Ohio politics – Page 2

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This week marks nine years since I moved to Maryland from Ohio. While at the beginning this website delved regularly into Ohio politics as a base of comparison (since that was most of my experience at the time), over the years I have worked away from the goings-on in the Buckeye state. But an article regarding the state’s bid to decimate the third party movement piqued my interest, and shamefully it’s backed by the legislative Republicans – all but one GOP State Senator voted for it.

It’s definitely worth pointing out that, in my estimation and memory, the Ohio Republican Party is more Republican than conservative. John Boehner is a good example of an Ohio Republican in that principles come in a distant second to party. Instead of showing leadership in good government, Ohio Republicans cynically shamed the overall GOP by creating one of the most gerrymandered Congressional districts in the country in order to place two liberal incumbents in the same district. (This used to be my district and part of my family lives there, so I have a vested interest.) I guess it should be expected from a party which bent over backwards to avoid primaries for their chosen, “electable” (read: moderate) candidates.

Of course I understand that third party votes generally tend to be siphoned away from the Republican side as opposed to the Democrats. Libertarians have just enough philosophical differences from the Republicans that they tend to draw support from the GOP pool, whereas the Green Party and Democrats are basically two peas in a pod. It’s noticeable to me that the Green Party in Maryland runs relatively few candidates in our state when compared to the Libertarian Party, despite the fact there’s supposedly far more liberal voters than conservative ones.

Yet the Ohio proposal is very draconian for a group which accumulated less than 2 percent of the vote last year. Yes, much of it probably came out of Mitt Romney’s total and it could have cost him the election. But is that the right thing to do? I don’t think it is.

Aside from the insurgent campaign of Ross Perot and the Reform Party, which proved to be a one-year flash in the pan back in 1992, the last time the two-party structure was challenged was the mid-1800s, when the Republican Party was born. All that movement did, though, was supplant the Whigs, which faded from the scene. In the years since, both parties have found agreement on methods to insulate themselves from the prospect of a challenge from other political parties.

I look at it this way: if the Republicans can stand on their ideas they should not be afraid of any challenge. If they want to prevent the rise of a conservative third party, though, they might want to reaffirm themselves to conservative, limited-government principles.

The declaration of (courting) independents

It doesn’t seem like this issue will ever die.

You might recall that after our Maryland GOP Spring Convention earlier this year I posted a piece critiquing the thoughts of Don Murphy, a former Delegate and longtime party activist who has been fighting a crusade for many years to open up the Republican primary to unaffiliated voters, perhaps with the idea of welcoming them to the party eventually. His reasoning seemed sound: a number of like-minded Northeastern states open their primaries because they have a plurality of unaffiliated voters.

But the MDGOP appears to be interested in revisiting the process, as Erin Cox writes in the Baltimore Sun, and it may set us up for yet another contentious convention this fall in Annapolis. And while Brian Griffiths uses the evidence of past election results in his post on Red Maryland today, I honestly believe that’s a little bit of a red herring argument.

In Maryland today, the registration numbers lay out as follows (from the June report):

Democrats: 2,073,619 (55.6%)
Republicans: 959,120 (25.7%)
minor parties – Libertarian, Green, Americans Elect, and other unrecognized: 59,644 (1.6%)
unaffiliated: 636,716 (17.1%)

Four years ago at the same point in the cycle, the percentages weren’t a lot different. There are now 300,000 more voters in Maryland, but numerically they line up similarly:

Democrats: 1,942,336 (56.9%)
Republicans: 909,848 (26.7%)
minor parties and other unrecognized: 80,034 (2.3%)
unaffiliated: 478,817 (14.0%)

A number of the unaffiliated are likely former Independents, which is no longer a separate category.

And I’m sure some fret that eventually the unaffiliated will catch up to the Republicans – a 3% gain every four years coupled with a 1% loss in Republicans would put that date sometime early next decade. My contention, however, is that there are a significant proportion of Democrats who are so because their primary is the only race they can vote on.

But opening up the GOP primary to unaffiliated voters isn’t going to be enough of a draw for voters who have no local Republican candidates on the ballot for whom to vote. For example, in Prince George’s County’s 2010 primary – perhaps the most unbalanced in the state – once you departed the federal and statewide races there were exactly zero contested GOP races at the legislative level and just two local races (both for Central Committee seats) where the GOP had more contenders than winners. I admire the Prince George’s GOP for their efforts (my “partner in crime” Heather Olsen hails from there) but what would help them more than anything are candidates willing to stand up and hoist the GOP banner. Allowing unaffiliated voters into the GOP primary wouldn’t change the game.

Now I’m sure those who favor the idea will argue I used the most extreme example. Yet even if every single voter not connected with the Democratic Party decided to become a Republican, AND we could attract the 10 percent or so of Democrats statewide who are affiliated that way because their daddy was a Democrat but vote straight-ticket Republican – we’re still a minority. Barely, but still looking at a deficit and up against the hardcore elements of a power-drunk party.

Personally, though, I think the idea seems to come up when the Republicans are threatening to run conservative candidates for office. When I was living in Ohio, their Republican Party always seemed to anoint the most moderate candidate and overtly try and eliminate any more conservative primary competition for that person. And what did we get? Sixteen years of ruining the Republican brand with tax-and-spend governors, particularly Bob Taft. (Unfortunately, John Kasich isn’t doing much better now that he’s been spooked by the unions.)

Here in Maryland, the talk of opening up the primary died down when Bob Ehrlich won and through the three cycles where he was the all-but-endorsed choice of the Maryland GOP apparatus there was no chatter about adding unaffiliated voters to the mix. But now that we have a more spirited competition between several good candidates, the powers-that-be are presumably trying to make sure the most moderate, “electable” candidate prevails. As a conservative, pro-liberty Marylander who would like to see a governor tell the Democrats it’s his way or the highway, I would like a leader and not someone who sticks his finger up to see which way the wind is blowing. Mitt Romney and John McCain were supposed to be “electable” in a way that Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, et. al. were not.

If unaffiliated voters want to vote in a primary, it’s very easy to change your registration to Republican. Get good candidates worth voting for and they will come.

Update: A non-scientific poll by Jackie Wellfonder at Raging Against the Rhetoric found that support was perfectly mixed: 44% for, 44% against, and 12% undecided out of 75 who responded.

‘Naked, petty politics’ as usual

There’s really not a whole lot I can add to what two conservative kingpins have had to say about the decisions our government has made regarding sequestration cuts, but it’s also my job to make readers aware of them.

I wanted to begin with a quote from Maryland pro-liberty standardbearer Dan Bongino, who said in a release regarding the closing of the White House to public tours:

The President is a guest in the White House, the people of the United States are the Homeowners. Closing the White House to public tours, despite the negligible impact on the budgets of the U.S. Secret Service and the EOP (Executive Office of the President) is clearly a petty, naked gesture of pure politics rather than sound budgeting.

The White House closure reflects a continuing pattern with this administration of placing petty politics over public good. Inviting a group of multi-millionaire celebrities, and Obama campaign donors, to the White House to celebrate a family birthday, while at the same time closing the doors to America’s schoolchildren is a disgrace. During my tenure as a Secret Service agent securing the White House grounds, it was an immeasurable honor to see the excited faces of schoolchildren from all across the country as they witnessed the majesty of our White House for the first time, an experience sidelined for the sake of ‘Downtown (sic) Abbey’ political insiders and multi-millionaire celebrities.

I’m sure spellcheck nailed him on that last sentence, but the point remains.

I thought this was a nice quote from Dan, but it didn’t seem like enough to carry a post well – that is until I read Byron York’s piece on Townhall.com and knew I had the required yang to the yin. The money passage is as follows:

All those Obama administration officials complaining about across-the-board cuts dictated by sequestration could come up with plans to make the same amount of cuts in ways that would create fewer problems for federal workers and services. Then they could ask Congress for permission to do so. Lawmakers would say yes, and things would be fine.

But it’s not happening. And the fault is not with Congress.

In recent weeks, House Republicans have been virtually begging administration officials to ask for permission to move money around. If one program could be more easily cut than others, those Republicans say, just ask us, and we’ll let you do it.

“We sent out on Feb. 28 a letter to every Cabinet officer asking them what changes they’d like to have — pluses, subtractions and so on — to give them an opportunity to show us at least one program they would like to have cut, which would then save on sequestration,” Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in an interview recently. “We did not receive a single answer.”

It all became clear with that revelation. If you really want to address the spending problem, you go to Congress and say, “look, we hate to do this, but we think we can do with less and here’s how.” But if you want to play ‘naked, petty politics’ you come in with the attitude that we are going to make the cuts as painful and public as possible. No White House tours for you!

This reminded me of my Ohio days. In the Buckeye state, school districts aren’t generally countywide but normally serve a municipality, township, or group of townships – the school district I graduated from was once five smaller township-based districts which merged in the mid-1960s into one of the geographically larger districts in the state. They also have taxing authority, and money not supplied by the state or federal government comes in the form of a property tax levy, which normally has to be renewed or replaced with one at a higher rate at regular intervals of three to five years. The same is true for income tax levies, which some districts (including my home district, which has both income and property tax levies) have resorted to.

If a levy failed, which it often did, the scare tactics would begin with the second or third attempt to pass. Never did they say that they would cut administrators; instead the ominously promised cuts began with non-required bus service – not that it affected many children in our far-flung school district – then progressed to teacher layoffs, and if those didn’t work athletics were placed on the chopping block. Usually that was enough blackmail to get a levy to pass.

I’ll grant this is an imperfect and somewhat anecdotal example, but the prevailing attitude of government is rarely one of learning to do with less. With the prospect of budget cuts, agencies and departments think more about preserving turf than being public servants and stewards of taxpayer money. In this case of the federal government, we are talking about a budgetary rounding error of less than 2 percent of spending; insofar as state government goes, our governor disingenuously brags about making “cuts” on every budget yet spending somehow increases each and every year.

With all the caterwauling about a 1.5% federal budget cut in the news lately, you would think that Warren Harding had returned from the grave! But if we cut the present federal budget proportionally to what Harding did over the two years he was President before his death (granted, we were coming out of World War I so the military absorbed a significant share of these cuts) we would balance the budget without raising taxes; in fact, we could return to the Bush tax rates and still be in surplus. I think we could even get the White House tours back.

Of course, I’m certainly aware that we now have an entitlement system which was still in the dreams of progressives when Harding and his successor, Calvin Coolidge, were in office during the Roaring Twenties. That’s not only created a huge obstacle to necessary budget cuts but also given birth to an entitlement mentality among many millions – you would think they were bureaucrats who are owed a living.

But the road to sanity has to begin someplace, and the sooner we embark onto it the less painful it will be in the end.

One last weekend…

…and everyone wants help! Many of those appeals come from giving the national campaigns a hand in Ohio and Virginia.

(Update: read to the end for vital new information.)

For example, the Maryland GOP (on behalf of Mitt Romney) is going to those battleground states. But they’re also backing events in Harford, Montgomery, Washington, Cecil, and Queen Anne’s counties as well. Most will be Saturday, although the Harford event runs through Monday and the Queen Anne’s sign waving is later this afternoon.

And for those on the Shore who may want to help in Virginia, my friend Melody Scalley is organizing her own Saturday’s worth of activities in several Tidewater-area locations: Norfolk, Newport News, Virginia Beach, and Chesapeake. It looks like they’ll be canvassing in 2-3 hour shifts during the day Saturday and one shift in Norfolk on Sunday afternoon. As before, you can contact her at (703) 258-4200 to help out.

Since the extended early voting comes to an end today, volunteers can shift from the polling places out to the neighborhoods.

There’s also been an important change in absentee balloting. An Executive Order signed by Governor O’Malley states:

Registered voters who are out of their county of residence due to Hurricane Sandy are authorized to apply for an absentee ballot up to 5:00 p.m. on Monday, November 5, 2012. The State Board of Elections is authorized to electronically deliver absentee ballots to such voters. Completed ballots must be mailed on or before Election Day and received by the local board of elections no later than November 16, 2012.

So those displaced by Sandy will be treated similarly to military voters.

While I’m thinking about voting, here’s more to ponder:

It appears that about 1 in 10 voters overall will opt to vote early, despite the loss of two days earlier this week. Through Wednesday a little over 225,000 voters had already voted early. Compare that to just 11,793 total absentee ballots requested throughout the state.

It’s interesting to note as well that as of Wednesday 41% of Democratic absentee ballots had come back, compared with 34% of Republicans and 31% of unaffiliated. Democrats also have the upper hand insofar as early voting goes, as 7.4% of them statewide have made their choices compared to 4.9% of Republicans and 3 to 4 percent of unaffiliated and minor party members.

What this could mean on election night is that ballot questions and Democratic officeseekers will probably grab an early lead because these votes are actually counted during the day and released right after the polls close. So issues like gay marriage and in-state tuition for illegal aliens may have a seemingly insurmountable 60-40 lead early on, but as rural precincts tend to come in first those leads should evaporate – even as early voting covers about 10% of the electorate, in a Presidential year turnout in Maryland runs around 60 to 70 percent. In both instances, though, it may be a long night.

Update: There is another non-political – but certainly more important – volunteer effort going on tomorrow morning. This comes from my former local blogging cohort Julie Brewington, with emphasis mine:

Please come and help our Neighbors in Crisfield to Recover from Hurricane Sandy TOMORROW!

Please come dress in work attire, waterproof boots, and gloves. Bring a rake if you have one.

Saturday, Nov. 3 at 10 a.m. – Crisfield City Hall Parking lot, 319 W. Main St.

Even if you don’t have any equipment or special skills, we can use your help. To volunteer you should be physically fit and able to do manual labor. Water will be provided, but be prepared to work on sites that do not have basic sanitary services or utilities.

We will endeavor to select sites that are safe, but you must use your own common sense to protect yourself from dangers such as falling trees, submerged holes, and the general danger of being on a worksite with other untrained, unskilled volunteers. You assume all responsibility for your safety by volunteering and we will ask you to sign a release of liability of the Crisfield Chamber of Commerce, the City of Crisfield and the homeowner or property owner we are helping before assigning you to a work crew.

Equipment and skills we need

If you do have skills or equipment, we are in need of the following equipment along with persons who know how to use them:

Chainsaws
Large pickup trucks
Skillsaws
Power drills
Axes
Rakes
Plywood
Gloves
Gasoline for chainsaws

Supplies Needed (Drop Off At The Ambulance Squad Coming Into Town)

Bleach and cleaning supplies (mops, buckets, etc)
Household goods
Gently used clothing
Respirators
Portable Heaters
Blankets
Contractor clean up bags or large black trash bags
Bottled water
Rakes
Plywood
Gloves
Gasoline for chainsaws

Mold Removal is Needed. Please visit this site for Mold Removal Kits, with Household supplies and bring them if you can.

Saturday Volunteers are asked to print and bring signed release.

We will have blank release forms, but anyone wishing to volunteer tomorrow is asked to (sign a) volunteer release form to participate in our cleanup effort. We need to keep track of our volunteer ours for disaster relief purposes. Thank you!

Odds and ends number 62

While this is a Halloween day edition, hopefully you consider this a treat and Sandy hasn’t played any trick on my power which extends past today. (It didn’t.)

Did you know that the media has succeeded in demonizing the TEA Party to a point where it has the most negative connotation among political phrases? This according to Rasmussen, who claims a full 44% have been brainwashed into believing that being a TEA Party candidate is detrimental.

I take it as a badge of honor myself. Now if you’re considered liberal or moderate, that’s not good in my eyes.

Nor is this good – assuming it’s true, of course. I rarely take what this guy says at face value:

We’ve out-registered Republicans in every battleground state for the past THREE months.

Right now, we’ve got a total of more than 14,000,000 registered Democrats in battleground states like Florida and Nevada — that means we have a 2,400,000-person lead over Republicans where it matters the most.

And when it comes to voting early in battleground states, we’re in the lead in important states like Iowa and Ohio — and ahead in ballot requests in Nevada.

In Ohio, all public polling shows that the President has a double-digit lead among those who have voted. And nearly two-thirds of all voter registrations in the state in 2012 were in counties that President Obama won in 2008.

In Iowa, we lead in vote-by-mail ballots cast, in-person early voting, total voting, and total ballots requested. We also lead by a wider margin than we did at this point in 2008 in both ballots requested and cast. (All emphasis in original.)

Of course, that’s all subjective: registering voters doesn’t always translate to votes. This Politico story by Adrian Gray points out that Democrat turnout in Ohio’s early voting is down 220,000 compared to 2008 while the GOP is up 30,000. If that’s true, not all of these voters Obama is registering are going into his column. One could even speculate that Obama wants these early votes because people are changing their minds late and moving to Romney.

Meanwhile, one group is helpfully reminding non-citizens that for them, voting is illegal and could carry a severe penalty. Some will call it voter suppression and intimidation, but the law is the law. As Help Save Maryland notes:

While a few Maryland jurisdictions allow non-citizens to vote in their local elections, in general, non-citizens who vote in Maryland federal and state elections may be subject to fines, imprisonment and/or deportation. Even registering to vote, or encouraging other non-citizens to register to vote, is a serious crime in Maryland, punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

The problem has been made worse by Maryland’s past history of giving drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens. And organizations, such as CASA de Maryland, which provide services to illegal aliens, have posted notices in Spanish outside their facilities about helping people register to vote.

Another reason English should be our official language.

Someone else who is working against the grain assessed his two opponents succinctly after a recent debate:

(In this radio debate) both Senator Cardin and Rob Sobhani reaffirmed their commitments to a ‘government first’ economic recovery plan. While Senator Cardin believes this can be accomplished through increased taxes and increased government spending, Mr. Sobhani continues to campaign disingenuously by attempting to sway Marylanders for their votes with pie in the sky campaign promises that the Washington Post is calling ‘half-baked’. This is what we have come to expect from typical Washington insiders.

I am the only candidate making an ironclad promise to the citizens of our great state not to raise your taxes and to get the government out of your way, allowing our economy to return to growth and prosperity.

And the message seems to be working for Dan Bongino, as he continues to outraise his opponents combined. It’s unfortunate that their local debate was a casualty of Hurricane Sandy because I wanted to ask Sobhani about the concept of privatizing profit while socializing risk – if he can get $5.5 billion in investment, why not do it now?

A message that press guru Jim Pettit (the spokesperson for Change Maryland) has gotten out to a wider audience was recently featured on National Review Online. He writes about the Genuine Progress Indicator that Martin O’Malley is trying to foist on Maryland in lieu of actual job creation and true economic advancement. I spoke about it more on this post.

It’s telling to me that as O’Malley’s national profile increases, so does the reach of Change Maryland and, by extension, Pettit and Larry Hogan. Being a thorn in O’Malley’s side is obviously a popular gig.

So hopefully you’re in the process of recovering from Sandy if it affected you. Sorry I had to put up some seriously scary items on Halloween, but we could face an even scarier future one week from now if the current regime remains in place.

The varied reaction to MOM

Obviously I have my differences with our governor, but when he misinterprets the state of the state of my birth, Ohio, well, that’s not going to stand.

For those of you who don’t know this – and I wager that’s most of you, because your backgrounds are in Maryland – Ohio was doing so-so for awhile under a pair of moderate Republican governors, George Voinovich (who went on to become a U.S. Senator) and Bob Taft. (We won’t count the 11 days Lt. Gov. Nancy Hollister was a caretaker between terms.) Unfortunately, Governor Taft was sort of like Ohio’s answer to Martin O’Malley and poisoned the well for a far superior Republican (Ken Blackwell) to succeed him in 2006. (Blackwell should have succeeded Voinovich in 1998, but the Ohio GOP is smarter than the voters, or so they seem to think. They convinced Ken it wasn’t his turn yet.)

Anyway, the upshots were these: the economy in Ohio got so bad that I moved to Maryland 8 years ago, and that 2006 wasn’t just a bad year for the GOP in Maryland but they also lost the gubernatorial election in Ohio as well, ending a 16-year GOP run. Ted Strickland became governor and promptly was even more of a disaster than Taft, which says a lot. In 2010, Strickland became the first Ohio governor to lose his re-election bid since fellow Democrat John Gilligan did in 1974.

(Trivia: John Gilligan is the father of former Kansas governor and now-HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.)

Yet Martin O’Malley deigned to criticize current Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican elected in 2010, in remarks made to the Ohio delegation to the Democratic National Convention. “If there’s one place to find buyer’s remorse, it’s Ohio,” O’Malley commented.

Of course, that “ultimate thorn in O’Malley’s side” (h/t Jackie Wellfonder) known as Change Maryland did a little digging into Ohio’s job creation record and found out that Kasich’s state had created three times more jobs than Maryland did since Kasich took office (122,500 vs. 37,300) and while Ohio’s cost of doing business has plummeted from 29th to 6th best in the country, Maryland continues to rank in the bottom 10.

While Ohio has roughly twice the population of Maryland, that doesn’t cover the fact it’s creating three times the number of jobs as Maryland is – not to mention Maryland has the advantage of nearby Washington, D.C. Like certain portions of Maryland off the I-95 corridor, Ohio has to work to use its own assets and not sponge off the government.

Change Maryland also took potshots at O’Malley’s record here at home, creating a “top 10” list of O’Malley’s economic fallacies. I could go through that as well but, to be quite honest, in that battle of wits the Governor is coming up far short like that hapless mouse in the corner. I do have to quote Change Maryland head Larry Hogan’s reaction to MOM’s speech before the national Democrats:

Governor O’Malley talks a lot about ‘moving forward’ but here in Maryland his policies have slammed us into reverse and have us stuck in a ditch.

(snip)

Under Martin O’Malley, Maryland lags behind our region in attracting jobs, businesses and those who pay taxes. Make no mistake, modern investments in a modern economy is just code language for more tax-and-spend governing like we have had here in Maryland.

Not to be outdone, 2014 candidate David Craig felt compelled to criticize his would-be predecessor’s DNC performance as well:

This past Sunday, Governor Martin O’Malley, in a brief moment of candor, set aside his usual smoke and mirrors to admit that we are not better off today then we were four years ago. In a statement, which he immediately attempted to spin and retract, Governor O’Malley admitted what the people of Maryland have known as fact for years: both President Obama and Governor O’Malley have failed to curb record unemployment and revive a depressed economy. Most importantly, we know that we cannot survive 4 more years of these failed policies, which have led us down a path of endless tax hikes, ever-increasing deficits, and countless unfunded mandates.

After realizing his political mistake, Governor O’Malley proved once again that he is out of touch with the average Marylander. Governor O’Malley went on to say “…but that’s not the question of this election.”

(snip)

O’Malley, a frequent surrogate for President Obama, said Tuesday evening that the President’s policies “have moved America forward.” Can Marylanders honestly trust the Governor’s opinion of the past four years, after he raised taxes on the middle class and shifted millions of dollars in unfunded mandates to local government? The reality is Maryland has suffered a double dose of failed policies under the leadership of Governor O’Malley and President Obama.

Craig is definitely in a position to know about those unfunded mandates as a County Executive.

But more importantly, the economic disaster of the last four-plus years IS the question of this election. We have had three “recovery summers” without recovery, “shovel-ready jobs” which neither needed a shovel nor were ready – because they were never created – and, despite the fact it was “all about that three-letter word: J-O-B-S,” it seems it was really all about making as many people as possible dependent on a government check.

Fellow gubernatorial hopeful Blaine Young was more succinct (and humorous):

Martin O’Malley traveled to North Carolina to ‘tell the Barack Obama story’. Naturally Governor O’Malley wouldn’t want to tell the Maryland story because as Governor, he dumped $2.4 billion in tax increases on the residents of Maryland.

With a record like that I’d want to run away and not tell the Martin O’Malley story too.

Maryland is facing unprecedented challenges, from budget issues, to unfunded pension liabilities, to increased mandates on local governments and increased regulations on businesses, and Martin O’Malley is acting like an absentee landlord – draining Maryland taxpayer resources while in North Carolina focused on his own political gains.

It’s interesting to note that O’Malley has addressed pretty much everyone else in the country except for Marylanders. I’m not interested in seeing him on the television daily from a different location in the state, but once in awhile would be nice. I’m sure Mrs. O’Malley would like to see him home on occasion too.

I’m not sure where this came from, but I’m in possession of a series of talking points presumably put out by the O’Malley administration. The very first one states “Maryland has recovered over two-thirds of the jobs lost in the Bush recession – the 11th fastest rate in the nation.” Must be nice having a thriving Washington, D.C. next door.

But read that sentence again. We have been out of the recession since sometime in 2009, but we’ve only made up 2/3 of the ground in three years (after a recession which lasted less than two years, and actually began once Democrats took over Congress.) Obviously I have no context as to which states are ahead of or behind us, but that’s not something really worth bragging about.

These talking points also claim that Maryland has the third-lowest state and local tax burden as a percentage of income and the ninth lowest state and local taxes in the country. But there’s no need to keep shooting for number one! Nor does this distinguish between fees and taxes, even though we all know “a fee is a tax.” For example, does the $60 a year “flush tax” get included in that tax burden study?

Even Dan Bongino got into the act, neatly tying his opponent Ben Cardin into O’Malley’s statement:

As Maryland continues to hemorrhage businesses and jobs, Governor Martin O’Malley finally admits, on behalf of the administration, that we are not collectively better off than we were four years ago.

Senator Ben Cardin’s blind support of the current administration’s economic policies has severely damaged our nation’s economic well-being and, as a result, too many Marylanders are struggling to survive in this brutal economic condition. Mr. Cardin’s support of the Obama administration’s — and that of the Annapolis machine’s — irresponsible fiscal policies have made it extremely difficult for businesses to thrive in our state.

And if businesses don’t thrive, jobs aren’t created, and economic prosperity is impossible to come by. Seems like a logical progression to me.

Martin O’Malley actually told the truth for once, but you’ll notice he spun away from his statement just as fast as his little words would carry him.

Why add to the debt?

Obviously this post I cite is an oversimplification of the educational approach needed for many children, but I thought it was appropriate to point this out given the fact a small group of parents – backed by an all-powerful school board and sympathetic County Executive and newspaper – are putting big-time pressure on our County Council to approve the debt necessary to build a new middle school.

But Richard F. Miniter, a writer posting on the American Thinker website, makes the case that education can be as simple as applying a little discipline and effort, given the vast library now available to anyone who has an e-reader and cares enough about their child to make sure they learn. And there is a time savings, as Miniter writes:

It also sums down to a little block of time because without having to get ready for the school bus; the bus ride; dispersing to classroom; disciplinary issues in classrooms; having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom; noisy, chaotic hallways scenes every fifty minutes; noisy, chaotic lunch periods; announcements; fire drills; lectures about bullying, respecting alternative lifestyles, or strangers; then preparing for the bus ride home, followed by homework, one can do a better job with a child in two hours than a traditional school classroom setting can in eight.

Now extrapolate that to the building itself. If one can learn in the small space of time allotted to learning at home, it can also be assumed that learning can be achieved in a regular school building, regardless of the age.

Continue reading “Why add to the debt?”

Joe the Congressman?

Having lived in the Congressional district in question for a long time, I think this is quite funny.

First of all, the Republicans who are running Ohio’s redistricting process played quite the nasty trick by lumping two longtime liberals in Congress into the same Congressional district – Ohio’s Ninth District, which used to be primarily a Toledo-based district represented by Marcy Kaptur since 1983, now snakes along the Lake Erie shoreline toward Cleveland and has since the 2000 redistricting. But the newest Republican lines have now expanded the district far enough eastward to take in the residence of one Dennis Kucinich.

Continue reading “Joe the Congressman?”

A chance of improvement

Obviously the political landscape is much different here than it is in my native state of Ohio, but there are times I still get missives from the Buckeye State because I’m still on a number of mailing lists.

One such case was today, and although I deleted the actual message the gist of it was a local chief of police calling out the opponents of Issue 2 – a measure that would roll back gains made against the overly powerful unions in the state – for misleading the public into thinking they’d be less safe if it passed. On the contrary, passage of Issue 2 would allow him more funding for hiring police officers since his other overhead costs would be reduced.

Continue reading “A chance of improvement”

Is Ohio’s recovery on the line?

It’s been seven years since I left the state of my birth, and it doesn’t seem like politics has changed all that much.

Even the ray of hope provided when a solid conservative governor was elected may be snuffed out next week if voters in the Buckeye State are fooled into voting against Issue 2. A no vote would wipe out a series of common-sense measures designed to hold the power of the state’s labor unions in check along with making them contribute a little more to their benefit package (but still less than the average private-sector worker does.)

It’s telling that opponents of the measure, essentially Big Labor and its allies, are outspending those who want a yes vote by a significant margin. The unions didn’t want Governor John Kasich to be elected anyway, as one of his first priorities was to whip them into line. If they can’t beat him until 2014, they can do their level best to thwart his efforts. It’s nothing new from a state which is heavily unionized along the Ohio Turnpike corridor from Toledo through Lorain and Cleveland to Youngstown. The rest of the state is relatively conservative.

I’m hoping against hope that the smart voters aren’t fooled by the lies and obfuscation of Big Labor’s campaign and hand them a stinging rebuke. If they don’t, you can well see why I left the state – not that Maryland is a whole lot better, but the weather and vibe is what keeps me here. It would be nice to have a governor with the cajones to take on Big Labor, so let’s hope he’s rewarded next week.

‘More,’ Fedzilla screamed, ‘more!!’

I thought I could let this go, but then this Washington Times story by Stephan Dinan begged to differ.

Now I realize that the situation over the last few months was akin to walking a tightrope, but to rack up a record $239 billion in debt in ONE DAY – almost 60% of the wiggle room gained by the Republican sellout – simply boggles the mind. Notice that the previous record deficit day came in 2009, after Barack Obama took office. So don’t blame it on Bush.

In fact, consider that in one day our deficit exceeded that of the entire final Bush budget submitted with a Republican Congress (fiscal year 2007) – $239 billion beats $161 billion in any sort of math, fuzzy or not.

And the public is skeptical too. Today a Rasmussen Poll was released and it showed just 22% of the public approved of the budget deal. Of course Republicans are dead-set against it (by about a 4-to-1 margin) but the poll also showed unaffiliated voters in with the same feelings toward the agreement. Only Democrats had a more favorable impression, with 34% favoring the package with 40% against.

The reason the public doesn’t like the agreement? They don’t trust Washington to cut spending.

Another interesting facet of Rasmussen’s summary is that, despite the frenetic coverage by the media, people had expected the outcome. Perhaps it’s a natural cynicism Americans have with their government. “You can’t fight City Hall,” they often say.

While the TEA Party has made great strides in fighting the excesses of government, its biggest problem is that we only control a small portion of government. Look at the strides certain states like Wisconsin and Ohio have made in curbing their governments – they managed to elect enough conservative legislators in both their legislative bodies to complement the reformist ideas of the governors elected – Scott Walker and John Kasich, respectively.

Both Walker and Kasich also have to overcome continued threats to their reform packages as several GOP state senators are subject to recall elections this month in Wisconsin and Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 – an act which severely curbed union influence in Ohio – goes before Buckeye State voters this fall. Don’t be surprised if unions aren’t looking to dump tens of millions into the campaign to overturn SB5.

So the TEA Party fight may be over for the time being in Washington, and those of us skeptical that Fedzilla could curb its spending appetite may be vindicated based on the one-day deficit record. But we have a lot of state capitals where the fight needs to be renewed.

Come this fall, the scene in Annapolis may rival the one back in March, but contenders will on the opposite sides. I’d love to see 10,000 TEA Party members outnumber 50 union thugs in demanding fiscal responsibility.

A Wicomico County school board proposal

This is something for you to mull over, based on the promise I made on Wednesday’s post about the County Council meeting the previous night. This also extends a call for the elected school board I made in March of last year – unfortunately, the previous County Council didn’t act on that measure in time for November’s election.

As I understand it, the process can be completed as follows:

County Council votes to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot at the next General Election. (This would be in 2012.)
Assuming the referendum is passed by voters, legislation to allow the county to make the switch is passed by the Maryland General Assembly.
The first elected school board members are selected at the next General Election in 2014.

I believe we could skip step one if our General Assembly delegation got the proper legislation passed, but it’s my understanding that Norm Conway wouldn’t move it without a referendum. (If I am mistaken, be patient and I’ll get to comments when I have a chance.) The other method to achieve step one would be via a petition to get a referendum on the ballot, which I have been told was tried in 2001.

But the devil is in the details, and it seems that County Council would like to have all of the parameters ironed out before passing along a proposal to voters. (Unfortunately, that may make it too complex and doom it to failure – I’d rather just have the concept presented first.) In that case, here are a few humble suggestions I’d like to make as a framework for an elected board. Obviously they would have all the responsibilities and duties that the current appointed board has.

The Board should be a seven-member body (as it is now), with one representative from each County Council district (using the exact districts) and two at-large members. I think this addresses, at least in part, one concern of the NAACP. District representatives must be a resident of that district.
Each member would serve a four-year term (with an exception as noted below). For any member, there would be a limit of three terms of service, whether consecutive or not. Current appointed members would be allowed to serve the full three terms if they choose to stand for election.
Beginning with the 2014 election, members elected from districts would serve a four-year term and stand for re-election in 2018. The at-large representatives would serve a single two-year term, standing for election in 2016 before commencing on a four-year cycle. This way every two years the entire county votes on at least one school board member, whether representing their district or the county at-large.
School board elections will be non-partisan, with no party identification on the ballot. Because of this, there would be no primary and the election winner would be determined by whomever has the most votes of all candidates, whether by majority or plurality. (This has its drawbacks, but also gives a so-called disenfranchised minority a better shot at winning.)
In case there is a vacancy mid-term for any cause, it would be up to the County Council to vet and select a replacement to fill out the term within 60 days of the vacancy.
State campaign finance rules in effect for elected school board officeseekers would apply.

There’s probably other language I need to make this a more complete proposal, but I think you get the idea.

I know the naysayers would tell me that the school board would be too politicized if elected, with one making the point that many of the nation’s worst school districts are saddled by elected boards. But who’s fault is that? And would it truly make any difference if the boards in these places were appointed by the same inept government that can’t run these cities properly?

What I know is that, in the situation we have currently, a governor we did not vote for makes the selections based on the recommendations of the appropriate partisan Central Committee – in many cases, our first choices have been denied for a number of reasons, even by Governor Ehrlich. (He’s the last governor we in Wicomico County actually voted in favor of; to find the previous example you’d have to go back to William Donald Schaefer in 1986.) To me, a person who came of age in a state where local districts are run by elected school boards – for better or worse, Ohioans in their hundreds of local school districts can exercise this accountability – it makes little sense. (Ohioans also get to vote on local operating and bond tax levies, which is a definite double-edged sword.)

I don’t advocate going quite that far here in Maryland, but I think we should join the vast majority of other counties in the state by letting the voters decide their school board.

Just so you know, my internet access will be limited over the next couple days so comment moderation will be spotty.