Defending One of Our Own

Delegate Warren Miller (District 9A Howard County) is a conservative’s conservative. He goes to Annapolis not only to kill bad bills, but push for good legislation as well. In it’s endorsement of Miller the Baltimore Sun—let me repeat that the Baltimore Sun—called him, “the kind of representative all voters deserve.” Whether it is protecting small business from the ravages of burdensome regulation or dragging state government into the light of transparency Warren Miller is the kind of man we need in Annapolis.

That is why his Democratic opponents’ hit pieces, Mary Ann Maher in particular, are so troubling. It is quite cheeky for Maher to attack Warren when she has never answered the troubling questions about her campaign accepting contributions over the legal limit from foreign donors.

I don’t expect Maher to address the campaign finance issue, she’s a progressive and by definition absolved from following the rules like the rest of us, because she is on the side of the angels.

However, let’s address one of her charges. She claims Warren is “too extreme” for Howard County because in 2008 he voted against HB 62 a bill that bans the sale of children’s products containing lead. The implication being that Warren is a shill for big business interests.

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However, if you understand the fundamental truth that big business loves regulation because it eliminates competition you can see why someone would vote against such a regulation. Indeed, as the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney has shown with lead regulations in the federal Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, the big toy makers Hasbro and Mattel heavily lobbied for the bill. While those big corporations can absorb the added regulatory burden by passing the costs on to consumers, smaller toy makers and individual artisans cannot, and are now in danger of going out of business.

We’d like to see Maher defend why she favors a law that benefits big corporations while putting small businesses out of business.
Warren Miller for Delegate.



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