A PROCESSION OF THEM by documentary photographer Eugene Richards gives readers a glimpse of the inhuman conditions suffered by the mentally ill and disabled who are warehoused in psychiatric cells. A volunteer for Mental Disability Rights International, Richards traveled to institutions in Mexico, Argentina, Armenia, Hungary, Paraguay and Kosovo. University of Texas Press.

HIDDEN CONSEQUENCES: LESSONS FROM MASSACHUSETTS FOR STATES CONSIDERING A PROPERTY TAX CAP by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looks at the impact of 2.5 percent property and revenue tax caps passed in Massachusetts in 1980. According to the CBPP, the caps have had a “considerable cost” for taxpayers and have exacerbated disparities between wealthy and poor communities. As the report states, “a tax cap won’t make government services cost less.” Published in May 2008, the report is available in PDF format online at www.cbpp.org/5-21-08sfp.htm.

THE FIRST BILLION IS THE HARDEST: REFLECTIONS ON A LIFE OF COMEBACKS AND AMERICA’S ENERGY FUTURE by T. Boone Pickens shares the details behind the 80- year-old Texan’s latest and perhaps greatest goal: energy independence. Published by Crown Business.

STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS: GROWING FISCAL CHALLENGES WILL EMERGE DURING NEXT 10 YEARS by the United States Government Accountability Office. In its January 2008 report to congressional committees, the GAO predicts that “absent policy changes, state and local governments will face an increasing gap between receipts and expenditures in the coming years,” largely due to rapidly increasing healthrelated expenditures including Medicaid and health insurance benefits. The 78-page report is online at www.gao.gov/new.items/ d08317.pdf.

TRAFFIC: WHY WE DRIVE THE WAY WE DO by Tom Vanderbilt attempts to explain the complex web of physical, psychological and technical factors that lead to traffic jams and why the other lane is always faster. Vanderbilt will be in Austin for the Texas Book Festival Nov. 1-2. Knopf Publishing Group.

GOING ONCE

Late this month, 10 Northeastern states will conclude an auction like no other in American history. What’s up for grabs is not art or property. It’s carbon – or more specifically, the right to emit carbon dioxide from a power plant. Soon, in Baltimore, Boston and Buffalo, carbon also will have a price.

The auction is the opening act of a daring plan to put a big dent in greenhouse gas emissions. Another part of that plan is to impose a region-wide limit on carbon emissions from power plants, which the Northeastern states will begin enforcing on January 1. Once those two pieces are in place – a price for carbon and a cap on carbon – the states expect market forces will take over. Utilities will buy, sell or trade their carbon allowances amongst themselves. What the Northeastern states are putting in place is called a “cap-and-trade” system. They’re not the only ones interested in the approach. In the West, seven states and four Canadian provinces are developing a parallel regime of their own. In the Midwest, six more states are starting work on a third regional carbon-trading scheme. Florida also is developing a program. Collectively, these initiatives rank among the most serious efforts ever aimed at mitigating the effects of global warming.

— Governing

AXIS OF FEEBLE

“This is the time we saw the Axis of Feeble. By the Axis of Feeble I’m referring to the strange collection of people in the press, reporters, pundits, political consultants and pollsters who consistently got everything wrong for the last year. Every time you turned on the TV, there was some talking head insisting that he knew exactly what was going on in the democratic or republican presidential primaries. John McCain was dead, Hillary Clinton was inevitable and any other big or small thing you heard from not just talking heads and pundits, but from pollsters and from reporters. We in the press ought to be ashamed of the way we have presented the events of the last 12 months to you. We did a terrible job. Frankly my colleagues in the press – who thought they knew so much and are now shown to have known so little – should shut up and go away for a while because the fact is all of you out there are the ones who ultimately decide the outcomes of such things, and should be left to do that without interference or by any other obstruction by people in my profession.”

— Texas Monthly Editor Evan Smith during the keynote speech at the TAC 2008 Annual Conference

FAST FOOD DRIVE-BY

Support for a fast food ban in New York is growing among city lawmakers after the Los Angeles City Council passed an unprecedented bill in July that would make the addition of new fast food restaurants in certain areas of the city illegal for at least one year. Some city residents, however, immediately voiced opposition to such a ban.

The executive vice president for the New York office of the New York State Restaurant Association, Charles Hunt, said banning fast food in predominantly low-income areas could cause more problems than it solves. Fast food, he said, is often the only option for low-income residents.

“I know they are trying to combat obesity,” he said, “but where are these people supposed to go?”

— The New York Sun

DONATE THIS

“It is time for us to look at doing away with the concept for having an opt-out opportunity from the highway trust fund and let states keep 100 percent of their gasoline tax dollars. Back in the 50s when the highway trust fund was started, when the national highway system was conceived, places like Wyoming, and Idaho, Montana did not have the capacity to raise money to put a federal highway or even a state highway through their state that would connect them to other states. So the concept of a national highway system was really Eisenhowers and it was for national security.

So the highway trust fund was made up of some donar states giving to the donee states because they didn’t have the capacity to raise money. But America is different today. Today every state ought to be able to raise their own funds.”

— U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, speaking about her legislative priorities at the TAC Annual Conference in August

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