The first step is for someone to say you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. The time has come to make some hard decisions. Those decisions go to the core of Nevada life as we know it. Perhaps anyone currently raising a family here should consider moving somewhere else. Our school systems in Nevada — from kindergarten to graduate school — are shamefully underfunded now and have been for years. The governor said that he has yet to receive a letter or postcard telling him that there is an alternative to cutting education budgets. Funny, he never said a word opposing new sports pavilions at UNR and UNLV. Now comes a report that Nevada ranks dead last among 51 states (behind D.C., Puerto Rico or perhaps Guam) in the amount of state support for higher education.
Why let UNR and UNLV degenerate into Reno State and Las Vegas State colleges? Why don’t we consider shutting both schools down altogether? Let’s make Nevada live up to the reputation it already has all across the country — that of a 20th century boomtown mining camp.
Let’s forget all those wonderful plans for economic diversification. Hewlett-Packard wouldn’t touch Reno a decade ago because of what they considered a substandard educational environment for a high-tech industry. More recently, Las Vegas lost a major new industry because it was viewed as a cultural wasteland — and they walked away even though all other conditions were right. It was just that the area was perceived as a poor place to bring up a family, and the company thought that its people would not want to move their families to Las Vegas. Maybe we should stop being such hypocrites, trying to change an image we really deserve.
Perhaps it is time to realize that we really don’t have a state government here in Nevada and that we’ve never had one. Nevada’s state government is still basically a territorial administration. We could probably rescind statehood, go back to territorial status and be better off. We’d probably end up with a better share of our federal tax dollars that way.
Monopoly milk and dairy pricing is currently happening with the full knowledge and acquiescence of the Nevada Dairy Commission. Insurance regulation in Nevada is non-existent. Health care costs are totally out of control and the Greater Nevada Health Systems Agency and the State Division of Human Resources have been so shot through with political influence peddling as to be totally worthless. The mentally disabled are still left to die through improper care.
Déjà vu all over again
All of the above was lifted from a speech I gave at the appropriately named Depression Deli, now a topless joint on E. Fourth Street in Reno. The date was Oct. 5, 1982.
More than a quarter century has now passed. That economic crunch was followed by another a decade later in which the budget was again balanced on the backs of the physically and mentally disabled. Now, here we are again in the same damned place, only worse. Gov. Jim the Dim is every bit as weak and horny as his 1982 predecessor, List the Lustful.
Was I overstating the case when I said we might as well close the universities?
“We might just as well close the campuses down,” said Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Gomorrah South, reacting to Gov. Gibbon’s Rape of the State speech Thursday night.
My old friend Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, has proven entirely correct when he said a decade ago that growth had stopped paying for itself and it was time for gambling to pay its fair share. Never happened. Ditto with mining.
The Legislature will again fail to discharge its constitutionally mandated duty to adequately fund education. I am talking to people about preparing legal action, as has been done in 37 other jurisdictions, especially in the deep South. The Mississippi West of Nevada would then have a federal judge permanently running its educational system. Fine by me. The federal district court has run western Nevada’s water system since 1944.
Nevada has gambled too often and lost. We are now out of chances and plunging ass-first toward Tap City.
MLK today
Today at 3 p.m., the Second Baptist Church at Montello and Carville in northeast Reno will honor Hug High principal Andrew Kelly, the man credited with significantly upgrading his school’s academic achievement and my pick to succeed Paul Dugan when the long-suffering Washoe County school superintendent retires. Rev. Terry McCray-Hill of Sparks’ Bethel African-American Episcopal Church will preach as part of a weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday celebrations. On Monday at 10:30 a.m., the Rev. Onie Cooper will form his annual car caravan at the Second Baptist Church. They will depart at 11 a.m. to drive the portion of U.S. 395 which Cooper worked for years to have designated as Nevada’s MLK Highway.
Barbs and bulletins
Longtime Reno activist William Puchert has launched a timely new blog designed to kick government in the ass. Highly recommended. See renoiconoclast.blogspot.com.
Adding Insult To Injury Dept.
Last Wednesday, the Reno Gazette-Journal opened a posh new employee break room featuring high-def TV, a pool table and electronic games. Not that the severely understaffed paper’s employees will have any time to use it, something they duly pointed out to management, which noted that it was either use the budgeted funds or have them revert to corporate in New York. On the same day, the workers were notified that everybody will have to take an unpaid week off in order to support corporate profits. For more on how the RGJ thinks, check out “The Chain Gang” by Richard McCord at the Sparks Library — if you can find it open.
Be well. Raise hell.
Andrew Barbano is a 40-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and second vice president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. He hosts live news and talk (682-4144) Monday through Friday, 2 to 4 p.m. on Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter digital channels 16 and 216, streaming at Barbwire.TV. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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