The Orlando Sentinel editorial board writes a letter to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who will give his State of the State address tonight:

You, governor, need to level with the people, and not just this evening during your State of the State address. They're under no illusions that they and the state can climb out of the recession pain-free. Or that Band-Aids can heal serious financial wounds.

President Obama can't salvage Florida's economy. Tell Floridians that the $8 billion the state gets from the federal stimulus will fund some programs and projects for just 16 months. Tell them what the state, its government and its people will need to do not merely to recover but to prosper.

You know the state needs more than just one-time sources of money, so tell them that means more taxes or fee hikes. It'll mean going after Internet sales taxes and raising the cigarette tax, because your Seminole Indian gambling deal alone won't cut it.

In order to "prosper" the state of Florida needs to implement an internet sales tax?

After 27 years with the Rocky Mountain News, Vince Carroll is now on the staff of the Denver Post.

Is John Kerry. So says Caroline Baum of Bloomberg, who sticks the boot in this morning:

Kerry called Northern Trust's spending “another idiotic abuse of taxpayer money while our country is on the brink.” One person's idiocy may be another person's good investment.

In 2007, Northern Trust signed a five-year agreement to sponsor the annual golf event at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California, one of the oldest stops on the PGA tour. Last year the bank had $640 million in net income while most of its peers were deep in the red.

It's in our national interest for Northern Trust to invest in its business, turn a profit and add to its capital base so it can keep lending.

What about the symbolism? How does it look for Northern Trust clients to sip champagne at the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Ray or listen to a performance by Earth, Wind & Fire at a private hangar at the Santa Monica Airport when formerly middle-class folks are lining up at food pantries?

I don't recall much outrage when the R&B band entertained the nation's governors at the White House a few days later. And President Barack Obama's guests didn't exactly dine on mac ‘n cheese.

A new PPP poll finds still no candidate pulling ahead in the Democratic primary race for governor of Virginia (Feb. 28-March 1, 687 LV, MoE +/- 3.9%).

Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe has the highest positive and negative favorability ratings (31%/24%), while former State Del. Brian Moran (30%/14%) and State Sen. Creigh Deeds (26%/10%) have +16 favorability margins.

McAuliffe 21
Moran 19
Deeds 14
Und 46

Apparently, this week is official Israel Apartheid Week on 40 campuses around the world -- a movement that started a few years ago in Toronto.  While schools in Canada have removed some offensive posters associated with the event (a cartoon of a hook-nosed Hasidic Jew with a bazooka, another showing an Israeli plane with a swastika), the concept itself is ugly.  One need not agree with all Israeli actions to find this outrageous, particularly considering the multitude of brutal regimes that are not singled out for protest.  I rarely join in Internet petitions, but this one, urging Canadian college administrators to "marginalize such hateful dialogue," is worth signing.  (Via Ted Belman's Israpundit site, and one needn't agree with everything on that site to support this particular initiative, either.)

Update: Ampersand points out in the comments that the posters in question were associated with a different anti-Israel event in January.  I regret the error.

(Cross-posted on The Y-Files)

Club for Growth President Pat Toomey released a statement this afternoon indicating that he is once again considering a run for Senate in Pennsylvania:

"As this disastrous recession worsens, I have become increasingly concerned about the future of our state and national economy. Unfortunately, the recent extraordinary response of the federal government -- more corporate bailouts, unprecedented spending and debt, higher taxes -- is likely to make things worse. I think we are on a dangerously wrong path. Pennsylvanians want a US Senator focused on real and sustainable job creation that gets our economy growing again. That is why I am considering becoming a candidate for the US Senate."

Toomey, a former Pennsylvania congressman from 1998-2004, announced in January that he would not challenge Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) again in 2010. Toomey left the House to challenge Specter in the 2004 Republican primary, but lost by a 51 percent to 49 percent margin.

The NY Post's Fred Dicker reports that NY Dems are now going public with their concerns that Governor Paterson's "bumbling performance" will end up dragging them down with him. Paterson's not getting any slack from New York Magazine either, where Chris Smith says in the new issue that Eliot Spitzer's biggest legacy, in addition to being remembered first and foremost as Client Number 9, will be leaving behind an "incompetent successor."

Danny Finkelstein of The Times responds to John O'Sullivan's piece in National Review on David Cameron and the evolution of the Tories.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton buries what should be the lede in his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Changing Tehran's Holocaust-denying regime could end its nuclear program, as well as eliminate its continuing financing of and weapons supplies for Hamas and Hezbollah, reduce its malign hold over Syria, and strengthen Lebanon's fragile democracy. Taming Iran is not a magical cure-all, but surely addressing the central threat is more sensible than haphazardly dealing with the symptoms separately.

This comes at paragraph eight, but surely this should be up front. After all, deposing the government in Iran is something of a serious undertaking. Unfortunately, Bolton doesn't devote much time (none, in fact) to the mechanics of how the U.S. goes about deposing the Mullahs. (Maybe we dust off the Kermit Roosevelt playbook?)

He asserts that a Mullah-free Iran would give up nuclear weapons. You have to wonder how plausible this claim is given that Iran's nuclear program began under the auspices of the U.S.-backed Shah and is reportedly a source of pride among the Iranian people. More broadly, while attempting regime change may result in all the benefits Bolton expressed above, it might not. As Bolton acknowledged, it's not a "cure all." But it could be far worse than that.

As we learned in Iraq, once you topple a repressive regime, there's no telling what happens next.

(Cross-posted at RCW's The Compass.)

As predicted here at Media Watch, after warning that the San Francisco Chronicle might fold, the parent Hearst Corporation made demands on the newspaper guild and other unions for drastic concessions to keep the paper operating. Management and labor likely will have the next 2-3 weeks to work out the givebacks or the paper could be shuttered by the end of the first quarter.

Media Watch has obtained the memo sent to guild members on the highlights of the proposal. There were a few mundane items - such as increasing the work week from 37.5 hours to 40 hours without an increase in pay, trimming four weeks of vacation to three, and loosening existing constraints on management to use freelancers. And there were a few more difficult ones, such as more layoffs and discontinuing pension contribution.

In all fairness, the demands were harsh, but not entirely unreasonable. Partly due to the high cost of living in the Bay Area, and partly due to the fact that San Francisco was one of the strongest union towns, the employees at the San Francisco newspapers have always enjoyed some of the best benefit packages of newspapers anywhere in the United States. While California's escalating taxation is taking its toll on all residents, it's not particularly a burden that Hearst should be forced to carry as its employees are giving away more and more of their salaries to satiate a near-bankrupt state's penchant for spending.

It appears that the guild, after putting up light resistance, would be willing to accept most of management's demands - given the choice of losing their jobs outright vs. losing a few perks, vacation and sick days and freeze in pay. At least Hearst is not asking for direct pay cuts and unpaid furloughs, as a number of newspaper chains have done.

But the ball might be out of the guild's hands. Its other more notorious union brethren representing the composing room, pressmen and truck drivers may be less willing to give in. And this time, if they decide to call management's bluff, they may be making a grave mistake.

Meanwhile, Hearst is exploring other ways to improve its revenue stream as it's losing about $1 million per week at the Chronicle and a bit less at its other 15 papers. The company is contemplating a pay scheme for certain articles on its properties' web sites, including the Chronicle's popular sfgate.com site.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Hearst president Steven Swartz said his company is developing a new digital strategy that may also include a Kindle-like reading device:

Reworking its digital strategy is a part of Hearst's "100 Days" plan to cast a critical eye on longstanding newspaper-industry business practices. Mr. Swartz promised profound changes. "One inescapable conclusion of our study is that our cost base is significantly out of line with the revenue available in our business today," Mr. Swartz said. "It is equally inescapable that during good times our industry developed business practices that were at best inefficient."

(Cross-posted at RCP's Media Watch.)