Dan Gainor
2008-02-05 08:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

I’m remembering when the circus was a big deal. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey would bring three rings of fun to town, and we would go to see everything from high-wire acts to clowns.

The circus isn’t as big anymore. Maybe we don’t need it. Instead, we elect our clowns and here in Maryland we could fill a clown car with examples. (Editor’s note: Surprisingly, this is not a column about Gov. Martin O’Malley.)

Baltimore is the center ring.

There’s Democratic City Councilman Jim Craft’s crusade against Styrofoam. Apparently, Craft never asked owners of sub shops and delis about the difficulty of replacing such a useful product. Then there’s Mayor Sheila Dixon’s tax committee. Its clownish proposal would lower the property tax rate by raising almost every other tax. As The Examiner’s Stephen Janis explained it: The plan included “a regional sales tax, a commuter tax, increasing the city’s local share of state income taxes to the maximum rate, as well as doubling the 4 percent cap on property tax increases when property values rise.”

Encourage people to live in Baltimore by lowering one tax and raising others? The commuter tax would devastate the city on its own. Any city businessman could tell you that. But none of the clowns on the committee bothered to ask.

Howard County, where I live, has its own circus tent. We get the big-government clowns — from the silly green initiatives pushed by Democratic County Exec Ken Ulman to the Soviet-style speed cameras promoted by former county Police Chief and now Democratic Del. James Robey. Both are bad for business.

Ulman wants to make business even more expensive so he can be a mini-Al Gore. (Al’s off the diet. Being a Mini-Me version of the Jolly Green Giant should be easy.) As for speed cameras, picture one on the road where you run a business. How long before people stop coming to your store because it costs them an extra $75 just to shop there?

Every one of these bogus speed tax tickets will cost the companies in that area. But even the normally, non-clownish Sen. Allan Kittleman, R-Howard and Carroll, voted for this anti-business, anti-resident plan. Who knew that there was a jackboot version of clown shoes? Thanks, Del. Robey, for proving that much. Hopefully voters will give him a bit of the boot next election in response.

Let’s not forget statewide clowns. Prince George’s Democratic Del. James Hubbard wants to take Montgomery County’s ban on trans fats and make it statewide. This follows the equally horrible ban on smoking from last year’s clown act. And the legislature still has time for more in 2008.

Unfortunately, the political class in Maryland is more like class clowns. Only I don’t see businesses or citizens laughing.

Dan Gainor can be seen each week on Thursday afternoons on the new Fox Business Network. He is the T. Boone Pickens fellow at the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute, a career journalist and media commentator.

He can be reached at gainorcolumn@gmail.com