Don Addis Editorial Cartoons E-mail a letter to the editor

Editorials
Distasteful self-aggrandizement
Tampa City Council member Gwen Miller has a tacky request on today's council agenda: She wants to name a playground after herself. No subtleties here. The idea comes from the city's parks, recreation and culture committee -- which Miller happens to chair.

City in sticky tax situation
The city of St. Petersburg finds itself entangled in a sticky tax situation. When the city leased Tropicana Field to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, state law allowed the facility to remain exempt from property taxes because it supposedly served a public purpose. With that in mind, the city agreed to pay those taxes should the exemption ever disappear.

No to Yucca Mountain
Congress should not approve plans to store highly radioactive nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which would pose too many risks along the transport route and to nearby Las Vegas.

Letters
Saudi prince should have been shown the door
Re: Saudi ruler scolds U.S. for being too pro-Israel, April 26.

 

Columns today
John Romano
Complex problem with an easy target
In years gone by, they would call him a skipper.

Tampa Uncuffed
Dangerous reality ends date with TV program
With his short hair, gung-ho attitude and ability to speak in sound bites, Hillsborough sheriff's deputy Richard Fitzpatrick is a favorite of the TV show COPS.

Ernest Hooper
A big-ticket jab; a threat of litigation
Playwright Eve Ensler used the word vagina to spur women into having frank discussions about their bodies. County Commissioner Ronda Storms used the word to draw attention to her campaign to withdraw county funding from Hillsborough's public access channel.

 

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.