Memo for Democrats

As we celebrate what we are most thankful for, here's a reminder about the Pilgrims and why they didn't eventually wind up starving to death (H/T Instapundit):

In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.

Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.

This change, Bradford wrote, had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.

Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine was just around the corner.

So, National Democrats, Maryland Democrats; are you guys boneheaded enough to realize that the stimulus package, the GM bailout, and the nationalization of health care are going to work out any differently for us than communal farming did for the pilgrims?

Happy Thanksgiving everybody...

Lines in the Sand

My RedMaryland colleague Michael Swartz has done some excellent analysis about the likely prospects of Congressional and Legislative reapportionment here in Maryland following the 2010 election. And some of it is not pretty. Based on some of the potential redistricting plans Michael found floated by "silver spring" on the Swing State Project website, we could be in for a huge problem here in Maryland.

Take a look at this Congressional District map:What do the inner DC suburbs have to do with Carroll County? What does Gibson Island have in common with District Heights? Nothing, but that's one of the many permutations that Democrats could concoct after the next year's census.

The legislative plans? Potentially worse:
Heavily gerrymandered districts designed to do Mike Miller's goal of "burying Republicans for forty years?" You betcha.

Anybody who has been around Maryland politics during this decade knows what can happy when it comes to the reapportionment process. And that is what makes the 2010 Gubernatorial election so vitally important to the state of Maryland. In Maryland the process is, more or less, completely controlled by the Governor. Once the Governor introduces his plan to the General Assembly, the General Assembly has forty-five days to pass their own redistricting plan or else the one that is proposed by the Governor is put into place. Of course, the likelihood of a majority of the General Assembly agreeing to the creation of district lines, particularly those for their own seats, when members of the Assembly are bound to find themselves in an uncomfortable position is relatively unlikely. So the likelihood of the plan proposed by whomever is Governor is 2011 being adopted is a relative certainty.

Now, rewind back to 2002 and the legislative and congressional plans introduced by Parris Glendening. The plans were introduced by the Governor and became law 45 days after their proposal due to the inability of the General Assembly to adopt its own plan. Glendening's plans presented us with laughably gerrymandered districts; you can see his Congressional Districting plan, which remains in effect today. However, his legislative districting plan was so onerous and ridiculous that it clearly did not meet the Constitutional requirements for legislative districting; some districts were not geographically congruous and many districts were clearly desgined to screw Glendening's political opponents. For example, six precincts from Baltimore County were mysteriously redistricted to District 31, across the Patapsco River in Anne Arundel County. I'm sure it was just a coincidence that State Senator Norm Stone lived in one of those six precincts. Because of such shenanigans, Glendening's plan was tossed out of court and replaced with today's court-imposed plan in late June 2002.

Now this brings us back to the importance of the 2010 Gubernatorial Election. The Governor has the power to create these legislative district lines. Which means the voters of Maryland have an opportunity, moreso than in most elections, to have major longstanding change on the makeup of the Maryland General Assembly. And there are two distinctive scenarios.

Scenario one sees Martin O'Malley reelected. And can you imagine the districts that this petulant Governor would come up with? Given O'Malley's ability to hold grudges and inability to lead, no legislator who has ever crossed O'Malley would be safe. Anne Arundel County, for example, would likely be shredded to pieces, with shared districts across county lines to force a Republican leaning county into districts with more sympathetically Democratic areas in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard, and Prince George's County. An O'Malley redistricting plan would strike a chilling blow against competitive government and the marketplace of ideas in Maryland.

Scenario two sees the election of a Republican governor next year. And it would be a tremendous opportunity for Maryland's middle and working class families to see positive change in Maryland. We would have the opportunity to see redistricting done in a manner that is more fair, more equitable, and more in line with the ideological leanings of Maryland voters. Furthermore, we may finally see redistricting done in the most fair manner of all, with the introduction of single member districts for the election of all 141 members of the House of Delegates. Not only would this see the elimination of the constitutionally questionable one, two, or three member districts depending on your location and subdistricting, but would also allow for a greater diversity of members being elected to the General Assembly. Not only would single member districts allow for a more ideologically-balanced House of Delegates, it would also create more majority-minority districts that would allow for a more accurate minority representation in Annapolis. All in all, legislative districts drawn by a Republican governor will be more fair and more accurately representative of Maryland's economic, ideologically, and cultural diversity than anything that will be drawn by a Maryland Democrat.

These districts are not just lines in the sand; they are the basic building blocks for the elected legislators who make decisions in Annapolis. We must seriously consider the consequences of redistricting as it relates to the 2010 election, and we must make sure that the voters understand what is at stake as we get closer to next November...

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 11-09-2009

And Jim Zorn is the NFL Coach of the Year....

Four-and-a-half years ago, Time magazine named then-Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley as one of America's five best big city mayors. I noted at the time that Time must be setting low standards to credit O'Malley as being good at his job.

Fast forward back to today, and you would be shocked and appalled to discover that Governing magazine has named Martin O'Malley one of their 2009 Public Officials of the Year.

Seriously:

Everyone knows Martin O'Malley is a numbers guy. The data-driven approach to policy and administration that he created as mayor of Baltimore, known as "CitiStat," has been copied by cities across the country. Now, as governor of Maryland, O'Malley is showing that states, too, can improve performance by measuring what they do and relentlessly monitoring their progress.

Emphasis mine. Because I'm not exactly sure what progress we are improving upon here in Maryland thanks to O'Malley and any of his metrics.

Frankly, somebody needs to get the guy a calculator and a clue so he might realize that spending more than you make is an irresponsible, reckless, and immature way to run a government.

The Governing article gets even deeper with O'Malley in an extended interview that has some, well, enlightening comments.

So as you're tackling these big jobs, how do you keep everyone focused and keep morale up when the budget situation is so tough?

I think there's two things that allow us to stay focused as we're jumping these budgetary bowling balls that keep coming down the gutter at us: It's clarity about the big goals — sustainability, security and skills — and it's the relentless stat meetings.

I ask you this; is a Governor who is so focused on his band really able to keep his entire administration focused on public service?

Next, we get to Martin O'Malley's thoughts on power and "being mean":

But how do you know when to back off a little and when to lean in?

When you actually hold the power, I don't think you ever have to be cruddy or mean. I appoint judges, and that's one of the things that I share with them. If you're wearing the black robe you don't have to be cruddy or mean, you've got the power.

Hasn't Martin O'Malley made a career of being cruddy, mean, petty, immature, irresponsible, and a bunch of other adjectives that you could insert here? O'Malley has some of the thinnest skin in the history of Maryland politics, and loathes it when he doesn't get his way. Just look at his shakedown of Constellation Energy and you will see a Governor who is more petulant than poised, and more concerned in political posturing that doing real work for real people.

And furthermore, you will note in the original that O'Malley himself put an emphasis on the phrase "you've got the power." You can draw your own conclusions of O'Malley's views on government intrusion and the scope and size of government from that little emphasis on that little word.

Then, the subject turns to the budget and the economy, and O'Malley continues to show that he has been living in some fiscal wonderland that the rest of us are not privy to:

We did a lot of things prior to getting hit with this recession. When we came in, we had what was primarily a structural deficit, not a cyclical deficit. That was the result of Democrats and Republicans alike, who had voted for huge increases in education investments, the cost of which they knew wouldn't come ashore for another five or six years, while simultaneously voting for 10 percent cuts to revenues. And so we had to address that utterly irresponsible fiscal math, and we chose to do that in a special session eight months into my first year.

Yes, he somehow managed to squander a $1.2 billion surplus eight months into his term. It was amazing and stupefying, yet he was able to pull it off. That leads us to....

Most of us remember it as a really miserable session — there was nothing terribly special about it. But we looked at virtually every revenue source available, the primary one being the sales tax. So we raised that by a penny. We also put in place a progressive income tax for the first time in Maryland's history, where we asked higher-earning folks in our state to pay a little more than a single parent who might make only $30,000 a year. And we also increased our corporate income tax by 1 percent. Those were some of the things that we did. And as difficult as it was, the fact that we did them before the recessionary tsunami hit has stood us well.

Yeah, it was a miserable session alright; mainly for Maryland's middle and working class families who have been suffering at the hands of Governor O'Malley's recklessness and incompetence. Higher and higher taxes continue to slow our economy, drive jobs out of state, and force middle class Marylanders into continued economic uncertainty, but Martin O'Malley thinks that this is a good thing. And what's even more delusional is the fact that Martin O'Malley thinks that Maryland's fiscal situation is good right now. He raises billions in new taxes, adds billions in new spending, wonders why the math doesn't work out, and then in an Orwellian fashion declares the crisis managed and that victory has been won. It's surreal.

Finally, as is Governor O'Malley hadn't already shown how divorced he was from reality, comes this:

In talking to some of the Republicans in the legislature, while they complain about Democratic dominance they do say that your administration is at least approachable. What's your basic strategy when it comes to working with the legislature?

I was elected following a term of tremendous polarization. It was almost the Newt Gingrich sort of thing, that you'd better not be seen having lunch with people that are not of your party. So I've tried to bring us together, and to underscore that we're one Maryland and we're all in this together. I do understand that each legislator is individually elected and each has a vision that they bring into government.

A Maryland Democrat talking about polarization is so incredibly comical, given the fact that it was Democratic leadership in Annapolis that refused to work with Governor Ehrlich when he came to them with a collaborative approach. In the time since O'Malley has taken office, he has taken a my way or the highway approach, particularly with Republican leadership in Annapolis; how many times over the years has Republican leadership been completely left out of the conversation, particularly when it comes to important issues such as taxation, the budget, and health care.

Sure, there are some Republicans who for whatever reason will give O'Malley cover and vote for his plans. But I think it is safe to say that Martin O'Malley has presided over the greatest partisan divide in Annapolis in my lifetime.

The fact of the matter is that this article in Governing has shown that the O'Malley camp is doing a nice job of pulling the wool over the eyes of people who don't see how he operates on a day-to-day basis, nor people who are living here in the state of Maryland. We see the kind of petulance, incompetence, and indifference that comes out of the O'Malley Administration on a Daily Basis. We see the middle and working class families who are struggling to make ends meet as they suffering from higher taxation and fewer job opportunities. We see state employees suffering furloughs because of lower than expected tax revenues due to businesses, people, and jobs leaving the state in droves.

It makes you wonder how any objective observer could recognize O'Malley's "Accomplishments". I suppose there is hope for Jim Zorn yet...