Maryland should make the most of online education

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun

By Dan Lips
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010
High school students must feel like Marty McFly. In the classic 1980s movie "Back to the Future," Michael J. Fox portrays a teenager who uses a time machine to travel back to 1955. During his journey, Marty sees what it was like to attend school with his parents' generation. Teenagers heading back to school this fall must also feel like they're traveling back in time - leaving the high-tech world of 2010 to return to schools that have remained largely unchanged since the 1950s.

How Maryland Can Become A Leader In K-12 Online Learning

By Dan Lips
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Technological innovations are improving and transforming most areas of American life. Yet our schools continue to be one area that has resisted transformation, operating more or less as they did 150 years ago. This will soon change.

Listen to business

Originally published in the Frederick News-Post

By Marta Hummel Mossburg
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Gov. Martin O'Malley says creating jobs is his top priority. He proclaims the goal with the fervor of a religious zealot. "Maryland will lead the country, not only economically, but morally," he said during an August visit to Fisher BioServices in Wedgewood Business Park.

Blame-game politics

Originally published in the Frederick News-Post

By Marta Hummel Mossburg
Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010
Gov. Martin O'Malley's latest campaign commercial attacking his Republican opponent Robert Ehrlich for raising taxes and fees is everything his leadership is not: clear, concise and jargon-free.

Maryland's Restrictions On Patient Choice

The State of Health Care Freedom in the 2010 Maryland General Assembly

By Marc Kilmer
Posted on Friday, September 10, 2010
While national health care legislation received significant attention in 2010, there were also efforts in Maryland (as well as in every other state) to enact health care reform legislation. These reforms ranged from a wholesale overhaul of how health care is funded in Maryland to minor tweaking of insurance regulation. In general, these bills were reflective of two modes of thinking about how to reform health care: introduce more government regulation in an attempt to protect consumers or reduce government interference in the health care marketplace in an attempt to give consumers more choices and lower prices.

The Maryland Electricity Market: A Primer

By Thomas A. Firey
Edited by Alison Lake
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2010
The Maryland Electricity Market - A Primer," by Maryland Public Policy Institute senior fellow Thomas Firey, reviews in detail the 1999 decision to deregulate electricity generation in Maryland and the 2006 political response to news that Baltimore Gas and Electric planned to raise rates 72 percent. The primer also describes the history of electricity regulation and the economics of both regulation and deregulation. The paper concludes with suggestions to state policymakers about future electricity policy.

Democratic fiefdom

Originally published in the Frederick News-Post

By Marta Hummel Mossburg
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2010
If state Sen. Ulysses Currie is convicted of bribery charges, it shows the reckless extent to which he used government to benefit himself.

Don’t count on slots to save Md.

Originally published in the Daily Record

By John J. Walters
Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Maryland is placing a lot of faith in revenue generated by slot machines positioned in a few strategic locations around the state to plug large holes in the budgets of such services as education and law enforcement.

Alcohol tax increase is bad economic policy

Originally published in the Daily Times

By Marc Kilmer
Posted on Monday, September 06, 2010
It's an election year and in most states, politicians from both parties are running on platforms of reducing government spending and lowering taxes. Maryland is just a little different. The liberal Maryland Health Care for All Coalition is pushing a proposal to raise the tax on liquor by 853 percent, the tax on wine by 640 percent and the tax on beer by 1,188 percent. More than 130 Maryland legislative candidates have signed a pledge to support this tax hike -- bad news for overtaxed Maryland businesses and individuals.

Hiding the truth

Originally published in the Frederick News-Post

By Marta Hummel Mossburg
Posted on Wednesday, September 01, 2010
The narrative coming from Annapolis reads like a weather report from early June: Sunny with months of balmy breezes ahead.