SOUTHERN ACCENT

Though 38 states now have a death penalty, one r egion carries it out far mor e often than any other. Southern states have executed 81 per cent of the national total since 1976. Nearly half have been in just two Southern states: Texas with 368 and Virginia with 95.

Other parts of the countr y send people to death row, but rarely to their death. Reasons for the death penalty’s S outhern accent and its implications ar e as contentious as nearly ev er ything else about society ’ s ultimate sanction.

In the past five or six years, the number of death sentences handed do wn and the number of ex ecutions hav e been decr easing, even in the South, due in large par t to states adopting “ true ” life prison terms without possibility of parole.

So much so that Richar Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, asserts: “the death penalty is becoming irrelevant.”

“Almost none of the most notorious killers in recent history received the death penalty,” he said. “Of those who do receive it, few are executed.”

The number of executions have dropped in Texas and Virginia, and death sentences are down in both states. Nationally, there has been a 60 per cent drop in death sentences since 1999. – Richmond TimesDispatch

MISTEPS

(Taxpayer Bill of Rights) backers in at least three states are under serious fire for potential legal and ethical issues related to their funding sources and their signature gathering methods. In Oklahoma, a group of businessmen and a former Republican A ttorney General are challenging roughly 40 percent of the signatures gathered for having been gathered illegally . Meanwhile, the effort in Oregon was under fire for r efusing to name donors to the effor t and hiding their big money backers thr ough com- plex financial tricks. In Montana, signature gatherers for TABOR and two other measures have had complaints filed against them for misleading voters about the contents of their petitions. – Progressive States Network, a website that opposes conservative initiatives

EQUAL TIME

(An Americans for Tax Reform) study of 25 years of state tax data finds several key points: 1) Tax increases are shrinking (particularly in recessions); 2) Tax cuts during periods of economic expansion are becoming more popular; 3) States are turning away from income taxes to targeted tax increases, such as tobacco taxes, and to ward other forms of double taxation; and 4) States with high tax burdens continually lose residents and their income to lower tax states. – Press release from Grover Norquist’s ATF regarding its study of 25 years of state government taxation.

NEW TERRITORY

The roles and responsibilities of state and local government in Texas require clarification. Conservatives must acknowledge that meaning ful local control is an important way to limit the power of centralized government, and that it is not the role of the state to protect local taxpayers from themselves by attempting to limit the ability of locally elected officials to raise revenue for local services and pr jects. – From “ The Role of Government, Part I: Blurred Lines Between State and Local Government ” by the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute. The paper also proposed a long-term study of the oles of state and local governments.

UP THE BUREAUCRACY by H. George Frederickson.
A professor of public administration at the University of Kansas has written a collection of humorous explana- tions of the relationship between politics and bureaucracy - getting elected vs. getting it done. Published by Governing Magazine and readable on line at www .gov- erning.com/books/utb/book1- 4.htm.

COUNTIES AS SERVICE DELIVERY AGENTS: CHANGING EXPECTATIONS AND ROLES. J. Edwin Benton of the University of South Florida has assembled this collection of pieces on how counties have begun taking on more varied urban and regional responsibilities, dispelling the notion that counties are mere providers of services they are mandated to perform by their state governments.Praeger Publishers.

RED-LIGHT CAMERAS IN TEXAS: A STATUS REPORT by Joel Eskovitz of the Texas House Research Organization.
Thorough researcher explores use of red-light citation cameras various T exas cities as well as in other states and some of the ethical legal debates surround- ing their use. Online at http://www .capitol.state.tx.us/hr ofr/frame9.htm.

CORRUPTION IN CUBA: CASTRO AND BEYOND by Sergio Díaz- Briquets and Jorge Pérez-López.
Two Cuban-Americans explore how Cuba’ s corruption has become institutionalized pre- scribe uni
quely Cuban policies to minimize corruption whatever direction the country takes after Castro. University of T exas Press.

SECRET LIVES OF U.S. PRESI- DENTS: WHA T YOUR TEACHERS NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT THE MEN OF THE WHITE HOUSE by Cormac O’Brien.
Great book for the bathroom. Quirk Books at www .quirkbooks.com.

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