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August 29, 2001
Editorials
What surplus?
President Bush calls it "incredibly positive news," but most Americans probably are alarmed to learn that the federal budget surplus has disappeared.
Halt Colombia drug war spraying
The U.S. effort to help Colombia eradicate illegal crops of coca and heroin poppy is making people sick -- literally. Children are developing sores on their skin, and adults are stricken with diarrhea from herbicide contamination of their drinking water. Poor farmers complain that their potato and onion crops are dying. Meanwhile, the drug lords simply relocate their coca crops to areas not yet poisoned by aerial fumigation.
Letters
Don't legislate social change in the Constitution
Re: Smoke-free workplaces make healthy sense, Aug. 21.
Bill Maxwell
Southerners love their football season
Soon, nights will cool, marching bands and cheerleaders will perfect their routines and excitement will infect the bleachers, often turning sane men into rabble-rousers.
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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