Religious but not Right

All politics is local, right? So here's a local political story -- with national ramifications. The Maryland state legislature (the General Assembly) passed a law to keep two state offices open when the next fiscal year begins July 1. The offices enforce state wage laws, by, as the Washington Times put it, "helping workers collect pay owed to them by employers who are not complying with state law."

The governor of Maryland, Robert Ehrlich, announced he was going to shut down the offices, despite the law. Maryland's Senate President Thomas Mike Miller, called the move "outrageous. It's an insult. It's a slap in the face to every working man and woman in Maryland."

The slap resounds well past the Bay State borders. In this "let them eat cake age," Ehrlich's actions stand as sign and symbol of an approach to working people that begins with disdain and ends with policies, local and national, that undercut the economic well-being of hundreds of millions of working people in this country. The sad irony is that many of these same people voted for Ehrlich, and his clones at the national level, in the first place.