Policy

What it means to be poor in Maryland, one of the nation's wealthiest states: With Elizabeth Kneebone, senior research associate and associate fellow, Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program; Ralph Moore, director emeritus, St.

In the first hour, a look at poverty on the national scale. Is the economy really to blame for the increase? What is happening to our safety nets? Who makes up America's poor? What can be done to reverse the trends? With Michael Reisch, the Daniel Thursz Distinguished Professor of Social Justice at the University of Maryland School of Social Work; Indivar Dutta-Gupta from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Margaret C. Simms, fellow at the Urban Institute and director of the Institute's Low-Income Working Families project.

As the deadline looms for the massive budgets cuts put in place by Congress last year to end the stalemate over the nation's debt ceiling, Pulitzer Prize-winning economics writer David Wessel describes the people and the politics behind the federal budget, and why it is on an unsustainable course. Wessel is the author of In Fed We Trust and Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget.

For about two years, from June 2010 until May of this year, our show held a series called the Maryland Morning Screen Test.

Libowitz web extra.mp3

This segment originally aired on June 8, 2011.

In the U. S., the majority of midwife-attended births take place in hospitals…but many people still associate midwives with births that take place outside the hospital—at home, or in a free-standing birth center.

What if Baltimore's vacant lots were transformed into half-acre farms, producing greens, onions, herbs, berries, honey and other fresh produce for residents and for the city's restaurants and markets? Urban farms are becoming increasingly popular in Baltimore and other cities. What does it take to run one, and could this be an option for revitalizing some abandoned areas and for reducing the number of "food deserts" in the city?

Yesterday, the Maryland General Assembly convened for a special session to take up legislation about gambling.

The U.S.

What it means to be poor in Maryland, one of the nation's wealthiest states: With Elizabeth Kneebone, senior research associate and associate fellow, Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program; Ralph Moore, director emeritus, St.