Hot Buttons: Talk show topics

GOOD FOR BUSINESS?

According to the old expression, when business is good nothing is bad -- but business researchers in Los Angeles report that one of the more successful business practices being applied lately is also illegal.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the Economic Roundtable found that cash-pay, off-the-books work is thriving -- fed by illegal immigration and lax labor law enforcement, among other things. All that underground activity keeps thousands of low-skilled workers employed -- but there is very little job security, the jobs don't pay much, and the state loses out on taxes and workers' compensation insurance premiums.

Steve Smith, director of the state Department of Industrial Relations -- which enforces labor laws -- said the extent of the practice is huge.

"It's bad enough on the people who work in it," said smith, "because there is much greater potential for abuse (of wage, hour and safety laws). But those employers also compete with legitimate firms, driving the good employers out of business."

-- Is this an immigration issue? Is it a workers rights issue?

-- Is there always going to be an underground economy, despite the best effort of governments to wipe it out?

TRAILING EINSTEIN

According to a report in the New York Times, the FBI and other agencies spied on one of America's preeminent scientists -- Albert Einstein -- based on suspicions ranging from a tip that he had been a Russian spy in Berlin to a vague sense that he was not to be trusted because he supported civil rights and pacifist and socialist causes.

The paper reported that the FBI even suspected that Einstein might be working on a death ray, or heading a Communist conspiracy to take over Hollywood.

Dr. Richard Alan Schwartz, a professor of English at Florida International University in Miami, first reported the surveillance of Einstein in 1983, when he acquired a censored copy of the famous scientist's FBI file and wrote an article about it in The Nation magazine.

Now, Fred Jerome has new details in his book "The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist." Jerome sued the government -- with help from the Public Citizen Litigation Group -- and obtained a less heavily censored version of Einstein's file.

"It's like the agents got up in the morning, brushed their teeth, opened other people's mail and tapped some phones," he told the Times, describing the routine manner in which agents snooped into people's private lives.

The investigation continued until Einstein's death in 1955, but never produced any evidence that Einstein was doing anything wrong.

-- Was the FBI justified in investigating prominent scientists at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a space-arms race that depended entirely on establishing and maintaining scientific superiority?

-- Do you think the FBI is still conducting these kinds of investigations of prominent people?

WHO WOULD YOU KICK OFF?

In a new online poll, Mariah Carey has been voted the pop music act people would most like to kick off the planet.

The poll -- conducted on the music Web site, popdirt.com -- asked: "If you could remove one pop act's music from the face of the earth, who would it be?"

More than 8,000 visitors to the site voted -- and 31 percent picked Carey.

Jennifer Lopez finished second with 24 percent. 'NSync was third with 12 percent.

Britney Spears finished with 8 percent, followed by Mandy Moore (7.5 percent) and the Backstreet Boys (3.5 percent). Jessica Simpson, Enrique Iglesias, Madonna and Ricky Martin rounded out the Top 10.

-- Would you want to live in a world where pop acts could be voted off the planet just because a handful of online voters had a nasty attitude about them?

-- Do you suppose the people who voted to get rid of Carey and the other have actually spent much time listening to their music? Or is it more likely they're just being fashionably cynical?