Last year Maryland had a Republican governor, Robert Ehrlich, and a $billion year over year surplus and a “rainy day” fund. Now, less than nine months after Democrat Martin O’Malley was sworn in as governor of Maryland – and during a substantial economic boom in the State, surpluses and “rainey day” funds are gone. In fact, the Democrat governor has called for a 20% increase in the state’s sales tax, an increase in income taxes and plans to tax the poor with legalized gambling.
Marylanders are acting surprised that a Democrat would raise taxes – well, most of them, anyway. Yesterday they had a protest in Annapolis, the State Capitol reports the Washington Examiner;
“No new taxes†was the rallying cry Monday of demonstrations by taxpayer, conservative and Republican groups around the State House.
The relatively modest turnouts of about 300 people came just hours before Gov. Martin O’Malley was set to give a short pep talk to a special session of the General Assembly he called to raise a series of taxes.
“I’m going to stand up and oppose every stinking tax,†said Del. Donna Stifler, R-Harford, typifying the comments of dozens of GOP lawmakers.
Stifler said she was getting 80 to 100 e-mails and phone calls a day opposing any tax increases.
And the guilty white people were there to counter-protest;
Progressive Maryland, an organization of liberal social and labor groups, mounted its own quickly called rally to counter the Republican theme and support the governor’s tax package.
“We believe the governor’s package represents by far the best deal for working families,†said Sean Dobson, executive director of the Progressive Maryland. Â
“Working families”. That’s the code phrase for non-working families. When Democrats claim something is good for “working families”, that means they’re going to screw the living shit out of working families. Paying taxes for 40 years has taught me that.Â
Former Governor Ehrlich also took the opportunity today to write an op/ed piece in the Examiner detailing the failures of the current administration;
Here’s what leaders in Maryland don’t get: We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem. With creativity and slower budget growth, legislators can align Maryland’s spending with its needs without raising taxes.
Yet they inherently believe that low taxes are a problem that must be “fixed†in order to expand government’s reach into our wallets and our lives.
Nowhere is that more evident than the bloated salaries doled out to political appointees. The new administration approved a whopping 58 percent pay raise for the head of the Public Service Commission, who then forced a 50 percent increase in electricity costs on one million state residents.
The new comptroller gave three of his aides salary increases to $150,000 each — on par with Cabinet secretaries with infinitely greater responsibilities.
These raises may be small in the context of a $30 billion budget, but they speak volumes about Annapolis’s lack of respect for Marylanders’ money. So, as our government leaders rush to Annapolis this week to raise our taxes, ask yourself: Have they made a real attempt to tighten government’s belt?
O’Malley has threatened to cut $1.7 billion out of the budget – which probably isn’t a bad idea – but he plans to cut essential spending like fire and police services instead of cutting out the wasteful administrative spending in surveys and victim pandering ostensibly to force Republican lawmakers to pay the political price for the Democrats’ wasteful habits. O’Malley’s probably afraid to cut the wasteful spending because no one would notice the cuts except the lobbyists and he wouldn’t be able to hold the Republicans hostage.
Can anyone see this happening after the 2008 national election? So far, Republicans in the Senate and the President have been able to stop wasteful spending habits of the Democrat Congress to some degree – but I suspect that if we had a Democrat president, Republicans would cave on nearly issue to protect their jobs. Remember how the Hagel Gang caved to Democrat pressure on the Iraq War right after last November’s elections? Well, imagine eight years of that behavior on every single spending bill.
