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February 12, 2002
Editorials
Preventing another Enron
Blood is in the water in Washington as Congress encircles Enron. The public thrashing of company officers has begun, but Congress also needs to focus on institutional reforms that could keep a similar collapse from happening. Lawmakers' sanctimonious lectures accomplish little other than to divert attention from Washington's role in approving laws and regulatory changes that allowed Enron to operate outside the appropriate checks and balances of corporate activity.
Trust the voters
Gov. Jeb Bush asserts that the average Floridian believes our tax structure is fundamentally sound. If that's so, why doesn't Bush let them vote on it?
Letters
Ignoring mental illness won't make it go away
Reading the news stories these days is like a walk with insanity. While we are debating the fetus-versus-unborn-child issue, another story appears of another child already born: a child who could have been be so delusional to think he was helping the cause of Osama bin Laden by flying a plane into a Tampa building!
Perspective
Taking jobs, alienating customers
For weeks Americans have been told that the outsourcing of high-tech jobs is good for our economy. So said Greg Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in a recent report signed by President Bush. So, too, writes Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in articles praising the rise of call centers in India used for everything from making airline reservations and reading medical X-ray films to providing tech support for American computer firms.
Philip Gailey: Democrats fall off campaign finance reform wagon
Well, what do you know. Soft money is back, and it's making hypocrites of all those Democrats who fervently championed the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, not to mention those Republicans who objected to the law's restrictions on issue advocacy.
Bill Maxwell: Who is for the farm worker?
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is touting legislation to improve the lives of Florida's 300,000-plus farm workers, who endure institutional and systemic injustices each day in our fields and groves and their personal lives.
Robyn E. Blumner: For some defendants, an American gulag
In Bernard Malamud's masterpiece The Fixer, inmate Yakov Bok was subjected to psychological torture in a Soviet gulag through the humiliations of constant shackling and repeated strip searches.
© Copyright 2001 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.
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