Capital Sentencing In Kentucky, 2000–2010

The current study attempts to build upon previous analyses of capital sentencing in Kentucky and other states. Using data compiled from official court records compiled by the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, we examined death eligible homicide cases for the years 2000–2010 for the state (N?=?359). Multivariate analysis determined that the death penalty in Kentucky was sought 3.17 times or 217 % more when the victim is female. It also found that cases featuring a black defendant and a white victim were 56 % less likely to result in a plea than cases featuring other defendant/victim racial combinations. Despite legal requirements, Kentucky fails to collect data to assess the factors that influence the seeking and imposition of the death penalty. Paper presented at the Second Annual Forum on Criminal Law Reform in the Commonwealth of Kentucky on November 15, 2013 at the University of Kentucky Law School, Lexington, KY.     

Do intergovernmental grants create ratchets in state and local taxes?

A large literature on the ‘flypaper effect’ examines how federal grants to states at time period t affect state spending (or taxes) at time period t. We explore the fundamentally different question of how federal grants at time period t affect state tax policy in the future. Federal grants often result in states creating new programs and hiring new employees, and when the federal funding is discontinued, these new state programs must either be discontinued or financed through increases in state own source taxes. Government programs tend to be difficult to cut, as goes Milton Friedman’s famous quote about nothing being as permanent as a temporary government program, suggesting that it is likely that temporary federal grants create permanent (future) ratchets in state taxes. Far from being purely an academic question, this argument is why South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford attempted to turn down federal stimulus monies for his state. We examine both the impact of federal grants on future state budgets and how federal and state grants affect future local government budgets. Our findings confirm that grants indeed result in future state and local tax increases of roughly 40 cents for every dollar in grant money received in prior years.     

Confrontational Mutual Perceptions and Images: Orientalism and Occidentalism in Europe and the Islamic World

Europe's reactions to its recently-constituted Muslim communities reflect its implicit self-image of cultural homogeneity, despite a long tradition of cultural adaption. This, in turn, is a facet of the persistance of an Orientalist vision which stimulates its opposed mirror-image, Occidentalism or Orientalism-in-reverse, as those communities react with a sense of profound alienation. The two interact to generate the cultural and political confrontation that typifies inter-communal relations today, constructing a new inter-communal socio-political boundary that could harden into a permanent divide of mutual hostility. It is this, far more than globalised salafi-jihadism, that explains the political extremism confronting European states today.     

The Greek state response to terrorism

Since 1975 Greece has been suffering a persistent assault of terrorism mainly at the hands of the 17 November, revolutionary communist group. The Greek state after two decades of bitter and bloody experience, has been unable to resolve the problem. The purpose of this article is to identify and examine the attitudes of Greek political elites towards the problem and the tactics and responses which they have utilized to combat it. Focusing on the major political parties, the study explores opinions and reactions to different manifestations of the problem of political violence. It also attempts to demonstrate that, although each party stands in principle against terrorism, the overall response of the Greek state has been uniquely lethargic, dilatory and unbalanced. Four conclusions emerge from this study: the inefficacy of legislation that treats terrorism like organized crime; the need for a thoroughgoing reform of the security services; the lack of a national strategy to combat all terrorist activity; and the necessity for Greek governments to put party politics aside, when dealing with terrorism.     

Greece: Twenty years of political terrorism

From the mid‐1970s to the present, Greece has been suffering a systematic terrorist assault on her political and socieo‐economic institutions‐mainly at the hands of the 17 November and ELA, intransigent communist organizations. During these two decades, the Greek state has failed to make a correct diagnosis of the problem. This article traces the long history of terrorism during this period and enables the reader to understand how the phenomenon was allowed to grow so uncontrollably that it has now become a permenant feature of contemporary Greek political culture. The author concludes that the Greek terrorists will continue their violent campaign attacking the people and institutions they despise for several years to come‐at least until Greece's established political clas takes a clear‐cut stand and effective measures to oppose and resolve this seemingly intractable problem     

Comments on James L. Gelvin's “Al-Qaeda and Anarchism: A Historian's Reply to Terrorology”

The article deals with the intellectual and philosophical background of Sartre's thought, which made him susceptible to the influence of left-wing totalitarian structures in general and to left-wing terrorism in particular. Consequently it is argued that Sartre's identification with Stalinism in his younger years, and his later sympathies with the infamous German Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang, were more than mere expressions of his personality, but rather part and parcel of his special blend of existentialism and philosophy. At the end of the article, Sartre's position in this matter is contrasted with the position of another existentialist French thinker, Sartre's contemporary, Albert Camus.     

A Review of: “Andrew F. Krepinevich. 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century.”

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