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Sunday’s editorial pages

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St. Petersburg TimesPlugging the Internet tax drain – The Republican-dominated Pinellas County Commission smartly voted last week to sue online travel companies like Priceline and Expedia that have avoided fully paying the county’s bed tax. Too bad their Republican colleagues in the Florida Legislature are not as aggressive in addressing other unfair tax policies, including by extending the state sales tax to all Internet sales.

Daytona Beach News JournalDeserved, but also wanting of further vindication – Barack Obama was in office less than 10 months when the Nobel Committee picked him as the recipient of the 2009 peace prize. It’s a surprising choice. Obama’s charisma is still more proven than his accomplishments. That’s no discredit to him. No president could repair in 10 months, or even a few years, the wreckage of the previous eight, so much of it wrought by Obama’s predecessor’s adulation of war and bullying. And Obama’s presidency shouldn’t be judged by the exigencies of the 24-hour news cycle, when a president’s lack of accomplishments in the last three days can be interpreted as incontrovertible proof of incompetence or signal the imminent fall of the republic.

Lakeland LedgerHopeful Signs; Help Still Needed – Finally, some positive signs are showing up in economic reports, offering Americans hope that the worst recession since the Great Depression is ending. Thursday, for example, The Wall Street Journal reported that its survey of 48 economists showed consensus on these points: The four consecutive quarters of economic contraction has ended. When all the data are in and analyzed, they will show that the seasonally adjusted growth domestic product for the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, grew at a rate of 3.1 percent

Orlando SentinelOur take on: Nobel Peace Prize – But for all the new president’s aspirations — including his call to eliminate nuclear weapons, his reaching out to the Muslim world and his promise of U.S. leadership in fighting climate change — he has few if any accomplishments to show for them. That’s understandable. He’s just getting started. Honoring him now, so soon after Mr. Bush has left, can’t help but politicize the prize.

Miami HeraldTallahassee’s culture of anything goes – Key leaders in the Legislature add and subtract from the budget and then rush it to the members, who have just days to approve thousands of items. That’s not a sound way to establish public policy, but it has been that way for so long that few in the Legislature seem to think there’s a problem.

Tallahassee DemocratMary Ann Lindley: Abusing power isn’t always a crime – The Sansom grand jury was following this trail of outrage when it went on to say: “Further, the ability of an individual or corporation to contribute large sums of money to political action committees or major political parties needs to be addressed by The Legislature. The present system has the potential to breed corruption and create an unfair advantage for those who have money to leverage influence on The Legislature.”

Tampa TribuneEveryone wants peace of Obama – Obama could also have won the prize for chemistry, joked Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein. The selection committee could explain, “He’s just got great chemistry.”

Peter Schorsch is the President of Extensive Enterprises and is the publisher of some of Florida’s most influential new media websites, including SaintPetersBlog.com, FloridaPolitics.com, ContextFlorida.com, and Sunburn, the morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics. SaintPetersBlog has for three years running been ranked by the Washington Post as the best state-based blog in Florida. In addition to his publishing efforts, Peter is a political consultant to several of the state’s largest governmental affairs and public relations firms. Peter lives in St. Petersburg with his wife, Michelle, and their daughter, Ella.

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