There has been a lot of foot stomping in Conservative America about John McCain's endorsement of cap-and-trade as a so-called market-based solution to restricting so-called "greenhouse gas" emissions.  But no one has really asked "Why does he back this method"?

Remember how O'Guvnah promised us in his 2006 campaign how the O'Guvnah era in Maryland Politics would usher in a brand new Public Service Commission... one not "so connected" with power utilities that they regulated?  How rate increases would be rolled back?  How electricity would be made affordable again?

Of course, the rest of Maryland now knows what Conservatives were saying all along:  O'Guvnah's gift of gab from kissing the Blarney stone was producing rhetoric his capabilities couldn't match.  (In other words, he was lying his ass off.)

And PEPCO has just given us proof.

There Heritage Foundation has a new chart up on the ridiculous stupidity that surrounds farm politics in America today.  It's stupid, because our nation's farm politics have nothing to do with saving family farms, but with providing corporate rent-seekers (like, ahem, David Letterman) with gobs of taxpayer money to subsidize incredibly profitable operations.

If you think "Big Oil" is bad, you ain't seen nothing yet.  "Big Ag" is worse.

Did you know that there are more employees in the US Department of Agriculture than there are farms in the United States of America?  How can that possibly make sense?

And the Heritage Foundation chart doesn't even take into count massive tarriffs on items like imported sugar, which act as entirely other subsidy on an incredibly non-competitive industry.  The tarriff on imported sugar is made even worse when you consider that, because of that tarriff, food companies switched to High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) over two decades ago to cut costs.  Yet another distortion on the demand curve for corn that increases the price of food worldwide.

On Friday, May 2, 2008, Eddie Hale -- robust supporter of O'Guvnah and would be land-baron of Baltimore -- spoke up at the annual 1st Mariner Stockholder's Meeting and prognosticated that the stock had reached its lowest point, and was poised for a rebound.

The stock had closed at $4.13 on Thursday, May 1st. 

The stock closed at $3.80, down 33 cents, on Friday, May 9, 2008.

Eddie certainly is no Jim Kramer, that's for sure.  If you are taking advise from him on your 401(k), I have three words for you:  Don't do it.

Bank of America, one of the largest retail banking operations in the United States of America, loves America, but seems to have a serious dislike for Americans.  Founded by Italian immigrants in San Francisco in the 1800s when "American" banks wouldn't service them, Bank of America was one of those true Horatio Alger stories.  But a recent patent filing by Bank of America has a lot of people scratching their heads.

AmericasBank Corp -- which runs Towson Community Bank and Annapolis Community Bank -- has ousted its President and CEO, Mark Anders, due to poor performance according to the Baltimore Business Journal.

Hard to believe that a small bank company would have the gumption to "do the right thing".

As many of you know, I recently started a new job at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.  As such, I am a contractual state employee and I have the opportunity to participate in certain benefit plans available to state employees.  And so this morning, I found myself in the weekly three-hour new employee orientation. 

And one thing I learned made me go "holy shit!"

Mighty George W. Bush keeps striking out on energy.  For someone who was once the owner of a Major League Baseball Team and an oilman and has an MBA, he keeps striking out on the cross between energy, the economy, and fiscal policy.

The battle now begins for the November ballot measure that would amend the Maryland constitution to allow slot machine gambling in the state of Maryland.  The idea of slots in Maryland has been a long time coming-- since at least 2002, when it was a hallmark of Bobby Ehrlich's campaign.  Ehrlich was thwarted for four consecutive years by House Speaker Mikey Busch.  Thwarted until his defeat... and a massive state deficit caused by the profligate and morally bankrupt spending habits of a General Assembly addicted to our wallets.

Mark me down as a member of the anti-slots group, but not for the reasons others oppose slots.

The International Herald Tribune has an article featuring a new product in development that would allow any citizen to make their own ethanol at home.  I don't know about all of you, but I call that a "still".  Quick, someone call Uncle Jesse!