Dan Gainor
2008-03-04 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

Checkers. Chess. Parcheesi. Scrabble. We played them all when I was growing up.

By the time you graduate from the Game of Life into the real thing, you realize the games don’t stop. The stakes simply get bigger.

Lots bigger. And somebody’s always changing the rules and making the game harder.

For decades, Maryland Democrats played the game of Monopoly. Sure, there were Republicans roaming around like scattered game pieces. But they didn’t elect many of their own kind and never threatened the way the game was played at a state level.

Times began to change. That other party even won a contest for governor. The legislators were infuriated and, when they won back the State House, they changed the game.

Oh, sure, they’re still playing a professional level of Monopoly. But now they’ve added a new game. Risk. Whether we like it or not, we’re all playing.

Why? Because the games they are playing right now are with the state economy, and that Boggles the Mind. It’s as if the party leadership decided to pass the worst, most anti-business, anti-consumer laws possible. (Editor’s note: There’s only so much space in a given newspaper, so we’ll keep this to the high- or low-lights only.)

Let’s start out with the largest tax increase in state history. That was really the beginning of the new rules. That time, Democratic leadership decided they needed to play banker to win, so they needed a lot more money.

OUR money. After spending the state into debt, they needed more than a billion dollars in new taxes. I hear constant complaints from small-business owners who tell me they are either retiring or relocating.

The new taxes were generally destructive and hurt everyone by raising the sales tax. There was a surprise addition — a tax on computer services. That tax takes one of the highlights of the American economy — tech — and tries to chase it out of the No-Longer-Free State.

There have been tons of complaints as a result. However, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (TD — Typical Democrat) told the businessmen to lump it. In 2008’s version of “Let them eat cake,” Miller asked “What is their alternative?” In other words, he’s not willing or competent enough to cut spending, so he’d rather chase business into neighboring states.

Why stop there?

We have the governor’s climate-change initiatives that will make it difficult for any manufacturing plants to keep operating. Even with the lame changes the governor suggested, the plan is to force companies to massively cut emissions, conveniently long after the guv has moved on.

If a foreign nation did that much harm to the Maryland economy, O’Malley, Miller and others would be pushing for a declaration of war. But it is they who have declared war on the state.

And the legislators and our dear guv don’t have a Clue. One thing is certain, at the rate they are going, the game we’ll be playing soon is Sorry.

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