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

Editorial
Clear the DCF backlog
Backlog. It's a word that conjures up sterile images of paper mounds and file baskets. But in the context of child-protective investigations, the state's backlog continues to have excruciatingly human consequences for the safety of Florida's abused children. Clearing that backlog -- and putting measures in place to keep it from exploding again -- should be among the top priorities of state leaders.

Editorial
Sold short
The majority of the St. Petersburg City Council was cowed by three members who, for no good reason, rejected the mayor's compromise proposal for Albert Whitted Airport.

Letters
Abandoning of moderates hurt the Democrats
I have read all the reaction by your editorial staff and your columnists trying to rationalize the results of last week's election, and I don't believe that any of them understand what has happened.

 

Columns today
Howard Troxler
Budget cuts? This was shameless censorship
Over the years I have griped that public access channels on cable TV aren't really "free speech." They are the opposite. They are artificial venues that the entire public is forced to pay for.

Ernest Hooper
Beauty and Fat Boy; a hunt for Mr. Twister
For years, I thought Redneck Trailer Supplies was the most amusing business name in town.

Robert Trigaux
BofA economist optimistic about 2003
There's a good reason I sat in the back of the small Hyatt Westshore meeting room, well hidden behind the serious dark business suits of an invitation-only klatch of upscale clients of Bank of America's private (read wealthy) bank. Earlier this week, BofA shipped in Lynn Reaser, its veteran Ph.D. economist and prognosticator, to shed some light on the murky world of stock markets, interest rates, job prospects, U.S. election implications, foreign markets and the possible effects of war with Iraq.

Jan Glidewell
What next? A zone for freedom of religion?
With any luck the timing will work out right.

Gary Shelton
Pittman: what you see isn't what you get
He sees what you see.

 

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.