In 2015, Maine will face many challenges. Too bad no one in state government has a clue how to deal with any of them.
Climate change? Denial has always worked pretty well.
Income disparity? Let’s raise the governor’s salary.
North Korean computer hacking? The lack of high-speed Internet in most of the state should thwart attackers once they become mired in our bandwidth bog.
Maybe that outdated technology could even be a selling point if Sony wanted to move its headquarters to a more secure location. And if Sony did relocate to Maine, maybe North Korea would make a substantial investment in our fiber-optic network in order to gain illicit access to emails discussing plans to film “The Interview 2: This Time We’re Assassinating Somebody From A Wussy Country Like France.”
Admittedly, these scenarios are based in ignorance, incompetence and implausibility. But those qualities have formed the basis for such endeavors as state-mandated school consolidation, the Maine Republican Party platform and running Democrat Emily Cain for Congress again in 2016. Why stop now?
If this state is going to accomplish anything in the new year, it’ll only happen through the power of unconventional thinking. Because our elected leaders have already tried conventional thinking and discovered they’re not very good at it. Particularly the thinking part.
With a government divided between clunk-headed members of the GOP in the Blaine House and state Senate, and dimwitted Democrats hunkered down in the state House, there’s little chance of progress through the usual channels. Republicans won’t support anything that costs tax dollars. Dems won’t vote for anything that doesn’t. It’s a sure recipe for stalemate.
But there is hope – if our lawmakers will set aside their preconceived notions of how government is supposed to operate, and embrace a different brand of absurdity.
Let’s start with Maine’s crumbling transportation infrastructure. We need tens of millions of dollars every year to restore our roads, airports and rail lines. Otherwise, neither Sony nor North Korea is going to want anything to do with us.
The problem is that GOP Gov. Paul LePage hates borrowing money, so he’s unlikely to approve big bond issues for sand, gravel and steel support beams. But what if there was a way to raise cash without increasing debt.
There is. It’s employed all the time by oddball enterprises that can’t get conventional financing because they don’t make financial sense. I’m referring to Kickstarter.
If crowdfunding can be used to underwrite unwatchable indie films, unlistenable pop music and untenable business plans, it can also underwrite the rebuilding of impassable highways. Of course, the state Department of Transportation would have to offer customized coffee cups (“I bribed my local bureaucrat and all I got was this lousy mug”) for donations of $1 million to $5 million, t-shirts with snarky slogans (“My principles are set in concrete – just like the chief witness for the prosecution’s feet”) for contributions of $6 million to $10 million, and for gifts of up to $25 million, hoodies (“Don’t worry, I’m not a gang-banger. I’m strictly into white-collar crime”).
Not only is this a painless way to raise needed revenue, but it has the advantage of avoiding one of the fiscal pitfalls of charitable giving. Writing a check to a nonprofit organization provides the donor with a tax deduction, which means the state isn’t going to collect some money it thought it was getting. But payments to Kickstarter campaigns aren’t tax deductible, so the fat cat who coughs up a multi-million-dollar hairball still owes taxes on his gift.
Now that Maine has the resources needed to bury the landscape in asphalt, let’s use the same imaginative approach to deal with welfare reform.
Here’s the problem. People with jobs have to work for their money. People on the dole don’t. Only an idiot would prefer the former to the latter.
What’s needed is a method of convincing folks who are thoroughly acclimated to sucking on the government teat that they can become gainfully employed without sacrificing the advantages of institutionalized indolence. Fortunately, there’s an occupation that fulfills these conditions.
Once Maine starts using Kickstarter money to build roads and bridges, it’ll need to hire hundreds of new construction workers. As anyone who’s ever driven past a paving project knows, many of the hard-hatted hearties involved in these endeavors do little more than stand around leaning on their shovels.
It’s not that different from being on welfare – except in one important way.
The slug sitting in his living room all day smoking dope and streaming a bootleg version of “The Interview” is being subsidized by taxpayer dollars. The one passing time by the side of the road with a cigarette and a cold drink is underwritten by crowdfunding. No public money involved.
That’s Kim Jong Un-believably better.
See, not all my fantasies involve sex. Share yours by emailing aldiamon@herniahill.net.
How popular, fashionable and easy it is to characterize those on “the dole” as lazy, shiftless opportunists who wouldn’t work if a job came up and bit them on the posterior. It might be helpful to check out such information sources on poverty in Maine as the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center or the Rural Assistance Center before castigating those – the elderly, single mothers with children, folks with disabilities and without health care, people who lost their jobs after 2008 and have not yet found another – who might otherwise go hungry or be unable to heat their homes without some kind of assistance from the government or local help like food panties. Your wit, sir, sometimes gets in the way of your wisdom and you adopt the popular rant rather than try to understand a problem that’s more complex than simplistic thinking would make it.
Who is castigating those folks, Old Hoss? Most of the people on your list didn’t choose their situation. We could help them much more than we already do if we could evict from the welfare roll all those who have chosen it as a career and lifestyle.
As for wit … most people can meet it only half way.
Very disappointing to see the same old tired ‘talking points’ used to demean the poor. And to stereotype and criticize construction workers. Where is the “cops and donuts”, “teachers are overpaid and get long vacations”, etc. ?
Fiscally, there are many Maine issues that will continue to fester because of Paul LePage’s misguided intransigence.
Gov. LePage’s intransigence won the approval of 48.2% of the Maine voters a couple of months ago… The most votes any Maine governor has received for a long time… maybe forever… Time to move on with the festering and discontent from the disappointed opposition and make the next 4 years as great as possible for the State of Maine..
Wait til you hear about the (Maine) hospitals going broke. LePage left a lot of Federal money on the table by not expanding Medicaid. He could take a lesson from the State of Tennessee which has Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) re-elected AND is progressive about health insurance.
Correction: Meant to say that McConnell of KENTUCKY represents a state where the State has expanded Medicaid.
Tennessee likewise has taken steps to prevent hospitals from taking the continued hit of providing “free” medical attention to the un-and under-insured by supporting the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
@Elmira et al: Before the beneficent federal government can give a dollar to one person, it has to confiscate it from another person. Federal money is never “free” – not at the beginning and certainly not later on, when the attached strings are pulled painfully tight.
Maine voters either don’t understand or don’t accept that there is no such thing as a free lunch. That’s why we keep passing every bond issue that comes along, so our grandchildren will pay our current bills for us “later”.
87% of new Obamacare users given federal aid
Some 87 percent of people who just signed up for Obamacare are getting financial assistance to lower their premiums, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. … That is a jump from 80 percent during the last open enrollment period.
That federal aid is more of that free money. Hang on to your wallet.
Folks,
Before we get silly here let’s all remember that it was John Elias Baldacci that wired the entire state with high speed internet. Numerous Maine Press reports at that time were proclaiming him a “Visionary”. Be patient and stay the course and see it through- there will be no need to have to borrow money for such antiquated notions like transportation infrastructure. OTOH, I was always willing to assume that meant that by now (2014), none of us should have to even leave our houses to go to work. Instead, it costs the average Maine schmuck about half of what his car is worth every year in repairs just to drive around. So tax, borrow and spend just doesn’t cut it anymore.
I say, get back to some good old fashioned Socialist/Democrat reasoning i.e.,”After all, you didn’t build that!”
So let those greedy corporate lemmings at UPS, FedEx and yes of course, the UBER RICH USPS, pony up to fix them. Heck! They’re making a bazillion bucks using OUR roads and wrecking them at the same time! (They’ll simply cut a back room deal and impose a package surcharge to make it up on the “other end”. That’s you, chump.)
I say, time for a hard LEFT turn,
I say, we incorporate all the Internet into the ever expanding Industrialized Prison Complex.(Don’t tell you haven’t heard of the Industrial- Prison Complex) I call it “The Big Bang Theory”. Sort of like an apple on every school desk only a computer in every jail cell. Put state of the art technology in the hands of some real innovators instead of letting them suck off the government teat. Sic them on the greedy banking system and you watch how much cash comes rolling in the door! Stop “investing” in the classroom with this technology stuff. Junior’s only getting more obese and these kids are only getting more and more my-optic with these devices (they’re walking into moving cars for heaven’s sake). You’re not helping them!
I say, we start utilizing our “under-utilized” citizens (see lay-about) to train up and run the “Big Bang Theory” system. We eliminate conflicts of interest by using our out of office politicians and their cronies (let’s call them Ministers without Portfolio) to oversee and report back to a committee headed up by some real power broker(s) I for one, would nominate John Martin and his cabal. Love him or hate him – you have to admit the man simply knows how to get things done. (Sort of like putting Joe Biden in Charge of Stimulus “…cause you don’t mess with Joe”.) Only this time – THIS TIME- it will work!
Even a staunch red, white and blue Conservative, knuckle dragging free market, capitalist, nit-wit like myself can see that “…this is a time for all of us to come together” and ” …time to move forward”… and “…secure our future for our children and their children…” and “… the Governor’s vision for Maine…” has gotten us nowhere. Blah ,Blah, Blah! Even my political hero, Winston Churchill, once said in a famous speech (back when wars were fought in black and white) “…but half measures have gotten us nowhere….(or was it “…availed us nothing”?) Anyways, you get the point.
The Maine Model for the last 40 years has been about building an expanding Welfare State and Public-Private Partnerships. All sides of the political spectrum have been in on the scam. It hasn’t worked out that well for the rest of us. Now, we have an economy so dependent on a single payer, namely- the Federal Government- that Maine would starve itself to death if we were set on wringing out Waste, Fraud and Abuse.
I know no system is perfect but when you the politics aside or simply eliminate them altogether the North Korea model works with more accountability and more efficiency.
Heck, who wouldn’t settle for that?
I have been forced into Obamacare with no federal aid. So now I get to pay more for a worse insurance policy and help subsidize the breeders, the lazy, and the drug addicts to boot. You win Obama, I just don’t feel like working anymore. Where’s my free s#*t?
Don’t hold your breath,Planet. Most of that goes to the rich.
Well, happy New Year any way. Looks as if SAD (seasonal affective disorder has set in already).
Time to try something other than the same old tired rants about the awful Feds and how red-blooded Mainers are getting shafted by the know-nothing
liberal cabal.
Elmira…. I am now seeing things your way…. I suggest we do away with our US House and Senate… think of the savings there… We let President Obama stay on for at least 10 more years and let him choose whatever title he likes… He knows how to break the gridlock and get thing done for more than just the 1%… I say think about it and give the man a chance..
Elmira,
You totally misunderstand- the Feds are our Benefactor.
I say ride ’em for every nickel they’re worth!
Liberal Dems have it down to an art form (so do many Repub’s.) We need a certain type of leadership and cabal mentality so that we can “war game it”. Le’s face it- the Le Page notion that you can pull yourself up by your boots straps is way to hard a lift for the 21st century Mianer. That kind of romantic economic nonsense went out the window back in the 1980’s under Reagan.
Personally, I seen the light as the saying goes. I’m fondly reminiscing in one of the first Marxist maxims, “to hang the Capitalists with their own rope”. V. Lenin.
Therefore, I say, Print it, borrow it and spend, spend, spend!
What better way is there to collapse this entire corrupt economic system down upon your kids and grandkids? Dig a financial hole so deep for our posterity that they’ll be shoveling their meager earnings down it for an entire generation. Your kids and their kids will surely thank our generation for crushing their hopes dreams and aspirations. As long as we all stick together and fail together, we’ll be all right.
So why fight against the Maine economic model? Why argue to turn back now to the old antiquated ways of actually providing for one’s self when so many are so willing and eager to pull the your load for you. In fact, they reward you here when you fail and financially punish and demonize you when you succeed. Things probably work the same way in North Korea, so maybe in the end, we arrive at the same destination anyways.
Personally, I think it would be so much nicer if we’d all be content with 2 pair of blue PJ’s, a sack of wheat flour and bicycle. I’m just hoping I don’t have to push mine.