Martin O'Malley - Let's Raise the Sales Tax AGAIN!!!

Martin O'Malley. What a guy. There's not a tax hike he doesn't like. Alcohol tax. Sales tax. Another sales tax. Thumb tacks.

It's really frustrating to hear him talk lately. WBAL radio keeps playing a clip of him saying to the effect that we really don't have any other choice but to raise taxes because we've already cut over $6 Billion from the budget over the last few years and you get what you pay for. I wish the tax payers of Maryland got what they paid for.

The truth is, Martin O'Malley has NOT cut the budget by $6 billion. At least he hasn't cut the budget with regard to the amount of money the state spent the previous years with the exceptin of a $200 million cut between 2010 and 2011. But we're talking billions of dollars here, so millions in nearly insignificant. Here is a list of the total state spending (as reported on Red Maryland) on O'Malley's watch.

2008: 29.4 billion

2009: 30.7 billion

2010: 32.2 billion

2011. 32.0 billion

2012: 34.2 billion

I don't see any $6 billion decreases here. So where is this phantom $6 billion coming from? I suspect that every year Governor Martin "Leapin' Liar" O'Malley came up with a wish-list of the billions of dollars that he wants to spend, then cuts his own list and calls that 'cutting the budget'. "I want to spend $45 billion this year, but I'll reduce what I want to spend to $35 billion. Now I can say that I cut the budget by $9 billion!!!" Does that sound like his kind of crap?

Now O'Malley is running our of revenue to spend on his pet projects, so he wants to increase the state sales tax for the second time during his tenure as governor. I don't think any sitting governor of Maryland has ever raised the sales tax twice. What a wonderful dubious honor, Guv'nah!

O'Malley defends his massive tax increase proposals by saying that Maryland has the 40th lowest state sales tax in the Union. However, of those states with higher sales taxes, Washington, Nevada, Wyoming, South Dakota, Texas, Alaska, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Florida have no state income tax.

Additionally, according to the Tax Foundation, Marylanders are already burdened with one of the highest overall tax rates in the country, surpassed only by New Jersey (11.8%), New York (11.7%), and Connecticut (11.1%).

Now comes the best part. Martin O'Malley will spin his latest massive tax increase on the struggling middle class and poor working people of Maryland by saying it's "a penny increase". I had an long-standing battle with the liberal pundits on Wikipedia during the last state sales tax increase. I would write, "Anne Kaiser voted to increase the sales tax by 20%". It would then be changed to "Anne Kaiser voted to increase the sales tax by 1 penny." Technically, my statement is more correct. To make the second statement correct, you would need to add "for each dollar spent".

Now Martin O'Malley wants to "technically" raise the state sales tax by another 16.7%. The two sales tax increases will amount to a 40% increase in the sales tax since he's been governor. Liberal cannot argue with the math. But as they say, don't let the facts get in the way of good tax increase.

New Maryland Law - Co-ed Showers

Maryland's hard-left wing liberal extremists who dominate both the State Senate and State House are hard at work wasting our money and time again. No, they're not working on ways to stimulate the economy, or help people get jobs. Nope. Health care? Nada. Solving Maryland's inadequate transportation problems? Nein. Instead they're busy pushing some really loony ideas. Here's one that was passed along to me in Delegate Susan Kreb's newsletter:

HB 474 and SB 566 - The Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity - Antidiscrimination Bill.

This bill will broadly define the protection awarded to people suffering from gender identity problems and casual cross-dressers. This means that men who dress as the opposite sex will be allowed (by law) to shower and undress in women's locker rooms.

How does this law protect women and children from sexual predators who want to take advantage of the law? It DOESN'T!!!!

Additionally, there will be no exceptions for dating services (if someone wants to pose as a woman and date men, the man on the other end has no right to know that the other person is a dude). Schools and daycares will not be exempt. These facilities for children must allow for gender benders to use the gender-specific bathroom and changing rooms of their choice. Finally, this bill also does not allow for exceptions for establishments for orthodox Jews, Muslim, or Christians.

Who are the nuts that support this bill?

Joseline Pena-Melnyk, Saquib Ali, Curt Anderson, Charles E. Barkley, Ben Barnes, Kumar (pass me another drink) Barve, Pamela Beidle, Joanne C. Benson, Elizabeth Bobo (Howard County), Talmadge Branch, Alfred C. Carr, Jill Carter, Virginia Clagett, Frank Conaway, Anne Marie Doory, Kathleen Dumais, Brian Feldman, William Frick, Barbara Frush, Tawanna Gaines, James Gilchrest, Cheryl Glenn, Ana Sol Gutierrez, Guy Guzzone (Howard County), Peter Hammen, Hattie Harrison, Anne Healey, Sue Hecht, Sheila Hixson, Marvin Holmes, James Hubbard, Tom Hucker, Jolene Ivey, Adrienne Jones, Anne Kaiser, Ruth Kirk, Carolyn Krysiak, Stephen Lafferty, Susan Lee, Mary Ann Love (Anne Arundel), Roger Manno, Brian McHale, Maggie McIntosh, Heather Mizeur, Karen Montgomery, Shirley Nathan-Pulliam, Doyle Niemann, Nathaniel T. Oaks, Victor Ramirez, Kirill Reznik, Craig Rice, Daniel Riley, Barbara Robinson, Samuel Rosenburg, Justin Ross, Todd Schuler (Baltimore County), Melvin Stukes, Shawn Tarrant, Frank Turner, Veronica Turner, Kris Valderrama, Joseph Vallario, Michael Vaughn, Jeff Waldstreicher, Jewell Jay Walker.

Not surprising is that most of these hard-left wingers are from Baltimore City, Prince George's County, or Montgomery County. And the openly homosexual delegates, obviously, support it.

However, there were a couple delegates from Anne Arundel County, one from Frederick County, and a couple from Howard County that also supported it. Fortunately for Michael Busch, he kept his name off of this toxic bill.

The Senate version of the same bill was sponsored by the following state senators:

Richard Madalone, Joan Carter Conway, Jennie Forehand, Rob Garagiola, Lisa Gladden, Harrington, Verna Jones, Nancy King, Mike Lenett, Nathaniel McFadden, Paul Pinsky, Catherine Pugh, Jamie Raskin, and Jim Rosapepe.

Again - no surprises in the sponsors. Did you see all of the Republicans who sponsored this ridiculous bill? That's right. None.

Contact your state legislators and tell them that you do not want to give another tool to sexual predators.

Do it now!

DUI License Plates

You can tell that the Maryland General Assembly is in session. You can hear the laughter 50 miles away.

As reported on Channel 11 this morning in their usual absurd question, the Maryland General Assembly is going to consider legislation that would require repeat offenders to have a DUI license plate. Everyone but lawmakers knows that laws do not prevent people from doing things. If that was the case, no one would speed or have oral sex or take lions into movie theaters, and we know that's not the case.

Obvious problems with that law are that multiple people can use a vehicle. I drive my wife's van, she's drives my truck. When I started driving, I drove my parent's car. Who's the drunk driver?

Let's put this into perspective, let's assume Maryland Delegate Kumar Barve gets arrested for drunk driving 2 more times (he's already been arrested once). He would then be required to have this new DUI license plate. Is that fair to Mrs. Barve to have to drive his car with the DUI plates? Everyone would think that she's the drunk driver and not our elected state delegate from Montgomery County.

Another point that I read is that if we start there, we are just going to start adding special license plates for other various offenses. Image if we add sex-offenders, which means State Delegate Robert McKee in Washington County would be required to have this plate. Or Democratic Senator candidate David Dickerson who was arrested for raping a 19-year old. What about sodomy? That would land homosexual state delegate Anne Kaiser with her own sodomist license plate.

As you can see, this proposal is clearly a bad idea. If legislators want to do something serious about drunk driving, let's start convicting them and putting them in jail. If you spent several months in jail for drunk driving, I'm sure you'd be less inclined to do it again.

Good News Everybody!

The doctor called and I don't have mono, though I may be in bed with one of her cousins, which outside of sicknesses is one of my favorite situations.

So I read another 50-75 pages of Living Biblically. This book is fantastic. I really enjoy this dude's sense of humor. I highly recommend it. Hopefully I can finish it by the end of the month. Now that I'm back at work, my reading will subside to about 15-20 pages per night.

I slept a lot again yesterday, which is what I hear you should do when your sick. I also continued to watch lots of movies. I watched Fargo. Someone needs to help me with that one. Why was Jerry Lundegaard trying to get the money in the first place? It that even significant? Overall just a goofy movie. I also watched the Princess Bride. My friends who grew up in the 80's say this is one of their all-time favorites. Perhaps I should get some new friends. It was okay, but mostly hokey. Vizzini was funny. And everyone loves Andre the Giant.

I also watched I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. It was very funny for the first hour. The second hour fell into that "we need to tie this together and finish the movie" drama.

I also filled my day on Wikipedia. I decided to go through all of the Democrats in the Maryland General Assembly and add legislative notes to their bios indicating which ones voted in favor of raising the sales tax by 20% and which ones voted in favor of allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition. Apparently Delegate Anne Kaiser didn't take to it too well. I assume it was her changing the bio because the changes made were inconsistent to wikipedian's changes. Anyway, my changes were undone, but because it's Wikipedia, I get notification of changes and I went back and re-added it. Ha!

Anyway, I'm back at work today. Boo...