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Editorial: Exposing tax shelters
From 1995 to 2001, the now-bankrupt energy trading giant, Enron, paid outside advisers from the banking, accounting and legal professions nearly $88-million to help it find $2-billion in reduced tax liability and inflated profits. The manipulations contributed to Enron's house of cards, which all came tumbling down in late 2001. The company's undoing caused devastation for employees and shareholders and a created a whopping financial loss for the government in uncollected taxes.

Editorial: Patently ridiculous
When peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are getting their own patent, the system intended to protect creativity is in need of a major overhaul.

Letters: House's goal is keeping the people informed
Re: Speaker spends $600,000 on PR, Feb. 8.

 

Columns today
Howard Troxler: The will of voters is being trampled by wily folks in Tallahassee
There is no getting around it.

John Romano: Hitting his stride, 30 years later
LUTZ -- The sheriff's deputy was shouting at the crowd, trying to clear a path for the golfer on his way to the first tee.

Gary Shelton: Fun key among big expectations
ST. PETERSBURG -- Before you decide what the Grand Prix was, it is necessary to first establish what it was not.

Sara Fritz: Democrats have candidate for nearly any view on war
WASHINGTON -- The burgeoning contest for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination offers as many positions on the impending war with Iraq as there are contenders.

 

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.