For years, social scientists have been trying to expand their influence from beyond the small university departments where they are holed up to the real world where serious work is being done. To some degree, they have been successful. In the world of business, for example, diversity counselors with Ph.D.s now advise CEOs on how […]
In October, the state government released a new and important resource for bewildered health-care consumers. The Maryland health maintenance organization (HMO) report card, developed by the Maryland Health Care Access and Cost Commission (HCACC), is a critical step in consumer education and the development of the market for health-care services.1 While the report card is […]
Great demands are placed on lawmakers each year to spend taxpayers’ money. The causes are usually noble, well intentioned and passionately argued. As a lawmaker, I know first-hand how painful it is to say no when someone looks you in the eye and pleads for your help. Our human nature makes refusal a difficult choice […]
It is a rare day indeed when this journal opposes a tax cut, a rarer one still when it actually suggests an increase. But Harford County Executive Eileen Rehrmann’s proposal to do away with the state property tax prompts this response. It is, of course, entirely natural for gubernatorially aspiring politicians to dream up election-year […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]