New Taxes

Nearly half of Baltimore's municipal employees and retirees have a "critical or chronic" illness - a distinction that contributes to the high cost of providing their health insurance, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Wednesday. "We need to improve the wellness of our workforce to reduce costs by promoting fitness and smoking cessation," Rawlings-Blake said as she released a consultants' report about the city's long-term finances. "Our workforce is unhealthy and it's driving up our costs.

Everything that everyone loathes about Washington was present in the "fiscal cliff" bill just passed by Congress. It is 153 pages long; most members probably hadn't read all of it before voting on it; it was delivered in the middle of the night; it was loaded with pork -- the mother's milk (to mix a metaphor) of politicians -- and while the country is already swamped with massive debt, it contains massive giveaways to satisfy interest groups and campaign contributors. Did I mention the bill raises taxes on top of the coming Obamacare taxes, but does nothing -- nothing -- to address the debt problem?

As the owner of a flower shop in Aberdeen, I am very concerned with new legislation currently being considered in Congress: the "Marketplace Fairness Act" and the "Marketplace Equity Act," which will add sales tax to Internet sales. This will disproportionately impact small businesses like mine - creating a significant administrative and financial burden that will make it necessary for me to pass on additional costs to my customers. In today's economy, it is irresponsible to place additional burdens on small businesses, which are the engine of our economy.

Fresh off his star turn as Indiana Jones , Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot is trying his hand at making parody videos. No, he's not joining the throngs who've recast "Call Me Maybe. " But he has reworked the popular and rather silly DirecTV "Don't Let This Happen to You" ads. To promote the state's week where people can shop without sales tax, Franchot just released a video on YouTube and to make sure people saw it, sent out a press release with this headline: Comptroller Video Encourages Marylanders to Shop Maryland Tax-Free or Face the Consequences.

As a Baltimorean overburdened by local taxes, I'm angered the Baltimore City Council will afflict yet another upon us ("Bottle tax gains in council," June 12). It will take more than a bottle tax to fix the Baltimore schools, and I would suggest the council examine Raymond Daniel Burke's op-ed ("City or oasis on the water?" June 12) which succinctly describes the problems our city faces. Although I'm not from the city, I know enough about Baltimore's past to understand everything changed in the mid 1960s, culminating with the 1968 riots.

Infamous presidential quotes through history: 1. "The American people have got a right to know that their president is not a crook. " Richard Nixon. 2. "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. " Gerald Ford. 3. "Read my lips: No new taxes. "George H.W. Bush. 4. "I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. " William Clinton. 5. "The notion that my White House would purposefully leak classified national security information is offensive. " Barack Obama.

America was built on the ideas that one could work hard, sacrifice and save, to have a better life. I worked hard for years and years in school, I sacrificed and saved, and now I wake up early every weekday and many weekends to go to work, where I provide services to the public at a very high price to myself, and often to the recipients of my services. As our lawmakers embark upon the first day of this special session, I wish to call to their minds the very purpose of their being there: to formulate laws.

The Sun finally got one thing right: A special session of the Maryland legislature is needed - but not for the reasons stated in your editorial ("Twice as nice?" April 25). King Marty and his clown princes, Mike and Michael, need to reverse the shell game they've been playing with their subjects for the last several years. Every year, the king raises taxes to fund "shortages" in, alternately, the education, transportation and public safety budgets. Then, when the peasants are not looking, they shift the money to the special interests - satisfying their big-time donors - and to failed social programs.

The conservatives in Congress are taking advantage of a semantic convenience when they insist on "no new taxes for anyone. " It is based on the fact that the poorest Americans are excused from paying federal income tax in the first place, due to their small paychecks and/or disproportionately large obligations. But when tax reductions on the middle class and the rich are balanced by curtailment of government services to the needy, as in the recently passed House Republican budget plan, the tax forgiveness to the better-off comes on the backs of the unemployed, underemployed, elderly and children.

State aid to public schools and universities could be slashed, 500 state jobs abolished and local law enforcement grants eliminated under a "doomsday" budget prepared for the Maryland Senate to show the impact of a budget balanced without tax increases. The budget cutting would especially be hard on Baltimore, which would lose almost $75 million in state aid — including $34 million for education and $10 million for law enforcement. The $720 million in cuts are part of what Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller has called a doomsday budget, prepared for the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee as an alternative to Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposal to raise about $300 million in additional revenue, largely through an increase in the income taxes paid by Marylanders earning $100,000 or more.