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April 16, 2001
Editorials
Latvala's faded green
A year after championing Preservation 2000, the senator has backed two anti-environmental bills.
Child protection or tax cuts?
This is no time to be scrimping on child protection. Child-abuse complaints are on the rise, and state investigators are able to check up on the children feared in danger, within 24 hours as required, barely half of the time as it is. Yet, the Florida House has offered millions of dollars less for child protection than what Gov. Jeb Bush and the Department of Children and Families deem minimally necessary. Are those cherished tax cuts -- the ones driving the House budget for which members have shaved valuable human-service programs -- really more important than the safety of Florida's at-risk children?
Conservation needs leadership
Pinellas County trails some of its partners in Tampa Bay Water when it comes to conservation measures. Hillsborough and Pasco counties have more stringent penalties for violations of watering restrictions. And while other cities and counties in Tampa Bay Water seem to be taking an imposed 5-percent water reduction seriously, Pinellas County is still debating whether conservation even works.
Letters
Our drug problem is both a medical and criminal one
Re: Changing attitudes on the drug war, by Neal Peirce, April 2.
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.
© Copyright 2001 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.
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