My all-time favourite political promise - more a boast than a promise, really - came from former Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, who said in the lead-up to the 1976 Olympics, 'The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.'
Maryland first allowed early voting during the 2010 primary elections. In November 2012, more than 16 percent of registered voters in Maryland cast their ballots during the early voting period, and some polling places, particularly in our larger jurisdictions, witnessed early voting lines that were hours long.
There is no reason that billionaires should crowd us out from our democracy.
Maryland is among the nation's most vulnerable states to the effects of sea level rise from climate change, and we are taking strong action to reduce carbon pollution.
I didn't run for mayor because everything was going great in Baltimore in 1999.
Let's talk about policing and public safety. Let's debate what works and what does not. We must abandon practices that do not work, and do more of the things that actually do work to save lives.
When you create an economy where you subsidize corporate profits through a welfare program and food stamps in order to keep wages low in some perverse pursuit of 'competiveness,' than you reap the fruits of the anger that you sow.
Facts are facts: No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression inherited a worse economy, bigger job losses or deeper problems from his predecessor. But President Obama is moving America forward, not back.
Democrats haven't been functioning effectively as a party at the national level.
Civil rights was not an impossible dream. Thousands of brave African Americans stepped forward to make it happen.
So, look, in order to move our country forward, we have to do the things our parents and grandparents did. They believed enough in our country to invest in our country, to create jobs, to make modern investments. And those are the things that we need to get back to with a balanced approach.
But we should not lose sight of how far we are coming and what a big hole we were left by George W. Bush.
We have not recovered all that we lost in the Bush recession. That's why we need to continue to move forward.
Romney economics would spell disaster for America's middle class. In this economy there are shipbuilders and ship wreckers.
In times of adversity - for the country we love - Maryland always chooses to move forward. Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. Whether we move forward or back: this too is a choice.
Together with President Obama, we are moving America forward, not back.
Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down.
Our story, Maryland's story, is the story of better choices and better results.
We live in a very different world than the one that we inherited from our parents and from our grandparents. Times are changing, and states must adapt to win.
Some people see Baltimore as a hopeless place. Some have even made a lot of money on it.
