**kwds behavior?

[Jeff Epler]

Changes to locals() do not necessarily affect anything.  
    locals()
        Update and return a dictionary representing the current local
        symbol table. *Warning*: The contents of this dictionary should
        not be modified; changes may not affect the values of local
        variables used by the interpreter.
    -- http://python.org/doc/current/lib/built-in-funcs.html#l2h-47

You should probably try a different approach to whatever the underlying
task is.

Jeff