December 20th, 2011
Category: Miscellaneous
www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-norquist-20111219,0,497956.story baltimoresun.com Norquist’s ‘beast’ thrives Influential anti-tax activist’s work has done nothing to limit the size of government By George W. Liebmann 6:00 AM EST, December 19, 2011 Advertisement For the last 20 years, the charming Grover Norquist has been perhaps the most successful of American political entrepreneurs, having used a letterhead and small office […]
September 18th, 2011
Category: Budget, Comment, Fiscal, Miscellaneous, Publications
Confronting Party Myths by George W. Liebmann Some cheer can be obtained from recent fiscal events. The Reagan-Bush tax cuts ended the Democratic era of tax and spend. The debt limit crisis ended the Republican era of borrow and spend. Perhaps the hour of the late Adlai Stevenson, who told us “there are no gains […]
August 15th, 2011
Category: Criminal Justice, Culture Wars, Drugs, Miscellaneous, Urban Affairs
baltimoresun.com Reefer madness: Reform our crazy marijuana laws 750,000 marijuana arrests a year have gotten our society nowhere By George W. Liebmann 7:00 AM EDT, August 15, 2011 The militarization of the Mexican border is a new phenomenon for two nations whose militaries have traditionally been made to stay out of politics. There are constant […]
August 10th, 2011
Category: Culture Wars, Welfare and Other Social
The Immigration Conundrum Chapter 191 of theActs of 2011 relating to college tuition has now been successfully petitioned to referendum. This is a welcomc development in that it curbs the increasing arrogance and lack of accountability of Maryland’s single-party government. Itis likely. however. to touch off an unedifying campaign between the self-righteously sentimental and the self-righteously parsimonious […]
August 9th, 2011
Category: Judiciary and Legal Issues, State and Local Politics
The Governor has appointed a reapportionment commission of flive members: his patronage secretary;President Miller, Speaker Busch. a businessman. and a former Republican delegate. safely ‘out of the loop’ as as respects his party’s leadership, The commissionis in effect a Society for the Protection of Democratic Incumbents, Was this the constitutional design? […]
August 5th, 2011
Category: Education
Science Education Revisited Once again.the Maryland State Department of Education. which has done virtually nothing to relieve the State’s chronic shortage of qualified high school science teachers. has released its biannual Teacher Staffing Report. Pages 87 through 90 of the Report contains statistics showing that the state’s high schools offer only 355 physics classes. as […]
April 8th, 2011
Category: News Series, Publications
NOW AVAILABLE MARION ELIZABETH RODGERS’ BALTIMORE BAR LIBRARY TALK ON “MENCKEN, RITCHIE AND PROHIBITION” AS PART OF PROHIBITION IN MARYLAND: A COLLECTION OF DOCUMENTS including speeches and messages by Governor Albert Ritchie, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and members of Maryland’s prohibition-era congressional delegation, excerpts from the Wickersham report on the prohibition laws, and texts of […]
March 9th, 2011
Category: Education, Education
Maryland is known as a strong union state, and it would seem improbable to Marylanders that the current battle in Wisconsin could be replicated here. Maryland’s budget deficit is less pronounced than that of Wisconsin, though its combined state debt and pension deficits place it among the top 20 states in debt burden. It retains […]
February 1st, 2011
Category: Budget, News Series
The current state administration likes to boast of its economic development record, but the best test of economic development is provided by the way that people behave in fact. For many years, Maryland was one of the fastest-growing states in the East. Its growth was spurred not only by the growth of the national government […]
January 4th, 2011
Category: Education, News Series
Fresh from its advocacy of the Thornton Plan, which exploded current expense spending for schools in the name of a supposed constitutional imperative, the A.C.L.U. now seeks to duplicate this experience with school capital spending. It will be recalled that the A.C.L.U. brought a lawsuit, Bradford v. Board of Education, asserting that the education clause […]
