Feb. 19, 2002
 
 Were you amazed when you read in the Baltimore Sun how much dough House Speaker Cas Taylor raked in during the 1998 election cycle?
 
 Over $989,000!!!
 
 Which is really weird since none of that seems to show up in his accounting of campaign contributions, but that’s another story.
 
 Mr. Taylor is one amazing pol. He managed to snatch more money than anyone else in the entire General Assembly in that 1998 election cycle. In fact, he managed to snatch $475,940 more than the guy with the next highest amount, Senator Thomas Bromwell, chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Bromwell only got $513,164, and the guy next on the list - Senate President Mike Miller - received a paltry $480,270. How pathetic are they?
 
 Mr. Taylor, in fact, came really, really close to getting more moola than those two combined. That’s the kind of politician Mr. Taylor is.
 
 We’re so proud.
 
 The question all this raises, of course, is who are Mr. Taylor’s donors and why are they giving him all this money? We know they’re not from Allegany County. And that, in turn, raises another question - exactly whose interests is Mr. Taylor representing when he’s in Annapolis? Ours? Or the guy who handed him $5,000 at breakfast?
 
 That $989,104 wad of cash does represent how well Mr. Taylor serves his constituents - not his constituents in Allegany County, but his constituents in the corporate world. Maybe that’s why Mr. Taylor hasn’t really accomplished much for Allegany County during his tenure as Speaker.
 
 We know that’s a shocking statement to make, since all you tend to hear from the local media is “where would we be without Cas,” but let’s take stock. In the nine years that Mr. Taylor has served as Speaker, we have continued to lose population, basically because of our serious lack of employment opportunities, to put it politely.
 
 Mr. Taylor has made a lot of noise about jobs, jobs, jobs, but he hasn’t really delivered. The good news is he got us the state prisons. The bad news is, he built a financially unstable hotel that lays off a sizable chunk of its staff every winter. He created legislation (One Mexico) that encourages companies to locate here and pay people poverty wages. And he’s working feverishly at this very moment to get us a horse track complete with slot machines, a set up that creates more jobs paying lousy wages and, as a bonus, will also create lots of social problems we don’t have the money to deal with.
 
 We’re excited.
 
 Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mr. Taylor has been working really, really hard making lots and lots of people in the state capital really, really happy. So happy, in fact, they toss money at him with abandon, sort of like rice at a wedding.
 
 Well, now that we know he has all this cash, maybe he can share some with his poverty stricken district. We need it more than he does.