Friday, March 21, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
O'BRIEN ISN'T OBRIEN, McDonald isn't MCDONALD, and Garcia-Lopez isn't GARCIALOPEZ, and don't let any bureaucrat or business executive tell you anything different. And don't believe them when they say their way, the wrong way, is the only thing their computer will produce. I know better, and so do they.
If you allow the different government agencies and some businesses to continue down the road of computer name-changing, they will eventually do more damage to your name than was done to many foreign names processed through Ellis Island. Foreigners coming to the U.S. in those days were so eager to be allowed into our country that they were afraid to object, even when knowing their names were being butchered.
Computers and other bits of technology are designed to help us in creating more and better work products. For us to allow these same machines to dictate what the product will be isn't much improvement over counting on our fingers or writing on a blackboard.
Even worse is the lazy habit of the people using these machines by going along with them and not making an accurate product. If you don't really care how your name is spelled, then it's no problem. You can be sure that two generations down the road, the change will be permanent.
If you don't want your surname changed to satisfy a lazy computer operator, then speak up. McDonald doesn't have to be spelled MCDONALD, Garcia-Lopez can keep the hyphen and O'Brien can keep the apostrophe.
"He's dead meat" was a comment a Washington friend made last week when discussing Anthony Lake's possibility of gaining Senate approval to run the CIA. This was the general opinion of most people I asked during my week in D.C. Lake was an ideal and safe target for the Republicans. He is white and a male, and they wanted at least one scalp to hang on their political belts. Most observers believed they would keep him dangling in the wind until he became frustrated and asked to have his name removed from consideration. Evidently, Lake foresaw the plans of the GOP and dropped out Monday, becoming a political victim as the late Sen. John Tower had become when kept from a Cabinet post by the Democrats. This continuing bit of nasty partisanship, by both Democrats and Republicans, has denied hundreds of highly qualified Americans from serving in high-level government positions over the past 40 years.
Now that they had an important scalp, the Republicans weren't so hard on President Clinton's nominee for Labor secretary. Alexis Herman, an African-American woman, faced few tough questions and will be confirmed. The GOP didn't have the stomach to make her a martyr. Also, the national press finds it more difficult to play "gotcha" journalism with a minority woman than with a white male. She will be a good Cabinet member. ...
Have you noticed the media demand for campaign reform? Writers and commentators sound shocked when discussing the millions of dollars spent for political campaigns. I wonder who they think is profiting from these excessive expenditures. Many editorial writers and columnists are suggesting that candidates be given free time on radio and television. The Los Angeles Times comments: "Free time would not eliminate all the squalid and corrupting aspects of political fund-raising and campaigning. But it would reduce pressures on candidates to solicit ever-larger contributions from special-interest sources, and it would let voters see candidates outside the artificial context of slick multimillion-dollar ads. It's a much needed step on the long road to reforming political campaigning." I'm still waiting for a national or local daily newspaper to offer free advertising space for candidates. I'm not holding my breath.
Columnist Andrew Barbano, writing in the Daily Sparks Tribune, recently gave his own view of what's taking place in the 1997 Legislature. Some of the column is interesting reading for Southern Nevadans, and parts certainly should concern all of our working men and women.
Barbano writes: "In Carson City, big gamblers are busily trying to jack up the state's business tax by 20 percent on everyone save themselves. They are also pushing the Legislature to impose a sales tax increase on Las Vegans, a tough trick to turn now that it takes a two-thirds vote to impose a new levy. No problemo, if the wheels have been properly greased with campaign cash.
"The gamblers are also 'allowing' an increase in the Las Vegas area room tax to help pay for growth-related needs. It will raise only $27 million of the needed $3 billion and will all come from tourists, but I guess it's the thought that counts.
"The only piece of legislation gamblers failed to juice through in 1995 is now back before the Assembly Judiciary Committee, chaired by Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks. Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, last week brought back the Blackball Bill (AB248). It would place gamblers in a class by themselves. Alone among Nevada businesses, they would be exempt from worker lawsuits arising from sharing information with other gamblers about employees.
"No matter what your boss might say to another gambler about you, true or false, you'd have no recourse. You could be blackballed, reduced to second-class citizen in a second-class state. They wouldn't risk breaking federal law by calling somebody applying for work a 'union sympathizer.' Such a person might just be code-named a 'troublemaker' for making outrageous demands like overtime pay (which would be pretty much eliminated by AB212)."
Editor's note: Barbano's columns are available at http://www.nevadaweb.com/dave/barbcontents.html
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