Revenue

The Ravens and Redskins will host playoff games Sunday, about 30 miles and 31/2 hours apart. Hosting two of the NFL's four playoff games in Maryland offers something of an economic double shot for the state. The games bring an increase in local taxes, a significant boost to the host teams' bottom lines and could have a combined economic impact of about $20 million to more than $40 million. But economists say most of the money being spent in Baltimore and Landover this weekend would have been spent in the area anyway.

When 2 a.m. came Friday, the sound of coins hitting metal — electronically replicated, of course, since the slot machines pay out with a printed ticket — continued at Maryland Live casino. About 1,000 people stayed where they were, plugging money into the video terminals and ordering drinks. Terry Cohen of Randallstown was there to celebrate the new schedule that will keep the casino open 24 hours a day. "There's nothing to do around here at night," she said. "The town shuts down.

Business leaders, elected officials and transportation advocates gathered in Annapolis Wednesday to push Gov. Martin O'Malley and the General Assembly to take action next year to raise vital revenue for the state's roads, bridges and transit systems - even in the face of public opposition. Participants in the Transportation Funding Summit packed a hearing room near the State House to brainstorm over strategies to persuade legislators to do what they refused to do earlier this year - increase taxes on gasoline to provide the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to sustain a transportation program that does more than just maintain what it already has. “This is the year,” said Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker III. “If we don't get it done this year, we might not get it done for the next eight years.” Some summit participants believe the what the governor needs to do is make a more sustained, consistently hands-on push for a tax on gasoline than he did last year.

We're almost a month away from another legislative session, so it was no surprise to read The Sun's editorial in favor of higher cigarette taxes ("A life-saving tax," Nov. 25). While lobbyists like Vinnie DeMarco prepare their annual push to punish smokers, the rationale to raise cigarette taxes is as flawed as ever. Higher cigarette prices may discourage smoking, but there is hardly the direct connection between declining rates of smoking and higher tobacco taxes as The Sun claims.

Maryland's three casinos generated $43.1 million in November, about half of which went to the state's education trust fund. Maryland Live in Anne Arundel, owned by Baltimore developer David Cordish, continues to generate a majority of that revenue, as it has since opening in June. Its 4,750 slot machines brought in $34.4 million, or about $241.16 per machine each day. Hollywood Casino in Perryville brought in a total of $5.4 million from 1,500 machines ($120.48 per machine each day)

"Compromise or confrontation?" So ran a recent headline on CNN.com, above a story about the "fiscal cliff" and a confrontational-looking picture of President Barack Obama. The implication was clear: Our leaders must compromise or confront each other on the precipice. Even clearer, in the view of most Americans, was the solution: Compromise, already! Endless confrontation has made the need for compromise as obvious as the election results. Or has it? Actually, decades of negotiation research have cast doubt on the conventional wisdom, showing that compromise vs. confrontation represents a false choice, and compromise a false ideal.

Congress returned to "work" this week (now there's a laugh) to complete its lame-duck session before taking another holiday. Spending other people's money is a taxing experience. Their task is to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a geological construct of their own making. It doesn't take a genius to predict both parties will try to do two things: (1) reach an agreement that will allow each side to take some credit and (2) require those who work for a living to pay government more while they come up with phony or inconsequential spending "cuts.

I understand why speed cameras are needed at all times in construction zones; even if there are no workers present, the highway lanes are often narrow and twisting and require a lower speed ("Delays, detours and dead ends on cameras," Nov. 25). Regarding school zone cameras, however, are we supposed to believe that a child hit by a vehicle traveling 12 mph over the speed limit sustains more serious injuries than a child struck by car going only 11 mph over the limit? Since the answer is obviously not, why then are vehicles ticketed only if they exceed the posted limit by 12 mph or more?

Your front-page article "Speed cameras called a success" (Oct. 25) is going to earn you a flood of letters from those who want to break the law and escape the consequences. Everyone is all hot for "personal responsibility" these days, so why don't we start there? But if that doesn't work, and people won't regulate their own behavior, the state will do it for them, because the state will have order. But what really bugs me about the camera controversy is the almost binary nature of the debate.