High Taxes

AS GOVERNOR of Maryland, I will provide its citizens with leadership that is honest, consistent and puts principle ahead of politics.I will work to change the culture in Annapolis and ensure that policy decisions are made with the public interest in mind, not just the needs of a cozy group of insiders whose only goal is to feather their own nests.Before I discuss my plans for jump-starting Maryland's economic development, improving the schools and controlling crime, I want to state up front that I will enforce state laws on abortion and gun control.

FOR MOST OF its 25 years, the privately-owned 268-unit Eutaw Gardens apartment complex on the northern fringes of Bolton Hill has been a monument to bad planning and neglectful management. Things got so bad that a year ago it was emptied out of remaining tenants and boarded up. Today, it will be demolished.In its stead will rise 84 units of historically designed townhouses priced between $115,000 and $130,000. Will they sell in a city of thousands of vacant houses? Most likely they will.In Baltimore, new homes tend to sell as long as they have the amenities buyers expect to get in the suburbs -- like garages and fireplaces -- and are close to good schools.

CHICAGO -- Trying to strike a chord with financially strapped voters, Bob Dole promised yesterday to stoke the engine of American growth with a broad array of tax cuts."

This country is burying young men who are too young to shave. Many of our children are afraid to go to school each day. Afraid!While predators roam our streets, drugs are available in open-air markets and violence escalates, too many judges allow repeat or violent offenders pre-trial release, plea bargaining and probation. The terror continues.Fifty percent of the 18-year-olds in this county can't read at the ninth-grade level or compute an eighth-grade math problem. ''Value-free education'' has been the rule for 30 years.

This year, when you cast your vote in the primary election, you will be making a decision that will affect your life and the lives of the people you care about. Before you decide to cast your vote, you should be asking yourself two simple but important questions:* Will this person represent me in a way that is consistent with my values and beliefs?* Will this person fight for what I believe in and not sell out to insider political pressures?I believe I am the answer to both of those questions.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ellen R. Sauerbrey said yesterday that she wants to take charge of the state budget and limit taxes, eliminate "excessive, overzealous regulations" and get tough on crime."

We had misgivings about the "100,000 cops on the beat" crime bill, but we supported it in part because of the very helpful and urban-oriented prevention programs and in part because Attorney General Janet Reno promised that "community circumstance" would determine where the federal funds to pay for more police officers would go. By "community circumstance" she meant the amount of violent crime and the local tax burden. Federal dollars would go where both were high. Sounded like Baltimore and other big cities to us.So where did the first grants go?

That recent squabble between Baltimore County Executive Roger B. Hayden and several of the "anti-tax" protesters who helped him win office ended in what participants described as a family feud. This is hardly a family squabble.The tax protesters, testifying before a state Senate committee, tried to intimidate Mr. Hayden by charging he would have to "look for a new job" if he opposed them in supporting a bill to have the county assume the job of assessing property, a role now handled by the state.

The latest craze in Congress, as the end of this session approaches, is a plan to cut taxes on the middle class. Should Congress and the administration ease the tax burden on middle-class families?* KATE O'BEIRNE: Only the most dimwitted lawmakers (redundancy) have failed to realize that last year's deficit deal slowed federal spending the way a 200-mile-per-hour speed limit slows traffic, and the new taxes stimulated the economy like a shot of Novocain. Taxpayers were told the deal was needed to reduce the deficit and keep the economy growing.

A century ago, Roland Park was a new concept -- suburban living. Today, it's a thriving part of Baltimore, a stable community that looks very much as it did when it became part of the city in 1918.Such stability, says William H. Wilson, longtime resident of Roland Park and former president of a real estate company that still carries his name, is the result of a strong neighborhood association, the Roland Park Civic League.The association has fought changes -- both inside and out of the area -- that would be detrimental to the approximately 1,000 properties in Roland Park, Baltimore's oldest planned year-round community.

Thoughts on taxes, tea parties and Washington's looming fiscal disaster. Call me conservative, but I believe parents who toil and save and accumulate a modest fortune ought to be able to pass it on to their children and grandchildren. Vanishing savings largely caused this financial crisis. We save so little we need the Chinese to finance our deficits. Let's not discourage Americans from saving by seizing big chunks of their nest eggs when they die. A Republican proposal to exempt estates worth less than $10 million for couples and $5 million for individuals sounds about right.

"The question is, should we be giving an extra $120 billion to people in the top 1 percent?" So asked Gene Sperling, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief economic adviser, at a recent National Press Club panel discussion. Translation: It's the government's money, and anything left over after Uncle Sam picks your pockets is a "gift." Indeed, to hear leading Democrats talk about the "richest 1 percent" - a diverse cohort of investors, managers, entrepreneurs and, to be sure, some fat-cat heirs - one gets the impression that wealthy Americans are a natural resource, to be pumped for as much cash as we need.

The Supreme Court's decision this week not to consider overturning the federal ban on a District of Columbia commuter tax was good news for the thousands of Maryland residents who work in the nation's capital. Commuter taxes are frequently counterproductive, anyway; they discourage job creation - or at the very least, give companies one more reason to set up shop in the suburbs. But it's still up to Congress to solve the district's real problem, which is the federal government's failure to adequately pay for its keep.

NANCHANG, China - Authorities kept a tight grip around a village in central China yesterday to cover up what residents say was a bloody government assault Sunday in which two people were shot to death and at least 17 wounded. Police maintained road blocks outside the village in Jiangxi province after an American reporter visited earlier in the week. Authorities permitted only family members to leave the village so they could visit injured relatives in nearby hospitals. "The closing off of the village shows that they don't respect human rights and they interfere with [our]

BEIJING - Two farmers were slain and at least 17 wounded this week when police opened fire on angry peasants in a dawn raid in central China's Jiangxi Province in a battle over high taxes, according to villagers and officials. In phone interviews yesterday, residents of Yunxing village said the violence began Sunday morning when at least 600 police armed with rifles, pistols, electric batons, riot shields and wooden boards entered the village and began arresting farmers. As villagers came out of their homes to help neighbors, police fired at their feet and legs.

THE PROTESTS shutting off gasoline supplies in Europe are popular with consumers, oil companies and OPEC governments. All parties resent the high taxes that European governments slap on oil products. This strike action was undertaken by small business proprietors such as farmers, truckers and commercial fishermen -- not against high prices in the oil field, but high taxes at the pump. That is not equivalent to American anguish over current gasoline prices. The European protesters are demanding prices and fuel taxes more nearly resembling ours.

AS GOVERNOR of Maryland, I will provide its citizens with leadership that is honest, consistent and puts principle ahead of politics.I will work to change the culture in Annapolis and ensure that policy decisions are made with the public interest in mind, not just the needs of a cozy group of insiders whose only goal is to feather their own nests.Before I discuss my plans for jump-starting Maryland's economic development, improving the schools and controlling crime, I want to state up front that I will enforce state laws on abortion and gun control.

FOR MOST OF its 25 years, the privately-owned 268-unit Eutaw Gardens apartment complex on the northern fringes of Bolton Hill has been a monument to bad planning and neglectful management. Things got so bad that a year ago it was emptied out of remaining tenants and boarded up. Today, it will be demolished.In its stead will rise 84 units of historically designed townhouses priced between $115,000 and $130,000. Will they sell in a city of thousands of vacant houses? Most likely they will.In Baltimore, new homes tend to sell as long as they have the amenities buyers expect to get in the suburbs -- like garages and fireplaces -- and are close to good schools.

CHICAGO -- Trying to strike a chord with financially strapped voters, Bob Dole promised yesterday to stoke the engine of American growth with a broad array of tax cuts."

This country is burying young men who are too young to shave. Many of our children are afraid to go to school each day. Afraid!While predators roam our streets, drugs are available in open-air markets and violence escalates, too many judges allow repeat or violent offenders pre-trial release, plea bargaining and probation. The terror continues.Fifty percent of the 18-year-olds in this county can't read at the ninth-grade level or compute an eighth-grade math problem. ''Value-free education'' has been the rule for 30 years.