The five-year Thornton program, which would enhance Maryland’s public school appropriations by $1.3 billion, is a big mistake. The inadequacy of public high school education is the most serious problem this nation confronts, but Thornton is a case of more means worse. Appropriations for future years should be stretched out and conditioned on reforms. Every […]
St.John’s College, Annapolis, January 6, 2004 Reported by Linda A. Crockett, videotaped by G.Stanley Doore, conference organization by Robert O’C. Worcester GEORGE W. LIEBMANN, Executive Director, Calvert Institute, Moderator WILLIAM S. RATCHFORD Director, Department of Fiscal Services, 1974?1997 NANCY K. KOPP Maryland State Treasurer, 2002?; House of Delegates, 1975-2002 ROBERT R. NEALL Maryland State Senate, […]
Calvert Report November 2003 Market Approaches to Congestion Control Transcript of a Discussion On October 7, 2002, during the State election campaign, the Calvert Institute sponsored a symposium at Montgomery College, Germantown, including presentations by four leading transportation experts on the then little-discussed subject of Market Approaches to Congestion Control. The symposium coincided with the […]
This memorandum (in PDF format) is intended to outline the constitutional powers of the Maryland Governor, who is often said to be the most powerful Governor in the country in terms of constitutional authority. Click here to view the PDF File.
The recent consent decree relating to ‘racial profiling’ by the State Police negotiated by the Glendening administration and accepted in modified form by Governor Ehrlich appears to put a nasty controversy to rest: one which united ‘hit and run’ politics and identity politics in one toxic package. Such decrees nonetheless raise serious concerns. Policing is […]
MR. GEORGE LIEBMANN (moderator): Roughly 10 of 35 respondents to Calvert’s survey of public college science and math professors referred in one way or another to the problem of recruiting and retaining qualified high school science teachers. The other comments were also very interesting. It is rather commonly put forth as part of an agenda […]
A lawsuit seeks to accord civil litigants a constitutional right to state-paid lawyers like that guaranteed criminal defendants by the famous case of Gideon v. Wainwright. The test case is Frase v. Barnhart, a child custody matter which the Court of Appeals is to hear this October. Not one Marylander in a hundred knows about […]
MR. GEORGE W. LIEBMANN: This is a symposium on the criminal justice system in Baltimore City that is jointly sponsored by three organizations: The Bar Association of Baltimore City, Maryland Business for Responsive Government, and the Calvert Institute for Policy Research. We are honored to have with us this evening four distinguished judges, Judge Charles […]
The condition of Baltimore’s schools, together with the fact that more than 40% of the parents of Baltimore schoolchildren applied for a limited number of private scholarships would suggest that Baltimore City is a jurisdiction politically ripe for the introduction of vouchers. Several Baltimore political leaders have lent their support to voucher proposals. In 1994, […]
The late Spiro Agnew, no great statesman, once referred disgustedly to “the pop issues-acid, amnesty and abortion.” The first two are no longer with us as political issues, having now been replaced by ‘gun control’. Agnew’s point, however, remains valid: when candidates talk about abortion and gun control, it suggests that they have few serious […]