Set aside those creepy feelings you get from being called a “worker.” Instead, unless you’re a member of the 1%, focus on what prominent “progressive” politicians are aiming to do to you, without the jelly or even a kiss. Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who has ambitions to play on the national stage, proposed yesterday (O’Malley tries to rally support for gas tax increase) to burden Marylanders with the state’s regressive 6% sales tax on gasoline sales . . . Yes, it’s true. As gasoline soars past $4 a gallon, and President Obama plugs wells in the Gulf of Mexico, directs Canadian shale oil to China, and panders to rich environmentalists – the 1%ers – Mr. O’Malley chooses to drill elsewhere.

Characteristically, we are asked to grin and grab our ankles “for the children.” Yes, the governor argued in his testimony that we will have to face our children in the years ahead and apologize when they’re stuck in traffic, or a bridge falls down, or, horrors, we didn’t build another taxpayer fueled Metro line.  Never mind that Mr. O’Malley has siphoned nearly $1,000,000,000 from the state’s transportation budget funded by gasoline taxes already paid to fund any number of “progressive” schemes, especially an education system that doesn’t . . .

That Mr. O’Malley doesn’t understand economics was evident when he channeled former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who famously claimed that the most valuable spur to our national economy is unemployment insurance!  The governor averred that the new funds extracted from the “workers’ would lead to a boom in construction jobs – union jobs of course – and dismissed the notion that businesses that employ people – as opposed to “workers” – would suffer from the transfer to big labor bosses.

It is a challenge to feel to much for Marylanders though. They re-elected the governor in 2010 with nearly 55% of the vote.  In his first term he had only raised taxes on the 1% and the rest thought they were immune. Not!