I’ve held this in my back pocket for a few days but since the second-to-last post featured GOP candidate for Governor Larry Hogan and the subject isn’t exactly stale, I’ll run it now. Hey, it even ties in with what I said at the county’s budget meeting last week. So I excerpt from the Hogan release:
Larry Hogan, a small business owner for more than 20 years, challenged Martin O’Malley to “stop talking and take action to help Maryland small businesses.”
“After three years of beating up on small businesses in Maryland, raising their taxes, and making it even harder to do business here, Martin O’Malley wants to start a commission to determine how to help them out?” questioned Hogan. “For starters, you don’t raise taxes and put added burdens on small businesses and mom and pop stores, forcing them to lay off workers and close up shop.”
“For someone who fancies himself as a musician, he’s utterly tone deaf when it comes to the issues facing small businesses and hard working Marylanders. The sad truth is that Martin O’Malley is the worst anti-business, anti-jobs Governor Maryland has ever had,” Hogan charged. ”Small businesses all over the state have either left for friendlier pastures or are shutting down all together.”
Maryland small businesses employ over 50% of the Maryland work force. Recent state economic numbers reveal that over 215,000 Marylanders are unemployed, the highest in 26 years.
“O’Malley has had over three years to respond to the needs and concerns of Maryland’s largest employer – small businesses. He has failed to do anything to stem the tide of job loss and business migration. His record of lost jobs, higher spending, record tax increases and broken promises is unacceptable. Maryland families and small businesses deserve better”, Hogan concluded.
What liberals like O’Malley fail to understand time and again is that placing burdens on business is counterproductive to economic prosperity. There are 50 little laboratories out there and all but a handful are proving to be more business-friendly to entrepreneurs and investors, leaving Maryland in a precarious position.
O’Malley may be the most fortunate governor in the country because it’s through an accident of geography that Maryland isn’t a complete economic basket case. The problem is most of the state is in the doldrums, but O’Malley can cater to his base along the I-95 corridor and thanks to his friend Barack Obama growing the government there are some portions of Maryland immediately around the nation’s capital succeeding.
But if you go to Princess Anne, Hagerstown, or Cambridge you’ll find people who beg to differ about the successes claimed by O’Malley because their counties were among the worst areas for unemployment in the state. Far off the beaten path and home to few voters, Democrats in Annapolis don’t mind leaving them crumbs (if that) because that’s where all the Republicans live anyway.
Looking at the primary industry on the Eastern Shore, Governor O’Malley’s bending over backwards toward environmental interests at the expense of local agriculture is eventually going to drive the poultry industry out of Maryland. We don’t need a commission to tell us this!
Let me make a suggestion for Larry Hogan: come down to Wicomico County, stand in front of a dilapidated chicken house with an owner waiting on the state of Maryland to approve a new facility, and invite the press to see you justifiably blast away at the O’Malley policies which are killing the Eastern Shore.
It seems like the only investment being made down here is in Salisbury University, which is building at a remarkable clip. While it’s good that the area has a campus of higher learning the state can be justifiably proud of, the graduates won’t be enticed to stay here because there’s few jobs to be had and little prospect of getting any with O’Malley in charge.
There’s a target-rich environment if Hogan chooses to fire away at O’Malley’s policies. But we also need to know what the alternatives would be, and hopefully they will fall under the category of common-sense conservatism.
Save yourself the commission, Martin, and listen to the producers for once. Maybe then you’ll not have to continually cut the budget or suck up to the feds for another stopgap measure. It’s worth a try.
Who are you trying to kid — it was Montgomery and PG Counties that with Wicomico needed (and the two in the DC area did not get) the maintenance of effort waiver.
Don’t try to shift the Bush boondoogle to O’Malley.
Did you leave the comment on the wrong post? I’m curious which Bush boondoggle you’re referring to, since he had several.
If you’re trying to blame our overall poor economy on Bush, well, he gets some of it but the lion’s share goes to Obama and the Democrats. Funny how the economy was humming along pretty well until Pelosi and Reid were put in charge of Congress (and budgeting.)