Commentary
“You know the world is going to hell when the best golfer is black and the best rapper is white.” — Charles Barkley, 2003
Last Tuesday’s Reno Gazette-Journal front page made me think of that bit of wit from Sir Charles. His pop culture portent has proven all too accurate.
“Pandemic Not Done” the RGJ reported with an article from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“People who have dodged COVID entirely are in the minority,” they noted.
I resemble that remark. Since Friday the 13th of March 2020, I have pretty much limited my life to medical appointments.
Those who must get out and about in the MAGA-infested world are not so lucky. Mask-wearing has become the MAGA equivalent of the scarlet letter “D.”
“Repeat infections are common,” KFF Health News noted. That’s no small thing. Websearch the horror stories of people who have contracted long COVID. If you get it, your life as you have known it may well be over.
I even have a senior friend and regular reader who is needlessly fatalistic and cavalier about the Terminator.
“I have had all my shots and recently, a booster. I am now 80, an age where I might well end up a burden on my kids. Though I think I am fine, to lessen that possibility, I take just about every risk out there. I would like to leave my kids something and I certainly don’t want to live on as a vegetable,” he noted.
He is still a dynamically productive member of society who continues to do valuable work, employing others and helping the less fortunate, as he has all his life. He’s also a conservative but reasonable Republican (there are a few left). This troubled world needs more like him, not fewer.
Then there’s a young relative of mine who has refused to vaccinate his children, both Washoe County School District students. I just don’t understand.
I likewise can’t fathom how the richest, fattest, most badass country in the world can let its children sicken and starve out in the cold.
The other Tuesday front page headline noted that Las Vegas Democratic Congressmember “Susie Lee and nonprofits discuss growing housing crisis.” They have their work cut out for them, given the competition.
To steal from Sir Charles, you know the world is going to hell when children are sick and hungry and taxpayers are subsidizing BigOil’s predations (Google Koch Brothers and “Dark Money” by Naomi Klein). Oil baron Charles Koch set the template for establishing tax-deductible non-profits as money laundries to funnel freebie money to MAGA Moonhowler causes.
As I noted last week, the cancer is spreading. Non-profits are now channeling tax-deductible money to pay for college level pro-sports athletes, some to the tune $500,000 a year. Meanwhile outside of the jockocracy, real students go into debt for life to pay for college.
Enough, dammit! Get vaccinated so you may live to vote for liberals who have a heart like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
TIME AND SPACE. There’s just never enough, a principal reason the Barbwire live call-in news/talk/rock show will soon return. I defeated Lush Rambo in this region back in the day and the great issues need a forum wherein no one goes unchallenged.
So, here are short shots which demand attention and will be expanded in the web edition of this column at the flagship of Nevada union activism, NevadaLabor.com/
DARRYL ROBERTS, CALL YOUR OFFICE. My friend Darryl is the award winning producer-director of “America the Beautiful,” a film critical of the country’s obsession with skinniness and phony beauty standards. He interviewed former Miss Nevada and future Assembly Majority Leader Teresa Benitez Thompson, D-Reno, and César Chávez NevadaLabor.com Hall of Famer Darlene Jespersen for the film. He also interviewed me and I vaguely recall ending up on the cutting room floor. He showed the film twice at UNR.
Darryl sounded the alarm on cancer-causing (cue Sylvester the Cat) Phthalates in cosmetics. They replaced lead to make lipstick shiny. The Killer P’s are endocrine disruptors, a class of potent chemicals which interfere with human hormone systems. They also infest just about every plastic and synthetic from your refrigerator to your eyeglasses and plastic coffee cup.
These gremlins decrease testosterone, which is slumping in human males worldwide. So get used to less sex. Word just came out that with bee populations dying off, pansies are learning how to fertilize themselves.
Bachelors and batchelorettes beware.
Consumer Reports just issued a blistering indictment of phthalates, finding them all over the food we eat every day.
CESAR CHAVEZ XVIII returns in March. I have made the case that to make the late Tribunite and Barbwire and Nevada Press Association Hall of Famer Dennis Myers the first journalist inducted to the NevadaLabor.com César Chávez Hall of Fame, an honor delayed by plague still upon us.
Stay tuned.
UNION MUSCLE IN THE TRENCHES. At presstime came news that both the Nevada State AFL-CIO and Railroad Workers United are looking to hire organizers. The rail folks are looking regionally while the AFL-CIO needs someone to work northern Nevada. Full details at NevadaLabor.com/
When labor gears up early, progressives win. When union attention gets diverted, as the late great Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., did awhile back trying to save his senate majority, disaster ensues. The game’s afoot.
EBENEZER SCROOGE LIVES. An initiative petition was just filed by a beneficial non-profit to cap interest rates on payday loan predators.
All this got started when the late Gov. William Janklow, R-S. Dakota, got his state’s usury (interest rate) law repealed. That led to Citibank relocating its credit card business to his backwater. The cancer soon spread to Nevada, where pols always have the red light on. A special legislative session was called, interest rates were allowed to skyrocket, and Citibank located a credit card center in Gomorrah South.
They were so ashamed of having payments sent from LV that they got a special zip code for “The Lakes, Nevada”.
Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 55-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us Links with this column at NevadaLabor.com/
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