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Editorials
The hole legislators are digging
When the Florida Legislature finally enacts a budget, members might want to mark the occasion by wearing hard hats to symbolize the huge hole into which they're digging themselves. Some $1.3-billion in proposed spending is to be financed by what lawmakers call "nonrecurring" revenue -- unspent appropriations, idle trust funds and other available cash balances. Senate Majority Leader Jim King candidly compares it to "paying off your Visa with your Mastercard." Eating your seed corn would be another apt analogy.

A solid step
President Bush's diplomacy, which produced a plan to end Israel's siege of Yasser Arafat's headquarters, offers a glimmer of hope for further progress.

Letters
Water district's remodeling was a success story
Re: Hasty remodeling project costs taxpayers $1.1-million, April 20.

Bill Maxwell
Downtown St. Petersburg transformed
Last Sunday afternoon, after driving from Gainesville, I saw a movie at BayWalk. Afterward, I walked to the Garden Restaurant to eat. The sidewalks were busy. At least two dozen patrons ate and drank at the Garden.
 

Columns today
Robert Trigaux
A show of wealth
If home prices in some towns get any more stratospheric, they'll be issuing us peons special passports just to visit.

Howard Troxler
A 'price' on ballot items is more than we can afford
In the election of 2000, Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a high-speed rail system. The idea got on the ballot by a citizen petition. The ballot did not give voters the slightest idea of the potential cost.

Ernest Hooper
1 less bar, 1 more poll, applause for Storms
This city is getting pretty difficult to live in for the sentimental.

Bill Maxwell
Downtown St. Petersburg transformed
Last Sunday afternoon, after driving from Gainesville, I saw a movie at BayWalk. Afterward, I walked to the Garden Restaurant to eat. The sidewalks were busy. At least two dozen patrons ate and drank at the Garden.

 

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.