Welcome to our campaign...

Driscoll and Rothstein will fight for a POSitive Populist Plan for the 21st Century
The Driscoll-Rothstein Gubernatorial Campaign is proposing a three-point Populist P.O.S.itive Plan for Prosperity, Opportunity and Security. To achieve that plan, we would promote:

Prosperity:
• Tax Relief for Working Families: Cut Taxes significantly on working families with a genuinely progressive income tax, eliminate property taxes on residential properties below $400,000 in value, close up the loophole that allows corporations to dodge taxes by moving taxable income out of the state, institute a state “land-value tax” (also known as “split-rate tax”) to encourage urban and rural renewal. Repeal all sales taxes except on luxury items. Impose a heavy “Outsourcing and Capital Flight tax” on corporations that take the wealth Marylanders create out of the state and the country, and finally, institute a small personal wealth tax on large estates.

Opportunity:
• An “Ownership Society": Create an “Ownership Society” in Maryland by instituting new laws and promoting existing laws to incubate tens of thousands of new small-businesses and employee-owned and operated companies. The Ownership Society would increase prosperity for Marylanders while rooting businesses securely in the state’s communities. By promoting a more democratic credit system in the state, by leveling the playing field between big business monopolies and small business and employee-owned and operated companies, by making more efficient use of the existing Employee Stock Ownership Plan statutes, and by increasing available funding, we intend to create hundreds of thousands of additional Maryland citizen-business owners. By changing existing law to allow and encourage Maryland consumers and municipalities to form Energy Buying Cooperatives, the Populist plan for an Ownership Society would foster competition, bringing to an end an era of state protection of big business energy monopolies. The Populist Campaign for Governor would also launch a small-and-mid-sized business paperwork reduction project to unburden business owners from state-imposed paperwork;

Security:
• Return the Guard to Maryland and Provide Healthcare for All: Return the Maryland National Guard to Maryland control and create a statewide single-payer publicly financed health insurance plan . It is our belief that tight security starts at home, not half way around the world! The right to form militias to protect communities in America is written into the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. The Maryland National Guard was formed for that purpose, to protect our state’s communities and to stand as the first line of defense against any natural or man-made disasters. Our Maryland Guard’s ability to carry out its primary mission of public safety today has been severely compromised by a federal government that has nationalized our state’s soldiers and sent them into an un-winnable, illegal war in Iraq. As a result, our state is poised for catastrophe. As we saw last year when Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, George Bush’s illegal war abroad has left our states unable to confront disaster and secure the public safety. Louisiana National Guard high-water vehicles needed in New Orleans at the time were deployed in Iraq - a desert country. American citizens died because of that terrible misappropriation of public safety resources; yet we heard not a single word of protest out of the mouths of Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich or Baltimore Democrat Mayor Martin O’Malley. Marylanders need leadership, not yes-men for George Bush.

Genuine Universal Health Insurance-
We also think we need to be more practical about how best to improve security in our lives and we need to be careful not to confuse ideology for truth. We’ve been told that 15,000 people a year die out of lack of medical care in this country, that is 5 times a many people each year as died in a single terrorist incident on Sept. 11, 2001, terrible as that tragedy was. Even worse, 90,000 a year die of mistakes, yes we said mistakes, in hospitals. The best single thing we could do to improve our security would be to get rid of the terribly expensive and inefficient health payment system based on private waste, private profit and immense public costs, that is, based on private insurance companies. These profiteering monopolies are the greatest threat to public safety and security in America today, greater than any foreign-born terrorist, greater than all the violent crime in the country, bad as the crime wave under the Democrats and Republicans has become. We simply can’t afford to keep paying for the monopoly insurance companies’ lavish lifestyles while many hardworking Americans and Marylanders go without healthcare.

Republicans propose sticking with the status quo, which will lead our country and our state to bankruptcy in the near future. Democrats propose a fake form of “Universal Healthcare” that would rely on the same private monopolies robbing us blind today, would not cover all the people (what does “universal” mean to a Democrat Politician?) and would actually cost us more than the current wasteful system, also leading in the short-run to virtual bankruptcy.
The Populists offer a tried-and-true state-wide public insurance plan that would rein in costs while covering all.

We appreciate your support.

Ed Rothstein
labored-AT-hotmail.com