A Tale of Two Cities
If you've got something better to do don't bother reading this, its mostly just a rant about right wing idiots.
I live in West Virginia which makes me one of the lowest taxed people in the country, at least if you only consider real and personal property taxes. Next door, so to speak, to us is Maryland. They will tax the skin off of you in Maryland and the people who live in Maryland's eastern panhandle just hate it.
Driving from West Virginia into Maryland up here in the northern part of the state will take you through a town called Terra Alta on the WV side and then the next town of any size worth mentioning will be Oakland, on the MD side. Both towns are about the same size and they have an unsurprising similarity in their reason for existence. The B&O railroad connects the towns and since before the Civil War has provided employment to the region - or at least it used to.
Terra Alta is nearly a ghost town, it is in a state of decay and disrepair from which it will never recover. The main road that runs through it is pock marked with pot holes, repairs have been delayed for years. Nothing is kept up and very few people are to be seen. Ten miles up the road is Oakland. Oakland, MD is a thriving community. It is clean, it is well kept, and it is clear when passing through that in a deeply middle class way it is thriving.
Now why is it that one town on the WV side is desolate while not a 10 minute drive away on the MD side a town that is the kissing cousin of the WV town thrives?
Could it be that the people of Maryland actually get something for the taxes they pay? Could it be that the orderly regulation of their community actually resulted in a better place for everyone to live?
Yesterday morning I was in Oakland, at a hardware store that stocks an obscure product that I needed. As I was paying for it I noticed a sign on the counter urging customers to show up at a meeting and sign a petition. The purpose of the petition, as I read it, was to nullify all zoning restrictions and deny the state (defund by removal of existing taxes) the ability to regulate individuals land use in the future. I guess their purpose is the make western Maryland look like eastern West Virginia.
What are these idiots thinking? All they have to do is drive 10 minutes down the road to see what happens when a state is corporately ruled; lacks meaningful citizen input into land use restrictions, zoning, or building standards; and refuses to tax itself to provide civil services.
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