The Case for Martin O'Malley - The 'Third' Candidate in This Race

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from Matthew Yglesias at Vox:


Alex Seitz-Wald's report on Joe Biden's feelings over his not-quite presidential campaign made me profoundly sad. Not for Biden (his family tragedies have been sad enough without the need for any new pathos) but for former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, the forgotten man of the 2016 campaign:

Asked Wednesday if he regrets the decision, Biden replied, "Sure, I regret it every day, but it was the right decision for my family and for me."

He continued by saying he plans on "staying deeply involved" in the process. "We’ve got two good candidates," he said.

He was referring to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, apparently forgetting O’Malley, who has struggled to escape single digits in polls despite dogged campaigning in Iowa.

The fact is that mainstream Democrats have not two but three solid candidates in the race. And of the three, in conventional terms it's O'Malley who seems the most solid, reflecting a more consistently liberal record than Clinton's but not veering so far left that he's spent the bulk of his career denying that he's a Democrat, like Sanders.

Under O'Malley, taxes on the rich went up. So did the gasoline tax. The state curtailed gun rights and expanded same-sex marriage rights. It passed a state DREAM Act and capped college tuition increases. Maryland is also the home to a health care cost control policy known as the all-payer rate setting that is generally liberal wonks' dream. O'Malley expanded mass transit in his state and helped develop an alternative to GDP to measure real progress in living standards. Even a hideously unpopular O'Malley initiative like the so-called "rain tax" on impermeable surfaces was actually a perfectly reasonable idea

Not only did O'Malley do a lot of liberal stuff, but the outcomes were worth bragging about. Maryland has the highest median household income of any state, the most college graduates, and under O'Malley it had the nation's best-scoring K-12 students too. Maryland is a bottom 10 state in terms of per capita carbon dioxide emissions. It's the kind of record that might have made for a good presidential campaign. If the average American were as a rich, educated, green, and healthy as the average Marylander, we'd have made enormous progress as a society...


read more: http://www.vox.com/2016/1/8/10695420/martin-omalley

[FSogol]

1. Great article. K&R. n/t

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2. kick

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. O'Malley was a good governor

much much better than the idiot that is governor now.

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4. he was a good governor

...the idiot we have now is determined to end good government and replace it with mockeries of the progress we've made. He'll deplete and disrupt our government's revenue sources and then start cutting essential services to provide big businesses a tax giveaway, just like every other republican governor in the country who doesn't believe in government and is put up to the job to destroy it.

[elleng]

5. AND

Just as oysters are staging a comeback, Governor Hogan's Administration is moving to suspend oyster restoration.

The Hogan Administration has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to cease its oyster restoration efforts on the Tred Avon River. Reportedly, at the request of certain watermen, the Hogan Administration wants to wait for the results of a pending study before deciding if oyster restoration will move forward. The action could delay one of the biggest restoration projects in the state for more than a year.

The mega-oyster bar planned for Tred Avon will benefit everyone, boosting oyster reproduction, attracting fish, and cleaning currently heavily polluted water. Oysters are a common resource to be protected for all—not for one group's economic gain.

Why would anyone want to delay the recovery of the oyster population in the Bay? We can't think of one reason anyone would want to backslide on protecting these vital critters.

As reported by the media, a handful of watermen leaders convinced the Governor to delay the Tred Avon project with "new data" on the effectiveness of restoration efforts.

The first problem with this delay request is no "new data" exist. The state's fall oyster survey is still being analyzed, and no data are yet available even to state managers. According to the Corps of Engineers, what information is available indicates restoration has "resulted in healthy oyster populations and reef habitat."

The Hogan Administration's delay also violates consensus. In designing the Tred Avon project, the Army Corps was sensitive to local concerns. The Corps even modified the plans last year to satisfy local watermen. The Hogan Administration was part of the consensus and agreed to this modification. In asking now to delay the project, the Administration is going against the consensus decision and disregarding an open public process.

There is one more problem with this delay request: Halting oyster restoration efforts alone also reveals a bias against restoring oysters on sanctuary bars. If the Hogan Administration believes work related to oysters should wait until the five-year review in July, why wouldn't the Administration call for a delay in ALL parts of Maryland's oyster plan, including oyster harvesting?

Oysters are making such an encouraging comeback now, leading to cleaner, healthier waters. But these water-filtering, reef-building bivalves still face considerable challenges. Political moves designed to appease a small minority opposed to oyster sanctuaries shouldn't be another hurdle oysters need to overcome. It's up to us to make sure that isn't the case.

NO SMALL MATTER!

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. and not giving the much needed millions due to Maryland schools

and the red line