Recent Calvert Institute PublicationsSchools of thought on looming teacher layoffsG. Liebmann 2010-06-02 White House economic adviser Christina D. Romer tells us ["Keeping teachers in the classroom," op-ed, May 28] that by "preventing layoffs we would save on unemployment insurance payments, food stamps and COBRA subsidies . . . and we would maintain tax revenues."Maryland's 'Race to the Top' Application: Failure Revealed George Liebmann 2010-04-27 The Obama Administration's education reform effort continues Washington’s enthusiasm for intellectually bankrupt 'top-down' reforms. As in foreign policy and policies relating to financial regulation, there is essential continuity between the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. The Obama reform approach essentially abandons any significant effort to alter failed grant in aid programs. The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, with its destructive embrace of restrictions on school discipline, its requirement that large sums be spent on student classification and administrative paper-shuffling, its adherence to now-discredited ‘inclusion’ theories, and its charter for expensive lawsuits is to be maintained. So is the central thrust of the No Child Left Behind law, with its incentives to rote 'teaching to the test' and its encouragement of debasement of state testing standards.Baltimore City Pensions: A Worthy Report George Liebmann 2010-04-27 The recent report of the Greater Baltimore Committee’s Task Force on Fire and Police Pensions under the Chairmanship of Donald Fry is a worthy effort, and repeats many of the observations in Calvert's The Baltimore City Retirement Systems: Heading for Trouble report in 2006.Policy Wonk's Guide to the Gubernatorial Election George Liebmann 2010-04-23 To the uninitiated, the choice between two remarkably similar candidates, Govs. O'Malley and Ehrlich, must seem like a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.Now What For Obama? George Liebmann 2010-04-07 Now that President Barack Obama has achieved the long-time goal of the Democratic Party of passing a comprehensive health reform bill, he must ask himself what comes next. He has achieved a great political victory but now comes the difficult part of paying for and administering the now greatly enlarged government responsibility for the nation's welfare.Terrorism trials: no new issues, no need to panic George W. Liebmann 2010-03-01 The controversy over the upcoming Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial has not enlightened the public. Those who would deny rights to persons denounced by the president and those who automatically reject all alternatives to criminal trials have seen to that. Prisoners of war are persons captured in uniform of whose enemy status there is no doubt. They may be confined indefinitely but have the right not to be questioned. Bush-Cheney defenders uphold unlimited detention but not its confining factors: undisputed belligerency of the captive and freedom from questioning and torture.Beyond drug law reform: We need a new Wickersham Commission George W. Liebmann 2010-01-11 Change is in the offing for U.S. drug policy. More than a dozen states, including Maryland, have adopted medical marijuana laws. Attorney General Eric Holder, a decisive member of a sometimes indecisive administration, stated that federal laws against marijuana possession would not be enforced against persons immune under such state laws. |
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