The Baltimore Sun reports wailing and gnashing of teeth in Maryland.
People are mad as hell about the tax increase, The Sun reports. I don’t doubt it. Especially in Baltimore County, even the drinking water seems poisoned against government and taxes. Except for Districts 10 and 11, Baltimore County may join the long list of Maryland’s red counties.
Smokers are bitter all over Maryland. Sure, tax the poorest and the most addicted! Add a dollar-a-pack tax on top of the daily cost-of-living for the indebted working class and the suffering poor. Raising the sales tax one cent was regressive enough, but probably necessary. Doubling the cigarette tax was a kick in the teeth to the poor. Good timing, just as a wave of foreclosures is sweeping Maryland.
The cigarette tax was a well-intentioned idea promoted by a Democratic Party elite that is out of touch with the working class and the poor.
Gov. Martin O’Malley tried to lead the way with a fair and responsible tax package, and he is reaping the blame.
The fractured General Assembly was cowed by the wealthy. Martin O’Malley’s progressive tax proposal was scorned. Republicans boycotted everything. Democratic Sen. James Brochin all but switched parties, live on WBAL. Democrats caved in and passed a regressive tax package. Let the middle-class and the poor pay. Don’t risk the wrath of the rich and the special interests. Don’t discourage them from investing their money and financing your campaigns.
Is Maryland’s legislative branch, with its roots in Colonial times, an effective arm of democracy in this new century? The General Assembly looks dysfunctional, and along with it my Democratic Party.
The Maryland legislature is an assemblage of mostly unknown and invisible part-timers. I suspect that some senators and delegates like to go to Annapolis every winter because their spouses won’t let them stay up that late, or drink that much, at home.
To be fair, most legislators are hard-working and informed. Some are experts in their legislative specialties. But no one is accountable. The power and the will to act are fractured. Two bodies, the Senate and the House of Delegates, fight to a draw. Committees and subcommittees are necessary, but often not responsive to the will of the majority. Bills are blocked by a single vote in committee. Bills are stalled by filibuster or threat of filibuster on the Senate floor. The speaker of the House and the president of the Senate, often influential and even powerful in the past, are reduced to trying to herd cats.
The Democratic Party taxes and alienates its core constituents in order to protect the Republican rich and corporations. The hottest idea among Democrats in the General Assembly right now is to repeal the extension of the sales tax to computer services. It’s a tax that would be paid mostly by thriving service and high-tech businesses.
A better idea would be to keep the computer tax and extend the sales tax to include other services used mostly by more affluent consumers and businesses. That would enable lawmakers to accept Martin O’Malley’s proposal to freeze state college tuition for another year. Children of the wealthy go to private colleges. They don’t care about Maryland college costs. Tuition went up, up, up during the recent unpleasant Republican administration. The middle class and the poor need Maryland’s public colleges and universities. Keeping the freeze on college tuition should be a no-brainer for Democrats.
If Democratic legislators repeal the computer tax, they had better be prepared to also repeal the cigarette tax hike. That, of course, is just my opinion. – Bernie Hayden
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