The Brian Griffiths Minute: 5-4-2008

Bologna Boy still full of Bologna

David Paulson, of all people, has a column up at PolitickerMD.com regarding "political courage." Now, never mind the fact that "Maryland Democrat" and "political courage" tend to be oxymoronic, I want to highlight this comment, which highlights why Paulson doesn't get it:

It is easy to whine, gripe, attack and predict disaster is at the doorstep. Having the courage to solve real problems is hard and sometimes costly. After all, there is always someone or some group ready, willing and able to do what's easy.

You're right David, it is easy to whine, gripe, attack and predict disaster. So why, David, do you instinctively defend Martin O'Malley at every turn? All the Governor does is whine about Governor Ehrlich, gripe about how hard his job is, attack anybody who even remotely opposes his bad ideas, and predicts disaster if the people of Maryland don't roll over for his whims, and right now.

And you're right David: having the courage to solve real problems is hard and sometimes costly. I just wish that Maryland Democrats had some of this courage that you speak of, because they sure as hell didn't show it during the General Assembly session. Instead of reducing the size of government and assuring the people of Maryland that our state was under prudent financial stewardship, they instead rubber stamped O'Malley's profligate spending, sticking the citizenry with a higher tax bill as a result. That's certainly not leadership, that is, in fact, doing what's easy. Maryland Democrats are good at that.

Paulson later goes on to say something even more patently absurd:

In the end they couldn't even agree with each other on the Smith Island Cake. Some belittled our new "state cake" as a complete waste of time for a General Assembly facing serious issues. They must have forgotten it was a Republican sponsored bill in the first place.

Paulson forgets three key points:

1. Just because something is sponsored by Republicans doesn't mean it's a good idea. There are a lot of ideas from the moderate wing that aren't exactly beneficial to our side, nor are any number of bills that Republicans sign-on to as co-sponsors at all representative of our ideology;
   
   
2. Republicans actually have the testicular fortitude to call each other out when they go astray: Democrats outside of leadership have been for all intents and purposes been politically neutered in Maryland for some time now; and,
   
   
3. The Smith Island Cake was not the issue for a lot of people; it was Page Elmore's sellout of his vote for O'Malley's profligate budget to get the Smith Island Cake bill passed that was the real key issue.

What's odd is that David Paulson would spend his time kicking us while we were already down. I just wish that Paulson would spend less time psychoanalyzing the Republican side of the aisle, and instead spend more time trying to explain and justify why Martin O'Malley and Maryland's Democratic leadership want to tax Marylanders right out of the state and why these "leaders" want to destroy Maryland's Middle and Working Class Families.

Spend it like ya stole it

It's becoming apparent that fiscal responsibility has no place in Annapolis, despite the best efforts of our Republican minority:

The Maryland House of Delegates yesterday rejected a series of Republican-sponsored budget amendments to curb spending on transportation, education and other programs as the state prepares for a new fiscal year amid significant economic uncertainty.

The most sweeping proposal, by House Minority Leader Anthony J. O'Donnell (R-Calvert), sought to cut $560 million from a $31.2 billion spending plan expected to be approved by the Democrat-led House today.

"A lot of these programs are good ideas, but we can't afford it right now," he said during preliminary floor debate. "We have not done enough to rein in the growth of spending in this state....."

.....O'Donnell said he was seeking to reduce proposed spending growth rather than make outright cuts to the budget. Under his amendment, he said, the overall budget would grow by 2.5 percent next year.

It is getting more and more amazing each day that these Democrats in Annapolis think they are invincible. They believe that they are beyond reproach, that they cannot be be beaten, and that they will continue to run roughshod over the people of this state. The fact of the matter is that the longer these Democratic legislators are in power in Annapolis, the further detached from reality they become.

The General Assembly seems to be completely of incapable of making the sacrifices they so readily ask us taxpayers to take. They seem to be incapable of making the tough decisions, and they are certainly incapable of spending with the state's means. And nothing proves that point more than the General Assembly's overwhelming rejection of common sense spending cuts proposed by the Republican minority.

It is, unfortunately, going to have to wait two more years until the voters get an opportunity to correct this imbalance. It will take us until 2010 when we the voters go to the polls with the opportunity to truly elect representation that puts people before politics, and get the opportunity to send leaders to Annapolis who actually understand that Maryland needs to spend less and to spend more responsibly. Until then, we are just going to get more and more of this irresponsibility from the legislature....

The Results of O'Malleynomics

One of the net results of the computer services tax that the Governor and the General Assembly railroaded through the Special Session is that it is becoming more and more attractive for tech businesses to cut bait and leave the state:

In January, just as anger over a new tax on computer services was beginning to boil over in Maryland's high-tech sector, Robert Epstein received a call from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

"This guy called and said, 'I don't know if you've heard of the computer tax coming on board in Maryland. ... Have you ever thought of opening an office in our state or relocating to our state?'" recalled Epstein, president of About-Web LLC, a 52-employee, information technology firm based in Rockville.

After poring over maps last week with Pennsylvania officials courting his and other companies in Maryland, Epstein said he is thinking of moving a large chunk of his business to York, where employees can serve Baltimore-area clients. He's already committed to investing more resources in an office he has in Virginia.

Other technology executives in Maryland tell similar stories of being approached by officials from neighboring states and by commercial real estate brokers looking to capitalize on widespread discontent in the information technology sector over the new tax.

Of course, anybody with half a brain can understand that when you make the business climate less and less appealing by continuing to raise the cost of business, business leaders are going to do what they have to do in order to continue to keep costs low. If, as in the example above, businesses can serve Baltimore and still relocate to a place like York with lower taxes, they are going to leave much like so many folks who work in Baltimore have moved to the Red Lion and Shrewsbury areas the last fifteen years.

What's amazing is the fact that the O'Malley Administration is completely oblivious to the fact that business might actually take advantage of such economic benefits:

Gov. Martin O'Malley's secretary of economic development, David W. Edgerley, said yesterday that his office is aware that Pennsylvania and Delaware have recently targeted Maryland computer companies. He said he is "monitoring the situation" but does not believe it is widespread.

"It is standard operating procedure behind the scenes to try and take advantage of any opportunity," Edgerley said of states' business development agencies. "I don't think it will be very successful."

I'm not even sure how one could say that logically. Does Secretary Edgerley really believe that businesses are so tied down in Marlyand that it doesn't make economic sense for them to move? This is particularly true of small businesses. It might make more sense that a large operation with a number of sunk costs will not pull up roots and leave quite so quickly. But small businesses, the backbone of our local economy, tend not to have those sunk costs. If they can continue to serve (or even expand) their customer base and save money on the cost of doing business in the process, why wouldn't they?

And reasonable people understand that:

Greater Baltimore Committee head Donald C. Fry said that position betrays a naivete about the uniqueness of the computer services industry: "Whenever the business community raises concerns about taxes and talks about the possibility of leaving, the state government leaders seem to believe that that's just not going to happen because there are other compelling reasons for them to stay."

The computer services tax is different, Fry argues, because the high-tech industry is "much more mobile. ... You don't have to bring in moving vans. You can do it electronically."

The irony of the computer services tax is rich when you consider how much time and effort state and local leaders have spent trying to turn Maryland into a player in the technology field. How many times have they tried to woo businesses to our state in order to create a Tech Corridor in Montgomery County, or try to woo businesses to downtown Baltimore. The administration seems to fail to realize that businesses that could be wooed here can also be driven out of town by decisions that negatively impact their bottom line in such a way that it makes it difficult for them to do business.

When will Maryland Democrats, particularly Governor O'Malley, learn that you cannot tax your way to prosperity?

Corner Kicked

Looks like Prince George's County leaders are more realistic about the D.C. United stadium situation than the administration:

Some state and local leaders in Prince George's County are expressing misgivings about a plan to move the professional soccer team D.C. United from the District's RFK Stadium to a location in the county.

A new stadium could exacerbate some of the challenges the county faces in spite of its potential economic benefits and entertainment value, said Del. Barbara A. Frush (D-Dist. 21) of Beltsville....

...Greenbelt Mayor Pro Tem Rodney Roberts, upon hearing Greenbelt was considered as a possible site, said he did not take the news seriously and offered little support for a soccer stadium near the Greenbelt Metro station.

''Personally, I don't think there's enough room there for a stadium," Roberts said. ''I think that's crazy. If you're talking about having revenue, there's a lot better things to put there besides a stadium."

State Sen. James C. Rosapepe said he does not hear many people demanding a soccer stadium in the county.

''It would depend on who pays for it, traffic congestion," said Rosapepe (D-Dist. 21) of College Park, an admitted soccer fan. ''... If a private company wants to build a soccer stadium in a place that won't create worse traffic, then there could be a chance for it."

As I noted earlier this week, common sense dictates that the construction of such a publicly-financed stadium in Prince George's County is fool-hearty, given the current economic climate. And when you consider all of the challenges that Prince George's County itself faces, one wonders why anybody would support publicly financing such a venue.

Time for a Red Card

Apparently the O'Malley folks still don't realize the state has money problems:

With negotiations to build a stadium for D.C. United stalled in the District, Maryland officials have agreed to consider constructing a home for the soccer team in Prince George's County.

The Maryland Stadium Authority has decided to spend $75,000 on a feasibility study to look at the economic impact and potential tax benefits. The step concerned Vincent C. Gray, chairman of the D.C. Council, who noted the team's success and potential for financial growth.

"I continue to believe that we should work with D.C. United to construct the stadium in Poplar Point," Gray (D) said.

The study comes two months after Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) wrote a letter to David Raith, the stadium authority's acting director, asking the state to help the county lure the team.

I'm not really sure exactly how this benefits the taxpayers of Maryland in any way. Particularly when you consider the fact that the through the profligate spending of O'Malley and legislative Democrats, we are still facing a projected deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars. Annapolis Democrats still cannot grasp the concept of basic economics and fiscal responsibility. To say that the state should be spending money on a study to consider spending more money to build a stadium in an area that already has five stadiums of 30,000 or more seats within a 20-mile radius is laughably absurd.

From a business perspective, D.C. United Holdings should be looking at building soccer-specific stadium to fit their needs, and I am sympathetic to the fact that they probably need such a venue to thrive financially. But if they want to build in Maryland, they should have to find the private capital to do it. The state should not be fleecing taxpayers to direct money towards an already mismanaged agency to build venues again beyond their intended scope. If they want government to build it, talk to D.C. or talk to Virginia.

I mean seriously: do Democrats really want to put stadiums before schools?

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 01-13-2008

Yes, I am aware that this drastically overreaches the concept of a show with the word "Minute" in the title....

O'Malley out of touch, out of control

Governor O'Malley is going farther and farther to prove that he has lost touch with reality when it comes to Governing Maryland.

First, take a look at his comments regarding Nancy Grasmick:

Gov. Martin O'Malley called longtime state schools chief Nancy S. Grasmick "a pawn of the Republican Party" yesterday, and other top Democrats said she should resign, indicating on the opening day of this year's legislative session that they might make good on threats to force her out.....

Speaking during a morning taping of WYPR-FM's Marc Steiner Show, O'Malley, a Democrat, said that if Grasmick refused to resign he would support legislation enabling the state school board to replace her with someone who is not a "poster child for No Child Left Behind or a pawn of the Republican Party."

"I'm looking forward to a new superintendent, and I'm looking forward to bringing one [on] in the very near future," O'Malley said.

The concept of long-time Democrat Grasmick being a "pawn of the Republican Party" is laughable considering Grasmick's history. She started out as a Schaefer appointee, remember, and has often been criticized over the past decade or more (often by Republicans, mind you) of the state of Maryland's school system. Of course, O'Malley's thoughts on the matter look even more mindless when you consider that you consider that Maryland school are ranked third in the nation .

Then there is this gem from his opening remarks to the House of Delegates yesterday:

"Important work remains to be done," O'Malley told House members. "As we proved before, progress is possible."

If anything, Governor O'Malley has proved that with him progress is not possible. His continued adherence to outdated ideas of the role of Government, ideas that came forth with the Great Society in the 1960's, prove that Governor O'Malley is committed to progress only for his own political career. O'Malley's continued support of higher taxes and unaffordable spending priorities certainly prove that O'Malley is not committed to making progress for Maryland's working and middle class families.

Maryland cannot make progress when we have a Governor who is out of touch from certain realities, and out of control with his attempts at abusing his power. It's as clear as day that Maryland will not be able to provide a livable future for the working and middle class families of Maryland until Martin O'Malley is no longer Governor of this state and replaced with a Governor who actually cares about the plight of Maryland's citizenry...

Breaking news from 2004....

Gee, somebody should do something about this:

Although the state has plenty of doctors, it doesn't have enough who actually see patients - a situation that creates "a silent and growing crisis," the head of the state medical society said yesterday.

The shortages are greatest in rural areas "but are likely to affect most of us by the year 2015," said Dr. Martin P. Wasserman, executive director of MedChi, the professional society for the state's doctors.

MedChi and the Maryland Hospital Association released a study yesterday showing that the state has 179 doctors delivering care for every 100,000 residents. That is 16 percent below the national average of 212.

Lord, you think that the state might need to do something in order to improve the climate for doctor's in this state. It's almost like they need a Special Session of the General Assembly...

Oh, yeah. We had one of those. Democrats responded by ignoring the need for Medical Malpractice reform and instead (what else) raised taxes.

Given the Democrats opposition to medical malpractice reform, and given the Democrats propensity to raise taxes, it looks like Marylanders are going to have to leave the state to get health care in the next 15 years. Doctors look like they are beginning to realize that there is no positive climate for them in this state without significant (albeit not forthcoming) legislative action...

Foxes, Henhouses, and Boondoggles

The same crew of Democrats who forced a half-assed electric deregulation policy down Maryland's throat now want to....force a half-assed re-regulation policy down Maryland's throat:

The soaring costs of electricity will not decrease soon unless the government takes action, according to the state's power regulators.

That is because deregulation - a process that allowed power plants to sell electricity according to market rates in order to lower costs - has failed Maryland, according to a report from the Public Service Commission.

Now, it is up to Gov. Martin O'Malley, the General Assembly, the Maryland Energy Administration, the PSC, and Maryland's power regulators to craft a workable power future without creating another disaster for consumers.

"After almost seven full years, Maryland ratepayers face among the highest capacity and locational marginal prices in all of (the region), and the prospect of draconian brown-outs in the next five years," said the recently released report, which maps out future courses of action. "By these measures, Maryland is not better off than it was before deregulation."

Mr. O'Malley and the energy administration will prepare a plan in time for the legislative session that begins in January and include "some similarities" to the PSC recommendations, said Rick Abbruzzese, the governor's press secretary.

Now as somebody who believes in the free markets, the problem with the concept that Maryland's markets were ever deregulated in the first place is a fallacy. The General Assembly kept caps in place on prices and never allowed the market to be fully regulated.

The problem is that through re-regulation, the O'Malley crowd may in fact be creating the type of end of the world disaster that they allegedly are trying to avoid. Let's face it, the kind of reregulation that the Democrats would wish to force through the General Assembly would probably severely inhibit the ability of power generating companies to cover their cost of doing business in Maryland. That would leave Maryland electric customers with fewer choices and in all likelihood electric rates that go beyond even the current cost of electricity in the rate of the 72% rate hikes.

Except one of the proposed regulations tries to go where California went:

Rather, the PSC proposed flexing its long-dormant muscles by forcing utilities such as BGE to sign long-term power purchase contracts from newly constructed power plants, locking in prices for customers for several years.

Which sounds very neat and panglossian, except that while the power price for customers may be locked in, the price for power on the wholesale electric market may not be. Which means that when BGE's power consumption exceeds their generating capacity, they will be potentially forced to buy power at ridiculously high rates without the capability of recouping their costs. The puts us on a path to a California style energy crisis, energy shortages, and rolling blackouts.

There is no easy solution to this, as the General Assembly really botched things up in the first place when they "deregulated" electricity in 1999. But the O'Malley/PSC plan that is currently in the works seems to be designed to put Marylanders in the same place California electric customers were in 2000 and 2001. As usual, O'Malley and company are backing plans that put the consumer and the working classes at the highest risk of absorbing higher costs and in this case, a potentially third-world situation as it relates to the availability of electric power.

Do as I say....

....not as the Majority Leader does:

House Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve, who has supported stricter drunken-driving laws, was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol after being arrested in Gaithersburg late Thursday, police said.

Barve, 49, a Montgomery County Democrat, was stopped by a Gaithersburg police officer after his car left a parking lot in oldtown Gaithersburg through a driveway marked "entrance only," police spokesman Sgt. Rudy Wagner said....

....the delegate failed a field sobriety test and was found to have a 0.10 blood-alcohol level through a preliminary breath test, which is not admissible as evidence in court. The legal limit is 0.08.

The kicker:

He was one of the sponsors of a 2001 bill that changed the state's legal blood-alcohol level for drivers from 0.10 to 0.08.

I hope that if Delegate Barve has a problem with alcohol, that he take care of it as soon as possible. However, I also hope that Barve does time for this crime. Nothing infuriates me more than judges who allow drunk drivers to get off with only a modest fine. Drunk drivers are dangerous, and are a menace to all drivers on the road. Whatever happens to Delegate Barve will be the example for all of Maryland; it means that we are either serious about punishing drunk drivers, or we not.

And on a political note, if I'm Democratic House members, I would seriously think about finding a Majority Leader who exercises better judgment.

D-Day

We know when the General Assembly is going back to work:

Gov. Martin O'Malley today formally called a General Assembly special session that would start Oct. 29, despite a warning from the state Senate president that lawmakers were far from consensus on O'Malley's plan to close a projected $1.7 billion budget shortfall.

OK, now let's delve into the gobbledygook:

"The time for delay is past. I am very, very optimistic about what the leaders of our state can accomplish when they know so much is at stake,'' said O'Malley, who signed an executive order calling the session. "We have the ability to come together and forge a consensus.

Which is amazing given the fact that the Administration has gone out of its way to exclude the Republican leadership from this process. Also, don't forget the fact that the Administration knows so much is at stake. Why have they sat on the sidelines during O'Malley's entire time in office, fiddling without dealing with the spending problem like responsible adults?

O'Malley has said the special session is needed to prevent the budget gap from growing wider. He has said the state could face a $2.2 billion budget shortfall on July 1 if lawmakers don't act now, rather than in the legislature's regular session that starts in January.

Again, the budget gap could have been lessened or eliminated had O'Malley introduced a responsible budget back in January. One that did not call for increases in state spending.

At a news conference, the first-term governor said he hoped legislators would take action by Thanksgiving, but he added: "If they need to take more time, they will."

"We don't want this to be a slapdash process,'' O"Malley said.

No, they want to continue to fiddle as the deficit goes higher and higher. It's almost as if it took six months for the Administration to realize there was a problem before saying "hey, we have to fix this." Unless you believe that this was their motivation all along; to continue to increase state spending to push through the buffet of taxes O'Malley wants to ram down our throats.

And whether you like Mike Miller or don't, you have to respect him and his intelligence. As evidenced by this:

Although Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had been pushing for a special session, he told reporters before O'Malley's news conference that he had recommended holding off on calling lawmakers back to Annapolis.

"I asked him if he had the votes, and he doesn't as of this day," Miller said. "I counseled him not to call a special session until he had the votes. He is determined to go forward."

Starting October 29th, the taxpayers of Maryland are going to pay roughly $40,000 a day (a cost of nearly $1 million if it goes to Thanksgiving) for some bizarre Kabuki theater allegedly designed to get us out of the financial hole. In reality, the Administration is going to try to ramrod through historic tax increases that will do little more than cripple our state's economy in an already economically disadvantageous time. And they will try to do so under the cover of darkness, right before the Holidays so your average taxpayer doesn't know what hit them.

Somebody needs to remind Governor O'Malley that there are a lot of things that you could call this, but leadership is not one of them...

The Dope Show

I'm hesitant to even give Free State Politics more traffic then they deserve, but since Andrew Kujan has to be smoking dope to come to this cockamamie conclusion, it has to be addressed.

The fact of the matter is that the family in question that is kvetching because they don't have health insurance makes a little more than half as much money as I do. Yet they have three-times as much square footage of livable space as I do in a more expensive community. They also have four more kids than I do. And choose to spend a boat load on private schools.

So answer me this: who are the parents who pay for private schooling? Who are the parents that choose to have a 3,000 square foot house? Who are the parents who choose to work at jobs with no health care? And why the hell should I have to pay for their poor parenting skills? And to why should some dolts who make choices to spend beyond their means deserves to be protected from ridicule by the right because they are "a white male, who is both married and a small business owner with more than 2 children, who sends his kids to private school and drives an SUV?" Particularly when you consider that said subject is knowingly trying to live off of my money, not their own?

So Andrew: who really is undertaking a rectal self-examination in this instance?

I don't think anybody is saying that there should not be certain government assistance for uninsured children. But to fall for this claptrap from the left, trotting out the kids of parents who pay thousands in private school tuition but can't afford medical bills, is beyond ridiculous. It is the very definition of disingenuous, and shows everything that is wrong with the modern fringe left.

Of course, when the modern left is so chicken that it has to hide behind children in order to score cheap political points, you knew all of that already...

O'Hubris

You have to love Governor O'Malley's hubris:

The GOP tactic of opposing a special session produces conflict when lawmakers should be working to build consensus, O'Malley said on Thursday.

''Over the next couple of weeks, any group of 10 or 20 people will get together and figure out if they can keep anything from happening, as if that should be a revelation," he told reporters at Embassy Day in North Bethesda. ''The last four years in Annapolis have unfortunately proven to the people in Maryland that Annapolis is really good at not getting anything done, but blaming everybody else. What we need to do now is find consensus to solve problems."

O'Malley's pretty good at blaming everybody else too, given his consistent record of failure. But I find his hubris completely overwhelming consider that it is the Administration who is purposely keeping the GOP caucus out of the discussions on his slots plan. It is O'Malley who wants to keep Republicans at arms length. It is O'Malley's actions that are ensuring no bipartisan cooperation is taking place on these issues.

And then there is O'Malley's actual bipartisanship:

In his travels around the state, O'Malley has made references to meeting with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle as he developed his budget solution.

Poppycock, Allan Kittleman said.

The party's No. 2 man in the Senate says the guv has only reached out to him twice — once to congratulate him on being elected minority whip and once to inform him that O'Malley was firing his mother, Trent Kittleman, as head of the Maryland Transportation Authority.

That stings.

O'Malley's warped view of bipartisanship is amazing. But I take solace in the fact that it will more than likely be conservative Democrats in the General Assembly who are ultimately responsible for ensuring his tax increases fail to come to fruition...

Straight Tax Talk

Capital columnist Eric Hartley talks straight about the Governor's tax plan today:

"The vast majority of Maryland families will be paying less," Mr. O'Malley said during an event in Ellicott City, one of seven stops he made in nine days.

But that's an assumption resting on some dubious and suspiciously precise numbers. And the truth is, a lot of us probably will be paying more.

How do I know? Let's look at the numbers.

Hartley goes on to show what the numbers really are going to add up to. He concludes with this:

Are the numbers false? Not exactly, but the presentation is carefully calculated to show the poor and middle class saving money. If the chart showed average families paying, say, $50 or $100 more, it wouldn't be so effective.

But then, it's only October. There are plenty of lies, damned lies and statistics still to come.

Which reminds me back from a few months ago when we talked about getting nickeled and dimed. Which is exactly what Maryland Democrats are going to do to the middle class. Maryland Democrats don't seem to care how much the middle and working classes are going to be forced to pay in order to fund their special pet programs....

Owing Favors

Former Clinton Apparatchik Lanny Davis must owe someone in the O'Malley Administration a favor for his gushing genuflection over O'Malley's tax and spend plan:

I'm a resident of Montgomery County, and under the O'Malley proposal to close the $1.7 billion structural budget deficit the state is facing, I am definitely going to end up paying higher taxes overall, even while some 83.5 percent of other Marylanders will end up paying less. So how can I claim that this plan is good for me, good for my county and good for Maryland?

Hey, if Lanny Davis is so rich he wants to pay higher taxes, I'm not going to stop him. Maybe the O'Malley tax plan should include one of Mike Huckabee's good ideas when he was Governor of Arkansas: a tax me more fund.

First, I believe that most people in Montgomery County, as elsewhere, support the principle of progressive taxation.

Have some numbers to back that up? Nope, didn't think so. The only possible reason that Davis can possible believe that this is true is the fact that he surrounds himself with like-minded urban liberals who all think that the middle classes should be taxed at a high rate in order to spend more and more on social programs. And I'm willing to bet that these same people Davis knows love the idea of "progressive" taxation when it's someone else paying the freight,

Some of Montgomery County's elected officials immediately opposed this income tax increase because, combined with Montgomery's local add-on income tax of 3.1 percent, it would give county residents a total of 9.7 percent in state and local income taxes.

Hold on: elected officials opposing tax increases? Because it is going to screw their constituents? In Montgomery County? This is supposed to be a bad thing? Are elected officials in this liberal bastion opposed to new taxes? Hallelujah!

Second, despite its image of affluence, Montgomery and other suburban jurisdictions suffer from overcrowded roads and schools. So Mr. O'Malley has proposed a 1 percent increase in the state's corporate income tax, with the revenues (more than $100 million a year in the next four years) dedicated to transportation and education, including stabilizing college tuition after an increase of more than 50 percent in the last six years, and providing long-term security for the Thornton plan's multibillion-dollar education investment.

The law of diminishing returns tells us that an increase in the corporate income tax is going to cause businesses to either pump less into the economy, or to bail out of the state completely. That's to say nothing of the citizens who may sell "the hell with this" and move elsewhere. And we have already talked about the education funding fiasco that is Thornton and general education funding.

It is regressive, because rich and poor pay the same rate. But the governor has compensated for this by offering special tax relief for seniors and the working poor. And few could argue that the extension of the sales tax to tanning and massage services cannot be absorbed by those who use these services.

Some call it "regressive". Others call it "unfair" because some citizens are treated differently than other citizens. Usually liberals call the treatment of one group of people differently than others"discrimination." In this case liberals call it "justice."

All parts of the state and all income groups benefit from different parts of this package. That is its genius.

I'm not seeing how me paying more taxes to fund services I don't use and I don't want to pay for benefits me. That's not genius. And that's extortion when it is done through additional taxes.

The bottom line: The governor is required, under our state's constitution, to close a $1.7 billion structural deficit. He has chosen an artful and comprehensive balancing act of spreading the pain and benefits equitably.

The middle class seems to be the one getting most of the pain. Billions in new taxes to cover a deficit and then some; up to $3.6 billion more than necessary to cover the deficit. That's not leadership; that's irresponsible fiscal stewardship.

Anybody have a better idea?

Yeah. Cut taxes and cut discretionary spending. Don't steal from me to buy a Rolls Royce when you can only afford the Pinto. Make intelligent choices. How hard is this basic economics stuff to figure out?

The fact of the matter is that the Administration is acting like the kid in a candy store whose mom is paying them no mind as they ransack the Jolly Rancher bin when the Administration should try and act like a mature, fiscally responsible adult. This robbing Peter to pay Paul stuff has never been fair before, is not fair now, and will never be fair or just. Talking about how "genius" this plan in completely laughable and makes it hard to take Davis seriously at all.

I really don't know how people who want to take more and more from the overtaxed middle classes can look themselves in the mirror every morning and say that they are doing good for the state of Maryland.

Don't Believe the Hype

Free State Politics is firing up the hype machine and harping the MSTA talking points in favor of throwing more good money after bad to our public schools:

It's trite, I know, but I still love the bumper sticker that reads, "If education is expensive, try ignorance." The truth is, good education is expensive. It requires high salaries and good benefits packages that can attract and retain a well-trained and hard-working workforce of teachers, administrators, and support services personnel. It requires the construction of safe and stable learning environments for kids. It requires the provisioning of thousands of classrooms with the latest and best instructional technology, not to mention the basic supplies for learning. All of these things require money. And that money requires the long-term dedication of our state and our communities, and of the politicians who lead us.

Of course what Eric Luedtke and the rest of the urban liberals fail to realize is that you cannot continue to spend, spend, and spend in the same way that you have already spent, spent, and spent. If the "spend first, ask questions later" was accurate, our public schools would be the Cadillac of public schools systems, and the District of Columbia (who spends more than $15,000 per pupil) would have the best public school system in the Western Hempishphere.

We spend money hand over fist, and education officials still whine that there is never enough money and support. And liberals and union officials continue to want raise your taxes to spend, spend, spend on projects that they deem to be important.

Mainly, benefits. Just look again at what Luedtke wrote:

It requires high salaries and good benefits packages that can attract and retain a well-trained and hard-working workforce of teachers, administrators, and support services personnel.

To be blunt, how the hell much more can we pay on high salaries and benefits pacakges. We discussed a few months back the budget here for public schools in Anne Arundel County and remember what the breakdowns were? 80-percent of the school system budget is spent on personnel. Eighty Percent. And remember something else: there is one administrative staff member for every 4.35 teachers in the Anne Arundel County system.

I think that Luedtke's example of Loiederman Middle School in Silver Spring is a fantastic example of the positive changes that can be made. But a lot of what Loiederman is doing does a great job of proving Luedtke's point about the necessity of additional monies for education false. Read what he writes about Loiderman.

Partially funded with a $7 million, 3 year federal grant, it and its two sister schools adopted programs that have led to a decrease in economic segregation, an acceleration of curriculum for all students in the schools, and provided unique learning opportunities in the arts and technology that few, if any, public middle schools in the country provide.

Sure, the federal grant helped out. But look at what they did with it. They did not throw the money down the drain on what has already does not work. They tried innovative programs designed to change the culture of the school. They saw that Loiderman was failing, and took positive action in order to change the curriculum, change the focus, and put the focus back on educating students. They tried something different. And that's a great thing to see. They didn't wait around to spend more on failing ideas and just hope for the best. And you know something, you don't need $3 billion to make that kind of change.

We need to streamline education. Public schools systems need to trim their size, not expand further. Many administrative positions need to be eliminated. Costs savings need to be transferred to repair dilapidating structures, and modernize classroom spaces, technological upgrades and replace textbooks. State profits from the passage of casino gambling should be funneled as a dedicated funding mechanism for school construction and rehabilitation. Focus should be put solely on classroom instruction, and more taxpayer dollars should directly impact the classroom environment And yes, teachers should be paid for their performance, not their longevity.

Education is the touchstone issue. Conservatives agree with liberals that it is one of the most important issues facing our state. But the fact of the matter is that we have tried education for the last 100 years through the liberal, Democratic worldview. And more and more, we are seeing that the liberal view of education as some place to throw more and more money is not working.

Schools should not be viewed as a depository of taxpayer dollars designed to reward Democratic supporters. Nor should public schools be laboratories for whatever the latest leftist education theories should be. Schools should be merely for learning about the things that any basic educated individual needs to know. We need to make sure that kids learn match, learn science, learn history, and learn to properly read and write. We need to teach them skills they need to succeed in our modern world.

Frankly, I am afraid that Democrats, liberals, education leaders and union officials are not focused on educating our students anymore.

One Missing

The Sun's Andrew Green had a Cliff Notes version of the deficit problem in today's paper. Which also includes this ridiculous quote from Progressive Maryland honcho Sean Dobson:

"The wealthiest Marylanders have received huge federal tax cuts from President George W. Bush. It's only fair they give back a small portion of that windfall so Maryland can invest in a better future of expanded health care, safer streets and better schools."

Which of course does not take into account how much money has been misspent and wasted in an effort to do all of those things in the first place.

My main criticism of Green's article has to do with the seven solutions that he lists as ways to solve the deficit crunch. The seven are:

• Increasing the Sales Tax
• Expanding the Sales Tax
• Making the Income Tax more "progressive"
• Shifting costs to local governments
• Closing corporate tax loopholes
• Freezing Spending
• Legalizing Slot machines

As you can tell, five of the seven involve the favorite liberal past time of trying to tax the middle class and the poor right out of Maryland. But Green forgot one thing that could reduce the deficit and provide long-term relief.

Cutting Spending.

Liberals in Annapolis seem to forget that the best way to cut costs is to cut spending. How many useless programs do we have being funded by the state government? How many commissions and boards that serve no legitimate purpose? How many positions in government are created only out of the need for largesse to give to political supporters? How many different ways can the state find to waste taxpayer dollars?

Cutting spending is the only way to ensure that the Democrats in Annapolis do not continually try to spend us into a deficit situation, and the only way to protect the poor and the middle class from onerous tax hikes.

Piled High and Deep

Tom Schaller proved once again in this morning's Sun that just because you have a PhD in Political Science doesn't mean you have any clue what you are talking about when it comes to actual policy:

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that Maryland is one of the wealthiest states in the union. Sure, it would be nice to recover revenues lost to neighboring states, but Maryland's problem is not a lack of wealth but a lack of will.

The state's structural deficit means that spending priorities outpace revenues. If Marylanders want the money to continue to invest in and develop their state - such as the Thornton Commission education goals - they should pay more in taxes. Alternatively, they can decide what programs they want to eliminate. Even in the Free State there are no free lunches.

Further complicating the slots issue is that you have too many groups promoting their individual agendas, with little if any regard for the state's fiscal solvency.

Reread Schaller's remarks here again. He is simultaneously complaining that:

• The General Assembly lacks the will to raise taxes;
• People in Maryland want Big Brother to do more and more; and
• Every special interest group is promoting their special interest regardless of its impact on State Government.
  

It is fascinating to think that Schaller seriously believes that special interest groups, who are the genesis of a lot of our silly government spending programs, are the problem. The problem is, in actuality, decades of Democratic leadership that lacks the fiscal intelligence to rein in spending before the state begins to run out of money. They are the ones who cave in to these special interests that Schaller blames. If "spending priorities", as Schaller likes to call government handouts and government largesse, are outpacing revenues, then clearly spending needs to be brought under control to ensure that revenues outpace spending. It does not take a PhD to figure that out.

Issac Smith tries to join the fiesta with this comment:

Conservatives like to write off all government spending as pork, but the problem here isn't quite so nefarious: The Thornton plan -- perhaps the biggest contributor to the budget deficit -- was meant to, among other things, eliminate funding disparities in the public schools, which I, and many others, think is an eminently worthy goal. One can question the efficacy of Thornton, or whether it's a policy worth keeping in financially lean times, but to assume that the deficit is the result of the greedy maw of government is bizarre, I think.

Except that "the greedy maw of government" is exactly what the Thornton Commission created. A multi-billion dollar boondoggle without either revenue sources or budget offsets to pay for it. And let us not forget, also, that the Thornton plan was only passed when the formula was finessed in order to ensure that more money flowed to Montgomery County than in the original plan, since the Montgomery County delegation was the the margin of victory in carrying the Thornton vote.

One would do best to ignore Schaller's suggestions entirely, and instead following a common sense approach of drastically cutting state spending, reducing taxes, and then beginning the process of phasing in new forms of legalized gambling as soon as possible. Instead, Schaller, Smith, and Democrats like them would prefer to do the same thing they always want to do; pay for Democratic mistakes out of the wallet of the poor and middle class taxpayers...

And out come the wolves...

Grab on to your wallet, because here comes Team O'Malley to stick it to everybody:

Now Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration is faced with swelling infrastructure costs and a state Transportation Trust Fund in urgent need of a cash infusion. Leading lawmakers say they expect O'Malley to propose an increase in Maryland's 23.5 cents-a-gallon tax and possibly recommend other measures, such as a sales tax on gasoline and tying future increases to inflation or construction costs.

Maryland Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari said in an interview this week that he supports changing the method of taxing gas, from one based on the gallon to one tied to rising prices.

The same Democrats who like to bitch about how unfair rising gas prices are to the poor and the middle class are now the same Democrats who are looking forward to piling on high gas prices with additional taxes and fees.

I have asked this question before, I will ask it again; why do Democrats think that taxes should be raised that will disproportionately impact the poor and the middle classes? Why do the poor and middle classes have to pay the freight for programs that make affluent liberals feel better?

Fringe Left: O'Malley now Fringe Left enough...sometimes

FreeStatePolitics now thinks that O'Malley is, in fact, fringe left enough:

Today's Post article on the new tough-on-big-business Public Service Commission under Gov. Martin O'Malley is a good read; despite the failure of the PSC to substantially mitigate the huge rate hike for Baltimore Gas & Electric customers, they've been aggressive in holding utility companies to account and in trying to lower overall energy bills for consumers through energy efficiency. Gov. O'Malley has gone so far as to call on the PSC to investigate the relationship between BGE and its parent company, Constellation Energy, and "determine whether customers should receive rebates and whether Constellation should be broken up."

Never mind the numerous errors in common sense, economics, and good government that those serious of sentences entail.

But then Isaac Smith goes on to kvetch that O'Malley is Fringe Left enough when he's in Maryland, but not Fringe Left enough outside of it:

All of which is fine -- it's good policy, not to mention good politics. Few people, after all, are going to come to Verizon or BGE's defense. What's peculiar about these populist impulses from O'Malley (think also of the living wage bill) is that, when on the national stage, he seems to go out of his way to shun any association with the progressive base of the Democratic Party. He has aligned himself with arguably the least progressive of the major presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton, and co-authored a now-infamous op-ed with the Democratic Leadership Council's Harold Ford Jr., in which they sang the usual DLC anthem of bashing partisanship and praising centrism.

I probably don't have to explain to readers of this blog what's wrong with the DLC's approach to centrism, but I do want to focus on this odd discrepency between O'Malley's rhetoric to the national public and his actions on the local level. Now, O'Malley isn't a true-blue progressive like, say, Eliot Spitzer or Deval Patrick -- his crime control efforts in Baltimore, for example, betrayed a hostile attitude toward civil liberties -- but I think it's fair to say that he has supported quite a few progressive policies as Governor, including the living wage bill, support for education, and various environmental measures.

Of course, any rational observer can easily identify why O'Malley wears his socialist progressive hat in the state of Maryland and tries to act normal outside of it. It has something to do with the fact that:

1. O'Malley wants to run for President;
2. O'Malley's brand of Maryland-based collectivist, big government, money-wasting, bureaucratically bumbling leftism probably doesn't play well in Peoria since the Democratic base her is so far out of the political mainstream it's talked about as a distant and exotic as an extrasolar planet;
3. Did I mention O'Malley wants to run for President?

It's hard to imagine that the folks at FSP are this out of it. They mostly seem like reasonable, if not politically misguided, folks who have an occasional outburst of oddities. They have to understand the real reason right?

Right?

Fringe Left: O'Malley not Fringe Left enough

Uh....OK:

I used to think O'Malley was a smart politician. Not perfect by a longshot, but ambitious, well-backed, with good instincts and the kind of charisma you can't buy. Becoming Governor was planned long ago. I'm not surprised on bit that he's getting even more into national politics - he wants to be the Pres on day and I'll not be surprised to see him running.

So what the heck is he doing running with the DLC crowd? Yes they have corporate money but they are basically Republican-lite. Think Joe Lieberman and you have their take on issues and loyalty to the Democratic Party.

O'Malley won his races by being mostly progressive, a breath of fresh air in Baltimore and MD politics. He's not afraid of a fight. I can see why he aligns himself with moneyed interest in order to seed his future - but the DLC has been pretty much discredited by the Democratic base. And the corporate money is going to follow the base in the end.

And this goes on in this, that O'Malley is this evil centrist. I am only pretty sure this is the same O'Malley who wants to expand the size of government, raise taxes, and spend us into oblivion.

Words cannot describe how far out of the mainstream some Democrats really are....

Wasting Money Early

Looks like a lot of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls are already getting a head start on wasting the people's money :

Former Sen. John Edwards' 2008 presidential campaign has paid nearly $22,000 to offset its global-warming emissions this year, including more than $5,000 a month from April through June, making him the candidate with the largest acknowledged output of greenhouse gases.

Meanwhile, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign spent $2,367 to offset its emissions for April alone, while Sen. Christopher J. Dodd paid $650 for his presidential campaign's emissions from April through June.

Together, they are the three campaign pioneers in the new world of carbon neutrality: the idea of "offsetting" their greenhouse-gas emissions by paying a third-party company to plant trees, build clean-energy projects or take other steps that will lead to less carbon dioxide being emitted.

Presidential campaigns, it turns out, are a dirty business, environmentally speaking — and for the first time, the campaigns' Federal Election Commission reports are providing a glimpse of just how dirty they are when it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions.

I am amazed that, given how money is the "mother's milk" of politics, that these candidates would spend so recklessly on these environment indulgences for zero political gain on an unproven environmental concept.

Actually, given that we're talking about Sens. Clinton, Dodd, and Edwards....I'm probably not that amazed.

Bromwell takes a deal

Official Annapolis just clenched a little...

Former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell Sr., the ex-tavern owner who became one of Annapolis' most prominent politicians, agreed Friday to plead guilty to accepting payoffs from a Baltimore construction company executive in return for securing publicly funded contracts, defense lawyers said.

The result of weeks of negotiations, the plea agreement came almost two years after federal prosecutors hit the Baltimore County Democrat and his wife, Mary Patricia, with an 80-page federal racketeering indictment in October 2005.

Bromwell was accused of using his political power to help Baltimore-based Poole and Kent in exchange for more than $200,000 in cash, bogus salary and discounted home-improvement materials.

Except, and this is truly bizarre, everybody else may get off free and clear:

Notably, and somewhat unexpectedly, Bromwell's agreement does not require him to provide any details to authorities about other possible crimes that might implicate public officials. Bromwell's original attorneys told The Sun more than two years ago that prosecutors indicated they would accept a guilty plea from the former senator only if he in turn provided incriminating information about other officials.

Had the case gone to trial, prosecutors were expected to air excerpts from secret FBI tapes in which