With surging juvenile crime rates and limited budgets, state governments have been hard pressed to handle the increasing demands on the juvenile-justice system. This strain has led to increased privatization of juvenile-corrections services. Once found only on the outer fringes of libertarianism, advocates of privatized corrections are new viewed as being well within the mainstream. […]
The economic uncertainty of our tomorrows necessitates a commitment to preparedness on the part of county and municipal governments successfully to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Sluggish economic growth and reduced federal and state financial assistance, coupled with increased demands for services and public intolerance for additional taxes/fees, underscore the importance and timeliness […]
One of the education establishment’s defenses of its poor performance (in relation to private and parochial schools) is that non-public schools are selective. That is, private and parochial schools may choose their own students, leaving the most difficult students for the public schools to deal with. This is used as a rationale to justify annual […]
At the same time that Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke (D) was announcing plans to appoint a task force to explore different options for providing school choice for parents, a new group was being chartered in Maryland – a Baltimore version of the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation (known as CEO America). Like the original group, […]
On August 12, Governor Glendening announced – firmly – that no bill authorizing slot machines or casinos in Maryland will pass into law under his watch.1 Nonetheless, given the – how shall one say this? – pliancy of various Maryland politicians on this issue, it bears remembering that a day is an age in politics […]
During Maryland’s last gubernatorial election, Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey promised deep tax cuts. She pointed to the 30 percent tax cut in New Jersey as a model. The victorious Parris N. Glendening seemed to get the message. After he took office, he called for a five percent to ten percent income-tax cut: a wise economic […]
The defense first made for Mayor Schmoke’s recent proposal to up the city piggyback income tax was the small average per-person tax increase that would result, less than $75 a year. This is not the point. Baltimore is not a pleasant enough place to live that it can afford to be making any more tax […]
So how are vouchers doing?” asks columnist Clarence Page in a March 15 piece in the Baltimore Sun, preposterously titled, “A Reality Check on School Vouchers.” “Unfortunately,” he opines sternly, “the marketplace produces disasters along with miracles.” School choice falls into the former category, apparently. Two — yes, two — of the private schools participating […]
To understand the effort to revitalize Baltimore City, one needs an analogy – perhaps the Allied landing on D-Day. About 15 years ago, the yuppies landed on the beaches of Baltimore. On that thin strip of land called the Inner Harbor, they built their camp, and the fashionable and gleaming Brooks Brothers, Williams-Sonoma, and Crabtree […]
With all the criticism of non-custodial parents that goes on in Congress over payment of financial child support, it is gratifying to see that at least one jurisdiction in Maryland pays attention to the emotional aspect of child support – parenting. There are financial child-support offices all across America to help parents obtain monetary relief, […]