Federal Government

The outcome of last week's presidential election has vindicated the wisdom of Maryland's early decision to begin setting up a state health exchange where consumers can shop for affordable health insurance coverage. President Barack Obama's victory virtually assures that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act he signed in 2010 will go into effect as planned in 2014. Having survived constitutional challenges in the Supreme Court earlier this year and an election-year campaign pledge by GOP challenger Mitt Romney to dismantle the law if elected, states across the country must now start setting up similar exchanges or face having the federal government do it for them.

Federal workers aren't the only ones anxious about looming budget cuts. Federal contractors - plentiful in Maryland - have a lot at stake, too. Mark Amtower, who helps companies market products and services to the federal government, thinks there's plenty of reason to worry. The most obvious challenge on the horizon is sequestration - the automatic cuts of $109 billion annually that are due to start in January if Congress cannot agree on deficit reduction. But Amtower sees other changes as well that he says make it more difficult for small companies selling, or hoping to sell, to Uncle Sam. He started his firm, Amtower & Co., in 1985 and runs it from his Highland home with his wife, Mary Ellen.

A leading advocate in Congress for federal workers, Sen. Daniel Akaka says he's pleased by progress on some of his priorities: Legislation to allow employees to work from home, reforms in hiring and the security clearance process, improvements in matching veterans and people with disabilities to jobs. But as he prepares to retire after 36 years in Congress, the Hawaii Democrat says there remains work to be done. "The federal government is facing some of the most complex challenges in our nation's history — and doing it with serious budget constraints," Akaka, 88, said last week during his final hearing as chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the federal workforce.

Vision Technologies Inc., a Glen Burnie-based information technology firm, said Thursday it had acquired Government Telecommunications Inc. in a move to strengthen the company's IT telecommunications services to the federal government. "This is a strategic acquisition designed to extend our federal market presence," said Vision CEO John Shetrone in a statement. Terms of the acquisition, completed Aug. 31, were not disclosed by the companies. Vision Technologies, which employs more than 300 IT workers in 22 states, has more than $180 million in federal contracts, including on-site IT support and design and installation of voice and data systems.

The past decade taught Americans of all political stripes an expensive lesson: When big institutions face financial crisis, the federal government bails them out. Wall Street? The federal government stepped in with the Troubled Asset Relief Program. General Motors? Uncle Sam again. Greece, Spain and Portugal? Germany will keep them afloat. Now a new crisis looms, and, if past is precedent, Marylanders have reason to worry. State-run pension systems across the country are underfunded to the tune of $2.5 trillion — equivalent to one-sixth of the American economy.

Unidentified woman: "Well, doctor, what have we got - a Republic or a Monarchy?" Ben Franklin: "A Republic, if you can keep it. " My periodic public speeches around the country usually end with an extended question and answer period. I enjoy these sessions because the tone and tenor of the questions provides me insight into the public mood. One question that pops up with increasing frequency is a modern day adaptation of Franklin's historic dare: whether our Constitutional Republic and free-market capitalism are salvageable.

A federal court has dismissed a case against a rehabilitation hospital owned by the University of Maryland Medical System that was accused of diagnosing patients with a rare malnutrition-related disorder to collect bigger Medicare and Medicaid payments. The federal government filed a $8.1 million lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Kernan Hospital last year, saying the West Baltimore facility manipulated its computer system to show that patients suffered from kwashiorkor, a disease most typically found in impoverished regions.

This year's drought has already raised wholesale corn prices dramatically, and consumers will likely soon feel the pinch at the grocery store checkout. Economists are warning of a 3-4 percent rise in food prices this year and next as well, an especially poorly-timed circumstance given the recent weakness in the economy. Nobody is feeling this pain more sharply than Maryland's poultry producers, who have traditionally relied on corn above all else to feed their chickens. They have called on theU.S.

Politicians haven't always been allergic to gun control, not even Republicans. In 1968, after the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr., Congress - on a bipartisan vote - outlawed gun sales to felons and the mentally ill. In 1993, when Congress passed the Brady bill requiring background checks for gun purchasers, former President Reagan, who narrowly escaped assassination in 1981, was among its supporters....

When Christopher Booher opens his email at work, a robotic voice rapidly reads the words to him. As a blind employee at the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Booher relies on the screen-reading software. But the 33-year-old says it's not just technology that makes him comfortable at work. When he interviewed for a job as a grants manager four years ago, the supervisor was open to working with someone who is blind. "That sort of drew me toward this," Booher said.