New Top 10 List

I finally decided to update my Top 10 list on the side.

I had several comments about the previous Top 10 List - 10 Maryland politicians that needed to be voted out of office. My favorite one was the comment about how my blog is full of hate and the person was going to vote for each and every one of the people I had listed. Idiot. Not all of them are in the same district. No one can possibly vote for all of them. Unless of course, the Maryland General Assembly decides to allow early voting and the flexibility to vote anyway, which will allow people to vote early and vote often.

My new top 10 list is the 10 best Maryland Republicans of all time.

1) Helen Bentley - Congresswoman Bentley basically saved the Port of Baltimore and thousands of longshoreman jobs in the city in addition to related jobs around the state. Her activity with the port was so successful that it was eventually renamed the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore.

2) Theodore McKeldin - he was the last Republican Mayor of Baltimore (1963 - 1967). The city named the water fountains at the Inner Harbor named in his honor. This is the same water fountain where you can watch homeless people bathe during the day. McKeldin oversaw the construction of Friendship Airport, now called Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. McKeldin then defeated William Preston Lane Jr for Governor (who had the Bay Bridge named after him) and pushed for state highways such as the Baltimore Beltway, the Washington Beltway, and Route 50. He returned to being the Mayor of Baltimore and began the focus of urban renewal and a plan to create the Baltimore Inner Harbor.

3) Marjorie Holt - served in Congress from 1973 until 1987 and was the first Maryland Republican woman to serve in Congress. In 1975 she refused to sign a Congressional Declaration of Interdependence that would have given up national sovereignty and promoted a new world unity and subjected Americans to International law and redistributed American wealth around the world. She was eventually nominated by President Reagan to serve on the General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament.

4) Connie Morella - she was first elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1978 and served until 1987 when she was elected to Congress to serve Maryland's 8th district, much of which covered heavily liberal Montgomery County. Another moderate, Morella opposed the party's stance on abortion, gun control, gay rights, and the environment. Mike Miller, Casper Taylor, and former adulterer Governor Parris Glendening redrew the Congressional map after the 2000 Census to undermine her reelection. Though illegal, their gerrymandering techniques worked and she was defeated by liberal and socialism supporter Democratic Chris Van Hollen.

5) Bob Ehrlich - the most recent Republican Governor of Maryland and the first since disgraced former Governor Spiro Agnew. Despite high approval ratings, rating higher than the current Governor, the moderate Ehrlich was defeated by an unpopular and highly hypocritical Mayor of Baltimore (who probably wants a bridge named after him) who befuddled the Governor with flowery rhetoric.

6) James Glenn Beall - a World War I veteran and one of the longest serving (if not the longest, I don't know), Beall was elected to serve in the Maryland Senate in 1930. Beall was then elected to serve in Congress from 1943 until 1953 when he was elected to the U.S. Senate and served until 1965. He was defeated by Democrat Joseph D. Tydings, who's adopted father had the I-95 bridge over the Susquehanna named after him.

7) John Marshall Butler - another World War I veteran and long-serving Republican politician, Butler was selected to serve the Baltimore City Public Service Commission from 1947 until 1949. He was then elected to the United States Senate and served from 1951 until retiring in 1963. He was preceded by Millard Tydings, the I-95 bridge guy.

8) Gilbert Gude - first elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1953, he served until 1958. He was later elected to the Maryland Senate in 1962 and served until 1967 when he was elected to the Congress where he served for another 10 years.

9) Robert Kittleman - a World War II veteran, Kittleman served in the United States Navy from 1943 until 1946. He served as the chair of the Howard County Republican Central Committee and, as a white guy, was a member of the NAACP. He was active in the Civil Rights movement. In 1983 he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates and served until 2002 when he was elected to the Maryland Senate. Unfortunately, he passed away mid-term. He was replaced by his son, Allan Kittleman and Route 32 is named in his honor.

10) Allan Kittleman - current Maryland State Senator and one of the few sensible voices in the Maryland General Assembly. Neither a conservative nut job, nor a blind liberal, Kittleman is one of the lonely dissenting voices to the radical legislation that passes through our state government, but he stands tall doing what is right.

Honorable mention - Jeannie Haddaway - once named the sexist politician in Maryland. I have no disagreement with that.

Another Tuition Freeze

So Obama is gracing our country with a big fat stimulus package, also known as the Porkulus. The intent of this stimulus package is to jump-start the economy and get people back to work.

As you can probably deduce, most of the people losing their jobs are being laid off from the private sector (for those of you in government, this means companies whose intent is to make money). What better way to stimulate the economy than to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into Federal and State pork projects? Even better - let's give a bunch of the money to the states so that they can determine how best to spend the money (within some guidelines, of course). I'm not against empowering states to use money as they see fit. People in Mississippi have needs that are different than those living in Alaska, right?

Our humble governor Martin O'Malley estimated that Maryland would get $3.9 Billion from the Obamassiah and the compassionate band of lunatics in Congress. Unfortunately, when O'Malley got the message that said, "use this money to stimulate the economy and create jobs" he misread it to say, "use this money to fund personal initiatives that will help you get reelected."

His first big initiative with all this cash will be to freeze tuition. Again. How, you ask, will artificially freezing tuition create jobs and stimulate the economy? Well, it's easy. First…..it's like…..but……uhhh.....wait. I have no flippin' idea. Perhaps if you work in a room full of magical stardust like O'Malley, your wildest dreams can come true, too. He can't be doing this for personal gain, could he? Hmmm...

Oh, but remember, he's doing this to invest in our future. We're all in this together. He had to make a lot of tough decisions (thank goodness he's there for that). This is for the children. All of the hardships that we are experiencing are Bob Ehrlich's fault. With this tuition freeze, the state can start to move forward again. If moving forward brings us closer to the edge of the cliff, so be it. If he does nothing, we risk an economic rebound that cannot be attributed to government intervention, and we can't have that!

Still Ehrlich's Fault

Nearly 2 years after he left office, former Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich is still being blamed for the state's problems by current far-left liberal Governor, Martin O'Malley.

O'Malley, who intentionally never accepts responsibilities for his administration's numerous failures, took a shot a Ehrlich when asked about the state's current $432 million budget shortfall. Economists blame the general economic slowdown across the country in addition to the 20% sales tax increase endorsed by O'Malley as the reason for the consumer spending decrease and thus, decrease in collected tax revenue.

O'Malley creatively said that he asked "the people of Maryland to play a role in the solution", which means much higher taxes, mostly at the expense of the working poor and the middle class. His phrase can be reworded, "Please take a role in solving my spending problem by allowing me to steal and waste more of your hard earned money. Oh, wait. I don't have to ask you, I'm just going to do it and pretend that we are working together to build the future. You'll believe that BS, because I'm the pretty Democrat Governor!"

He pointed out that under his tyranny, the state's budget increased by "less than 4 percent annually– less than the Spending Affordability Guidelines set by the General Assembly– compared to 22 percent in the last two years of our Republican predecessors.” However, he failed to mention that almost all of that increase in spending under Ehrlich was the result of mandatory funding requirements, such as for health insurance and the school-funding based Thornton bill, both of which were pushed through by the tax-and-spend-happy liberals in the Maryland General Assembly. Remember their slogan: "Welcome to Maryland. What's in your wallet?"

Let's continue to point out that although O'Malley criticized Ehrlich for not fully funding Thorton (Ehrlich only funded the mandatory requirements, not all of the recommended funding requirements), O'Malley himself has failed to do the same thing - much to the joy of the tax-paying citizens who are now struggling to make ends meet.

O'Malley's apathy and "pass the buck" view on responsibility is not new. We saw this early on in his administration when he shruggingly said there was nothing he could do to stop the electric rate increase, this after fighting tooth and nail claiming he was going to stop it. And to rub salt in the wound, he allowed the rates to increase several more times, thus continuing to allow the deterioration of the standard of living of almost all Marylanders. But it's okay, 'cuz it's still Ehrlich's fault.

And now O'Malley is pushing hard to get the slots referendum passed so that he'll have more money to spend. More money. Our money. To Spend. And Spend. And Spend.