Gov. Martin O’Malley autographs supporter’s baseball during his last reelection campaign. Will the Maryland governor be Hillary Clinton’s VP running mate in 2016? (VoB file photo/Alan Z. Forman)

RUNNING  WITH HILLARY
COULD BE A GIANT LEAP
TOWARD WHITE HOUSE

This and other musings for this week’s ‘Inside Pitch’
 
By David Maril
 
While wondering if Gov. Martin O’Malley already has staffers working on his acceptance speech as Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running-mate for 2016, it’s interesting to note the following:

It’s ironic that Clinton, who O’Malley supported over Barack Obama in the primaries for the 2008 election, is the biggest obstacle he will likely face for his upcoming run at the presidency.

Going into 2008, O’Malley, who is one of the most successful and calculating politicians in Maryland history, probably made a decision that he could gain more for his long-term presidential aspirations by backing Hillary over Obama. She went in slightly favored, she could serve her two terms and be out of the way, and he would have the gratitude and support of the powerful Clinton organization. He never dreamed Obama would win and he’d be dealing with Hillary in his path, two elections later.

No matter how many campaign speeches O’Malley makes around the country, or appearances on Sunday morning TV, Clinton, if she chooses to run, remains virtually impossible for him to defeat.

Even if the governor sets a record for most appearances on network-news talk shows the next few years, the former secretary of state, who turns 66 in October, is still a much bigger name on the national campaign trail. She is about to publish her fifth book and has an experienced, well-organized campaign staff.

Not to mention a husband who is arguably the most astute political strategist of our time.

Serving as her vice president, however, for a term or two, could work to O’Malley’s advantage. At age 50, he has plenty of time to reach the White House, and it wouldn’t hurt him to become the first Maryland governor to serve as vice president since Spiro Agnew.

He has, after all, been running for president since first becoming mayor of Baltimore in 1999.

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Maryland Live! Casino at Arundel Mills will premiere table games beginning Thursday this week.

MARYLAND LIVE! CASINO AND POWER PLANT DEVELOPER
PUT $116 MILLION INTO OFFSHORE TRUST ACCOUNTS
TO (LEGALLY) AVOID PAYING  U.S. FEDERAL TAXES

Table games to begin at Maryland Live! this Thursday
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
The Baltimore-based Cordish Companies, whose slot machines and table games at casinos such as Maryland Live! regularly entice gamblers, as well as tourists and other citizens, to bet their hard-earned cash against odds stacked heavily against them, put $116 million worth of assets into four offshore trust accounts — havens to keep from paying U.S. taxes — and got bilked out of $12 million as a result of the tax-dodging investments.

Cordish is scheduled to inaugurate table games — blackjack, craps and roulette — at Maryland Live! in Arundel Mills this week, beginning at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Poker at the Hanover, Md. facility will begin soon thereafter in a room separate from the rest of the casino. At present the company, which builds and runs urban retail and entertainment venues, has only one property in its gambling portfolio: Maryland Live!

As reported by the Washington Post, based on information obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Cordish Family was enticed by New York financial planner Brian Callahan and an attorney for Portcullis TrustNet, an offshore investment company which operates mostly in Asia and the Cook Islands, to invest their money through trusts set up in the South Pacific nation.

According to the ICIJ — which is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit news organization — the Cordishes created four trusts in the Cook Islands through TrustNet and then placed $116 million worth of assets in them. As required by law, they disclosed the transfer to the Internal Revenue Service, which permits American citizens to legally transfer assets offshore in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes, on condition that the transfers are reported to the IRS.

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BIRDS’  ‘MIRACLE’ SEASON  CONTINUES;
NATIONALS WIN 1st 2013 GAME IN D.C.

It was as if the Orioles’ “miracle” season of 2012 hadn’t ended yet, as the Birds stunned the Tampa Bay Rays with a five-run seventh inning Tuesday to win their 2013 opening game by a score of 7-4 in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The high-flying O’s wore down Tampa Bay’s Cy Young Award winner David Price, then battered shutdown reliever Jake McGee, as the Birds’ middle-of-the-order hitters — catcher Matt Wieters, center fielder Adam Jones and first baseman Chris Davis — drove in all seven runs and collectively went 6-for-12 with two homers, three doubles and three walks.

In Washington, the Nationals also achieved an auspicious beginning for the new season, defeating the Miami Marlins 2-0 on flawless Stephen Strasburg pitching and two Bryce Harper home runs, in each of his first two at-bats.

It was the beginning of Washington’s 80th baseball season, the ninth since the national pastime returned to the nation’s capital in 2005.

For the O’s it was the start of Season No. 60, since the Browns became the Birds in 1954.

After two games Wednesday and Thursday against Tampa Bay, the Orioles are scheduled to open the new season at home with an afternoon game Friday against the Minnesota Twins at Camden Yards.

Voice of Baltimore columnist David Maril, a former longtime sports editor of the Milford Daily News, in Massachusetts, and voter in Major League Baseball’s annual Cooperstown Hall of Fame balloting, weighs in on the optimism of the new baseball season with his second “Inside Pitch” column below.

Editor’s note:   Maril’s columns for VoB will not be limited to sports or baseball; it just happens that the O’s and Friday’s season opener are Baltimore’s big story of this week. (To read Dave’s inaugural column for VoB — on cheapskates! — click here.)
 

INSIDE PITCH — New baseball season allows for justifiable optimism

WILL O’S & NATS REPEAT NEAR-MIRACLES OF 2012?

Will hot dogs & beer at Camden Yards be affordable?
 
By David Maril
 
Baseball, the 2013 edition, is finally here. One of the rare times in our skeptical, cynical world that optimism is allowed to become the order of the day.

And, no matter how cool or windy the weather at Camden Yards might be when MLB returns to Baltimore this Friday, the first crack of the ball zooming off Adam Jones’ bat will signify that pleasant daytime temperatures lingering into balmy evenings are but a few home-stands away.

The beginning of the summer game, played in a rare but classic baseball-afternoon setting, means vacationtime is drawing closer and school is almost out.

Opening Day symbolizes anticipation and hope.

Will the Orioles repeat their near-miracle of 2012? Will the Nationals do the same?

Will a family of four be able to afford hot dogs and soft drinks at Camden Yards? Will guzzlers be able to afford a second beer?

In the early innings fans will cheer even when an Oriole hitter fouls a pitch into the stands. Routine defensive plays will bring the crowd to its feet. Every Baltimore home run will evoke a lengthy curtain call.

After wearing practice jerseys through spring training, the regular season home uniforms will look white enough to be used in laundry detergent commercials.

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INAUGURATION OF OPINION COLUMN
BEGINS WITH  FORMER EDITOR’S
ANALYSIS  OF  CHEAPSKATES

Return of the Native

Beginning today and scheduled to appear on a regular basis in this space, Voice of Baltimore is pleased to initiate a series of columns by longtime Massachusetts newspaper editor David Maril, a native of Baltimore who recently returned to his roots to head up the Herman Maril Foundation, an organization supporting educational programs and exhibitions in museums, schools and galleries related to the study of Herman Maril’s legacy as an artist. The elder Maril, a professor emeritus of painting at the University of Maryland, died in 1986.

David Maril, Herman’s son, was a columnist and copy editor at the Brockton Enterprise for over a decade, following a 25-year stint as sports editor of the Milford Daily News — both newspapers published in Massachusetts — where he covered the Boston Red Sox and Celtics and the New England Patriots, while winning numerous writing and section-design awards. The younger Maril continues to serve on the board of the Boston Chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, where he is a lifetime member and voter in Major League Baseball’s annual Cooperstown Hall of Fame balloting.

A graduate of Park School in Brooklandville, Md., he majored in English at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. and joins Voice of Baltimore as the creator and protagonist of “Inside Pitch,” a column dedicated to Maril’s opinion on all subjects near and dear to readers of the VoB news website, and by extension, all who see this page, whose comments pro and con are welcome — and encouraged — anytime.  (See “Post a Comment” under Main Menu at left for guidelines.)
 

The late Vaudeville, radio & television comic Jack Benny was well-known for his comedic personification of the ultimate cheapskate.

LIKE JACK BENNY  IN DAYS OF OLD,
ABILITY TO GET BY ON THE CHEAP
IS BADGE OF HONOR  FOR SOME
 
By David Maril
 
Even in prosperous times, cheapskates have always been around.

These days, however, with the national debt rising, unemployment still high, a hike in state gasoline taxes on the horizon and the stock market on a surge that pessimists are predicting won’t last, cheapskates everywhere are shedding inhibitions and wearing their stinginess as a badge of honor.

Yet while being a cheapskate is a bit of a character flaw, it’s not the same stigma as the label of thief, liar or bigamist. People love to tell stories about cheapskates they have known.
 
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  LETTER ERRONEOUSLY SENT TO PARENTS
  GRANTS ELIGIBILITY TO EVERY STUDENT
  THAT  TOOK  TEST  FOR  G&T  PROGRAM
 
  By Alan Z. Forman
 
  What does it mean to be “gifted and talented” in Howard County? Is every   student in the public school system a G/T scholar?

  That’s the question parents of Howard County elementary and secondary schoolchildren were asking this week, as the county’s public school system mailed a letter to parents of students who had taken a test for eligibility to Howard’s Gifted & Talented Education Program telling them their child had “qualified.”

The county is famous for attracting families from more expensive areas in Maryland who move to Howard because it’s known for having excellent public schools combined with more affordable living arrangements. But does that translate into all its students being gifted and talented? and far above the national average intellectually and academically?

The letters mailed a week ago Thursday to parents of learners who are not way above average would make it seem so. But the information contained in the letters, telling all parents their children had been accepted into the G&T Program, was incorrect.

“We had a quality control error, a coding error,” the county school system’s director of communications told Voice of Baltimore in a telephone interview at week’s end.

“All of the kids who tested got a letter saying their ‘cut score’ had met the requirement for G/T eligibility,” Rebecca Amani-Dove explained.

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