TAX FEVER!

Tax Fever is more contagious than H1N1 in Montgomery County right now. The County Executive and County Council have almost reached the breaking point in bankrupting our county through their irresponsible spending. Our AAA bond rating is in danger, according to one of the rating firms.

They can't get reelected if they don't close the budget deficit. But they also can't get reelected if they raise taxes - and they promised they weren't going to raise taxes, remember?

We know that our county council believes it is above the law, as we found during the school funding debates for FY2010 and 2011. And when the law is inconvenient, just have your cronies in Annapolis rewrite it for you, right? Even if children end up paying the price for your reelection!

They'll do whatever it takes.

And that also includes being out of touch with reality.

$800 million shortfall? Wave the magic wand and cut $173 million from MCPS! Wow, that was so easy!

Can they wave it again? Uh oh. They're willing to steal money from children, seniors and the disabled in the budget. But they're not willing to steal from the special interests that got them elected!

So they may just have to raise taxes, and hope the local media will cover for them as usual.

Risky strategy, but then, this is the council president who proposed a $250 parking tax, right?

So here comes the energy tax increase! Local media lapdogs have not questioned or researched the real cost of the energy tax for the average working family. I have, and can tell you it will be far higher than the laughable $3-5 a month Ike Leggett has claimed. He's so glad he has those media lapdogs to just cut and paste the press releases into the newspaper!

Hold on!

A business tax is coming! From guess who? Nancy "$250 Parking Tax" Floreen!

She's calling it an Economic Development Authority, but now it's become clear that this is simply a ruse to add a new tax on county businesses.

That ought to jumpstart us out of a recession! That ought to create jobs!

Or, at least, that's what some of Floreen's uncomfortable political allies on the county Chamber of Commerce are kind of, sort of telling the Gazette.

Survey says?.......... BRRRRRRRRNTTTTTTT!

It seems the authority will not only create more government, more bureaucracy and more salaries and benefits for you, the taxpayer to finance, but it will also be more of a tax collector than a business creator. After all, government doesn't create business or jobs - businesspeople do.

And they can't do that if they're being taxed!

It's not even April 15 yet!

"We may be calling upon the business community to make a contribution to this, and I think over time we will," says Floreen.

As my Spanish professor used to say, "?Voluntarios o victimas?"

Take a guess.