Last night, the League of Women Voters hosted a debate to which all five candidates running in the gubernatorial election were invited.  The two with all the money, O’Malley and Ehrlich, refused to attend (after saying maybe) while the three independent party candidates not only showed up but engaged in a substantive discussion of the issues we face.  O’Malley and Ehrlich have consistently not only refused to debate us, but have denied the voters of Maryland even the knowledge, much less the substance of, the real choices they have on November 2.  Here is what some voters heard last night:

We are living through the worst economic catastrophe of our lives, the loss of our middle class, the largest increase in decades of Americans living in poverty, the deliberate de-funding of our state and local governments and the ensuing cuts to essential services, the destruction of our manufacturing economy that sustained so many of us and its replacement by a casino economy based on speculation that sustains only the hyper-wealthy, the takeover of our health care system and our health itself by the insurance industry for which no profit is ever enough – all a result of government policies that transfer our wealth upward and our jobs overseas and the utter inability of elected leaders to address these issues on behalf of the people.

Why has this happened?  Because Democrats and Republicans all take money from corporations and special interests to gain and keep elected office.  That money buys access and favorable legislation for them as it cuts we the people out of the heart of representative government.  Look no further on any issue that concerns us:  the power of Constellation energy over both Martin O’Malley and Robert Ehrlich and the continued fleecing of BGE ratepayers under the scam of utility deregulation, the power of industrial food producers like Perdue and Tyson and the death of our once-abundant Chesapeake Bay, the enormous tax breaks handed out to corporations as bribes to keep them in Maryland which has not prevented them from leaving Maryland and shipping our good jobs overseas with them  - and you find huge piles of campaign cash and the politicians who serve their wealthy and powerful campaign contributors even as they ask for our votes and lie to us.

Tonight I will present my solutions to the problems that face us and as I do, I ask you to remember that yes, we are all in this together, but we cannot solve our problems without a government that serves our interests.  If you think government is the problem and that corporations can be trusted with our lives, look no further than BP’s destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, the 1.5 billion eggs recalled because Jack DeCoster runs his company like a corporate criminal and the 29 dead coal miners in West Virginia’s Massey coal mine disaster earlier this year.

It’s not that we need no government or less government, but that we need to make our government work for us again.  And that takes the kind of leadership I provide which owes everything to we the people and gives everything to our collective future.