Republican Gov. Paul LePage announced today that he’d solved all the problems associated with both the secret effort to move the Maine National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion out of state and the $1 million consultant’s report on Maine’s welfare system that featured large sections that were plagiarized.
LePage said he’s placing the National Guard in charge of ferreting out welfare fraud and asking the copy-happy consultant to develop a plan to restructure the Guard.
Under this deal, National Guard troops will be posted to all stores that accept Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards to make certain that poor people use them only to purchase approved products. While members of this force will be heavily armed, they’ll be instructed to use their weapons only in cases where cheaters attempt to purchase alcohol, tobacco or make campaign contributions to Democrats.
Meanwhile, the Alexander Group, the conservative consultant that cribbed its welfare report from unattributed sources (including at least one liberal think tank), will be offering suggestions on rearranging the Guard, employing uncredited material from Pentagon plans for winning the war in Afghanistan, random stuff lifted from Wikipedia and lengthy scenes copped from the script of “Apocalypse Now.”
It’s possible I made up all of the aforementioned, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. If there’s a steely-eyed dude in camo carrying an assault rifle standing watch, the seedy looking slacker in the checkout line at Hannaford’s is a lot less likely to attempt to slip through a Bud Light suitcase.
And if the Alexander report recommends switching our engineering battalion for an infantry unit from Pennsylvania, thereby depriving Maine of a significant resource for coping with natural disasters, it’ll be much easier to reject the idea once the pundits discover that the consultant falsely claimed credit for writing “The Ride of the Valkyries.”
But why stop there? Flipping one incompetent LePage minion for another might work to solve a variety of heretofore insurmountable problems.
For instance, Mary Mayhew has failed miserably as commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services. But Mayhew’s autocratic style seems ideally suited to the Department of Economic and Community Development. Her campaign against grifters gaming the system for food stamps and general assistance is easily transferable to one aimed at ending corporate welfare. Just think how much easier it’ll be for Mayhew’s recently beefed-up fraud unit to catch companies taking undeserved tax breaks or soaking up research and development grants that don’t produce any new jobs.
Meanwhile, at Mayhew’s old digs, it’s time for somebody who knows how to reverse the effects of decades of entangling legislation to get positive results for her most important constituents. I have no doubt that Patricia Aho, currently the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, could bring her expertise to bear on solving the entitlement morass. At DEP, Aho earned a reputation for letting developers, many of them former clients from her days as a lobbyist, run rampant over the rules. Where Mayhew was constantly thwarted by federal regulations and the U.S. Constitution, Aho is inclined to charge ahead shouting, “Waivers? We don’t need no stinkin’ waivers.”
Who replaces her at DEP? The answer is obvious. LePage should appoint his sworn enemy, Democratic state Sen. Troy Jackson, to the post. If Jackson loses the primary for the 2nd Congressional District seat next week, he’ll be looking for a job. And while he and the governor disagree vehemently on labor issues, the two both think bulldozing natural resources in the name of jobs makes sense. Not only does putting Jackson in the governor’s cabinet silence a severe (if inarticulate) critic, but it also makes it tougher for Democrats to attack LePage’s plans, since one of their own will be advocating for them.
On the off chance Jackson wins his primary, his opponent, Democratic state Sen. Emily Cain, might make an adequate replacement. After all, Cain has always claimed she can work with anyone, even LePage. It would be fun to find out if that’s true.
Of course, the main source of controversy in the LePage administration is the governor himself. His propensity for making up facts (Maine does not, as he once claimed, have more deaths from heroin overdoses than highway accidents), his tendency to inaccurately recall events (Democrats did not, as he asserted, oppose his bill to ban the use of EBT cards in liquor stores and strip joints), his inability to engage with legislators to win passage of his initiatives (stepped-up drug enforcement, increased payments to nursing homes) all label him as the least effective advocate for his agenda.
He definitely should switch places.
If only we could find somebody competent who wants his job.
No, not those two twits. I said competent. If you’ve got suggestions, email me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
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