2016 elections - because it's never too early

[garbon]

The problem with her book is the problem with most books:  it's too long.  There is no reason why a book chapter can't be whittled down to a tweet or two.

No, the problem with the book is that she doesn't have anything interesting to say. Hillary is too concerned with not ruffling any feathers in order to not risk alienating any constituency to say anything remotely interesting. Or, more likely, she just isn't a very interesting person.

[derspiess]

The problem with her book is the problem with most books:  it's too long.  There is no reason why a book chapter can't be whittled down to a tweet or two.

Some of it should be pop-up.

[garbon]

So buzzfeed had an article recently about O'Malley looking like someone who wants to run for President. Hands down, almost every single comment on the article was someone from Maryland talking about how much they hate him. Odd! Seeds is he that terrible?

[CountDeMoney]

He's one of those politicians that when you talk to his supporters, they really, really love him--and when you talk to his detractors, they spit up pea soup and their heads spin around, tossing wardrobes around the room.  Very Clintonian in that regard.  He's definitely a magnet that way.

Of course, the GOP in Maryland has a bunker mentality as the minority party, surrounded by all those scary and threatening negros and seeing 1968 everywhere.  Maryland's Eastern Shore, Western Maryland and Southern Maryland is pretty conservative but sparsely populated compared to the DC/Baltimore corridor, which carries the state for gubernatorial Democrats over and over.

People don't like him because he was a very popular Mayor of Baltimore, so it winds up being a lot of your typical conservative blame-everything-on-taxes-and-Welfare-Queens bullshit here in the psuedo-Confederacy.  But he's a very competent and intelligent executive, runs a clean albeit somewhat unwieldy government, is big on law and order from back in his prosecutor days and knows how to talk to the other side of the aisle to get 80% of what he wants.  But the GOP would have a field day with him--philosophically he's probably closer to Mario Cuomo than Andrew Cuomo.  He believes in government as Good Works, but as we all know, the real point of government these days is to eliminate government. 

The Languish Teabaggers would have kittens if he got into the White House as he's more progressive and liberal than Obama, and less corporate and Wall Street-friendly than Hillary.  Foreign policy-wise, it would be their 2000 Al Gore interventionism-with-a-conscience nightmare, only with personality and a pulse.  But he's a policy wonk and a worker, he's not fluff.  The man knows his politics.

I really want to support him, as he's about as aligned to my opinions on the big issues as a politician can get, but he has directly and personally cost me two jobs.  I'd rather not find out if he'll eventually cost me a third, because that shit really gets old fast.

[derspiess]

Thank you for the balanced analysis.

[garbon]

Thanks, Seed.

typical conservative blame-everything-on-taxes-and-Welfare-Queens bullshit here in the psuedo-Confederacy

That's actually exactly where many of the comments centered (if they gave any reason for the animus). 'Destroying the middle class by using taxes to prop up those who don't even do any work.'

[CountDeMoney]

Thank you for the balanced analysis.

I traffic in the truth.

[CountDeMoney]

Thanks, Seed.

typical conservative blame-everything-on-taxes-and-Welfare-Queens bullshit here in the psuedo-Confederacy

That's actually exactly where many of the comments centered (if they gave any reason for the animus). 'Destroying the middle class by using taxes to prop up those who don't even do any work.'

There's a lot more of that in Maryland than people think.

But yeah, if were digging Gary Hart in '84 and Al Gore in '00, then O'Malley is your kind of Dem.

[derspiess]

LOL MONKEY BUSINESS

[Valmy]

That's actually exactly where many of the comments centered (if they gave any reason for the animus). 'Destroying the middle class by using taxes to prop up those who don't even do any work.'

Has he raised taxes and increased benefits?  Because taxes giving benefits to people who don't work sort of happens in every single country in the developed world.

[garbon]

That's actually exactly where many of the comments centered (if they gave any reason for the animus). 'Destroying the middle class by using taxes to prop up those who don't even do any work.'

Has he raised taxes and increased benefits?  Because taxes giving benefits to people who don't work sort of happens in every single country in the developed world.

Here's the one tax they mentioned specifically.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbrown/2014/01/03/when-it-rains-it-pours-tax-dollars-in-maryland/

[Valmy]

Perry should have a tax on rain.  That would basically be zero.

That article did a lot to say why the tax was arbitrary and bad but it did two sort of weird things. 

First it said that the Department of the Navy was exempt and expressed some sort of outrage about it how they are not following the laws of the state.  Huh?  Isn't the Navy usually tax exempt?   Is this really an outrageous state of events?

Second he never bothered to say what the tax was going to fund or if it was worth the money.  I got the idea it had something to with an EPA program (so why is Maryland raising the cash to fund it?  Unfunded mandate?).  That made it rather difficult to judge the need for the tax.

[garbon]

Second he never bothered to say what the tax was going to fund or if it was worth the money.  I got the idea it had something to with an EPA program (so why is Maryland raising the cash to fund it?  Unfunded mandate?).  That made it rather difficult to judge the need for the tax.

Seeds will know more but I think this:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/23/chesapeake-bay-foundation-maryland-rain-tax-time-o/

[Valmy]

Ok that's dumb.  I hate social engineering via taxes.  No to O'Malley in 2016!

[CountDeMoney]

First it said that the Department of the Navy was exempt and expressed some sort of outrage about it how they are not following the laws of the state.  Huh?  Isn't the Navy usually tax exempt?   Is this really an outrageous state of events?

It is to Forbes.

Second he never bothered to say what the tax was going to fund or if it was worth the money.  I got the idea it had something to with an EPA program (so why is Maryland raising the cash to fund it?  Unfunded mandate?).  That made it rather difficult to judge the need for the tax.

It's all part of saving the bay.  Right now, there are two major factors that have caused the bay to have more dead zones than Yi's social conscience;  run-off from the massive poultry industry on the Shore into the estuaries, and high-density population areas in the upper bay and western shore.

The pollution is killing the oyster industry, and they estimate that the Chesapeak blue crab will be extinct by the end of the century.  Now, because all of our storm drains say "Bay Drainage: Do Not Pollute" on them, the rain that doesnt get absorbed on your property winds up running off into the drainage system, motor oil, yard chemicals and all.  Hence, a"rain" tax.

If you're not going to do the right thing by the Bay as a good citizen in preserving the state's most important natural asset, the State of Maryland will make sure you compensate the clean up efforts accordingly.

Good government at work.