O’Malley, a Democrat, says he will appoint a commission to study how the sweeping changes will affect Maryland.

The O’Malley administration estimates the federal overhaul could save Maryland about $1 billion over the next 10 years. That, O’Malley says, is because the federal plan will take care of costs from health initiatives now paid for by the state.

Now you know why the phrase “close enough for government work” exists. The Governor doesn’t really know that it’ll save Maryland any money at all. He’s just guessing because, as David Axelrod said, the utopian goodness of the bill isn’t readily apparent just by, you know, reading it (and did you get a chacne to read it? The President promised you’d have the chance.) But it’s okay, you “will understand” because he and the progressives, who are much smarter than you, will “implement” it so that its brilliance becomes instantly obvious.

Funny. I don’t recall the whole “you’ll do what smart liberals tell you to do” thing being in my Constitution. Ah well, it’s probably not all that important. They’re so incredibly smart, so how could this possibly go wrong?

Witness my home state of Maryland.

We reported in May that after passing a millionaire surtax nearly one-third of Maryland’s millionaires had gone missing, thus contributing to a decline in state revenues. The politicians in Annapolis had said they’d collect $106 million by raising its income tax rate on millionaire households to 6.25% from 4.75%. In cities like Baltimore and Bethesda, which apply add-on income taxes, the top tax rate with the surcharge now reaches as high as 9.3%—fifth highest in the nation. Liberals said this was based on incomplete data and that rich Marylanders hadn’t fled the state.

Well, the state comptroller’s office now has the final tax return data for 2008, the first year that the higher tax rates applied. The number of millionaire tax returns fell sharply to 5,529 from 7,898 in 2007, a 30% tumble. The taxes paid by rich filers fell by 22%, and instead of their payments increasing by $106 million, they fell by some $257 million…

And it gets worse. Maryland lost one in eight millionaires from 2007 to 2008 and approximately $1 billion of its net tax base because people fled Maryland to more hospitable places. Montgomery County, one of the state’s wealthiest, got clobbered. It lost over $4.5 billion dollars in taxable income between 2007 and 2008 and the number of returns over a million dollars plummeted by 27 percent.

Have the progressives running my state learned anything? Of course not. According to the WSJ, the Democrats are pushing two bills to extend the tax hikes past their 2010 expiration date. They’re getting the usual distortions from union-backed groups like Citizens for Tax Justice and Maryland Democrats still believe that this tax will raise revenue, despite direct evidence to the contrary.

No, the rich aren’t stupid, but some days I wonder about progressives.

The reason it doesn’t work is that the rich didn’t get that way by being stupid. They are pretty good at using the dastardly invention known as an “automobile”. When a bunch of Democrats concoct a scheme to take more money from them, they make use of their automobiles and find another place to live where the state government isn’t quite so grabby.

My home state is learning that lesson firsthand.

Maryland couldn’t balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O’Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were “willing and able to pay their fair share.” The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would “grin and bear it.”

One year later, nobody’s grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller’s office concedes is a “substantial decline.” On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year — even at higher rates.

Sure, the recession has put a dent in the total number of millionaires, but there is no doubt that a good number of them have simply moved to a place where they can put their money to better use than fueling the gaping maw of nanny government.

They can also see when the government is becoming openly hostile to business and wastes the money it does collect from them on frivolous real-estate purchases to please the environmental crowd while running a horse-choking deficit.

The rich have seen where Maryland is headed and they want no part of it. So they left. But don’t pity them. Pity the poor folks in my state who can’t so easily pick up and go. They’re the ones who will suffer for Governor O’Malley’s foolish liberalism.

Not that I’ll actually be there with you. See, I work for a state government that’s going to be getting a humongous chunk of your cash to cover its debts. Heck, we’re a billion dollars in a hole this year, the government is furloughing employees and looking to fire maybe 500 of them but I just got a raise!

Yep, you read that right. I got my regularly-scheduled raise this year, as did everyone else, including the people who were furloughed. I wasn’t expecting to get it. I thought it was a mistake. It wasn’t. Granted, it’s not a big raise (I’m on the bottom of the totem pole where I work) but it’s something I should never have gotten in the middle of a serious deficit problem. It makes no sense to me at all.

Of course, it also makes no sense for my government to buy up millions of dollars worth of prime real estate and spend millions on new parks. Oh, my Governor is just licking his chops at the prospect of getting some 3.7 billion dollars from American taxpayers so he can spend even more.

So, yeah, that breadline isn’t going to have very many of us state employees in it. Thanks for that.

If that makes you angry, hey, don’t blame me. Blame the Hope and Change Brigade. They’re the ones who made this all possible.

Maryland used to be in the middle of the pack of states with business-friendly environments. No more. The Tax Foundation now ranks Maryland as the sixth worst state in the nation in which to do business. Only Rhode Island, Ohio, California, New York, and New Jersey are more hostile to job- and revenue-producing enterprises.

The Governor passed the largest tax increase in the history of the state and tax revenues responded as common-sense would indicate. Revenues have tanked, big government programs have gotten more expensive, and businesses have stopped coming to Maryland.

This isn’t a shock to anyone but progressives, who continue to be surprised when their big tax, big government, business-hostile policies drive their states into financial ruin. You’d think that people who claim to be smarter than anyone else would crack open an economics book once in a while.

Oh, but he’s about to drop millions more in spending to reduce our state’s CO2 emissions by 25 percent in 12 years thus doing battle with the dread beast known as climate change. That’s supposed to magically bring in “green jobs” which will revive our moribund economy. He doesn’t say how his program will replace all the jobs he will chase out of the state with yet more big government, intrusive regulations, and higher taxes via a cap-and-trade program yet. I guess we’ll have to rely on thoe Hopenchange Fairies to come through for us. You never know. They just might show up if progressives pray hard enough.

You know, while he’s spening tons of our money on fighting mythical threats, why doesn’t he sink a couple million into a Chessie Apprehension Program? At this point, Chessie has as much solid science behind it as does global warming.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila A. Dixon was charged today in a 12-count indictment, according to the Maryland State Prosecutor’s Office’s Web site.

Dixon was charged with perjury, theft, fraudulent misappropriation and misconduct, stemming in part from gifts she received from former boyfriend and developer Ronald H. Lipscomb, who was also charged earlier this week.

Dixon, a Democrat, has been the target of a nearly three-year probe by State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh into corruption at City Hall, an investigation that has centered on allegations that Dixon has used her office to award lucrative contracts to various people including her sister, her then-boyfriend and her former campaign chairman.

Dixon, of course, says she’s not just merely innocent but most sincerely innocent.

Sure, it’s not the sexy, expletive-laden stuff of rod Blagojevich. It’s just your garden-variety normal Democratic corruption wherein a high official shovels tax money to her friends and family under the guise of “diversity”, like happens in plenty of other cities. First they buy the votes, then the feather their nests. Haven’t we seen this often enough to be a little bit sick of it?

Still, she’s headed to court, which is a good thing. Perhaps the conservatives in my state can get it together and make something of this issue in 2010. It’s high time that we had some real limited-government at work around here.

Ron has worked in the Bush administration and the American Red Cross and is now owns his own consulting business. He’s a musician, a family man, a tech geek, an Air Force veteran, and is deeply involved in his local community and his church. In short, he’s not a career politico. He’s just the kind of person who should be representing us in government, someone who can be a true citizen legislator.

If this sounds like a campaign pitch, well, it is…kind of. I’ve gotten to chat with Miller a few times on Twitter and he impresses me as the kind of guy who wants to do good by the rest of us instead of someone who craves the spotlight of political office. We need a lot more of those but it starts with the first one. Ron can be that guy if we give him a hand.

It’s painfully easy to support him right now. Just hit this link and sign up. You’ll get an occasional newsletter and other stuff from him in your e-mail box. Ron would love to see 17 new people signed up tomorrow, so help him out if you can. Maryland needs good men in our legislature and Ron Miller is a good man.

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Governors of five U.S. states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country’s 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.

I can’t speak for residents of other states but I can sure as heck speak for Maryland. Around here, we’re looking down the barrel of an almost $700 million deficit in 2009 that will come darned close to tripling to $1.8 billion in 2010. Now, if you were a Governor faced with a shortfall like that would you:

A) Cut spending as far as possible and look for ways to increase the revenue stream through?
B) Increase dozens of government programs, pray that getting slot machines will cover the shortfall, and throw a last-minute hail mary state employee furlough play to show everyone just how dire the situation is?

If you chose B), then congratulations, you could slide right into Governor Martin O’Malley’s shoes and no one would notice.

Right before Christmas, I noted how the Governor’s furlough plan is slated to save about $34 million while at the same time he’s spending over twice that to buy up some property to keep it safe from nefarious chicken farmers. This week, he upped the ante of idocy.

O’Malley distributes something called the One Marylander newsletter every week in which he brags about the good things the state government is doing for we poor peons outside of Annapolis. Here’s a chunk of the latest Proclamation from On High.

ver these past two years, even in difficult economic times, we continued to protect our shared priorities, strengthening Maryland’s middle class and expanding opportunities for more of our citizens:

* Together we made record investments in K-12 education, including in school construction to replace temporary learning shacks with modern classrooms.
* Together, we enacted what the Washington Post called the most “sweeping [reforms] in the nation” to keep Marylanders in their homes and avoid foreclosure.
* Together, we expanded access to health care to 100,000 of our neighbors who otherwise would have gone uninsured. We closed the Medicare “donut hole” so that our seniors can get access to the medications they need, and we became one of only a handful of states to assist small businesses in providing health insurance to their employees.
* Together, we made important strides toward the greener, more sustainable future all of us prefer for our State and our planet. We created the Chesapeake 2010 Trust Fund, restored our Office of Smart Growth, updated our Critical Areas laws for the first time in a quarter century, passed landmark Clean Cars legislation, and set some of the most ambitious goals in the nation to reduce energy consumption.
* Together we made important strides toward improving public safety in every region of our State – expanding DNA fingerprinting, closing the backlog of 24,000 DNA samples we inherited from our predecessors, reforming Parole and Probation to better target violent offenders, and creating regional, cross-border law enforcement partnerships to crack down on gun violence and gang activity.
* Together, we enacted the nation’s first living wage law, reformed our State’s ground rent system eliminating the creation of new ground rents.
* Together, we improved transition services and health benefits for our veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and increased the veterans scholarship fund to honor our local heroes.

This newsletter, by the way, is sent via e-mail to every state employee. So while our budget is circling the drain and employees are facing a salary cut right smack in the middle of the holidays, here’s Governor O’Malley bragging about how much money we’re spending on these weak-tea, Nanny State, money-wasting programs. Oh, but it goes on.

Over the last year we did not sit back and let our structural challenges overtake us. Instead we came together to make progress around the opportunities we had to make our State and our families stronger.

In the year ahead we will face new challenges with a struggling national economy but we will also face new opportunities – opportunities to invest in schools for the 21st century, new green technologies for a more sustainable future, improved transit options and new investments in our roads, bridges, and tunnels while creating jobs here at home.

You call them “structural challenges”. I call them “fiscal irresponsibility by a progressive throwback who doesn’t know how a balance sheet works”.

And as if his spending jamboree wasn’t enough, he’s promised even more spending next year, which he brazenly calls “opportunities”. Opportunities for whom? Governor O’Malley, the teachers’ unions, and cronies of the administration who are waiting for yet another years’ worth of handouts taken from our pockets. That’s who. There’s no opportunity for the people of Maryland to get out from under the financial hell O’Malley is raining down on us. There’s no opportunity for entrepreneurs to create wealth without the greedy, stifling hand of government sucking them dry. There’s only opportunity for Martin O’Malley and his Democrat pals to grab more and more power for themselves.

What’s most disgraceful is that he has the stones to wish us a “prosperous” New Year. I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word “prosperous”. If he did, he wouldn’t be the spend-happy, big government bungler that he is and he wouldn’t be begging Big Mommy Government to spend even more of our money to rescue him from his own selfish decisions.

(original link via Instapundit)