Public And Private

BOSTON -- What then is the most surprising discovery as we go spelunking down the endless caverns of this tawdry scandal?That Dick Morris actually hypothesized "what if" Hillary Rodham Clinton was "not necessarily into regular sex with men"? No, that's standard Morris procedure.That Penthouse magazine offered Monica Lewinsky $2 million to pose partially nude? That's Penthouse being Penthouse.That another couple, the Bleilers, were forced to display their tattered marriage on television? No one ever doubted that the dirt would spread like the spot in "The Cat in the Hat."

The thing that is most upsetting is he lied about it initially and put everyone through this for seven months and wasted everyone's time. If he had admitted it right out, we could have gone on from there. I was not impressed with what he said tonight.Susan Elgin, family practice lawyer and president of Women's Law Center, a Towson-based women and children's advocacy group."I worry a lot about young people who don't want to go into public service because they feel its no longer, a field of honor and respect.

WEST BALTIMORE SEN. Larry Young has blurred the line between his public and private roles. The situation screams "conflict of interest," but he does not see it. Instead, he views his legislative seat in Annapolis as a way to give himself "leverage," as he put it in a letter to Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller.Drawing a line between an elected official's public duties and his private activities has always been a cause for concern. This is especially true in the Maryland General Assembly, whose members are part-timers.

WASHINGTON -- Health care fraud is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the United States -- costing government and private insurance plans at least $44 billion a year -- and federal investigators are far behind the crooks, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told Congress yesterday.Fraud schemes are so profitable that street gangs and cocaine distributors in South Florida, Southern California and other parts of the country are turning to ripping off Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies, Mr. Freeh said.

Washington. -- In this high season of government bashing, some attention should be given to a neglected reality, namely, that personal incompetence and organizational asininity are probably about evenly distributed across the public and private sectors.A different impression arises from the corresponding political broadsides of Republicans and Democrats as they compete in denunciations of government and in adulation of business and industry. Messrs. Clinton and Gore insist that government is so bloated and inefficient that it must be reinvented.

Want to chill the conversation the next time you and your friends meet for coffee or margaritas? Want to fill the room with tension at your next dinner party? Try this new conversation-stopper, as good as politics or abortion ever were.Try talking about school choice.Try asking, politely, why a friend decided to enroll her children in private or parochial school, turning her back on public schools, taking her money and her time and her concern and her bright kids out of a system that needs all of those things so desperately?

LOS ANGELES -- Ever since the end of World War II, California has prided itself as the state "on the cutting edge of change" in the nation. This is where new ideas and fads start and then, in time, spread East.Most notable was Proposition 13, approved by California voters in 1978, that put a lid on local property taxes and led to the taxpayers' revolt that caught on in many other states.So it was with great enthusiasm and hope that important conservative thinkers and leaders around the country embraced the latest proposed California experiment -- school vouchers.

It ain't easy being a columnist these days. No sooner had a recent column on my opinion of fund-raising by public agencies -- my opinion was negative -- hit the streets, than I received a barrage of phone calls and several letters.After listening to and reading the responses, I'd like to devote this column to the opposing views of three of them. I will try to avoid editorializing on them. I've apparently said enough on the topic already.The most vociferous response was from a man who called and said that I was the biggest jerk he'd ever read in any paper.

State Aid to Private SchoolsThank you for publishing Shaila R. Aery's April 13 column on behalf of continued state aid for private colleges and universities. This is a serious issue and it should be fully examined.One of Dr. Aery's most valuable observations was to point out the naivete of those who assume the $25 million appropriation to private colleges and universities would automatically be transferred to public institutions. She is right in her assertion that all sorts of agencies and interests across the state would compete for these funds.

THE Los Angeles riots, the chaos in Crown Heights and the urban turmoil of the past year have made it abundantly clear that America needs a new approach to its urban problems.Bill Clinton was elected largely because his campaign focused so resolutely on new solutions.But to deliver on his promise of change, Mr. Clinton must not play the "either-or" game.We can't spend four more years debating whether social services should be delivered by the public sector or the private sector. Instead, the president-elect should rely on each -- singly or in tandem -- to carry out his policies.

Our new president has handed the same assignment to leaders in every sector: "Rethink it." As educators, it's an invitation we welcome. The challenges faced by our nation's public and private schools are serious. Money is tight, and after so many years operating in worlds apart, it now seems clear we need each other. It is time to create public-private school partnerships in communities all over the nation. Over the past three decades, we've watched the educational and opportunity gaps widen as a disparity in resources and outcomes grows.

All day Saturday, veterans and newcomers by the thousands marveled at the course for the area's most prestigious invitational cross country meet, the Bull Run at Hereford, as kids from the four corners of Maryland, as well as from Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia ran and ran up and down the hills at Parkton. And, as if right out of a line out of a Stevie Wonder classic, kids from public and private schools from all over the Mid-Atlantic ran together and against each other. With any luck, it will happen again next year.

WE CAME FROM across America - the managers and supporters of public television. Most of us are more comfortable behind the cameras than we are in front of them, but there we were in Washington, surrounded by a media scrum, to participate in a dialogue with many people who aren't members of the same choir. In case you haven't followed the issue, a House panel had approved a bill that would have reduced funding for public broadcasting by 45 percent next year. Many of my colleagues and millions of public broadcasting's supporters believed strongly that we were in a fight for the future of public broadcasting as we know it. The full House restored most of the cuts.

Victory for Kids: The Cleveland School Voucher Case, by David L. Brennan. New Millennium Press. 176 pages. $21.95. This brief, simply-stated book traces the 10-year battle that led up to the U.S. Supreme Court's Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision, a 5-4 conclusion that ultimately may have more impact on public education policy in the United States than any other occurrence since Brown v. Board of Education ordered desegregation of U.S. schools in 1954....

THE SUPREME Court narrowly voted to uphold a Cleveland voucher plan that funnels public money overwhelmingly to religious private schools. By a slim 5-4 vote, the court reversed a 2001 appeals court ruling that had invalidated Cleveland's voucher program. The decision came a month after Maryland's General Assembly chose a different and far better path - increasing annual public school funding across the state by $1.3 billion by fiscal year 2008, as recommended by the state's Thornton Commission.

June Anderson Almquist, 75, a former Seattle Times columnist and assistant managing editor who covered high society events to women's issues, died Sunday of cancer. She was 75. Hans Gustav Gueterbock, 91, a retired University of Chicago professor and one of the world's leading scholars of ancient Near Eastern languages, died Wednesday. Sir Robert Sainsbury,93, who helped build up the venerable British supermarket chain that bears his family's name, died Sunday. Milton Brutten,77, an expert on dyslexia who founded one of the nation's first private schools for children with learning disabilities, died March 16 in Devon, Pa., of complications from a stroke.

The thing that is most upsetting is he lied about it initially and put everyone through this for seven months and wasted everyone's time. If he had admitted it right out, we could have gone on from there. I was not impressed with what he said tonight.Susan Elgin, family practice lawyer and president of Women's Law Center, a Towson-based women and children's advocacy group."I worry a lot about young people who don't want to go into public service because they feel its no longer, a field of honor and respect.

BOSTON -- What then is the most surprising discovery as we go spelunking down the endless caverns of this tawdry scandal?That Dick Morris actually hypothesized "what if" Hillary Rodham Clinton was "not necessarily into regular sex with men"? No, that's standard Morris procedure.That Penthouse magazine offered Monica Lewinsky $2 million to pose partially nude? That's Penthouse being Penthouse.That another couple, the Bleilers, were forced to display their tattered marriage on television? No one ever doubted that the dirt would spread like the spot in "The Cat in the Hat."

WEST BALTIMORE SEN. Larry Young has blurred the line between his public and private roles. The situation screams "conflict of interest," but he does not see it. Instead, he views his legislative seat in Annapolis as a way to give himself "leverage," as he put it in a letter to Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller.Drawing a line between an elected official's public duties and his private activities has always been a cause for concern. This is especially true in the Maryland General Assembly, whose members are part-timers.

WASHINGTON -- Health care fraud is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the United States -- costing government and private insurance plans at least $44 billion a year -- and federal investigators are far behind the crooks, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told Congress yesterday.Fraud schemes are so profitable that street gangs and cocaine distributors in South Florida, Southern California and other parts of the country are turning to ripping off Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies, Mr. Freeh said.