Baltimore Sun

The New 'Awkward Age' | Baltimore Sun

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:24:00 -0500

The New America Foundation recently estimated that America needs to create nearly a million jobs a year just to keep pace with population growth, ...

What If The Problem Is Too Much Care? | Baltimore Sun

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:24:00 -0400

... months after the needle biopsy incident, I read Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, by Annapolis author Shannon Brownlee. ...

Defense Chief's Military 'Overhaul' Might Affect Maryland | Baltimore Sun

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:35:00 -0400

"It's a very expensive way to create jobs - pretty much any other kind of government spending will create more jobs," said William Hartung, a defense budget expert at the nonpartisan New America Foundation in Washington. At a Pentagon briefing, ...

Paying City Students Is a Wise Investment

Ron Tang — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:59:00 -0400

Summer has arrived in Baltimore, and so has summer school -- bringing with it a chance for students who improve on their High School Assessment exams to pocket something more than academic success. A few months ago, Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso unveiled a controversial proposal to improve city schools: Pay students to perform. It's a simple idea that has generated quite a bit of controversy from purists who cringe at the thought of paying students to learn and from realists who believe there simply must be a more effective way to spend $1 million in a failing school system.

Yet despite moral and practical objections, this approach does have a record of success abroad. What's more, there may be a way to tweak Mr. Alonso's plan so that it reinforces -- rather than undermines -- the value of learning and enables the city to earn a greater return on its investment.

Paying people to do what they should be doing, such as working hard in school, may seem like absurd policy, but this approach is proving to be an effective tool for fighting poverty in the developing world. "Conditional cash transfer" programs, as they are known in the international development community, have increased health and education outcomes for impoverished families around the globe, from Brazil and Argentina to Mozambique, Cambodia and Pakistan. Perhaps the best-known such program, Mexico's Progresa, pays parents cash in return for forfeiting the wages their child could earn and instead keeping him in school. Not surprisingly, children of families enrolled in Progresa are much more likely to stay in school and acquire the skills they need for the high-wage jobs that can lift an entire family out of poverty.

Progresa's success inspired New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to implement the first conditional cash transfer program in this country. Launched last year, Mr. Bloomberg's Opportunity NYC is a privately funded demonstration project that offers cash payments to low-income workers who meet certain benchmarks, such as opening a bank account or meeting with teachers to discuss a report card. Early feedback from the program suggests that these transfers aren't simply a cash bonus; for many, they serve to replace the wages lost when a parent leaves work to meet with his or her child's teacher.

Mr. Alonso's proposal to pay students to perform draws ire from those who believe our instant-gratification culture has infiltrated every corner of society; no longer are students compelled to learn for learning's sake, or to achieve in the hope of securing a better future. The critique that these payments for passing send the wrong message to students is a fair one -- and potent enough for Baltimore to reconsider how it structures and frames this program.

To start, the city should split the payment: Hand one part directly to the student and deposit the rest into a restricted savings account that can be used only to pay for higher education or skills training. The straight payment would give the city the instant results it seeks, while directing the savings to an account in the child's name would reinforce the expectation that passing the state assessment test is just one step in the journey to achieving a postsecondary credential and, with it, a better life. As a bonus, this plan helps provide these students -- those who work hard to achieve -- the financial boost they need to continue their education.

The program is thus transformed from a bribe for kids to past tests to a vehicle for students to chart a path to higher education through building academic skills and earning their college scholarship.

What's more, this structure could be replicated well beyond Baltimore by utilizing a restricted account system that already exists. Maryland, like every state, offers 529 college savings plans, tax-advantaged accounts for families to save for higher education. Unfortunately, low- and moderate-income families are less likely to take advantage of these accounts than their wealthier peers, which has prompted many states to offer incentives such as matching contributions to attract more low-income savers. Maryland could take a slightly different approach: Instead of, or in addition to, matching contributions made by low-income families, the state could make a deposit into a student's 529 when the student successfully graduates from elementary school, after he or she maintains grade-level proficiency in middle school, and once the student passes state assessment tests in high school.

This conditional cash transfer model would meet three goals at once: setting an expectation for achievement, rewarding hard work and providing low-income families with a financial path to affording higher education.

Terry Tamminen in Baltimore Sun | 'Pollution Bill Attacked'

Communications — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:57:00 -0500

Pollution Bill Attacked (The Baltimore Sun)

...Environmentalists, scientists, public health experts and alternative energy companies also pledged their support for the Global Warming Solutions Act during a Senate hearing yesterday. The supporters argue that state limits are necessary to spur federal action and will help to prevent deadly floods and economic chaos brought by climate change. ...

...Former California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Terry Tamminen said costs for most customers and businesses would go down because regulations created by the state would encourage conservation. Tamminen said per capita energy consumption in California dropped 40 percent during the past decade because of its regulations.

Shannon Brownlee in Baltimore Sun | 'More Money, Less Health'

Communications — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 12:04:00 -0500

More Money, Less Health (The Baltimore Sun)

A few years ago, health journalist Shannon Brownlee was going through some global health statistics. She noticed that even as U.S. health care costs were rising steadily, Americans were not getting healthier. How to explain this apparent paradox?

Brownlee became fascinated and began to collect data in search of answers. The result is Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, her analysis of how American health care has failed.

The book has received good reviews and was praised by one prominent economics columnist as the best business book of 2007. ... Last week, Brownlee, who lives in Annapolis with her husband and 12-year-old son, talked to The Sun about the perils of doing too much, and what might cure this ailment.

What's the key problem with our health care system?

Most physicians think of themselves as businessmen and -women. It's all based on the way we reimburse doctors and hospitals. Most payments to doctors and hospitals are called fee-for-service. In other words, they get paid for doing something, either having an office visit, giving you a test, putting you in the hospital, a consult in the hospital. This… more

Steven Clemons in Baltimore Sun | Examining Effect of Assassinations

Jerry Irvine — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:49:00 -0500

Over the past century, assassinations of heads of state and other prominent leaders such as the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and Rabin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in the Middle East have shifted the course of history one way or another.

The full consequences of yesterday's assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto remain to be seen. But some experts worry what impact the event will have in an era where conflict driven by religious extremism transcends the nation state.

"There are assassinations that lie in these moments when history can pivot one way or another, it can galvanize people or it can throw people in another direction," said Steve Clemons, director of foreign policy programs at the New America Foundation. "I think that Bhutto's death is probably a foreshock of other potential assassinations. It's the kind of assassination that hits sort of a soft spot in global tectonics."

For the complete article, click here.

Steve Clemons in The Baltimore Sun on Annapolis Conference

Communications — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:47:00 -0500

At Camp David, Egyptian President Anwar el Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin held secret talks that led to a historic peace between their nations.

On the banks of the Wye River, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to give back part of the West Bank in return for concessions from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Now, Annapolis becomes the third Maryland locale to take a turn in the international spotlight as a venue in the long search for peace in the Middle East.

Limited to a single day, the Annapolis Conference on Tuesday will be both shorter and less ambitious than earlier negotiating sessions that put the state on the diplomatic map. It will be bracketed by private White House talks between President Bush and the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. ...

The Annapolis Conference is intended to build international support for new negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Bush administration officials hope the sides will conclude with a joint statement that will point the way toward a final settlement.

It will be the first Middle East conference held in the Colonial city on the Severn River, but hardly its first meeting of historic import. The capital of the United States… more

Daniel Levy in The Balitimore Sun on Mideast Peace Conference

Communications — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:26:00 -0500

With a proposed Mideast peace conference in Annapolis only weeks away, the lofty goals outlined by President Bush seem to be fading beyond reach, with the meeting likely to be scaled back to a single day, according to senior U.S. officials and outside analysts.

The conference, originally expected to be set for late November, might not be held until mid-December, a State Department official hinted yesterday. Bush's spokeswoman called preparations for the conference "tenuous right now." ...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - who has pushed for what might be the last chance for the Bush administration to help arrest a deteriorating situation in the Middle East - has conceded that she does not expect Palestinian and Israeli negotiators to draft a joint statement before the meeting laying out "the basics of a deal" that she and others had anticipated. ...

Events could change quickly, diplomats caution, and agreements and arrangements for Annapolis could fall into place rapidly. Rice is to travel to the region this week to continue discussions, a White House official said.

But the last-minute uncertainty about the timing and substance of the Annapolis conference has renewed concerns about a failure to make progress that could energize radicals and extremists in… more

Shannon Brownlee in Baltimore Sun on Funding for Medical Research

Communications — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:21:00 -0400

With their efforts to win more government funding stymied in Washington, medical researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere are taking their lobbying campaign on the road -- and into the presidential campaign.

The doctors and scientists plan to raise the profile of their issue by advertising and organizing in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. It is the latest move in an effort to reverse an erosion of federal funding for medical research, and another example of interest groups using the presidential campaign to push their individual issues.

Despite intense lobbying, funding has not kept up with inflation since the National Institutes of Health's budget climbed to $27 billion in 2003, double the amount from five years earlier. Since then, the agency's budget has leveled off. …

A few candidates have already touched on the topic [of pledging support for science research]. In August, Democrat John Edwards, whose wife Elizabeth is fighting breast cancer, voiced support for increasing the budget for cancer research. This month, Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed doubling the NIH budget. Republican Fred Thompson's Web site mentions his support for promoting medical research, but it… more