$46,542. That's a salary that could relieve the anxiety and desperation of a lot of people in this economy, in this city, who can't find work, can't afford medical care, can't hold on to their homes.

A thousand checks at $46,542 each could indeed do a great deal of good for a great number of folks.

Gov. Martin O'Malley, however, is delighted to take those thousand checks, each at $46,542, and buy 1,000 gambling machines that themselves so often become instruments of despair. He is happy to convert $50 million to the whirring , clicking cacophony of gambling machines, alien things. He ignores the groans of the sufferers.

I hope Martin O'Malley is deaf and blind to this suffering all around him. For the alternative explanation, that he chooses to ignore the misery so he can celebrate the purchase of 1,000 machines, is very near monstrous to entertain.

Either way, he is far too handicapped to be reelected in the fall. At least 46,542 reasons attest to this.

Leo Otterbein, Lutherville