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The 20th Carnival of Maryland

Welcome to the November 18, 2007 edition of the Carnival of Maryland, a roundup of recent posting in blogs from and about the Free State. Some blogs referenced here are members of the Maryland Blogger Alliance, and some are not. All are invited to join, though.

LOCAL POLITICS

Despite all the coverage of home foreclosures and changes in home values, some people continue to slash away at their equity, borrowing money for sometimes lavish purposes. David Keelan connects the dots, noting the commonalities between individuals overspending by borrowing money, and the General Assembly and the governor following the same path of irresponsibility.

In light of the massive march in DC on Friday, we get an especially timely post (from ten days earlier) from Joyce Dowling, writing at PG Race Matters. There’s an awful lot of history in demographic changes in Prince George’s County. Here, Joyce gives a glimpse of how that demographic and racial evolution plays out today, with conflicts between the political leadership of the county, and the old time agricultural/ rural populations. Interesting reading.

A lot of us are sputtering in rage or just plain disbelief at the goings on at the special session of the Maryland General Assembly. Originally called to deal with a $1.5 billion deficit in the state budget, the governor and delegates and senators are introducing new spending programs that would exacerbate the budget problems. Chester Peake at Maryland Cheseapeake Blog is frustrated with pols who take the easy way out, and threatens the wrath of the voters upon them. At Annapolis Politics, Brian Gill steps from the political to the personal. As a small businessman, how much additional cost can someone be expected to absorb?

Ten questions everyone should ask their Congressional candidates are posted by Michael at Monoblogue. Read them over, and comment with your own answers. And while you’re at it, take a look at the first comment on that post. The commenter intendes to vote for the incumbent Congressmen because he “brings home the bucks to our area.” Was he just trying to prove Brian’s point, or what?

REAL LIFE

My wife gets a kick out of reading the odd classifieds in the newspaper (“Never-used engagement ring for sale. Only cost $2000 and my dignity.”) Stan at Blogger1947 gets some chuckles from the legal notices of name changes. Trevean is changing his/her name to Treashay, since he/she is “live as a female but still living as a male.” Or something like that.

I can’t get enough of the photos at the Greenbelt. After work and politics and other tooth-grinding matters, I find that the photos posted by the Ridger leave me with a most peaceful feeling of calm and appreciation for nature. Even in Bleak November, there of scenes of fragile beauty to be found. Spasiba.

OceanShaman , who is about as far east in the state as you can get, offer us the moving and cautionary tale of his personal rise and fall, and rise again. And when all else fails, there’s always football: Moving from it’s usual home in Philadelphia, the 107th Army-Navy football game is being hosted on December 1st at Baltimore’s M&T Stadium.

Thanks for stopping by. Please check out other posts on Leviathan Montgomery while you’re here, and look out for the next Carnival of Maryland on December 2nd.

Winston Smith, Check Your Messages

In the contest for the Unmitigated Chutzpah Award, labeling slots with the epithet of “tax on the poor” has to be a strong contender. Used by various politicians, including various state delegates and senators, the shameless comptroller Pierre Franchot, various religious busybodies, and the Washington Post.

First, it’s factually untrue. Allowing slot machines is not a “tax”, any more than allowing baseball games or fast-food franchises is a tax. A tax, by definition, is imposed by a governmental authority. No one is being compelled to play slots, so the “tax on the poor” label is just fraudulent.

Second, it’s factually untrue, because it is not the poor but largely the middle class who goes to racetracks or other locations to play the slot machines (as reported by Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licenses, and Regulation).

Third, it’s sneeringly condescending. The epithet implies that the poor are too stupid to know how to spend their money, and need to be guided by the wise politicians. It is condescending, and usually reflects a certain racism.

Fourth, it is maliciously deceitful. Those who are so concerned about the poor, like the Post, are also advocating the governor’s 20% increase in the sales tax – the most regressive tax on the poor possible – as well as his increased taxes on cars, rent, and other necessities. Clearly, these people don’t give a damn about the poor, but throw around this meaningless slogan. The uber-patrician Franchot is eager to shovel tax money to the owners of DC United, but that’s because he likes soccer.

Besides, not only do localities have numbers games, Vegas nights, and other kinds of gambling schemes, but the state itself provides plenty of venues for gambling, such as the lottery. Frankly, it’s much easier to go down to the corner liquor store and play the Maryland lottery, than to drive out to Western Maryland or the Eastern Shore just to get to a race track with slots.

Fifth, if you are truly concerned about the poor, then there is a simple solution: Remove the restrictions on slot machines, but don’t tax the proceeds!

Smacking the Poor Around

The 424^th (!) session of the Maryland General Assembly began this week, and the entire focus is on how to squeeze taxpayers more. There’s a $1.7 billion deficit that didn’t seem to bother anyone seven months ago, but now must be addressed.

The legislative hopper is filled with bills to raise taxes. The governor is proposing HB2 which would, among other things, jack up the sales tax by 20%, increase the types of transactions which are subject to sales and excise taxes, and raise corporate income taxes by 20%. The “Transportation Investment Act” would raise gasoline taxes by a half-cent per gallon.

What do all these have in common? They are painfully regressive, meaning that the state gains revenues off the backs of the poor. The lower your income, the worse you are hit by sales taxes. The poor are ravished more by gasoline price increases, too. But the poor are less politically powerful, and so they make an easier target for the governor and the legislative pickpockets.

Montgomery County is considered to bear a higher burden of tax increases than any other jurisdiction in the state. Although the county has about 18% of the state’s population, it is estimated that MoCo would pay about 80% of the increased taxes. Nevertheless, the county’s legislative representatives are piling on.

Montgomery Delegate Craig Rice, in the General Assembly for less than a year, is apparently learning the ropes: you can’t tax Montgomery County too much. He has proposed House bill 11, which would add taxes to forty-three services, including cell phone service, cable television, car repairs, emergency road service, haircuts, tax preparation (irony?), gyms, car washes, shoe repair, and photography.

Taxis: DC and Montgomery

Cabdrivers in Washington are trying to organize now, in protest of a coming decision that may change the required fare measurement system, from the zone maps to a metered system. Personally, I don’t have an inclination for zones or meters – or any other system. And I don’t that anyone in government should be deciding how businesses charge their customers. We don’t go around telling groceries whether they should charge for rutabagas per piece or per pound, do we? Let each company decide how it wants to charge people – and each passenger decide whether they want to use that cab or not.

But the cabbies in the District have a legitimate beef: They fear that the County may decide to impose a metered system and make other requirements, leading to a kind of bureaucratization of the industry. The cabbies enjoy their status as independent operators in the District. The Gazette reports that “(t)hey fear that meters and other regulations will put DC taxis into the hands of big business.” Another concern is that customers will be driven away by meters, since meters will increase fares, inasmuch as congestion raises fares under a metered system, but not under the zone system.

In other words, they fear ending up with a regulatory system like the mess we have in Montgomery County taxi industry:

- insufficient number of cabs (because the licenses are very restricted)

- no independent operators (four companies own all the cab licenses in MoCo)

- no chance for an individual to break in to the business and compete.

The county regulations preclude consumer sovereignty from operating in Montgomery, and the DC drivers are afraid that the DC government is heading in the same dysfunctional direction.

Taxing the Rich?

Yeah, Governor O’Malley would like you to think so. He claims that his budget will ensure that “the rich will pay more”, and that “everyone will pay their fair share.” For example, he claims that his plan will increase taxes on corporations (by eliminating the technique of “combined reporting”), and by increasing the corporate income tax by 14%.

I have to suppose that O’Malley is neither stupid nor devoid of advisors with some knowledge of economics. Even common sense tells you that firms see these taxes as a cost of doing business, and will pass along those costs to consumers to the extent possible. Economists study what’s termed the “incidence” of taxation, i.e., upon whom the costs actually fall. The degree to which those taxes can be passed along depends on the nature of the good or service being taxed, and the properties of the demand and supply in the relevant markets. But for the most part, though, we consumers can expect to pay most of the costs of these taxes.

And that’s only some of the taxes. The rest of the set of proposed tax increases are unequivocally regressive, such as the 20% increase in the sales tax, and the expanded set of goods and services that will be taxed. Other proposed increases seem specifically designed to exacerbate the high cost of housing, such as the increased property transfer tax and the titling tax.

We don’t have to give the governor political cover or buy into the myth that “the rich” or evil corporations will pay these increased taxes. When O’Malley says that, remember that we consumers will be paying the billions in higher taxes for this budget.

Property Tax Disclosure

Currently, home sellers are required to inform buyers of what is currently being paid in property taxes. That amount is not very informative to the prospective buyer, however, because the tax usually jumps after a sale. (The 10% cap on property tax increases gets lifted when the property changes hands.) So buyers who find out what sellers are currently paying, aren’t getting good information about the tax amount they would be responsible for paying.

The county council opened up discussion yesterday on Bill 24-07, Real Property - Property Tax - Disclosure. The bill would require sellers of property to inform buyers of the property tax that would need to be paid in the year of the sale

It doesn’t seem logical to demand that the sellers provide this information, since they wouldn’t know. They would have to go to the county to get that estimate, just as the buyer would. Why make the sellers intermediaries? Nor does it seem practical. What happens if the seller’s estimate is incorrect? Would the seller bear some sort of legal liability?

If it’s not logical, and not practical for sellers to be responsible for this, then the county shouldn’t try to pass the responsibility to the current homeowners. Insteady, the county should provide some mechanism for prospective buyers to easily get this information.

Most of the time on Leviathan Montgomery I’m whining about things the county is doing that they shouldn’t be doing. Today, I’m whining about them not doing what they should be doing. Just can’t satisfy some people, I guess.

Birchmere / Fillmore Update: Dueling over Dollars

Montgomery County executive Ike Leggett has a tentative agreement with Live Nation to bring a different concert hall to the Silver Spring location. That concert hall could carry the name of the legendary Fillmore arenas. Construction costs for the project are estimated at about $10 million, of which the company would pay a whopping 20%. The other $8 million would come from the county and other state taxpayers. Pretty cushy deal for Live Nation — described as “the world’s largest producer of live music” — wouldn’t you say?

Meanwhile, once the deal to bring the Birchmere to downtown Silver Spring collapsed, the University of Maryland leapt in to to the fray to bring the Birchmere to College Park. That deal was led by the University’s Vice President of Adminstrative Affairs, one Douglas Duncan. That deal also depends on getting state funding. Duncan is hoping to get the $2 million that the state had already set aside to subsidize the Birchmere in Silver Spring.

Now the current county exec and the former county exec are scrapping over that state money. Of course, there is one way to make everybody happy — just have the state subsidize both businesses! Or, as Leggett spokesman Patrick Lacefield put it, “the more music and music venues, the better.”

Or, to rephrase that realistically, “the more corporate welfare, the better.”

And now, a short blogging break until next week.

School Choice: Charter Schools in Montgomery

When it comes to schooling, one size doesn’t fit all. Charter schools are one of the easier ways to give parents some choice about their children’s education. Charter schools also provide some wiggle room from the stifling bureaucracy of the Board of Education / teacher union nexus. Charter schools have been a successful alternative to regular public schools all around the country.

A principal need for charters is to get independence from the bureaucratic and union-dominated mentality of the local school board or district. The Center for Education Reform points out that the best charter schools are in locations where there can be more than one chartering authority (e.g., at the county and state level).

But that creates a danger for the public school monopoly, which can’t tolerate the idea of someone else doing these outside of their control.

Maryland, in fact, is considered one of the worst states for charter schools. For facilitating school choice and focusing on childrens’ needs, the District’s charter law was graded “A”, one of the best in the country. Maryland got a “D”, rating as the sixth weakest charter law in the country.

Yet, despite that, there are now 32 charter schools operating in Maryland, educating nearly 6,000 students. In Baltimore City, charter schools rank among the top performing schools in the whole public school system. In Montgomery — zero. Why?

The schools bureaucracy / teacher union colossus has fought the idea of charters tooth and nail. In fact, the Board of Education has taken an explicit lobbying position against allowing other chartering authorities:

“The Montgomery County Board of Education supports local control [read, their control] of educational policy, administration, and curriculum, and opposes any legislative initiatives that have the effect of reducing local and state Board authority….”

Unable to get past the control freaks at the MoCo Board of Ed - which rejected their charter proposal twice — the parents at the Jaime Escalante Charter School tried appealing to the state. The school board rejected the application without even providing a statement of the rationale for the denial, instead referring to oral remarks that were made at a public hearing!

The result is that there are no charter schools in Montgomery County. The Board of Education is working to pursue its own interests, not the interests of children. Because of them, if you don’t have the resources to attend a private school, you don’t have any options.

Fighting Crime: Choices and Priorities

The county divides crime into two categories. Here are the statistics for 2006:

Part 1 Crimes (more serious offenses) reported were up 5.4% over the previous year, including:

15 Murders

141 Rapes

1,166 Robberies

133 Aggravated Assaults

3,804 Burglaries

16,860 Cases of Larceny

2,493 Auto Thefts.

Part 2 Crimes reported were up 6.4% over the previous year, including:

5,428 Minor Assaults

245 Cases of Arson

6,864 Cases of Vandalism

 

 

Lots of work there to keep the police department busy. So when our not-so-friendly neighborhood xenophobes at Help Save Maryland requested that the police also take training on enforcing federal immigration law, Chief Manger turned them down.

That just sounds like good, solid prioritization of police resources to me. The training would take five weeks per officer, during which time they would be diverted from the murders, rapes, robberies, and other mayhem being committed by the real criminals. The logical result would be an increase in crime. I think Chief Manger is doing the smart thing. I also think we might need a movement to Help Save Maryland from Help Save Maryland.