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

June 30, 2000

Editorials
Limited terms
Mixed up in a tax fraud trial, the nominating chairman for the Florida Public Service Commission should be released from his duties.

Retirement shows professionalism
Joan Wood, Pinellas-Pasco medical examiner, showed her professionalism this week when she chose to retire from the position she has held for nearly 20 years.

No. 1 in pedestrian danger
A national report has confirmed what anyone who has hoofed it in the Tampa Bay area suspected: This is the most dangerous place in America for pedestrians. In 1997 and 1998, 192 pedestrians were killed here. By comparison, Atlanta was second with 185 fatalities.

Letters
There is danger when the state promotes religion
The irony is almost palpable. On June 21 there appeared on page 2 a story headlined Scores killed in religious warring, telling us that in the Maluku Islands "more than 2,500 members of both faiths [Muslim, Christian] have been killed in the past 18 months."  

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.