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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
From time to time, the Calvert Institute will be interviewing the major contenders in the 1998 gubernatorial race. In this issue, we have a conversation with Eileen Rehrmann, county executive for Harford County, who is challenging incumbent Governor Parris Glendening in the Democratic primary. Calvert Question. What has moved you to challenge Governor Glendening in […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Libertarianism was once the ideology of cranks. While not the kind of people to hand out leaflets at the airport or solicit your house uninvited, libertarians were humorously derided by many and considered suspect by the rest. Then, during the 1970s and ’80s, as the country became disenchanted with government activism, libertarian ideas began to […]
Given the drubbing the Conservatives received in the recent election in the U.K., this may seem a strange time to suggest that Annapolis adopt Toryesque policies. However, as the commentary on the back page makes plain, the Conservatives’ electoral defeat has not in any way invalidated their ideological program of the last 18 years. After […]