Jonathan Lockwood, the 32-year-old campaign consultant and former party spokesman whose
brash messaging was once labeled “flat-out deranged” by a newspaper editorial board, said he has the experience and skills to rebuild a party reeling from back-to-back drubbings at the ballot box in a state with an increasingly left-leaning electorate.
“The Republican Party needs to get back to its roots of prudence, limited government and free markets,” said Lockwood in a statement. “I am running for Colorado GOP chair to lead the party to victory. We don’t have to look at things as if we can win this one or two seats here, and maybe run a good go at the governor’s office. We will flip this state red.”
My Turn: The path to enlightened criminal justice reform
Published: 1/31/2021 7:00:07 AM
The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any nation on Earth. That means that even non-democratic regimes like Iran, Cuba, and Russia that routinely jail people summarily have a lower incarceration rate than we do.
Not only do all other advanced countries incarcerate at a lower rate, their crime rates in those countries are often also lower than ours.
A wise friend of a notably different political persuasion than mine once said: “There are dangerous criminals that we’re rightly afraid of and they should be incarcerated, but the majority of criminals are frustrating and we are rightfully angry about their behavior, but we need to be much wiser about how we deal with them.”
New AP report concludes Federal executions likely a COVID superspreader
This new Associated Press article details the conclusions of its investigation concerning the spread of COVID-19 in and around the federal facilities responsible for executions at the tail end of the Trump Administration. Here is how the lengthy piece gets started:
As the Trump administration was nearing the end of an unprecedented string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19. Guards were ill. Traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. So did media witnesses, who may have unknowingly infected others when they returned home because they were never told about the spreading cases.
In 2018, Gov. Kim Reynolds and the legislature passed pro-growth tax reform that lowered income tax rates and broadened the sales tax base. Reducing tax rates, along with practicing fiscally responsible spending policies, is making Iowa more competitive and economically strong.
However, the annual report, Rich States, Poor States, describes how states across America continue to advance policies that help their taxpayers increase take-home wages and enhance their standard of living. This year, Indiana will once again lower its corporate income tax rate from 5.25 percent to 4.9 percent. Since 2012, Indiana has been gradually lowering the corporate tax rate from a starting point of 8.5 percent. Corporate tax rates vary greatly across the 50 states that tax business income, from the highest tax rate in Iowa of 12 percent to the lowest in North Carolina of 2.5 percent.
Prison Policy Initiative sets out long list of Winnable criminal justice reforms for state systems
Prison Policy Initiative has produced this effective ten-page document titled Winnable criminal justice reforms: A Prison Policy Initiative briefing on promising state reform issues for 2021. I count well over two dozen notable suggested reforms on the list, each of which comes with helpful links and additional information. Check out the whole document, and here are two of the many sentencing items to whet appetites:
Make it easier to change excessive prison sentences
Problem: Nationally, one of every six people in state prisons have been incarcerated for a decade or more. While many states have taken laudable steps to reduce the number of people serving time for low-level offenses, little has been done to bring relief to people needlessly serving decades in prison.