Things That Ain’t So: A Response to Dworkin’s Review of Murray

Will Rogers is supposed to have said, “The trouble with most folks isn’t their ignorance, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.” Ron Dworkin’s disapproving review of Charles Murray’s What it Means to Be a Libertarian, published in the spring 1997 issue of Calvert News, is based on some ideas about economics […]

A Plea for Sanity: Keep Politics Out of the Regulatory Process

Each year, the Maryland General Assembly considers over 2,500 bills during its 90-day session. Because of this volume and due to limited time, it is difficult adequately to address each bill proposed. It would help if there were fewer bills, if certain categories of bill were simply ignored or ruled “off limits” or were dealt […]

The Interview: Eileen M. Rehrmann, Harford County Executive

From time to time, the Calvert Institute will be interviewing the major contenders in the 1998 gubernatorial race. In this issue, we have a conversation with Eileen Rehrmann, county executive for Harford County, who is challenging incumbent Governor Parris Glendening in the Democratic primary. Calvert Question. What has moved you to challenge Governor Glendening in […]

Have the Checks Come In? A Review of Dash\’s Rosa Lee

Reprinted with permission of the Capital Research Center, Washington, D.C., in one of whose publications a version of it previously appeared. The word “crisis” is much overused in America these days, but there really is no better word to describe the problems afflicting the nation’s inner cities. The social pathologies are overwhelming: illegitimacy, crime, drug […]

To Secure These Rights: Maryland\’s Infringement of Medical Privacy

The 1990s will come to be known as the heyday of the information age. The cost will be the loss of personal privacy. Privacy will become the legislative issue of the late 1990s. If we maintain that government can only be for the cause of the governed, then government must rein in the erosion of […]

Bailing Out on Busing: Why Maryland Should Reject the P.G. Plan

There can scarcely be a soul in Maryland convinced by Governor Parris N. Glendening’s (D) rationale for his plan to pump $250 million or so of state money into the Prince George’s County school system over the next five years. The funds will supposedly be used for any new school construction required if the school-busing […]

Too Easy and Too Free: A Review of Murray\’s Libertarianism

Libertarianism was once the ideology of cranks. While not the kind of people to hand out leaflets at the airport or solicit your house uninvited, libertarians were humorously derided by many and considered suspect by the rest. Then, during the 1970s and ’80s, as the country became disenchanted with government activism, libertarian ideas began to […]

How to Wean the Poor from Medicaid

What will welfare reform mean for medical care of the poor? Welfare recipients today get Medicaid, which amounts to government-paid free health care. If they go to work they will sooner or later lose Medicaid, leaving some without health insurance altogether. Thus, any plan to end “welfare as we know it” must deal with the […]

Choice, Polls and the American Way

Anti-Choice Some weeks ago, a Calvert reporter went to a conference jointly hosted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and People for the American Way (PFAW), a liberal organization founded in 1980 by Norman Lear. The NAACP/PFAW marriage goes under the name, “Partners for Public Education,” a partnership whose mission, […]

Educating Arizona: Credit Where Credit’s Due

Arizona’s public education establishment has gone on red alert, talking about a possible lawsuit or ballot referendum as a strategy to derail a $500 income-tax credit for private-school scholarships. Governor J. Fife Symington III (R) signed the measure into law on April 7. For many parents now worried about low test scores, high drop-out rates […]