Blueprint for the Wrecking Ball
“The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”
— G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday
The Maine Policy Institute is a right-wing outfit that opposes government doing much of anything. It also believes individuals should be able to do pretty much whatever they like, so long as said individuals are wealthy, white, male and Christian (although it rarely makes these claims overtly).
The Institute doesn’t believe Maine does a good job of following those principles. To correct the state’s grievous deviations, it has published a lengthy “Blueprint” of the steps required to create a smaller, cheaper government that solves most of the pressing issues of the day, mostly by ignoring them.
The Blueprint is 133 pages long, and I’ve read it all, except the duller parts which I skimmed. Here’s what I found.
First, if all the proposals in this opus were enacted, the Institute claims it would cut the state budget by approximately $1 billion. That money would be returned to taxpayers, particularly rich taxpayers, because the 2 percent tax the last Legislature imposed on millionaires would be repealed. Then, the state income tax would be gradually eliminated and the corporate income tax would be abolished. Also, the payroll tax that funds paid family and sick leave would be history, so workers wouldn’t get checks if they had to take time off due to illness or to care for a family member.
There are plenty of other cuts. For instance, we spend a lot on public schools, but Maine students’ results on national tests are disappointing. Kids can’t read or do math as well as their peers in other states. The solution is to take a big chunk of that public education money and give it to charter schools, which don’t have to follow edicts from state bureaucrats dictating what they teach or how. Freed from the rules, charter schools will stress the good old fundamentals our grandparents once had pounded into their noggins. Which means they won’t be burdened with crap about climate change, evolution or slavery. And they’ll do it all without requiring students be injected with nasty vaccines.
Meanwhile, public schools would get less state aid for school administration, potentially raising local property taxes if municipalities insist on having superintendents and the like. And the program that provides free meals to all public school students would be eliminated. Eat paste, suckers.
The Institute has equally simplistic solutions to the housing crisis. Abolish rent control in places like Portland, as well as the city’s requirement that large projects include some apartments that are affordable for working folks. Most other zoning rules would be trashed, as well. Once developers and landlords can do as they please, all this blather about a housing shortage will magically disappear.
Speaking of magic, electricity costs can be reduced by repealing net energy billing, thereby undermining solar and wind power. But that’ll be offset by promoting fossil fuels and nuclear plants. Also, in Trumpian fashion, laws limiting greenhouse gas releases would be thrown out, but improved forest management will somehow still allow the state to reduce emissions.
While the Institute is fouling the air, it also plans to cut staff that oversees water protections. That blanket ban on products containing nasty PFAS forever chemicals would no longer be in effect. And let’s have more open pit mining.
The Blueprint would put an end to vehicle inspections, and when you drive your old beater with bad brakes and only one headlight, there won’t be any reduced speed limits except in construction zones. All local law enforcement would be required to cooperate with ICE.
DOGE was a flop at the federal level, but that’s no reason not to inflict haphazard cost cutting on a wide variety of state programs. Veterans services would take a substantial financial hit, but the Blueprint assures us this won’t reduce services to veterans because … um … well, because. The Department of Energy Resources would have its budget cut by 20 percent, forcing it to focus on what the Institute considers “essential” services.
Reduce the University of Maine System’s spending by more than $80 million and do away with free tuition at Maine’s community colleges. Kick a whole bunch of folks off Medicaid and slash most other welfare programs. Offset some of those cuts with tobacco-tax revenue by lowering the legal age to buy smokes to 18 and reducing anti-smoking regulations.
Freeze the minimum wage and pass right-to-work legislation weakening unions. Do away with requiring hunting and fishing licenses for anyone who’s engaging in those activities strictly for personal consumption, which is almost everyone. That would effectively eliminate funding for most wildlife conservation programs.
There’s lots more, including a long list of suggested bills legislators should introduce next session to make this libertarian-utopia foolishness a reality.
Al Diamon, who also writes for The Maine Sportsman and the Bangor Daily News e-mail newsletter Maine Politics Insider, is disappointed this Blueprint didn’t call for lower liquor prices. He can be consoled by e-mailing aldiamon@herniahill.net.
