INSIDE THE SHACK

The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation's 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples – with and without children – just shy of a majority and down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.

The numbers by no means suggests marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been reached. The total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry. But marriage has been facing more competition. A growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound.

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, attributed the accelerated trend to the lifestyles of baby boomers.

“It’s the legacy of the boomers that have finally caused this tipping point,” Dr. Frey said. “Certainly later generations have followed in boomer footsteps, with high levels of living together before marriage, and more flexible lifestyles. But the boomers were the trailblazers, once again, rebelling against a norm their parents epitomized.

“This would seem to close the book on the Ozzie and Harriet era that characterized much of the last century,” he said.

–The New York Times

WEB TREND

More voters (26.8 percent) pick the Internet as the best place to learn about a candidate’s position on election issues or to research general election issues, than any other information source including television (20.5 percent), newspapers (17.8 percent), radio (6.6 percent), pamphlets/ brochures/ direct mail (5.4 percent), and in last place, magazines (2.8 percent).

Among likely voters who clicked on a candidate's Web advertisement, nearly two-thirds (63.5 percent) went on to read additional information about the candidate’s platform on issues, 47.3 percent sent an email to the candidate, 39.5 percent signed-up to receive campaign email alerts, 33.4 percent watched a video ad, 17.8 percent made an online donation, and 16.8 percent signed-up to volunteer for the campaign.

– Press release from Burst Media

NO RATE RELIEF

A decade after competition was introduced in their industries, long-distance phone rates had fallen by half, air fares by more than a fourth and trucking rates by a fourth. But a decade after the federal government opened the business of generating electricity to competition, the market has produced no such decline.

Instead, more rate increase requests are pending now than ever before, said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the association for the investor-owned utilities that provide about 60 percent of the nation's power.

– The New York Times

THE GAY PLACE by Billy Lee Brammer. There are no homosexuals in this 1961 novel about the Texas Legislature and someone that seems a lot like Lyndon Johnson before he became president. Considered classic American political fiction. The University of Texas Press.

ALL THE WAY FROM YOAKUM: THE PERSONAL JOURNEY OF A POLITICAL INSIDER by Marjorie Meyer Arsht. One of the founders of the modern Republican Party in Texas, Arsht was the first Jewish woman to run as a Republican for the state legislature and was closely involved in the early career of George H. W. Bush. Now 90, she's written a memoir. Texas A&M University Press.

PLEASE PASS THE BISCUITS, PAPPY by Bill Crawford. Photos and entertaining text of Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel and his musical shows with the Light Crust Doughboys and his radio homilies extolling family and Christian values. University of Texas Press.

WANTED: HISTORIC COUNTY JAILS OF TEXAS by Edward A. Blackburn, Jr. Heavily illustrated guide takes readers to each of the 254 counties, presenting brief histories of the counties and the structures that housed their criminals. He provides general information about the architecture and location of the buildings and, when possible, describes the present uses of those that have been decommissioned. Texas A&M University Press

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