In 2010, after grappling with a decade of structural deficits and two years of recession, Maryland's Spending Affordability Committee (SAC) questioned its 30-year record on limiting state spending. Read More

The nation's health care sector undertook a massive overhaul with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in early 2010. One of the areas ACA affected most was the sale of health insurance. The law imposes a variety of new regulations on the sale of insurance and also directs states to establish new marketplaces for consumer purchase of insurance. These new marketplaces, called health insurance exchanges, are supposed to be operational by 2014. Read More  

Our current governor has paid no attention to the severe problem of youth unemployment in Maryland. The national rate of youth unemployment is about twice the general rate of unemployment, and the rate among blacks twice that among the total youth population: 40 percent, resembling London’s neighborhoods where there were major civic disturbances among the Afro-Caribbean population. The proposition that “idle hands do the devil’s work” is familiar: “flash mobs” have organized on the Internet in American cities like Philadelphia. Read More