The People’s Republic of Maryland is about as left as they come. The state has so many Democrats in the largest, most heavily populated subdivisions that all the others combined cannot overcome the deficit. This means a lot of Democrats win elections and the same ones win over and over and…
The previous governor of the state was a Republican, the first one in about 40 years. He assumed office with a deficit and left with an excess. He did some things I did not like but was moderately conservative which in this state is way right.
When Democrat Martin O’Malley defeated Republican Robert Ehrlich in 2006 the surplus disappeared not long after O’Malley took office. He had to pay his special interest buddies off and make good on the promises to people who got him elected. It was not long before a special session of the legislature was called in order to discuss the budget problems. We all knew that meant a tax increase.
In that session the Democrats raised the state sales tax 20% (from 5 to 6%) and they raised the income tax on the “rich.” Up until that time the rate in Maryland was the same for everyone but the Democrats decided that the rich needed to pay more to redistribute the wealth to others. Many of us warned that the wealthy would pick up and move or would find ways to reduce their taxable income. No, they would grin and bear it, or so said the Baltimore Sun.
The Wall Street Journal has an article that discusses the tax increases and how Maryland has one third fewer millionaires than it had last year. That’s right, one third of the millionaires are no longer around. Some of this is because of the economy but many of them just packed up and moved on.
One year later, nobody’s grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller’s office concedes is a “substantial decline.” On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year — even at higher rates.
O’Malley and his Democratic buddies could not get spending under control. Well, the reality is, they did not want to. They continue to pass unfunded mandates and though the law requires a balanced budget they can’t seem to manage that. The solution was simple for them. Being the good Democrats they are, they raised taxes on the rich. Some of the rich voted with their feet and now the state is taking in less money than it anticipated so the not so rich are going to end up footing the bill.
One other issue along these lines is the slot machine fiasco. Ehrlich tried to get slots through legislative action and the Democrats shot him down because “that is no way to balance a budget.” O’Malley, who was vehemently opposed to slots, was elected and all of the sudden slots are a good idea to raise money. They put it on the ballot as a referendum which means it becomes part of the state Constitution. It is never a good idea to put something like this in the Constitution. It passed and now they are stuck with the rules which can only be changed with another referendum. If they had legislated it they could have changed it with the legislative process.
Now we have slots that can’t be put into place because the rules are all screwed up. We have gone 7 years since Ehrlich introduced them which means if they had enacted the slots then they would be in place and generating revenue.
Maryland can’t get its act together because it is run by liberal Democrats and, like nearly every state run by Democrats, it is run poorly and in the red.
The people of Maryland need to wake up and start voting out all the people who keep making the messes. Einstein once said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result was the definition of insanity.
The people of Maryland are insane.
Cross posted at Grizzly Groundswell
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