers know that the worldwide outfit is partially owned and subsidized by the French government.
The three 2021 Teamsters Local 533 Hat Trick strikes in these parts are prominently featured, along with a photo of a local RTCRide bus.
Mediapart reported that Keolis just got fired in Gomorrah South, losing a bid to renew its Clark County contract. Despite its usual bait-and-switch low-bid hustle, Keolis lost to the high bidder! (Barbwire 2-22-2023)
Local 533 President Gary Watson told Mediapart about this area suffering like so many others from Keolis abuse of its workers and constant attempts to bust unions.
As I’ve reported several times, if striking Virginia union members come to Reno-Sparks to picket, local Teamsters won’t cross. (See NevadaLabor.com)
Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for the children Palestine, Ohio, Ukraine and 63 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org and MississippiWestNV.org/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
