VIRGINIANS STRONGLY SUPPORT MARYLAND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR ANTHONY BROWN TO SUCCEED O’MALLEY AS GOVERNOR – SO WE CAN CONTINUE TO “EAT YOUR LUNCH” IN BUSINESS!

We Virginians LOVE Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and, short of you Marylanders changing your laws so he can have a third term, the best thing for Virginia is that you elect O’Malley’s hand chosen successor and present understudy Anthony Brown as your next Governor!  Electing Brown will ensure Virginia can continue eating your lunch in business for at least another four years.  As a matter of fact, on 20 Oct the Washington Post just reported this headline:  "Construction giant Bechtel's Reston move shines spotlight on Md-Va business rivalry."  Keep up the Good Work!

 

Under the O’Malley-Brown Team and his liberal Democrat fellow-travelers, Maryland has acquired a well earned reputation as a state that is so extremely unfriendly to business and job creators that they are fleeing in record numbers.  Virginians are confident that Anthony Brown will continue the current anti-business crusade that has allowed your neighbor to the south to flourish while Maryland has been hemorrhaging businesses, jobs and even taxpayers in record numbers.  As a result of additional taxes and fees stemming from 40 separate O’Malley-Brown increases, wealthy Marylanders are fleeing the state faster than the state can drain their bank accounts!

 

The well respected CNBC business network scored and ranked all 50 states using the “51 Measures of Competitiveness” developed with input from business groups including the National Association of Manufacturers and the Council on Competitiveness. States received points based on their rankings in each metric. Then, they separated those metrics into ten broad categories, weighting the categories based on how frequently they are cited in state economic development marketing materials. That way, their study ranked the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves.   The entire 50 state ranking is appended at the bottom of this entry but here is a snap shot of how Maryland and Virginia compare.  I would note that Maryland, at #40, did beat out #41 Mississippi by “a smidgen” while Virginia came in a strong #5!

Overall Rank	State	Cost of Doing Business	Economy	Infrastruc- ture	Workforce	Quality of Life	Technology & Innovation	Business Friendliness	Educa- tion	Cost of Living	Access to Capital
5	Virginia	38	10	21	6	18	12	6	8	20	13
40	Maryland	41	33	46	20	25	9	45	2	42	9

To reinforce that the CNN ranking was not an aberration, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation ranked Maryland even lower at #41 in the nation for business climate.  Today Maryland's unemployment rate is 75% higher than when the recession began and the main cause is it costs too much for job creators to stay in let alone come to Maryland. According to data released on 20 Jun 14, by the U.S. Department of Labor, Maryland shed 1,300 jobs in May 14 in both the public and private sectors and the unemployment rate jumped to 5.6 percent.  By contract, Virginia’s unemployment rate is a full half percent lower at 5.1%.  Hence, that sucking noise you Marylanders hear all the time is jobs and businesses fleeing your state!  Within the past couple of years Maryland lost out to Virginia when Northrop Grumman, SAIC and CSC all relocated their headquarters from your clone state, California, and after looking at Maryland they all decided Virginia was a much more business friendly location.  

According the Washington Post's Washington Technology publication, of the 100 largest Government Contractors, 41 are headquartered in Virginia and just 5 are in Maryland; only one is in DC.  Of the Top 20, 11 are in Virginia and only one in Maryland.  Given over two-thirds of the Nations Capital is surrounded by Maryland, business climate and not proximity is the reason for Maryland's dismal performance.  And the main factor driving businesses (and Marylanders) away from your state can be summed up in one word – TAXES!

 

The O’Malley-Brown administration has levied 40 consecutive taxes on Marylanders in their term in office.  From increases in sales and income taxes, to regressive taxes such as the gas tax and rain tax, Marylanders are paying more for just about everything than they were seven years ago. These taxes have taken $9.5 billion from Maryland’s economy and are projected to cost $20 billion by 2018.  Maryland is now one of the highest taxed states in the country and the O’Malley-Brown Team has been innovative in dreaming up new ones – Maryland is the ONLY State that taxes citizens for the rain that falls on their property!

 

Over 31,000 Marylanders have voted with their feet since 2007.  As a result of the O’Malley-Brown historic tax increases, those 31,000 Marylanders that left the state took $1.7 billion yearly out of Maryland’s economy and took it to the more tax-friendly states, such as Virginia and North Carolina.  Along with those 31,000 taxpayers, Maryland lost over 6,500 small businesses, the worst in the region, thus showing the state’s inability to support business, produce jobs and maintain its tax base is eroding. The state has lost 10 of its 13 Fortune 500 companies.  This is a sharp contrast to 24 large corporate headquarters in Virginia.  In a recent pole, almost half of All Marylanders said they would leave the state if they could.

The Good News for Virginia is, with leaders like the O’Malley-Brown Team in Annapolis, we don’t need to worry about competition from our neighbors to the North.  We Virginians LOVE the O’Malley-Brown Team and many of us even contributed funds to their elections because they are the best thing that's happened to the Virginia economy in years.  Their anti-business policies are directly responsible for driving down our unemployment rate to the lowest on the Atlantic seaboard and now with their other harebrained initiatives like their off-shore wind turbine fiasco Virginia will do even better.  Their wind turbine fiasco, which locks Maryland taxpayers into paying for a 20 year binding contract to buy uneconomically feasible electricity from a bunch of their political cronies, will accelerate the loss of the few manufacturing jobs left in the State!.  Already electricity in Maryland averages 12 cents/kW hr while it’s only 8 cents across the river in Virginia but off shore wind will drive it up to 18 cents/kW Hr in Maryland.  Although the O’Malley-Brown Team only “intends” to tack on $1.50 for residential and 1.5% onto industrial monthly power bills, the rest of the costs will just be paid by other taxes such as your new 9% State Income Tax (on top of 35% Federal), increased sales tax and your new 24 cent/gal gas tax.  Don't forget your new "flush tax!"  Marylanders can't even take a crap without being taxed!

So PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Marylanders, Elect Anthony Brown as your next Governor so Virginia can continue to grown and prosper.  My only advice to you is, in your haste to flee the State is don’t forget to leave someone behind to turn out the lights.

And here is the side-by-side Maryland-Virginia comparison recently published in the Washington-Post and below it are some other observations about how the two states stack up.

Here are some observations -- More are coming:

• Virginians have 2.7 Times more Registered Firearms yet Marylanders are 2.5 times more likely to become a victim of violent crime!
• Maryland has 30% more Lawyers by population - guess that's to service all the additional criminals Maryland has than Virginia.
• Maryland teachers' salaries are 8th highest in the nation and 20% more than Virginia teachers (tied for 32nd) and Maryland is 9th in the nation in per pupil spending at $14,616 while Virginia is 20th spending $11,192 yet Marylanders SAT scores were 30 points lower than Virginia students in 2012.  In the past year while O'Malley has been off running for President and his approval ratings have plunged 13 points to a mere 41%, Brown has been running the state with disastrous results.  Brown's mismanagement of the state's ObamaCare website rivals his ineptitude in managing the education system.  He has managed to double last year's 30 point gap with Virginia to 62 point in the last round of SAT testing.  According to a 7 Oct 14 Washington Post article, state-wide the Maryland SAT average dropped 1468 while Virginia's average increased to 1530.
• Maryland does NOT even meet the requirements of the Individual & Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) "guaranteeing students a free and appropriate education" while Virginia had no problem satisfying the law.

Completely CNBC State Rankings for Business Competitive.