Reno Gazette-Journal from Reno, Nevada • Page 5

pmion Reno Gazette-Journal Founded 1870 Monday, August 24, 1987 5A Sue Clark-JacksonPublisher Everett S. LandersExecutive editor Bruce L. BledsoeEditorial page editor Merlin K. HendersonEditorial associate Letters THE US. ORDERED MORE SHIPS TOIHE PERSIAN GULF TOT JS THE IRANIAN NAVY began to flaunt its submarine Power.

i Chicken Nood 7 Communists tend to stay in power forever Caesars' plan proper Your Aug. 17 editorial, "Caesars plan to go into debt totally ill-advised," misses the most important point the true reason Caesars World's directors proposed the recapitalization plan in the first place. Caesars World was confronted with an unsolicited, hostile tender offer beginning on March 9, which, if unopposed: would have brought shareholders a price below the true value of the company and would have resulted in a billion dollars of debt on the company with inexperienced management. Contrary to your assertion, the debt was not a disincentive for the bidder since he intended to put at least as much debt on the company. The Caesars World board of directors have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the shareholders against an inadequate bid.

Unless shareholders have a reasonable alternative, they are forced to tender or end up in a company that is controlled by a single person or group. In consultation with leading financial and legal advisers, we thoroughly studied all of the alternatives available. In essence, the plan was designed to give the shareholders a choice between the hostile tender offer and our recapitalization proposal. They could choose to tender or to keep their equity position in the company and share in its future growth. The shareholders voted on July 8 to keep their equity position in the company.

I can assure you that Caesars' directors remain committed to operating in the best interests of shareholders, employees and the states in which we operate. We intend to continue meeting that commitment by maintaining the finest destination resort facilities and services anywhere in the world as we are doing at this time. Peter Echeverrla, Reno Director Aug. 20, 1987 Comstock not biggest Reviewed with interest, at this summer retreat, has been your coverage of the birth of the Comstock Chronicle (Aug. 6).

The initiative of William Cain and Carol DeKalb is something to be appreciated by all of us who have the deepest respect for Virginia City, Gold Hill and Silver City and Corn-stock history. However, as has been the case with reference to past Comstock analyses, your excellent article is guilty of exaggeration and I quote, as follows: "The Chronicle's improvised 12-by-15 foot office in a house dating back to the region's late 19th century heyday as site of the world's largest silver strike" (fourth paragraph). Two of the writer's professional years were devoted to mining in Bolivia's famous Cerro Rico De Potosi. With mining starting in 1545, recorded silver production amounted to 1 billion ounces; and it is generally believed that an equal amount "went out the back door." Bolivia's Cerro Rico De Potosi continues to merit "the world's largest silver strike." It is also believed that Idaho's Coeur d'Alene District's total silver production surpasses the Comstock total. It is true that the Comstock, for many reasons, is something very special, but let us all be honest about some of its totals.

David Le Count Evans, Reno Aug. 7, 1987 Thanks for helping dog Vanessa Young (who wrote about a dog Stairwell lights must be assured in case of a fire Owners and operators of high-rise buildings should be giving full cooperation to efforts to make sure stairwells have safe emergency lighting Reno fire officials discovered in the wake of an electrical fire at the Sundowner Hotel-Casino last weekend that one emergency lighting system may not be enough in all situations. In event of an electrical fire, firemen may be forced to disconnect the auxiliary system for safety reasons. This is what happened in the Sundowner, and guests had to exit down darkened halls. Firemen say it is also possible that the auxiliary power generators may fail by themselves.

This is dangerous because dark stairwells can pose a hazard to people evacuating a building. What is needed is stairwell lighting powered by batteries, independent of backup generators. While some high-rise buildings have these lighting systems not all of them do, fire officials report. Commendably, owners or managers of several of the buildings surveyed by the Reno Fire Department since the Sundowner incident have been cooperating in installing the battery-powered emergency lights. Among them is the Sundowner itself.

And while the Reno building code does not require the redundant emergency lighting systems, the Reno Fire Department has determined that state statutes allow the department to require installation of the battery-powered lights when generator-powered lights are already in place. So if owners of buildings that do not have battery systems do not voluntarily upgrade their systems, they can and should be ordered to do so. Furthermore, Reno's building code should be amended to ensure that all new buildings have the battery-powered lights in place. That way there will be no excuse for a new high-rise building to be constructed without having the appropriate lighting safeguards. Tax simplification not simple to IRS Why is it that every time Congress and the Internal Revenue Service simplify the tax code, it gets more complicated? After Congress "simplified" the code last year, the first thing the IRS did was to issue a form that taxpayers had to fill cut to determine how much money they were required to withhold from their wages.

But the form turned out to be so complicated that a lot of people couldn't complete it. The IRS had to rewrite the form. Now the IRS has issued a new form, 8598, which must be filled out by 13 million-plus taxpayers who will have to file early next year to determine how much of their home mortgage interest is deductible. Basically this applies to people who bought homes after Aug. 17, 1986, or who have refinanced homes bought before that time.

Some will have to fill out only eight lines of the form, but only if they know how much they paid for their home and the average balance they owed on their mortgage in 1987. Also, there is a four-page set of instructions for Form 8606 for determining how much, if any, 1987 contribution to an Individual Retirement Account is deductible. But the taxpayer can take comfort in knowing he is getting more than just simplification out of all this. His taxes help pay the salaries of the IRS people who just refunded $359,380 to a prison inmate who has just been indicted for allegedly owing the agency $2 million in back taxes. Things that have never happened before sometimes do happen for the first time.

Thus a communist government may permit the introduction of the ordinary freedom and liberties of parliamentary democracy. That is what many are betting will happen in Nicaragua. Well, let's hope so because this tiresome contra matter will extinguish itself if the Nicaraguans live up to the agreement they've signed with their neighbors. They have promised to restore liberty and refrain from helping the pro-communist con-tras in El Salvador in return for which support for the Nicaraguan contras will be cut off. You have a better chance of winning the trifecta or any other three-horse parlay than seeing all this come to pass.

Communists in power tend to stay in power forever. By the same token, if this strange new beast, a communist democracy should come to pass, will it make any difference to President Reagan and that bunch of political round heads he has around him? Are these square-jawed, block-headed men with the ribbons on their chests and the reactionary electrodes in their brains, who have already lied and broken laws to keep the contras alive, going to consent to lay off the Nicaraguan communists? To quote Buddy Holly, that'll be the day. no sense because the Vietnamese have never said they had any of our people. One never knows how the communist thing is going to affect the American brain. From time to time, we get it in our heads the reds are going to give up their wicked ways and be like us.

Do you remember a couple of years ago we were treated to a quick, sudden downpour of stories out of China about how they were, all one billion of them, embracing free market economics? The Chinese, we were informed by handsome TV personalities, had learned their lesson. Last winter, some folks opened up a private enterprise restaurant in Moscow, and you'd have thought Nikolai Lenin had asked to join the United States Chamber of Commerce. This time we got the stories about how the Russians have finally learned which way is the best way, but in the end, of course, it turns out communists are communists. They believe all that stuff. Well, we believe all our stuff, so it remains to be seen if the Nicaraguan reds do change, whether we will be able to recognize it, or, if they don't change, will we be able to recognize that? In about three months, we'll have some answers.

Nicholas Von Hoffman is a syndicated columnist based in Washington. Nicholas Von Hoffman Your average anti-communist missionary maniac gives up about as easily as your average pit bull lets go of the mail person's hand. Even after you've cut the head off of an Ollie North, the jaws will stay locked on commie flesh. It is unimaginable that the Reagan types will give up in Nicaragua until every last communist is hunted down and strung up from the lamp posts. That same mentality insists, 12 years after the United States pulled out of Indochina, that there are still hundreds of missing American soldiers living in bamboo cells somewhere in those endless jungles.

It is true that years after the end of World War II, an occasional Japanese soldier would march down from a volcanic peak where he had been hiding, unaware that hostilities had ended 20, 25, 30 years ago, but how many were there of such men? Three? Five? When asked why the Vietnamese communists would keep these men for so many years, what good could come of it, the zealots say that they're keeping our men as bargaining chips. But unless you're Rocky, or is it Rambo, the hypothesis makes Americans benefit from airline deregulation is that deregulation has produced something approaching economic and operational chaos in an industry that was humming along smoothly back when government was regulating it. It is important, therefore, to nail that canard to the barn door. The intended consequence of deregulation was an overall reduction in air fares. If this has forced certain carriers who were passing exorbitant labor costs along to their customers to go out of business, so be it.

The beneficiaries are the American people, who are taking to the air in numbers so much larger than before that Continental Trailways has already sold out to Greyhound and Greyhound is reportedly breathing hard. If airports are getting overcrowded, enlarge them. And while the alleged increase in near-misses is probably just the closest rival to pit bulls as this year's hysteria (midair collisions are actually down), let's not forget that air traffic is still just as tightly regulated as it ever was. If it isn't working, blame Big Daddy certainly not deregulation. William Rusher is publisher of William F.

Buckley's National Review. Liberal theoreticians, ever on the lookout for weaknesses in the conservative performance, as it is on display in the Reagan administration, think they may have spotted a useful vulnerability: the allegedly bad results of deregulation. Certainly, deregulation is one of the major commandments of the conservative creed. At a Cabinet meeting early in his first term, President Reagan was presented with a symbolic wooden hatchet and a bulky copy of the Federal Register, containing the text of existing government regulations. As the TV cameras ground away, he explained, "The idea is to cut the book in half," adding with a twinkle "and then throw away both halves." Abolishing all federal regulations may be a conservative fantasy, but there is no doubt whatever about Ronald Reagan's determination to "get the government off the backs of the American people" wherever he can.

Now, six and a half years into his administration, some of the consequences of deregulation are clearly visible, and liberals are betting that a lot of Americans are wondering whether we weren't better off back William Rusher in the bad old days when Big Government was on our backs. Take airline deregulation, which in the administration of Jimmy Carter. Deregulation's first result, of course, was to bring about reductions in air fares. This forced a number of airlines, which had acquiesced in featherbed labor contracts and consequently could no longer compete, to go out of business altogether or merge with healthier lines. There has elso been considerable turmoil over specific fares, with travelers wondering why it should be cheaper to fly from New York to San Francisco than to East Warwhoop, only half as far away (the answer being that popular destinations cost less to reach than exotic ones, because the larger loads make possible economies of scale).

Recently, the overall increase in air traffic has begun causing longer delays at airports, as well as charges (not necessarily substantiated) of increases in the number of "near-misses" in the air. The general impression, it is probably fair to say, that was the victim of a hit-and-run driver): Thank you very much for your kind efforts to help our dog (Tia) your kindness restored my faith in the human race. Unfortunately, the person who hit our dog restored my faith in the "sub-human" race. I'm real glad that wasn't my son or daughter left there to die. For our consolation and yours the Emergency Animal Clinic on Rock Boulevard told us she didn't feel a thing due to the high speed at which she was hit.

The woman doctor at the clinic (I don't remember her name) was a terrific help in my despair. They kept our dog until the Humane Society could take care of her (that's where we got her). This weekend we're taking her ashes to Lahonton and let her keep chasing the waves (her favorite pastime). Yes, it was unfortunate that our gate was left open by a neighborhood child, but the most unfortunate thing is that someone could actually be that uncaring to that Michigan-plated car that hit our dog go home! Mary Richardson, Sparks Aug. 14, 1987 Billboards outrageous Just how gullible do they think we are? Not all of us have our brains mushed out by an O.D.

of TV. I hope I am not the only person who drives south on 395 who's awake enough to be totally repulsed by those new Harrah's billboards. I'm referring to those three, six-pillared monstrosities exhorting us to "catch the wildlife" and "observe the delicate balance of nature" in a multistoried gambling joint best known for its rapid middle-age spread onto previously treed acreage. Give me a break. Harrah's has done as much for wilderness as Custer did for the Indians.

Tina Raven Fields, Gardnervllle Aug. 13, 1987 Services to the Blind brought me back to life Leave it to Beaver Ed Beaver, finance director for the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority, deserves a pat on the back for collecting $31,000 of $50,000 in room taxes owed by five local motels. For more than a year Beaver has been saying that several of the smaller motels have not been paying their share of room taxes. And while the amounts they individually owe are small in comparison with the amounts paid by the casino giants, this is nevertheless money which is used to promote Reno. And better promotion means better business for everyone, including those same small motels.

Besides, the law says that the tax must be paid, and it is time that someone enforced the law. Beaver also is to be commended for his plans to negotiate with or seek court actions against other motels that are in arrears on the debt they owe the authority. It's your turn Georgina Hennessey wanted the help. They sent me to an ophthalmologist who came up with the same diagnosis: You're handicapped, you shouldn't drive, you will start to not recognize people, there's not much hope, etc. The agency asked if I wanted to work, and I did, so they provided me with a talking book machine and a library of cassettes that would make a reader drool.

Then they asked me to come to see their rehabilitation person. That was like entering a new world. I was given a lighted magnifier, enabling me to read a few words at a time. He asked if a closed-circuit TV would help, and showed me how it worked. It was superb.

The biggest miracle of all was going to see a low-vision doctor and being told that with special glasses, I could actually read. It would take time and practice, iiut I would be able to do every-" thing I had before. As needed, the glasses would be strengthened. The new glasses came, and they aren't cute or fancy. But they do allow me to write these miracles down to share.

The lenses are magnifiers. The doctor has already told me I'll need stronger ones, and soon, telescopic lenses, but I don't care. I'm back at work, I'm helping others and I feel like a part of this world again. It is not easy, and I get frustrated. But this agency gave me a chance to live again.

I shall not waste a day feeling sorry for myself. If anyone has a similar problem, and will contact me at Care and Share, 358-9351, I will tell them how and where to get help. I was fortunate to have friends who would not let me give up. What started as a formidable mountain, with many barricades, became a challenge of knocking down those barricades one by one. The visual aids became gold to me.

Do not give up; have the faith in yourself that others do and what seems like a brick wall is but sand. Georgina "Hennessey is a resident of" Reno and won the Silver Pen award in May 1986 for a letter to the editor. In late January, I made an appointment with an eye doctor, and was confident that all I needed was new lenses for my glasses. "Sorry, Gena, new glasses won't help you. You have muscular degeneration and a cataract forming," he said.

Irreversible damage! Disbelief, anger, fear and depression are the only words applicable for the next few weeks. At 52, my world seemed to be a nightmare, and I was very frightened. Then, someone recommended I call Services to the Blind. I was at a mental low now someone said blind. Finally, I placed that call, and I thank God for giving me hope and help.

I gave notice to my supervisor that I would be giving up my position. As the days passed, I cried. I loved my job. But how could I continue with mountains of paperwork and greet people I could hardly distinguish? A softspoken lady came to see me from the agency. She said they could help make my world easier if I Letters welcome Letters will be selected on the basis of their merit on subject of current interest.

They are limited to 250 words. Letters must be signed. Include your street address or post office box and daytime telephone number. Writers are limited to one letter every two months. Address letters to: Editor.

Reno Gazette-Journal, P.O. Box 22000. Reno, Nov. 89520..