Gunpowder Chronicle posted on August 10, 2008 11:42 PM | Rating:
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We're moving on up! Moving on up! Here on the East Side! To a deluxe tax status in the sky! Cause we are Number Four! The Terps may not make the Final Four this year, but we did! We are in the top ten percent of the class! Aren't you excited?
Probably not, because O'Guvnah's fat Irish hand is in your pocket, squeezing your wallet for all it's worth,according to this article in the Baltimore Business Journal. According to a report by the Tax Foundation, Maryland's combined state and local tax burden now ranks us fourth in the nation-- up from number five last year.
On average, we pay 10.8% percent of our income in combined state and local taxes. New Jersey -- which ranked #1, was a full percentage point ahead of us at 11.8%, and the new "number 5" (Hawaii) was only .2% behind us.
What do we get for that? Well, we get one of the worst large-city school systems in the country, where less than 50% of African-American freshmen that enter high school will graduate (and where teachers are likely to get caught in a beatdown). We get incompetent state government leadership at the MTA, which can't seem to keep buses safe OR on the street. (Not to mention, keep the trains running on time!) We get a state police force that doesn't patrol roads except for the last four days of the month, but has time to spy on demonstrations. We get an "open space" program that spends money on indoor activities, when it is isn't spending money on corrupt land sales. And so on...
Is there any question that O'Guvnah is not just incompetent, but inept? If Republicans in this state were smart (a big "if", I know), they would hold shadow Board of Public Works meetings featuring monkeys frakking a football to show how government could be more efficient.
Let's keep one thing in mind: he cannot blame this one on Bobby Ehrlich. Governor Ehrlich left a $1 billion surplus behind when he left office. It was solely O'Guvnah's spending -- powered by a corrupt and shameful General Assembly -- that drove us to this level of taxation.