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 The first two are no longer with us as political issues, having now been replaced by ‘gun control’.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 […]
In a likely preview of Republican proposals should the party win the Maryland gubernatorial election next month, its 1998 candidate for the U.S. Senate [sic], Baltimore lawyer George Liebmann, writes on a Baltimore Sun opinion page that the state’s current Smart Growth practice ”has reached its limits” and that the time has come to privatize […]
Your editor had a look at the federal case file in that most macabre of all cases, Vaughn G. v. Board of Commissioners, involving special education in Baltimore City.(84 Civ.1911 (D.Md.)),which has lasted for 18 years, created two new bureaucracies, cost an estimated $50 million,and provided a Special Master with a $200,000+ salary (To assuage […]
This is the first Calvert Institute study to be issued in 18 months, and reflects the work of a reconstituted Board and new Executive Director. The Institute intends to continue to reproduce in Maryland proposals for market-based reforms that have not received serious discussion, though its basic thrust will seek to promote better government by […]
The recent discussion of slot machines at race tracks makes it appropriate to focus on Maryland’s existing gambling enterprise: the lottery. Critics of gambling have done little to see to it that gambling revenues are distributed so as to compensate the jurisdictions in which they are raised, which are also the jurisdictions which suffer any […]
Kalman R. Hettleman is an independent Baltimore education consultant. He was Secretary of Human Resources during the Hughes administration, and is a former member of the Baltimore City School Board. The following discussion of the costs of the Vaughn G. lawsuit is excerpted by permission from a 55-page report, “Still Getting It Wrong: The Continuing […]
If exodus is a measure of livability, then only a handful of cities are as unlivable as Baltimore. And the people leaving are just the sort of folk Baltimore must keep. They are the ordinary, middle-class types without whom no city can function. But the municipal authority’s response to these individuals’ verdict on the city has been – nothing. Baltimore is home to public employees and welfare recipients a-plenty.
As Maryland moves toward the 21st century, an expanding population demands ever better services and ever more schools – without more taxes. How to pull it off? The answer is for local governments to pay less for services, leaving funds available for purchasing additional services in other areas. The easiest means of doing this is to subject service providers to the rigors of the market by making them compete with each other.
As Baltimore’s disappointing Schmoke era draws to a close, Calvert recently attempted to elicit answers from potential 1999 mayoral candidates to some key questions. Surveys were mailed to seven people, either announced candidates or folk whose names have been mentioned as possibilities. These were Lawrence A. Bell III, the city council president; Mary Conaway, the […]
The National Taxpayers Union, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C., has just released its annual rating of the “taxpayer friendliness” of all members of Congress. Maryland’s U.S. Senators, Democrats Paul Sarbanes and Barbara Mikulski, ranked absolute bottom on the NTU scale. Between them, Sarbanes and Mikulski scored a combined average of 8 percent, out of […]