Bad Idea

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake seems to think raising the container tax on soft drinks is creative ("Rawlings-Blake calls on council to adopt bottle tax hike," Nov. 14). Just keep taxing the average Joe out of Baltimore. Is that a really good plan? Here is a better idea. Eliminate deputy mayors, make developers pay property tax on what they build and eliminate the Baltimore Development Corporation. I am sure there is more cutting to be done, but these are some easy ways to reduce waste in government quickly without more taxes.

Don't penalize honesty Bill Shaikin Los Angeles Times Intent can be notoriously difficult to determine — unless, that is, a pitcher admits his intent, as Phillies left-hander Cole Hamels did. "Come see our headhunting pitchers" is not the best advertisement for baseball, so Hamels, like any other pitcher admitting intent, should have been suspended. The league already suspends pitchers deemed to throw at batters with intent, no matter what the pitcher says.

The extent of the financial liabilities of the Baltimore Grand Prix promoters is a continuing revelation, but let's face it: The race had "bad idea" written all over it from the beginning ("Papers say Grand Prix debts over $12 million," Dec. 8). Yes, the event generated some revenue for downtown hotels and restaurants, but has anyone calculated the cost to the environment? And what was the expense of tying up the downtown for months in advance and virtually shutting it down the first day of the race?

The muddle that is Maryland's budget future cleared a bit this week as the three most important people in cleaning up the mess edged closer to an agreement on how to do so. The mess, of course, was left by state lawmakers when they ended the 2012 legislative session April 9 without reaching an agreement on next year's budget. This week, Gov. Martin O'Malley, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael Busch emerged from a morning meeting to reveal the outline of a solution, one that would involve two special legislative sessions for lawmakers, one to deal with the budget, the other to consider expanding casino gambling in Maryland.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposal to require Maryland utilities to buy electricity at above market rates from wind turbines located in the Atlantic Ocean may create a nice green credential for an aspiring national politician, but it would be bad for Maryland ("O'Malley wind plan draws questions," March 4). The proposal would require every Marylander to pay more for energy than would be the case if utilities could buy electricity on the open market. In effect, it is a tax on energy with the tax proceeds going to the wind farm developers.

Regarding your editorial "A flawed compromise on illegal immigrant tuition" (March 8), the initial premise of your argument — that we should be educating the children of illegal aliens — is ridiculous. Since these kids are here illegally, why are we letting them into our K-12 schools in the first place? According to you, we already are spending $200,000 per kid to get these undocumented students from elementary school through high school. That money could be better spent on the law-abiding legal residents of Maryland.

Here's my take on the O'Malley-Miller gas tax: Gov. Martin O'Malley and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had worked it out in a closed-door session that Mr. O'Malley would propose a 15-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax and Miller would knock it down to 10 cents. That way, everyone would feel good. But - hello? - where did that $1 billion in dedicated transportation taxes go? Answer: Both parties plundered the money for other projects. This is not about protecting Democratic or Republican turf; it's about the people you were elected to serve.

How's this for one of the biggest problems facing manager Buck Showalter this spring? The Orioles are hitting the ball too far. Showalter had to move batting practice from the northeast practice field to the southwest field that mirrors the dimensions of Orioles Park after several unhappy spring training spectators came to the O's administrative office hoping to be reimbursed for damage to cars parked beyond the left field fence....

There are pros to idea Ron Fritz Baltimore Sun I used to be totally against this because I thought the Olympics should be for amateurs. But who are we kidding? Many of the Olympic "amateurs" make more in a year than you and I will make in our lifetimes. So now I'm all for NHL players, and for that matter, NBA players, representing their countries in the Olympics. I want to see the best players from each country playing against the best. And in the case of the NHL, whose season goes on in almost anonymity, any exposure gained by having your elite athletes playing on center stage in the Olympics can only help more people find the sport.

Four years ago, the General Assembly put to rest a bad idea, but this session it's back. Two bills propose some kind of system for monitoring prescriptions for morphine and other pain-killing drugs that have a high potential for abuse. The classic version, reflected in a Senate bill, is "trip-scrip," a triplicate prescription form intended to help authorities prevent physicians from creating addicts or diverting drugs to illegal channels.There's just one problem: the system doesn't accomplish that goal, and it carries some painful liabilities.

Gov.Martin O'Malley's proposal for a 6 percent sales tax on gas is a bad idea. With the current 23.5 cents per gallon tax, consumers are already struggling to make ends meet. When a Maryland citizen doesn't have enough money to pay his bills, he is forced to cut his spending and adjust his budget. As steward of the public treasury, the same standard should be applied to our governor. Creating jobs can be accomplished not by raising taxes but by cutting taxes to make the environment more accommodating to the private sector.

Here's my take on the O'Malley-Miller gas tax: Gov. Martin O'Malley and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had worked it out in a closed-door session that Mr. O'Malley would propose a 15-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax and Miller would knock it down to 10 cents. That way, everyone would feel good. But - hello? - where did that $1 billion in dedicated transportation taxes go? Answer: Both parties plundered the money for other projects. This is not about protecting Democratic or Republican turf; it's about the people you were elected to serve.

Hours before the 2012 General Assembly session started, Gov. Martin O'Malley dusted off the frustrating passivity he employed to such ill effect in 2011. Speaking to Marc Steiner in the radio host's annual pre-session show, Mr. O'Malley casually mentioned that if he had his "druthers," Maryland would avoid a lot of the cuts that will be necessitated by its current budget woes and would instead raise the sales tax by another penny. Not that he's actually proposing such a thing, he and aides hastily clarified later.

The extent of the financial liabilities of the Baltimore Grand Prix promoters is a continuing revelation, but let's face it: The race had "bad idea" written all over it from the beginning ("Papers say Grand Prix debts over $12 million," Dec. 8). Yes, the event generated some revenue for downtown hotels and restaurants, but has anyone calculated the cost to the environment? And what was the expense of tying up the downtown for months in advance and virtually shutting it down the first day of the race?

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake seems to think raising the container tax on soft drinks is creative ("Rawlings-Blake calls on council to adopt bottle tax hike," Nov. 14). Just keep taxing the average Joe out of Baltimore. Is that a really good plan? Here is a better idea. Eliminate deputy mayors, make developers pay property tax on what they build and eliminate the Baltimore Development Corporation. I am sure there is more cutting to be done, but these are some easy ways to reduce waste in government quickly without more taxes.

“Bylaw” - Dino-Murder, She Wrote. After a blessed reprieve thanks to the World Series, Fox's “Terra Nova” returned in full pre-historical force Monday night, with a new record: barely a minute into the hour before some poor soul became dino-lunch. Par for the course in Terra Nova; G.I. Joe Taylor makes the point that the settlement has lost many people since its beginnings, but this one is different. This Death-By-Dino is Dino-Murder. It's more of a crime of passion, really, as the soldier digesting in the raptor's stomach had the poor sense to carry on with a (married)

SAN FRANCISCO - When I was bad, my parents threatened me with military school, which usually shut me up. I took them seriously. I had no idea of the cost of what I was sure would be a private penal colony. But they were no more likely to send me to military school than to Ft. Lauderdale on spring break. Nonetheless, I spent many morose hours curled up with the New York Times Magazine scanning its inky, small-type ads for military schools. They've been upbeat. In a recent issue: "Positive peer pressure and brotherhood within a structured setting."

THERE ARE many promising ways to "change the culture" in Baltimore City's troubled public school system. Appointing the head of the teachers' union to the school board is not among them.In announcing his plan to appoint Irene B. Dandridge to the board, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke referred to precedents in which corporations had appointed union representatives to their boards. But this is a very different proposition. Corporate boards do not set day-to-day policy or negotiate contracts. The school board is intimately involved in all these activities.

Aberdeen Mayor Mike Bennett's recent trip to Georgia to advocate on behalf of the Ripken organization as it tries to secure public financing of a stadium for a minor league ballclub in Augusta is one of the most ill-advised moves in his time in office. It wasn't a bad idea because the stadium in Aberdeen turned out to be a boondoggle. Quite the contrary, Ripken Stadium by itself has been a tremendous asset to the Aberdeen community and Harford County as a whole. In addition, the youth baseball complex and the Cal Ripken World Series have only increased the prestige of the city and the county and made them burgeoning baseball destinations for dedicated fans of the national pastime.

In Ann Patchett's new best-seller "State of Wonder," a woman scientist travels from Minnesota to the Amazon to find a missing colleague and to determine the status of a miracle substance that appears to allow native women to bear children into their 60s and 70s. The pharmaceutical company for whom she works is betting millions on this new drug, which would allow women to extend, or postpone, motherhood for decades. It is a terrific book, but a really bad idea. I am just back from a week with a 9-month-old grandchild, where I was able to catalog all the reasons why women shouldn't have babies past 40, and my knees are just one of them.