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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
George Liebmann talked about his November 22, 2010 article in the Baltimore Sun, The Youth Employment Conundrum, that suggests policy changes to create jobs for young people may be needed to avoid social unrest. http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/11/26/WJE/A/41208/George+Liebmann+Calvert+Institute+for+Policy+Research.aspx
Policy changes to create jobs for young people may be needed to avoid social unrest The level of youth unemployment, the highest since records began to be kept on the present system in 1978, is the great undiscussed issue in American politics. The numbers for July 2010, a month when youth employment usually reaches a […]
There are many resemblances between former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Gov. Martin O’Malley, but this election is not a choice between tweedledum and tweedledee. Mr. Ehrlich has compromised himself in conventional ways, most notably by signing an unaffordable Democrat-sponsored election-year increase in teachers’ pensions on which he should have bestowed a foredoomed veto. […]
In March 2006, the Institute issued a Report, The Baltimore City Retirement Systems: Heading for Trouble. The summary at the front of the Report stated: “The skimming off of surpluses to provide new unfunded benefits in good investment years, together with mediocre or worse investment performance and an escalation of disability claims in the Fire […]
Let's hear from the state's attorney candidates on peremptory challenges, drug offenses In a little more than two weeks, Baltimore City voters will participate in a seriously contested election for state’s attorney. There are various suggestions for rendering the criminal justice system more efficient. “Smoking out” the candidates would be useful to city voters next […]
The economists of this administration hold Keynesian beliefs, but their belief is in one-way Keynesianism. The stimulus package has not produced its expected multiplier effects for several reasons, but one of them surely is its superimposition not on a previously balanced budget but upon enormous structural deficits. No credible proposal has been forthcoming for the […]
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.” So much for productivity in the education system or anywhere in government. A […]