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I never thought that, even if I lived to be 101 years old, I would vote for anything proposed by Robin Ficker. Don't get me wrong. I've known Ficker for more than 30 years and I've always believed that he served as a useful gadfly in our community. But as a progressive I've viewed myself at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Ficker and have had little sympathy for his efforts to hamstring our government's taxing power.

This year, however, I voted for Ficker's Ballot Question B. This amendment to the Montgomery County Charter requires all nine members of the County Council to approve a budget that is greater than the county's charter limit on property tax collections, which links budget growth to the rate of inflation. Seven members are currently required to approve a budget that exceeds the limit and the council has done so four times in the last 18 years, including the most recent fiscal year.

I firmly believed that my vote was a quixotic protest against the irresponsible fiscal policies of our state and county governments. Surely the latest Ficker amendment would go down in flames in progressive Montgomery County.

To my shock and surprise it now appears that many other progressives in Montgomery County shared my sentiments. In a county that voted 72 percent for Barack Obama, the voters have likely approved the Ficker tax limitation amendment. According to a recent count, the yeas for Question B were ahead of the nays by 4,154 votes with about 16,000 ballots still to be counted. This means that unless nearly two-thirds of the uncounted ballots are against Question B, the Ficker amendment will pass.

Already the whining has begun from the county's Democratic establishment. Patrick K. Lacefield, spokesman for Democratic County Executive Isiah Leggett said, "The county executive thinks it is bad public policy to require a unanimous vote on a public policy concern. What effect it will have will depend on what kind of councils we get in the future. This could have the unintended consequences of getting a council who spends more because they have to satisfy the requests of one council member."

‘Not going to take it'

What the county executive and other opponents of the Ficker amendment fail to understand is that voters, like Howard Beale in the classic movie "Network," are as "mad as hell and [are] not going to take this anymore!" In particular they are angry about supposedly progressive county and state governments that have failed to take a comprehensive look at their budgets and have relied on regressive taxes to deal with the current fiscal crisis.

The state government has relied primarily on increasing the regressive sales tax to generate new revenue. It only tinkered with the state's regressive income tax structure and left in place loopholes that have enabled the state's largest corporations to evade paying their fair share of the corporate income tax. The county government, in turn, has relied primarily on increasing regressive property taxes. No wonder both the county and state leadership has lost credibility with the voters.

Some of our leaders, however, do seem to be getting the message. Progressive council member Phil Andrews (D-Dist. 3) said, "I think the message it sends is clear that a majority of voters want the council to cut spending rather than raise taxes. That's the message I take from it, and I think that's what voters are going to see. Based on what the council will do in the next budget, I think voters will have their concerns addressed." We'll wait and see, because other council members have been less forthright about addressing these concerns.

Voters statewide may soon have something else to be mad as hell about: the amendment that legalized slot machine gambling. This amendment passed narrowly in Montgomery County and statewide by a large margin.

It was sickening enough to see progressives like state Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and the state teacher's union pandering for slots as the salvation for our school children. Are we next going to see ads in the public schools urging kids to tell their parents to play the slots?

Slow in coming

It turns out, however, that legalized slot machines are not going to contribute one cent to the state budget anytime soon. According to Maryland legislature's Department of Legislative Services, slots are not likely to generate the estimated $600 million in state revenue until fiscal 2013.

The truth, of course, is that no one in state government has a clue how much revenue slots will generate several years from now. And they have no idea about the dimensions of offsetting losses in terms of lower revenue from the state's lottery and higher costs for increasing bankruptcy, alcoholism, family disruption and law enforcement.

The only thing we know for sure about legalized slot machine gambling is that the house is going to win and the players are going to lose. The rest is rank speculation.

Allan J. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and a national political analyst. He can be reached at lichtman@american.edu