Publication Date: Thursday, December 20, 2012

As government grows from the federal all the way down to the local level, it’s only natural that we should see more public-private partnerships cropping up. These can take many different forms, but one only has to glance through the news briefly to find several examples. Today’s post is a collection of four found in Maryland newspapers on Tuesday, December 18th.

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Publication Date: Wednesday, December 19, 2012

An article in the Washington Examiner lauds the Prince George’s County economic development fund for creating or preserving nearly 1,000 jobs. That would be great news, if true. However, I am a little skeptical that this is an accurate reflection of what happened. 

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Publication Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Should more government programs strive to be more like the Federal Housing Administration? Sometimes, the FHA catches flak for lending to “subprime” borrowers and possibly contributing to higher-than-normal rates of foreclosure. Such is the case in Baltimore right now. But there is one important attribute of the FHA that should make it a model for all other government agencies. Namely: it costs the taxpayer nothing.

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Publication Date: Monday, December 17, 2012

In the wake of the tragic school shooting in Connecticut, there are inevitable calls to enact laws to “do something” about school shootings. This blog post isn’t about the pros and cons of proposed gun control laws; MPPI is a fiscal think tank and so we don’t get into that issue. Instead, I want to caution against the all-too-common practice of politicians championing laws based on anecdotes. While anecdotes can be useful in the legislative process, they should not be the basis of any law passed by government.

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Publication Date: Friday, December 14, 2012

Last July, Hagerstown resident Dave Hixon offered the following observation in a letter to the editor of the (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail: I am absolutely sure that the health care issue that is upsetting Republican and tea parties relates only to politics. It has nothing to do with carrying [sic] for the uninsured.

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