I should also add *liberal candidates* to my headlines here (not enough room in the headline space to do that though, sorry)...
Anyway, a recent spate of decisions, by candidates, lawmakers, and later the liberal courts have been costly in multiple ways for themselves, and more importantly for voters and taxpayers in Maryland.
First, there was the costly special session of the legislature to over-turn the Governor's (Republican Robert Ehrlich) deal to help ease the pain of a rapid increase in the price of electricity. A deal that was designed to help make up for mistakes made by a Democrat Governor and Democrat controlled legislature that had passed a highly flawed electricity rate deregulation plan. The Governor's plan, which looked a lot like the plan that the Democrat legislature passed in their own special session, was different in just a few ways -- most importantly in that it offered a choice of avoiding having to pay interest on deferred payments that will eventually go to the utility companies.
The Democrats tossed the Governor's plan, implemented their own -- which didn't include choice and forces the customers of the electric companies to pay interest on the deferred payments -- and in addition called the Public Utility/Service Commission, with it's majority made up of appointees of the Governor, lapdogs of the governor. Their plan, and their law, which again passed over a veto, illegally FIRED the Utility/Service Commission and provided a new plan for staffing that commission that would stock it with lapdogs of the legislature's favor. When the Governor vetoed the law he even predicted and clearly stated that firing the utility commissioners was not consistent with the constitutional authority granted to the legislature.
Sure enough, some time later the fired commissioners take the case to court and basically have their firings stopped.
Continuing a bit, we also have lawmakers that passed an early voting ordinance so that their Democrat minions could get out and drum up (i.e., FIND) voters to vote for their candidates. Ooops, their law was found to be UNCONSTITUTIONAL once it was challenged in the court system. Nice waste of time and money there.
While these things were going on, we also had a candidate -- a long time politician actually -- that decided that he would like to run for higher office -- candidate for Attorney General Tom Perez (previously a Montgomery County Council member who could easily have been reelected to that office) -- who was later found not to meet constittutional requirements for the office. This one was a bit more interesting though in that an earlier liberal judge in the lower courts opted to accept the arguments made on behalf of the candidate to accept some alternate qualifications for the position he's running for.
Based on the earlier decision, the election materials were prepared expecting Perez to remain a legal candidate and funds have been spent on providing ballots for absentee voters, as well as programming touch screens that will be used in the primary and the general election. Ooops, that became a big waste of taxpayer money and a big problem for elections officials who now have an illegal candidate on the absentee ballots and whose name must be removed thanks to decisions by higher courts that over-turned the decisions of the lower court (and who also confirmed that the early voting law was not consistent with Maryland's constitution).
Thanks loads liberals, Democrat lawmakers, idiotic judges, and idiotic candidates. I really appreciate the fine waste of money and time that your efforts have resulted in for Maryland taxpayers and residents.
While I don't wish to see one party politics, I would like to have the people that control the body politic in my area be smarter about the laws they pass, the candidates the push forward, and the legal decisions that they will be making as judges. I understand that laws and decisions will be challenged along the way, but laws that are clearly flawed to begin with shouldn't ever make it far enough to create these challenges. Use some thought in advance, make sure that the laws you pass are in the best interests of the constituents (residents of the state) and make sure that the laws can pass challenges so that residents don't have their time and money wasted in these challenges.
