Reno Gazette-Journal from Reno, Nevada • Page 9

OiDioio: Reno Gazette-Journal Founded 1870 Saturday, July 19, 1986 9A Sue Clark-JacksonPublisher Everett S. LandersManaging editor Bruce L. BledsoeEditorial page editor Timothy AndersonEditorial associate Letters Campaign-sign defacers proving their ignorance wSjSa ilr I oh he following organizations and individuals deserve mention this week as winners and sinners: Dial NM America Syndicate, 1966 We're rapidly losing economics race to Japan Pit bulls debated I greatly enjoy owning and working with dogs. If it were otherwise I would not be in the business of training dogs. But I am relieved to hear that there is one less dangerous dog (Buddy the pit bull) roaming the streets.

Unfortunately, it was another pit bull horror story. These dogs do not deserve all this bad publicity. Any breed of dog, from a great dane down to a Chihuahua, could have done it (bitten a child). It is the owner's fault, not the dog's. I know of several people throughout the Reno area who are afraid to take their dogs andor children out into their own front yards, not to mention a walk around the neighborhood.

The reason for their fears is dogs at large. What do these loose dog owners think they are doing? Dogs need training and guidance, not the freedom to defecate on every lawn in a two-block radius. But I am sure that these dog "experts" do not need the advice of a professional who has worked with more than 1,000 dogs. Buddy is gone, but there are several dogs to take his place. Before it becomes open season on dogs that are consistently running loose, their owners should take the time to buy a leash and use it.

Brett R. Smith, Reno Sierra Nevada Canine July 14, 1986 She could speak, sit up pretty, sing and turn around. She loved ice cream and going in the car. She grew up with our children and slept in one of their arms every night. But the night of July 14 was different.

A neighbor's pit bull had tunneled his way the fence and hit our terrier "Bean-nip the force of "Jaws." For two hour our neighbors told us they heard a dog scream on and off as this vicious pit bull tore her te pieces. Two hours later he struck angther pet. In the futileliope of somehow compensating my threeobbing, children, I read the pet column in tfteJuly 15 newspaper. How can you replace dog- that grew up for eight years with yonr" children? I was appalled to read the following ad: very aggressive pit bull to good home will not tolerate children or cats." Will not tolerate? Didn't a pit bull just maul a child on Kings Row? Haven't we heard over and over again about the vicious temperament of these animals? What neighborhood would this animal terrorize? Why must we tolerate them? I don't understand. Please someone explain to me why anyone would want to own a vicious animal, and, better yet, tell me what can be done to rid ourselves of these killers.

Peggy Scheile, Reno July 16, 1986 "Japan, initially barred from the international arms race, now has mastered the new geopolitics, recognizing that in the nuclear age military power is of limited value and that political influence derives more from the economic strength of a highly productive, internationally competitive economy." Brown outlined the contours of the problem for me. In 1980, Japan's net foreign investments were $14 billion. Ours were $120 billion. In 1985, Japan's net foreign investment was $125 billion, while ours dropped to $97 billion. "When historians analyze this era of debt," Brown summed up in the 1986 book, "they will discover that excessive economic and ecological deficits have similar roots, for they reflect similar values and processes.

Occasionally, these are a result of miscalculations. But more commonly they result from a loss of social discipline, from a decision to satisfy today's needs and desires at the expense of tomorrow." It is that "tomorrow" that the Browns of the world are profoundly concerned about. And the world is becoming tomorrow even as we indulge ourselves today. Georgie Anne Geyer is a Washington-based syndicated columnist. WASHINGTON Lester Brown is good for some post-Statue of Liberty sobering up.

Brown, recipient of a $250,000 MacArthur "genius award" as one of 25 winners of MacArthur Foundation grants, is not hopeless at all but only urgent when he says of us: "We keep worrying about the Soviets. Actually, it's not possible to lose the arms race with the Soviets. But it is possible to lose the economics race with Japan. "Americans don't realize," he goes on, "that Japan will replace us as the world's main trading partner in 1990. It is almost as if we decided to accept an unconditional surrender, as though we were passive onlookers at our own destruction." In a city of too-often unwise men and women, Lester Brown is one of a handful of very wise people indeed.

Still in his early 50s, he came 30 years ago from a New Jersey farm eventually to form the Rockefeller-backed WorldWatch Institute here, which keeps the single most important watch on the globe's diminishing resources. Many believe Brown is the most effective monitor of the Earth its glories and cycles, its trees and waters and (more and more) its dangerous dysfunctions. And this is something he does with the mission- Georgie Anne Geyer ary zeal of the early Christians. Brown is one of a small band of men and women who are truly addressing the real "new politics" of the world today. These are not the traditional and expected issues of political power.

Nor are they issues addressed by traditional political power structures. The old issues were the grasping and holding of political power, the division of power between groups and persons. The new issues include everything from resource exhaustion, deforestation and massive illegal immigration from country to country to Brown's idea of understanding that the real new security in the world is economic. In "State of the World 1986," Brown's remarkable, almost biblical, annual report on the Earth, he wrote: "Preoccupied with each other, the two military superpowers apparently have failed to notice that global geopolitics is being reshaped in a way that defines security more in economic than in traditional military terms. Americans free to peddle smut, fight it ft em.

I don't weff to lh graph ic. Mwypo like a lot of thaae feiveat I see eCne displayed and evet Med it fd rriychil- being flaunted when dren to buy milk. SINNER: Whoever defaced the campaign sign of Reno Justice of the Peace Fidel Salcedo on Kuenzli Street. Apparently the defacers are out early this year in all their ignorance; and the person who assaulted Salcedo's sign must surely rank high among them. "Crimes against the innocent," the vandal declared in large black letters scrawled semi-legibly across the sign.

"Noway." The sign was further decorated by black smudging across Salcedo's face. And this is how we prove that we are upstanding citizens, isn't it? WINNER: Washoe County Registrar of Voters Robin Bogich, for preparing a handy 1986 Election Information booklet. The booklet, distributed as a public service by the Washoe County Commission, includes registration and voting dates, a list of the offices up for election with their qualifications and duties, a list of the questions to be voted on in November, instructions on how to vote on a voting machine, and answers to various questions about voting, such as i how to cast an absentee ballot and how to keep your registration current. The booklets are available at the Registrar's Office in the county courthouse. And by the way, the booklet says that election board workers are needed.

SINNERS: The more than 300 political candidates who failed to file their financial disclosure statements by the Monday deadline. It is no confidence-builder to know that these candidates have failed in the first legal obligation of their campaigns (aside from filing, of course, which they did remember to do). WINNER: Reno Fire Marshal Marty Richard, for closing the King's Inn Hotel after it failed to meet state fire code standards. The Nevada State Fire Safety Board should be commended, too, for refusing to grant the hotel a second r. extension.

King's Inn management has already had a two-year extension in which to meet state standards and it has not done so. It does not have sprinklers in the hallways or guest rooms, it has no paging alarm system in the rooms and its ventilating system does not have a shutdown mechanism to prevent smoke from filtering unchecked throughout the hotel. These safety standards were created after major fires at two Las Vegas hotels, and there can now be no exceptions for any hotel. SINNER: An unidentified aide of Rep. Harry Reid, for giving Reid credit for introducing two bills that he did not introduce: one to transfer 10,000 acres of private Lake Tahoe land to the U.S.

Forest Service, and one to limit taxpayer costs for presidential libraries. Reid has apologized to the real sponsors, Rep. Barbara Vucanovich of Nevada and Rep. Glenn English of Oklahoma. But his aide would do well to write, "Get the facts straight," a thousand times on a chalkboard.

WINNER: The 1986 District 1 Little League Hooligans Tournament, hosted by Carson Little League, for its fund-raising success. The tournament was established for two reasons: to raise money for charity and to give Hooligans a tournament of their own. (Traditionally, they are 11- and 12-year-olds selected by their Little Leagues to practice against their league's All-Star tournament teams.) All 12 area Little Leagues five from Reno, three from Sparks, two from I' Carson City and one each from North Tahoe and South Tahoe participated. 1 The tournament raised $1,055 for the T. Eagle Valley Children's Home.

SINNER: The U.S. Senate, for deciding to close down TV coverage of itself while it debates are you ready? I whether or not to make TV coverage a permanent fixture. Oh, stout hearts. SINNER: The federal Joint Nutrition Monitoring Committee for concluding, I after an intensive three-year study, that: I About 32 million Americans are I overweight, but the term overweight I cannot be precisely defined; it might be 10 percent above a person's ideal bodyweight or it might go as high as 20 percent, when a person would be considered severely overweight. And why this great mass of undefinable overweightedness? Because, dear friends, people eat too much and exercise too little (although, of course, the committee cannot say which).

Stay tunedior further revelations. Hypocrisy, i nave come tivuiErik, is GRASSE, France Far away from home on vacation, I have been thinking and talking more about sex than at any time, it seems, since my junior year in high school. Even here there are already jokes about what is legal or illegal in the bedrooms of America under the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that adults better be careful about what they consent to in Georgia. The consensus seems to be, though, that you can still do anything at all in France.

And, so far, I have already had a half-dozen discussions (or arguments) about the report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. No matter what position an American takes in bed, our government clearly doesn't want us reading about it or looking at pictures of it. There is a lot to argue about. I would defend to the death the right of the justices of the Supreme Court to make fools of themselves although it would be easier to travel without the sense that American prudishness has made us a laughingstock. Without having read the whole pornography report, an activity which is probably against the law in a couple of states, I can conclude that some of it is ridiculous.

Other parts, though, make sense. I have never been con- Richard Reeves vinced that the founding fathers had crotch shots in mind when they wrote freedom of speech into the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But, although I thoroughly dislike much of the garbage being peddled these days, I do not buy the argument that it causes sexual violence and crime. It seems to me that the opposite might be true, that such stuff may relieve sexual pressures in many people.

I don't like most pornography, although I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that. Perhaps what I object to is not pornography at all, but vulgarity. I subscribe to former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's opinion that he couldn't define obscenity, but he knew it when he saw it. Although I see things differently than Attorney General Edwin Meese and the ministers who support all of the report, I agree with the commission that citizens who believe their community is being damaged by pornography should organize to pressure public officials or boycott any merchant openly selling material they believe to be porno- an essential element of civilization. There is a critical difference between public and private behavior.

What is accepted and acceptable in public is part of the shared values of a society and I don't share the values of the publishers of Penthouse magazine, to say nothing of kiddie pornographers. The best example of creative hypocrisy in recent times was the use of the law and pressure by concerned citizens to change and control the public behavior of white people toward black people. This might not have changed what was in all human hearts, but we are better people for the hypocrisy that mandated equal legal and public treatment of all Americans. We are a puritan country. But we are also a free country.

Americans are free to peddle pornography and, if they have gone far enough to offend enough of the community, other Americans are free to try to stop them. Richard Reeves is a syndicated columnist based in New York City. So long, "Buddy." Justice has been done, but you were only a dog. How many organizations came forward in your defense? I have owned two pit bull terriers (Colby strain) in my 66 years. They were mother and son.

You couldn't force either one to attack a friendly animal or human, but woe unto any animal or human who attempted to attack me or my family. These dogs have been bred for hundreds of years to fight to win, or die. Their courage is beyond belief. They are a very special breed, and they should have a special class of owners. Perhaps if "Buddy" had had a special owner he would be alive today.

They are like guns, they should be taken very seriously. An old Italian-American, whom I greatly admired, used to comment about controversial issues, "Penso ripenso, come un matto," etc. Then it gets somewhat sacrilegious. I also, "Think and rethink, like crazy." What is justice? Two convicted killers of scores of young women (Bundy and Stano) have now had their executions indefinitely blocked by a federal judge. Hey, does anyone know whose side the federal judges and the American Civil Liberties Union are on? Incidentally, what part of heaven does Reno Animal Control Officer John Marquez descend from? Ted Barbee, Hawthorne July 9, 1986 Outdoors news needed Fishing, hunting and wildlife-associated activities are subjects of interest that I share with many other Nevadans.

Unfortunately, the Reno Gazette-Journal fails to include news coverage of these activities to the same degree given to organized sporting events such as boxing, baseball, etc. Did you know that in 1985, 214,000 anglers in Nevada fished 1.9 million days and caught 4,585,584 fish? This information was recently reported by the Nevada Department of Wildlife and thus indicates a high level of interest Nevadans have for piscatorial pursuits. Hunting and fishing articles written by Paula Del Giudice and published by the Gazette-Journal in recent months were of excellent quality and help dampen my criticism for lack of such articles appearing in your paper. The recent color pictorial layout and article on fly fishing the Truckee River was enjoyed immensely. Hopefully, your sports department will continue to increase its coverage of fishing, hunting and wildlife-associated activities in Nevada.

Richard J. Navarre, Reno July 14, 1986 lacocca nudged ever closer to presidential bid Time magazine commissioned a national poll during the same period. In that one Hart came out on top, but lacocca, the non-candidate, came in a strong second, substantially ahead of New York Governor Cuomo in national recognition. The further away from New York, the less well Cuomo did. All this helps explain the reason some political operatives look at lacocca as a man with potential for the White House.

Of course, he would have to show a great deal more interest in the job than he has displayed thus far. The American people are not about to elect a reluctant president. Issues of foreign and domestic policy are the second major obstacle. We know very little about where lacocca stands on a host of issues. Third, his blunt manner is appropriate to selling cars, but it might not go down as well in the rough-and-tumble of a political campaign.

The people trying to put together an lacocca campaign will tell you that all those obstacles, and more, can be overcome in the age of the anti-politician. Their first task is to persuade Lee lacocca. Bob Maynard is editor, publisher and president of The Tribune of Oakland, Calif. He has not quite said, "If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve," but Lee lacocca has been trying politely to say no to a run for the presidency. All the same, a group of savvy political operatives has formed an lacocca campaign committee and registered with the Federal Election Commission.

So far, the group has received no public encouragement from the candidate of its dreams. Furthermore, the group acknowledges that it will be difficult to get lacocca elected. After all, he has held no political office. His principal claim to fame is that he led the rescue of Chrysler from almost certain demise. He also wrote an autobiography that was on the best seller list for more than a year.

His commercials for Chrysler have made him instantly recognizable, and he led the successful drive to restore the Statue of Liberty. Ordinarily in American politics that would hardly be enough to make a viable candidacy for president. But this is the time of the anti-politician. His supporters believe the fact that he is not a politician might be one of his major strengths. There is a growing body of evidence that as Ronald Reagan prepares to depart and take with him Bob Maynard his "presidential" persona, there will be a hunger among the electorate for another slightly larger-than-life figure.

None of the present list of candidates quite fits that description, whether it is Mario Cuomo among the Democrats or Jack Kemp among the Republicans. Gary Hart, Bob Dole, Bill Bradley, Howard Baker all just names with little to make America's heart skip a beat. That brings us back to lacocca, a man with the image of a blunt, get-to-the-point executive with a Midas touch. Even as he avoids appearing to be the least bit interested in the presidency, the polls help explain why he remains a fascinating figure in American politics. In a poll conducted among farmers by Successful Farming magazine a couple of weeks ago, lacocca came out on top among 10 popular figures.

He received 27.8 percent of the preference among nearly 1,000 farmers participating. The next closest was Vice President Bush, 15.3. Sen. Bob Dole, a Kansan, came in third, with 14.4 percent. Gary Hart of Colorado came in fourth, 14 percij-nt.

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