Did somebody say "hurt the schools"? Hey I'd say we should be killin' them. 80% of Baltimore City's budget is now met by funding from outside of the city. That's right, the percentage of people that live there and exist wholly or substantially on the dole is something over half. They have succeeded in chasing anyone and everyone that could afford to leave to do just that. Baltimore City in particular already spends more per student than almost any other city in America, and they do just about the poorest job of using that money to any real effect. What they have gotten quite good at is cheating and lying to continue getting more money.
I visited a friend's bar on South Charles St. a few weeks back and he explained that he and his partner lived in a house that they had bought right down the street. Their taxes, on a 15' wide row house, in a city that can't manage to just teach kids to read and speak English...over $6,400 a year. I told him was insane. I'm paying over $4800 a year out in the county with an acre of land. He can't park two cars on his block and has invested a fortune in security equipment just so he can pay twice the auto and home owners' insurance rates that I do and still gets to fall asleep to the sights and sounds of helicopters and searchlights every night.
The ruling party of this State and City has been the same forever, and as such they can't very well continue to claim that it's some dirty Republican's fault...it's all them. They run every aspect of our State's government and have succeeeded in only one thing over the last few decades. They have grown government and the number of underachievers that they employ exponentially. Do you know of anyone who has ever had to interact with an agency of our State government who has felt anything other than raped and abused when they were done? Is there anything about how the union protected nitwits, most of which haven't even mastered the mother tongue, treat us...the tax payers who support their dead weight, that isn't down right insulting?
DMV, Vital Records, State Police, DNR, Toll Police...I can't think of a single agency that I am forced to deal with in day to day life where the "public servants" that live on the teat, don't treat me like I'm something that they stepped in. When these pathetic excuses for governors run out of citizens' money to steal and they have to start handing out furlough days to their trusty government employee union lemmings I absolutely laugh out loud, 'cuz these are the knuckleheads that make sure that the liars and thieves keep getting elected. (I'm not just referencing Democratic politicians in the liar and thief category, I am a Libertarian and find them all to be indistinguishable in their unfettered money and power grabbing support of the status quo).
I actually hired a kid last summer, a recent Maryland High School graduate, who could not discern the difference between a quarter and a half on a tape measure. Forget about eighths and sixteenths, or god forbid millimeters and centimeters, this young man had not a clue. He also had no idea how to do long division, convert fractions to decimals, work with fractions, compute volumes, areas or even begin to grasp circles and arcs. I build houses and cabinetry. Why would anyone even attempt to get a job where they had absolutely nothing to offer? I told him to go apply for a job with the government, which he did...and they hired his moronic behind. I'm sure by this time next year he'll be getting paid more than I make after taxes.
Here's a cold hard truth; Democrat or Republican, people need to awaken to the fact that it's not red against blue or conservative against liberal, it's us against our rulers and we are way behind the curve. We have already entered the phase where we must fearfully ask permission of our rulers to do just about anything and they impose their will by brute force. They have extracted rights and powers for themselves whilst curtailing and eliminating those that were once ours. We must pay and register and number and comply and line up and fill out a form and hope and wish to get anywhere. Now we're even being x-rayed and groped just to travel. All the while they exert more and more force while gaining more and more control.
People don't realize that our government already controls the value of our money, watches everything that we do with it and how much of it that we have, what is taught in our schools and how it is taught and by whom, where we can travel as well as how and when, what we can eat - smoke - drink and do with another consenting adult in the supposed privacy of our own homes, what we look at on the internet and what we write to each other. Now they are finalizing the details of what types of verbal protests that we will be allowed to enjoy or have to refrain from under fear of incarceration as a domestic terrorist or radicalized threat. Anyone who disagrees with the rulers will stand the risk of being arrested.
Old Japanese proverb: The nail that stands proud gets hammered flat.
Time to take a page out of French history. Let's revive 'The Terror'. Maybe when we build a few 'National Razors' and a few heads hit the pavement we'll start to attract more Mr. Smith's to Washington, Annapolis and City Hall and fewer power hungry crooks and thieves.
Little too extreme for ya?
Me thinks it not extreme enough.
To quote the famous Baltimore writer H.L. Mencken; "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
Arrrgh matey...give us a look at that thar flag.