Author: opinionstogo

Iorions For Sanchez?

When Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio opted out of the mayoral race she was a formidable, de facto candidate in, speculation was rife as to where her support would go. Conventional wisdom said that the lion’s share was likely to be divvied up between City Councilman Bob Buckhorn and business consultant Frank Sanchez.

Word now has it that Sanchez is getting more than his share of Iorions. And that includes more than half the members of Iorio’s erstwhile finance committee as well as key members of an incipient Iorio real estate/development committee.

Toast Of The Town

They are not the Bucs, Rays or Lightning, but they do represent Tampa and surrounding counties — and they are perennial winners.

So, congratulations again to the acclaimed Toast of Tampa Show Chorus. The 93-woman, barbershop-style singing group finished first at the recent Atlantic Gulf Region of Sweet Adelines International competition in Orlando.

TOT topped 14 contenders from around the state to advance to the International Chorus Championship next year in Phoenix.

Heart & Hustle Have-Nots

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays won’t make the playoffs this season — nor should they be expected to. That much has already been decided by the skewed economics that now define Major League Baseball. The Rays are Third World baseball have-nots. At $34 million, their payroll is a quarter that of the New York Yankees.

But to be a baseball “have” also means having prudent judgment, as in whom you choose to overpay. Otherwise, the Dodgers and Orioles would have been in some recent World Series.

Part of the Rays’ “have-not” status is not having better ways to spend half that $34 million. The half that goes to Designated Out Greg Vaughn and perpetually rehabbing, current Disabled Listee Wilson Alvarez. And speaking of “Another Taco, Please” Alvarez, since when does he have muscles to pull?

Sheriff’s Chase Policy Not The Key Question

To some, this might sound, at some point, insensitive. It’s certainly not meant to be. To others, it may seem cruel. It’s assuredly not meant to be that either.

The intent, however, is to put something sad into perspective. The intent is also to lessen the chances of more such sadness.

Barely a fortnight ago, three Tampa teenagers, ages 15, 16 and 17, were killed when the stolen car they were in crashed. The wreck, a particularly horrific one, ended a brief chase by Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputies. The 15-year-old driver survived, tried to flee and was arrested.

Predictably and understandably enough, media coverage focused on young lives lost and the pursuit policy of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department. Grieving mothers wanted to know why their sons — cruising in a stolen car after 10:00 p.m. on a school night — had to be chased.

Seems to me that asking more immediate and obvious questions — like Where? What for? With whom? Are you kidding? — might have obviated the need to ask one about the Sheriff’s chase policy.

And speaking of said policy, the department apparently followed its guidelines. That included verifying that a felony had been committed and getting the pursuit go-ahead from a supervisor weighing a checklist of criteria. A sheriff’s deputy even set stop-sticks, designed to deflate a car’s tires, but the fleeing vehicle went around them. It eventually careened into a median and struck a concrete overpass support.

The following day grief counselors were at Hillsborough High School, where one of the victims, 17-year-old James Lumpkins, was a student. The resultant talk, according to a school district spokesperson, was “all positive about the student.”

Lumpkins and two buddies, however, were not 9/11 victims, innocent bystanders or “life isn’t fair” poster boys. They were, although teenagers, fleeing felons.

Here’s another approach.

In lieu of grief counselors, send a deputy and crime scene photos to Hillsborough High. Call an assembly and say, in effect: “This is the result of a group of young men, one of them a Hillsborough High student, thumbing their noses at society and stealing someone’s car because — they wanted to. All they cared about was what they wanted. The law? Other people’s property? Anyone who got in their way? Not a concern of theirs. This is sad, and it’s a shame. But we’re not here for eulogies today.

“What they did ended this way because we would not let them get away with it — and they chose to run. Life is about choices.

“Any questions?”

America’s Cuban Policy: Nostalgia for Cold War

In the wake of Sept. 11, U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba finally made some sense. It’s nostalgia for the way the world was.

Back when Godless totalitarians roamed too far but played by the old ruthless rules of engagement. Some spying, some overthrowing, some proxy fighting, The occasional Korea and Vietnam. Back when being the enemy meant you were a hegemonous capitalist — not a satanic infidel.

Anyone want to trade Al Qaeda zealots pursuing paradise for the Warsaw Pact armies staking out geopolitical high ground? Fatwa fanatics and jihad junkies for fellow travelers? Those pushing payback for the Crusades or paving the way for a proletarian playground? Those rallying around “God is great” and “infidels die” or “workers of the world unite”?

How else to explain this atavistic approach to Cuba that more resembles an exhumed cold war time capsule than a relevant 21st century foreign policy?

Recall that détente was not incompatible with the old Soviet Union and we did business with the mass murderer who was Mao. We’ve normalized relations with Vietnam, with whom we went to war — and lost 58,000 G.I.’s. The Bush administration keeps reiterating that it is willing to meet with North Korea, an official “axis of evil” charter member, any time, any place.

Anyhow, Cuba is different. Too close, geographically and personally, and too politically sensitive. And no U.S. president, Democrat or Republican, wants to be remembered — even if it’s only by the sovereign state of Miami — as the one who “gave in” in to Fidel Castro, the personification of Cuban revolution and expropriation. Ironically, such a president would be yielding instead to humanitarianism, common sense, international credibility and enlightened self-interest — most demonstrably that of the American business community.

While visiting Cuba in 2000, I heard first hand — from a spokesperson at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana as well as befriended Cubans — what it would take to meaningfully change the U.S.-Cuba dynamic and end the four-decade-old embargo. It would take what everyone knows it would take: the 75-year-old Castro’s demise, referred to euphemistically as the “biological solution.” That would give pragmatism a chance, whether the U.S. President is George Bush or the Cuban leader is Raul Castro.

But until then don’t look for dramatic, even reasonable change. Just incremental erosion of the embargo while Castro defiantly lives on. So, don’t be fooled by Congressional rumblings that grow ever louder over the embargo and the un-American travel ban on U.S. citizens. And don’t be misled by the recently approved visit to Cuba this spring by former President Jimmy Carter, an outspoken critic of the embargo.

Look no further than how the Bush Administration overreacted last week to the issuance of visas to Cuban officials coming to the U.S. to oversee food purchases (allowed under the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000). The White House trumped its own State Department and pulled the visas, thus endangering a $25-million deal for pork, turkey, beef, wheat and eggs.

The ham-handed act spoke volumes. It said Florida could also decide the 2004 presidential election, and no one in the Administration wants to send the wrong signal to hardline exiles in South Florida. Whatever it signals to the rest of the country, especially America’s farmers, obviously matters much less.

Final For Real Students

It’s the Final Four — but nothing like March Madness. And refreshingly so.

Instead of a collegiate sport that is all about television money and bad graduation rates, the Final Four of Chess, which this year featured the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Stanford and Harvard, is about skilled players who are great students. What an intercollegiate concept.

“Chess is a way of making a name for a strong university that doesn’t have a 300- or 400-year history like Harvard,” explains Tim Redman, the director of the chess program at UTD, this year’s national champion.

“Recruiting is good for schools because chess players are bright,” points out Frank Niro, executive director of the U.S. Chess Federation. “It automatically brings good students to the schools.”

It won’t, however, bring ESPN, Nike and NBA lottery picks. Which is the point.

Clinton Slavery Apology: A Redress Rehearsal?

It’s that deadline time again. And for too many of us that apparently means last second scrambling across the taxing terrain of deductions, receipts, extensions and reparations.

Yes, reparations. The slavery sort.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, nearly 80,000 returns were filed last year for more than $2.7 billion in bogus reparation refunds. The IRS is gearing up again, even though the U.S. tax code does not allow for such reparations. Never has.

The rash of reparations-for-slavery scams seems attributable to several factors.

Publicity, if not credibility, has been generated by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who has introduced legislation that would establish a commission to look into the institution of slavery and its repercussions. There’s also the Rev. Al Sharpton, a putative presidential candidate, who has given every indication that he’ll push for a reparations’ plank in the 2004 Democratic Platform.

Second, we now have a slave descendent suing three companies in federal court for a share of the profits those companies — Aetna Inc., FleetBoston Financial Corp., and CSX Corp. — allegedly gained via slavery. Moreover, other such suits are in the works, including one being pursued by celebrity trial lawyer Johnnie Cochran.

Third, reparations represent a predictable and malignant outgrowth of victimhood, the mentality as well as the industry, that is sustained by white guilt. President Bill Clinton apologized for slavery, but that was only the redress rehearsal. The ante necessarily gets upped from there.

Moreover, the reparations issue only reinforces a false and counterproductive premise. That is that black Americans can’t make it on their own in this country without playing the victim card for all it’s worth. That should be as patronizing as it is insulting.

Fourth is a concept older than slavery itself: something for nothing. The operative color is greed green for those enslaved by old-fashioned opportunism. In this case, trying to cash in an I.O.U. earned by somebody else in the 19th century.

But some of those who let Cochran and Harvard University Law Professor Charles Ogletree do their talking and rationalizing for them, may have to face an intriguing irony as well. According to the 1860 census, more than 6,000 blacks owned slaves, mostly Indians.

Any of those slave-owner descendents want to step forward and settle ancestral matters with certain native Americans before proceeding on with principled recompense for historical affronts? What’s more, anyone interested in pursuing those related to West African chiefs who sold their tribesmen to the European slave traders?

Searching for Israeli-Palestinian Leverage

The U.S seems as unable as it is unwilling to get directly involved in a Middle East crisis that presages dire consequences for America itself. Ordering up a drive-by Zinni doesn’t cut it.

Perhaps this might.

Two countries — Egypt and Israel — that have a lot to say about whether the world turns toward Armageddon or toward a Cyprus-like solution keep raking it in from the U.S. Israel receives $3 billion annually in U.S. foreign aid, while Egypt’s take is $2 billion.

Perhaps Secretary of State Colin Powell could assume a role beyond rhetoric and brow knitting. Recall that he had no problem holding up $200 million in aid for Haiti until President Jean-Bertrand Aristide took steps to make that strategically unimportant, beleaguered country work better. Perhaps he should consider getting $5 billion dollars worth of leverage out of Egypt and Israel.

If we’re going to incur blame, wrath and more terrorist attacks, let’s at least not pay $5 billion for it.

Rights, Responsibilities and a Lesson Learned

There’s a certain journalistic episode that reflexively comes to mind when yet another story about “censorship” and high school newspapers hits the mainstream news.

First, start with the premise that if you choose journalism as a career, it will probably happen to you. Most likely sooner than later, but still at a point when you’re somewhat accomplished. You’re going to get something spiked. A story you labored over never sees the light of any day’s press run.

Mine was a piece on former President Ronald Reagan and “The Great Communicator’s” increasingly infrequent press conferences. It was a White House strategy designed to protect the president from his own misstatements. But it was a practice that too often resulted in Reagan being shouted at — seemingly always by Sam Donaldson — when en route somewhere. Such drive-by queries inevitably resulted in the president cupping his good ear, looking avuncularly perplexed and ultimately responding: “What?” It was wincing to watch.

I didn’t think the lines of public communication or the dignity of the office of the presidency were well served by such sideshows. I also gave voice to the people’s right to know, the role of an informed citizenry in a democracy, etc., etc.

I thought it was pretty good, even edgy, stuff.

But my editor, who thought I was a little rough on the president, had qualms. My publisher, however, had a fit.

My column was anchored as the lead editorial on the Opinion Page of a business weekly. Very conservative, very Republican, very brazen of me.

The column was returned to me, not with the usual pro-forma publisher notations about some factoid or a comma splice, but the word: “Inappropriate.” It carried the connotation of “See me” inscribed on a term paper by your high school English teacher.

The editor confirmed that “inappropriate” was short for: “It’s OK to criticize the president but this seemed more derisive than critical. Remember who he is, who we are, who our readership is and, yes, who the publisher voted for. So start over, research another topic, order out and work as late as necessary to make a compressed, unforgiving deadline. Thank you and don’t let it happen again.”

I was steamed, plunged headlong into a foreign trade zone piece and locked up after the cleaning crew that night.

Two days later the editor, the publisher and I reconciled over lunch. The publisher explained that the spiked piece was, indeed, well crafted but incompatible with the institutional voice of a business publication, especially one that he published. He underscored that ultimately he was responsible for everything — our editorial positions, our image, our market niche, our advertising mix, our profitability. We were free press pillars, but were also free to fail in a market economy. He had to balance it all. Writing columns, I inferred, must be so much easier.

Sure, he couldn’t be hands-on everywhere, he acknowledged, but he did want to preview each week’s lead editorial. Deal with it. But, hey, it was the first time he actually bounced one back, which wasn’t tantamount to a trampled First Amendment right.

I defended the barely defensible, owned up to an incipient case of writer’s ego and acknowledged a greater authority — and responsibility.

Now back to Hillsborough County. Recently we’ve seen Plant High administrators delay distribution of its student paper over a column on condom availability at the prom. We’ve also seen the principal of Leto High pull a column that criticized a teacher who sold flag decals for extra credit. The first Amendment will survive both. Some perspective.Principals are, in effect, publishers. They are ultimately accountable. To school boards, to taxpayers, to parents, to students. In fact, it’s an accountability sanctioned in 1988 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior review of student newspapers is well within the legal purview of principals. It can be a dicey, sometimes lose-lose proposition, for principals take the heat for what might upset teachers, segments of the student body, parents, politicians, the community at large and junior journalists. Moreover, they really aren’t real world “publishers;” school newspaper faculty sponsors typically aren’t real journalists; and teenaged, amateur reporters in pre-training are just that.But those who work on high school newspapers deserve as meaningful an experience as possible. Journalism in a free society is that important. Mastering layout, doing interviews, getting your facts straight and separating fact from opinion can’t be emphasized enough. Principals, however, need to save their trump cards for the tough calls, not overreacting, say, to an opinion piece on a valid, real-world issue for those in their prom years.