Red states are increasing

You should have noticed, the number of red states is increasing, primarily because people are fed up with the high tax rate in blue states. New York City, LA and San Francisco are cultural and commercial capitals and who can get away with high taxes, both California and New York are losing residents.

Maryland is surrounded by West VA, VA, PA and DE. Look at the tax structure of those states. They all better Maryland. Only PA has higher real estate taxes plus an inheritance tax of 4.5%. None of the other states have an estate or inheritance tax. VA has an income tax max of 5.75% as does Maryland which is about to raise its income tax, but VA has lower real estate taxes, and sales tax with no inheritance or estate tax.

Currently Baltimore has the second highest homicide rate of larger cites while it has an eroding commercial center. Where are high-end stores? They are not here and will not be here until there is a radical change.

In 1950, Baltimore had a population of just under 1 million people; today, half that. Leaving things the way they are, with plans to raise taxes will see a further exodus of wealthy people. We need to remove estate and inheritance taxes to encourage the wealthy to come to MD. We need to improve our infrastructure, make sure we live in a safe environment, our schools provide a quality education and improve our recreational environment. Fortunately, Baltimore has some of the best medical care in the United States, which helps to make this city attractive. If we can do these things, cut out all frills and just provide minimal necessary services, we can make Maryland competitive. This means cutting all nonessential services; otherwise in another few years Baltimore will be a city of 250,000 and Maryland will be a backwater. Simply put, we do not compete well with our neighboring states. Raising taxes has always been Maryland’s answer and that no longer works. Let’s cut the budgets, reduce salaries of politicians and see where we can make further cuts.

We need to encourage wealthy people to come and live in Maryland. Raising taxes drives rich and poor people away. Hemingway and Fitzgerald argued about the rich — the rich are different from you and me — they have more money to spend and that folks helps our economy.

— Peter W. Broido, Baltimore

Virginia’s economy is flourishing and Maryland’s is not

The Honorable Sen. James Rosapepe proposed legislation on Maryland residency requirements is precisely why Maryland is in economic decline. His proposal will give top earners another reason to flee the state taking with them the property tax, sales tax, etc. and myriad of fees they currently contribute to the state’s financial wellbeing. Not to mention possibly their business entities. If enacted into law his proposal, along with the top earner income tax increases that will most certainly become law, is a deep finger in the eye of these valuable citizens. It is precisely this sort of political action that is driving new businesses and high earners across the river to Virginia who have some of the best pro-business and high earner tax policies in the nation.

Virginia’s economy is flourishing and producing structural surpluses in the billions. Further similar action will only contribute Maryland economic decline and erosion of the tax base.

— Curt Rasmussen, Taneytown

The cruelty is the point

Among all the executive actions taken by President Trump on his first day in office, perhaps the most revealing, but least noticed, was his termination of President Biden’s Executive Order 14011 of February 2021. Biden’s order established an interagency task force to help reunite migrant families whose children had been separated by the “zero tolerance” anti-immigration actions of the first Trump administration. The difficult work of reuniting these families, still numbering over a thousand, will go on by private organizations but is made much harder without government help. Trump’s action tells the world not only that he doesn’t care about the innocent children effectively made orphans by his own past policies — to him they are only political pawns — but that we can expect more of the same over the next four years.

As others have said, the cruelty is the point. Combined with his many other orders related to immigration, many of them blatantly illegal or unconstitutional, Trump is clearly establishing an “all of government” approach to inhumanity.

— George Kaplan, Colora