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June 21, 2001
Editorials
Government blind to slaughter
Where the government has failed to act to bring humane practices to slaughterhouses, unions and fast-food restaurants have tried to step in. Under the Humane Slaugher Act, cattle and hogs first must be made insensitive to pain before they are slaughtered. But in some meat plants across the United States, fully conscious cattle and hogs are drawn and quartered, often dying only after their limbs have been severed, their hides skinned and their bellies ripped out of their bodies.
Pandora's box cutters
Members of the Pinellas School Board are so absorbedin zero tolerance they are unwilling to consider that one punishment does not fit all mistakes.
A better bill for gun shows
Sens. Joe Lieberman and John McCain have gotten high political mileage out of their Gun Show Loophole Closing and Gun Law Enforcement Act of 2001. But the legislation has a huge loophole of its own that needs closing. The bipartisan bill aims to fix an omission in the 1993 Brady Act that allows criminals to purchase guns from unlicensed dealers at gun shows without the mandatory three-day background check. The legislation would require background checks at all gun shows and events in which at least 75 guns are available for sale.
Letters
Problems in our schools have roots at home
John Balzar, in his column Learning loses with impatience (June 15), yields insight into the true nature of the problems with education. After actually teaching in a high school for several months, Balzar states that one of the major problems with education is the short attention span of students created, principally, by nerve-wracking electronic distractions.
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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