Martin O'Malley has NEVER fully funded this index with state funds. He did not fund it at all in 2008, only partially funded it in 2009, and used stimulus dollars to fund it this year. Moreover, Ehrlich made record investments in schools while governor, to the tune of over 1 BILLION dollars. O'Malley is just a liar.

Mr. Ehlich has promised to cut billion in state revenues, end furloughs, and pour largess upon various interest groups. His website suggests that he will pay for it by "cutting waste" and using "baseline budgeting." However, he did nothing like this for his first four years in office, leaving any voter with a memory longer than three years to be suspicious of just how Mr. Ehrlich will pay for all of the promises he's making.

Moreover, of course, it is utterly irrational to believe that there is so much "waste" in the State system that can be unilaterally eliminated by the governor -- since no other governor, INCLUDING MR. EHRLICH, has ever been able to eliminate before.

Apparently part of Mr. Ehrlich's plan for paying for all of his promises will be to to balance the budget on the backs of poor children. Because the children in Prince George's and Baltimore are mostly black, this plan should be quite pleasing to the frothing racists who (to judge from the comments in the Sun) make up the backbone of Mr. Ehrlich's suburban supporters.

However, that also won't be enough to pay for Mr. Ehrlich's promises; he needs to come up with about a billion dolalrs a year to do the things he says he's going to do.

The fact remains that (a) Ehrlich presided over record-breaking growth in the state budget, while O'Malley has had the least budget growth of any governor in over 60 years; (b) Neither Ehrlich nor O'Malley caused the global economic collapse that has essentially coincided with O'Malley's term in office.

Ehrlich's campaign this time can be summarized as follows:

(1) Everything bad that has ever happened to you is Martin O'Malley's fault,

and

(2) I will cut taxes and increase spending and pay for it by doing things that I didn't do last time, that won't add up to the necessary amount, and that won't pass the Democratic legislature.

and

(3) Again, everything from Icelandic bank collapses to black holes to myasthenia gravis is Martin O'Malley's fault, and how dare he not repair the budget I broke?

Rocket88, how does raising the salaries of public school teachers suddenly make education better for Maryland's students? It doesn't. Does this mean that all of the lame teachers will suddenly be fired and replaced by better teachers because they will come for more money? No. It's simply a handout to the teachers unions to buy their powerful voter base.

And using your own premise, anything that could be blamed on Ehrlich can also be blamed on the Democratic legislature by which he was handcuffed for his 4 years. Until Maryland has a Republican led legislature (which it never will), the Democrats are always going to share the blame.