Publication Date: Wednesday, February 08, 2012

We’ve heard a lot about taxes this legislative session. Governor O’Malley has suggested hiking the gas tax and cigar tax, imposing an app tax, and raising income taxes on people making over $100,000. If that wasn’t enough, there may be one more tax coming from our legislators – a bag tax.

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Publication Date: Tuesday, February 07, 2012

You would be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees with the common wisdom that progressive taxation is the way to go. I guess we just consider it to be the fairest way to evenly distribute the necessary evil that is taxation. After all: why should someone below the poverty line pay the same taxes as someone above it? Obviously, that money means a lot more to the poor person than it does to the rich person.

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Publication Date: Monday, February 06, 2012

With the release of Governor O’Malley’s budget proposal, Maryland taxpayers had better grab tight hold of their wallets. As the Washington Post puts it, “his ambition for a second major package of tax increases since 2007 risks reinforcing a tax-and-spend stereotype of the governor.” There’s no risk there – the stereotype of Governor O’Malley as a tax-and-spend governor is true. During his tenure, both spending from the General Fund (the money paid by Marylanders in taxes) and total spending (including taxes, fees, federal funds, and other revenue sources) has increased.  

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Publication Date: Friday, February 03, 2012

It’s not often that I praise Sen. Barbara Mikulski (although anyone her height who tries to fight off a mugger can’t be all that bad),  but today I’ll give her some not-overly-enthusiastic praise for her efforts to speed up the drug approval process of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While Mikulski deserves to be lauded for recognizing the problem, there are better ways to fix the FDA than her solution -- throwing more money at it.

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Publication Date: Thursday, February 02, 2012

Inspiration for this morning’s blog post comes from the “Myth vs. Fact on the Gas Tax Increase” posting that we released earlier this week. If you haven’t seen it yet, please take a minute or two and go check it out. It includes some surprising statistics, my “favorite” being that “in the past three years, Maryland has diverted $1 billion from the Transportation Trust Fund to pay for other projects.” Doesn’t sound like a very trustworthy fund if you ask me!  

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