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Editorial: Reshaping urban Tampa
Though they win elections by appealing to neighborhood concerns -- filling potholes, picking up the trash -- great mayors are the ones who draw bold corollaries between a city's landscape and its character. Tampa's next mayor has two places to make a mark: the riverfront district north of downtown and blighted east Tampa. Both have the potential to diversify the city's economy, culture and quality of life.

Editorial: School bonus battles
A state bonus spending plan for Florida public schools underscores how farcical this politically inspired incentive program has become.

Letters: School officials should listen more to parents
Re: Fewer students equals budget shortfall, Dec. 31.

 

Columns today
Howard Troxler: So she's for fair elections; we'll soon know what else she stands for
Pam Iorio enjoys an above-the-fray, white-hat reputation as Hillsborough County's supervisor of elections. If she runs for mayor of Tampa, she might have to cash in some of it.

Robert Trigaux: Another suspect deal, another Bush brother in the mix
The new year begs for a fresh start. But business accusations of international bribery, nefarious investors and a Bush brother awkwardly involved in a troubled company all have a too-familiar ring.

Jan Glidewell: Retirement is a holiday that's easy to anticipate
If you are reading this, and if it doesn't have a black border around it for irony's sake, then it means I have survived yet another holiday season without maiming myself or someone else, or at least without getting caught at it.

Gary Shelton: Quiet Coker content to let 24-0 do the talking
TEMPE, Ariz. -- Maybe what Larry, good old Larry, Coker needs is a better nickname. Maybe then people would pay attention to him.

 

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.