Posted by
Andrews on Friday, May 09, 2008 6:32:32 PM
I am a bit puzzled by the Maryland legislature.
During the entire Ehrlich administration, the Republican governor suggested placing slot machines at horse racing tracks. However, we heard from the legislature over and over that gambling was immoral and would never be allowed. This ignored the fact that our state sponsors two lotteries a day, as well as having state sanctioned Keno games at bars and convenience stores. Not to mention that the horse tracks where the slots would be located already had a bit of gambling. (What did they think all those windows and little slips of paper are for?)
Now, we have a Democrat governor who is pushing for slot machines, and has even mentioned legalizing other forms of gambling, and the legislature has decided that there is no ethical problem at all. Apparently they were in error when they opposed gambling before, and on well reasoned consideration decided that they should correct their earlier error.
Either that, or they were simply obstructing a Republican governor for no good reason.
Actually, this would not be the first time. Maryland has done a lot of creative legislation. During the reign of our former Demcorat governor they "deregulated" electricity. Well, except that they gave a ten year subsidy to BGE that supplied power to all the Democrat rich central parts of the state, in exchange for BGE not raising rates. So, for ten years the center of the state paid below market prices, which also prevented any real competition, as the subsidized BGE rates meant it could undercut any potential competitor. Ten years later, prices reverted to market levels, a 72% jump, and who got the blame? The then current Republican governor and "deregulation", despite the fact that the whole problem was that there was NO real deregulation.
And when that Republican governor managed to make a deal with BGE to phase in the increases more slowly and creates some sort of financing scheme for consumers to defer the rate hikes, the legislature not only shot it down, but sued to have the governor's public service commission replaced with a commission of their choosing. Why? They claimed his deal was not good enough, but the one they forced on BGE seemed pretty much the same. It seems that their real goal in the whole affair was not so much to get a good deal, or even to to wrest control of an executive committee from a detested Republican governor, but simply to try to embarrass the first Republican to hold statewide office in Maryland in two and a half decades.
And, saddest of all, the media reported all of this as if the Democrats' claims were true. Not one of the local stations bothered to ask about the BGE subsidies, the fact that the law had been changed ten years before, that the final agreement was not substantially different from the "unacceptable" one the governor made, nothing. They just rubber stamped the Democrat spin. Likewise, now they are not even mentioning that the legislature has completely reversed their position in four years. And it is not as if new blood has entered the legislature. Maryland seats are for life. These are the same people who swore Maryland would never have slots because gambling was unethical.
And yet people ask me how I can say
the media is biased? I wonder how anyone can claim otherwise.