Be careful what you wish for

“The world is in an uproar. The danger zone is everywhere.”— Ray Charles 1961

With McConnell and Czar T-Rump’s madcap judges afflicting and infecting the land, moonhowler corporate America is pulling out all the stops to take advantage while they can.

As usual, the prime target is people’s paychecks. One Confederate blackrobe in Texas just stepped back from the razor wire long enough to make it a lot harder for unions to organize workers at McDonald’s.

Nevada’s world champion corporate welfare queen Elon Musk has joined some of his fellow predators in an attempt to destroy any federal regulation of the workplace. Musk’s spaced out SpaceX, Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s are trying to get the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) declared unconstitutional.

They know that T-Rump’s favorite rap group, Clarence and the Supremes, feel anything that didn’t exist before 1789 is automatically unconstitutional. So much for Social Security, Medicare and the United States Air Force.

Baron Elon and his hucksters may think they’re doing something innovative. Have I got news for them.

Decades ago during the reign of King Ronald the Vague, the best Nevada labor leader I ever knew noted that some union leaders thought Reagan had perverted the NLRB so grotesquely that it SHOULD be eliminated.

Later Republican presidents have followed President Pomade’s lead and turned the body charged with protecting workers’ rights into labor’s enemy.

Following the perverted psychological projectionism of their Orange Crusher, today’s corporate royals accuse Biden’s NLRB appointees of (gasp!) opposing their dictates. You will probably hear the same thing if Biden’s new appointments to the postal board of governors rid of T-Rump’s hitman charged with destroying the system in order to make a case for privatizing it for corporate profit. Even UPS and FedEx might object, as they are the US Postal Service’s largest customers.

Assassinating voting by mail is just one byproduct of the campaign.

Anything that makes it easier for citizens to vote is anathema in the house of MarALoco.

I’ll talk to union leaders about the idea of eliminating the NLRB but it may be a good idea. Right now, any business that doesn’t want its workers to unionizd can prevent it. All it takes is tons of money destroying the lives of workers who dare.

There’s no real penalty for firing pro-union employees and the NLRB can’t fine companies so much as a dollar for breaking the law. Since Reagan fired all the members of the only union that supported him, the air traffic controllers in 1981, union-busting law firms have spouted like weeds near a sewage treatment plant. We’ve got some of them in these parts.

The eminent Guardian of London/UK just published a long article headlining that Musk and his fellow travelers are trying to “return labor to the law of the jungle.”

The estimable journalist Steven Greenhouse never bothered to speak with any union leaders.

The NLRB was passed in 1935 on Franklin Roosevelt’s watch. Unions were already running wild organizing the oppressed during the Great Depression. The NLRB was successful for 12 whole years until Republicans in Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman’s veto in 1947.

Unions in Canada today have about the same percentage in the workforce as right after WW2, about one in three. In the U.S., despite all the union strikes last year, union membership continued to fall to where it’s now less than one in ten.

Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden all promised to make union organizing easier rather than today’s elongated, convoluted legal maze.

All failed.

So let’s try going back to the future of the wild wild west. The Supremes like empowering states, and there is a current majority of blue and purple states that could finally do something against the overlords who have given us the most repressive labor laws and worst health care in the industrialized world.

The above scorched earth campaign against workers’ wages may well prove the old axiom: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

CESAR CHAVEZ CELEBRATION XVIII happens April 5 at Circus Circus Reno. See CesarChavezNevada.com/ INSIDE POLITICS: This week, non-partisan Marcy Kupfersmith will declare her candidacy for Clara Andriola’s District 4 seat on the Washoe County Commission. Mrs. Kupfersmith will take leave from chairing the Sparks Senior Citizens Advisory Committee which she helped form in 2018.

The district covers Sparks from downtown east to the county line and northward to Spanish Springs, Lemmon, Sun and Palomino valleys, Warm Springs and Pyramid Lake. Voter registration is basically split three ways between the two major parties and non-partisans, which makes it anybody’s game.

Republican Andriola was appointed to serve after Commissioner Vaughn Hartung resigned to take a post with state government.

I’ve known Marsy for many years and I know one thing: She will very probably be outspent but she will never be out-worked.

Stay tuned.

4TH ANNIVERSARY. I began my Covid quarantine on Friday the 13th of March, 2020. I’ve had all my vaxxes and I’m still here, unlike many good souls who thought that the Terminator had been vanquished.

FACEBOOK REVERSE CHAUVINISM. I recently posted that the last best hope organic life has on this tiny orb is for women to at long last finally take the reins of power. Males have proven genetically incapable of not starting shooting wars. So I guess I’ve endorsed democratic discrimination against men, even if we continue our manic servitude to tribalism — as long as women run the tribes.

And yes, “democratic discrimination” is a new oxymoron.

GOVS. ABBOTT AND DESATANIST, CALL YOUR CENSORS. Top gun Reno lawyer Mark Mausert recently posted his Facebook page with this bit of wisdom from the great ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become.”

To which I rudely responded: “Heraclitus has been banned in Texas and Florida because they think it’s the title of a dirty movie.”

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, CesarChavezNevada.com and MississippiWestnv.org/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us