Psst! Hey, buddy, wanna buy a bridge?

‘‘Under this plan, 95 percent of all Marylanders will pay less.”  Gov. Martin O’Malley

Yes, indeed, this is the era of outrageous spin. Then, again, maybe nothing has changed since that marketing guru of the late 1800s, P.T. Barnum, echoed his oft-quoted phrase about the gullibility of people.

Today, Martin O’Malley is Maryland’s consummate political salesman, our ‘‘Music Man” who has come to town to sell us a marching band with no instruments and no uniforms.

Like Robert Preston in that popular musical, O’Malley knows how to make us believe the impossible is real.

Just think of it: We’re going to raise $163 million through higher income tax levies and yet 95 percent of Marylanders won’t have their bills raised a penny!

And get this: O’Malley wants to hike total taxes $2 billion — and yet 83 percent of Marylanders won’t feel a thing!

Now close your eyes, wish upon a falling star — and presto!

The governor has put on a good show, chatting taxes over coffee with a middle-class family, asserting the need for more transportation revenue at a Gaithersburg park-and-ride lot, explaining how slot machines will save horse racing and farmland outside a breeding barn in Baltimore County and visiting low-income seniors in Landover to offer them a $50 sales tax rebate.

He has even climbed a ladder to reach a Baltimore rooftop so he could assail big, bad businesses that avoid taxes through legal loopholes — which he intends to close.

He is doing all this, mind you, to give ‘‘working families” a break. ‘‘Working people,” O’Malley says, ‘‘have really been taking it on the chin ...”

His tax plan is a Rubik’s Cube cobbled together to give him the biggest bang for his buck and the least political pain. It is a ‘‘pick and choose” array of tax changes rather than a comprehensive solution to Maryland’s tax and spending woes.

As for O’Malley’s ‘‘working families” and ‘‘working people,” only some of them get tax breaks.

Homeowners gain a modest savings on their property taxes, but 1.5 million renters — many of them with modest incomes — get nothing and then are hit with an indirect tax through an extension of the sales tax to property management companies (who will pass along this new tax to renters).

Condo owners and people living in homeowner associations will receive a property tax break but they are going to get a higher bill from their property management firms, too.

There is no rhyme or reason to O’Malley’s extension of the sales tax to health clubs, spas, tanning salons and property management firms — except that it raises just enough money for his purposes and ticks off the fewest number of people.

O’Malley’s effort to truly graduate the income tax also fails the test.

It modestly changes brackets for lower income folks but it keeps the same 4.75 percent tax bracket for most filers (with taxable income up to $150,000 if you’re single and $200,000 if you are married). Then the next bracket jumps all the way to 6 percent (up to $500,000). Finally, O’Malley levies a punitive 6.5 percent state tax for the so-called rich.

What happened to progressive tax brackets at 5 percent and 5.5 percent? A well-planned, logical series of brackets wasn’t of interest to O’Malley’s advisers. Politics (soak the rich) is what counts.

O’Malley’s budget plan is built on two foundations — slot machines ($656 million when fully implemented) and a higher sales tax ($1.2 billion over 18 months).

Without a special session to raise the sales tax on Jan. 1, there’s a $400 million hole in next year’s budget. That means even more new taxes.

Without future slots revenue, there’s are similar deficits in 2009 and 2010 requiring hefty new taxes as legislators prepare for statewide elections.

Replacing slots in this equation, as House Speaker Mike Busch seems determined to do, will be difficult. First, it means a lot more taxes that hit more Marylanders harder — a political liability. Second, Senate President Mike Miller won’t approve a package without slots.

O’Malley has come down on Miller’s side of this long-running feud. And in Maryland, the governor’s wish is usually decisive (at least when there’s a Democratic chief executive).

But if O’Malley wants to call a special session in November, he’d better start jawing one-on-one with delegates. We’re nearly into October.

Failure to call a special session, or to gain passage of his entire plan, would be devastating for O’Malley. And we know the last thing this master of spin wants is a monumental political defeat.