Green is the New Red

Crossposted on The Main Adversary

There are a few areas where Greens and conservatives meet in agreement.

Strong criticism of business as usual, corrupt one-party Democratic rule in Baltimore and in Maryland
The futility of the drug war
Elected School Boards

However, for a party that claims it is for the people, some its stated policy objectives as embodied in Maria Allwine’s candidacy for President of the Baltimore City Council would harm the people they ostensibly seek to help. Green polices would do nothing more than trade one bad set of policies and ineffective government bureaucracy for another, and stifle both economic growth and job growth.

Energy Policy
Allwine wants to “Marylandize” BGE, that is make it a publicly owned and operated utility. This is a nice pie in the sky idea however, Allwine does not go into the specifics of how this would happen or how this new entity would be operated. She cites Hagerstown and Austin TX as examples of successful municipally owned utility services. However, Hagerstown and Austin are not Baltimore. Is there any reason to believe that a city owned and operated utility would be any better? Baltimore can’t even run a decent trash pick-up service let alone a power utility. This plan would replace, an albeit troubled private service with an even more troubled and ineffective government bureaucracy. Citizens of Baltimore have enough trouble getting a voice in the current government agencies as it is, imagine one given the task of supplying power to the over 600,000 residents.

Instead of the Keiffer Mitchell proposed BGE city tax rebate that would return $30 a year to consumers and $30.8 million to the city; Allwine wants to keep collecting the tax and “create a Baltimore Alternative Energy program.” The BAE would use that money “to begin "solarization" of Baltimore city homes or use it to pay the legal fees to achieve a public takeover of BGE."

Allwine’s proposal is nothing more than a coercive government mandate on how you should power your home. She wants to trade a privately owned monopoly for government owned monopoly.

Allwine’s proposal for a government power grab of utilities would fulfill the Green’s wish to make Baltimore “a proud leader in the fight against global warming.” Now we come to it. Under Allwine’s plan of forced solarization we would be forces to choose how and we power our homes and how much energy we use. Allwine, in her campaign flyer wants to stop the “Enroning of Maryland.” That is a choice statement coming from a champion of global warming alarmism, given that Enron was the chief lobby on the Clinton administration to sign the Kyoto treaty. Funny how that "inconvenient truth" is never mentioned.

Green is the new Red. Allwine’s proposals for publicly owned utilities and government mandates on individual decisions regarding energy use is nothing more than a backdoor to socialism masked in do-gooder environmentalism.

Economic and Tax Policy
Typical of the Greens, Allwine’s economic and tax proposals drip with rank class warfare rhetoric. Allwine wants to require a city wide, “livable/minimum wage of $12/hour for companies with 10 or more employees.” Typical of such socialist twaddle, it lacks the concrete understanding that such livable wages actually creates unemployment. Allwine would create high wages for jobs that would no longer exist.

Allwine wants to “restructure corporate taxes”, and “stop sweetheart deals,” which is newspeak for raising taxes and “soaking the rich”. Allwine says:

“Why should any CEO make millions while the workers eke by on wages that no longer allow them to afford to rent, much less buy, no longer cover their rising BGE bills and prescription drugs, no longer allow them to send their children to college? Corporations receive enormous hidden subsidies (such as Payment In Lieu of Taxes programs and obscene tax breaks that ensure they pay little or no corporate state income taxes) from our lawmakers.”

Allwine’s solution is to make the tax climate even more oppressive further reducing economic growth and employment opportunities for the middle-class folks she purports to speak for.

Baltimore’s tax burden on both businesses and private property is oppressive for growth as it is. Why do you think the city makes such deals in the first place to attract business and residents? Lost on Allwine, is the fact that higher taxes creates lower tax receipts, this is the folly of the cigarette tax funding healthcare coverage. Lower taxes creates a favorable climate for business and economic growth, and actually increases overall tax receipts. Then you could close all the tax loopholes and use the revenue fund all the warm and fuzzy things Allwine and the Greens want like public works programs.

Allwine wants to create “a new public works program to provide well--paying jobs in our city, train our unemployed and underemployed city residents in new trades and skills, and repair our crumbling roads, bridges and infrastructure.” This program would obviously be funded through new taxes. But Allwine wants to tax businesses out Baltimore. So where would the money come from? It would come from taxes on you, me and all the other middle class folks Allwine wants to help.

If the Greens are the so-called “alternative” to business as usual, business as usual doesn’t sound so bad.