A friend who’s watching the Maine labor mural fail parade sent this story about the Department of Labor’s latest smackdown:
In a letter first obtained by the Associated Press, Gay Gilbert, a senior U.S. Labor Department official, writes that the federal government appropriated the funds to Maine for the mural.
“We understand, however, that the mural is no longer on display in your headquarters,” writes Gilbert. “Thus, it is no longer being used for an administrative purpose permitted by the Reed Act. Accordingly […] the state must […] return to its UTF [Unemployment Trust Fund] account the amount of the Reed Act funds represented by the mural.”
Unlike Wisconsin, LePage has already lost the support of some Republicans, who wrote a pretty tough op-ed yesterday:
Instead, we find ourselves continually diverted, responding to yet another example of our chief executive picking a personal fight not worth fighting. “Government by disrespect” should have no place in Augusta, and when it happens, we should all reject it.
I wonder if LePage will eat crow and put the mural back up, or if he’ll double down. My guess is the latter.
PaulW
I think the governor will file a lawsuit claiming the Reed Act is unconstitutional.
4tehlulz
OH YEAH? HERE TAKE YOUR MONEY BACK! IN FACT, HERE’S DOUBLE! THAT’LL SHOW YA!
roshan
Nope, as seen from the above, I don’t think LePage has lost any republican support for his batshit insane plans. The other stuff is just smoke and mirrors. From the years that I’ve spent watching politics I have yet to see any crazy republican lose GOP support which threatens him politically.
Valdivia
Ha ha ha. Epic.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
What? And waste another good excuse to cut something the common folks might actually use?
@roshan:
Nah, I have seen GOP folks lose support, but only for two things:
1) Homosexual behavior
2) Daring to believe a Democrat or Liberal might be right on something.
Both are grounds for total and utter shunning by the tribe. Because Gays are Icky and Libs are Evil.
Morbo
Chris Christie called; he said “fuck you, traitor.”
Social Outcast
He’s not going to put the mural back up, and he’s not going to return the money. Instead he’s going to spend the money on business-friendly pamphlets pointing out that labor is overpaid and lazy. That’ll learn ’em.
Scott
Oh, he’ll double down. Five’ll getcha ten, he’ll personally put the torch to it before the end of the week.
James Hare
Government by disrespect has no place in the United States of America but that seems to be a problem for most of the Republican party. I guess these are more of the RINO New Englanders.
Culture of Truth
Well it looks like they dislodged Laurent Gbagbo, so you never know.
Citizen_X
Where are our classical scholars? Because I’m thinking that whatever is the Latin translation for “Government by disrespect,” that should be the Republican motto.
eemom
I heard on NPR yesterday that the artist who made the mural has filed a lawsuit against Governor Asshole.
‘Course, it’s just a matter of time before the case gets to the Supreme Court and the right wing hacks use it to gut the entire First Amendment. It was a nice thought, though.
Kilkee
Here in Maine we at least pretend to still be civil, and to think that the Other Side may occasionally be well-intentioned, if wrong. It’s a fading notion, especially on the GOP side, but this op-ed represents the last gasp of this sort of thing. LePage, of course, is not among those genteel Republicans who believe that “the libs” deserve anything other than contempt, hence his “I’d laugh at them, the idiots” response to any objection to his totalitarian whims. So yeah, he’ll double down, although how he gets out of this I have no idea. At some point he loses, but he’s too arrogant to eat a little crow now, so it will be ugly in the end.
BTW, the Press Herald is also carrying a piece today about the Tea Partiers who are livid at the “Gang of Eight” GOPers who signed the letter calling for more civility. Hell no! That’s lib weakness!
Jay C
@Culture of Truth:
According to the latest from BBC and Al-Jazeera, ex-President (if that’s what he is) Gbagbo and family have retreated into the Presidential bunker – with Ouattara’s folks and the French in charge most everyplace else; so it’s looks like THAT contretemps is getting on to being over.
A pretty efficient job all around, I think: should we explore the option of hiring the French to deal with our own
petty dictatorsRepublicans?Svensker
A slight grim happiness to this story. Heh indeed.
Joey Maloney
There’s certainly precedent for the French fighting for control of Maine. Been a while, but still.
kay
@Kilkee:
That letter has a odd sound to it. I don’t know that it’s about “civility” so much.
I think you should brace yourself for continuing revelations that the governor may actually be crazy, as in “unstable” or “deeply unfit”.
aimai
He’ll double down, as everyone else has already pointed out. Remember, he was shameless enough, and stupid enough, to pretend to have an “adopted black son” when what he meant to say was that he had a live in black golf caddy.
The Maine situation is reminding me very much of the beginning of What’s the Matter With Kansas when the upper class Republican business leadership suddenly discover that they are being supplanted at election time by their uneducated but passionate pro-life secretaries. Genteel, Northern, Rockefeller, Planned Parenthood style politics is out, the politics of hate, rage, spite and rudeness is in. The Maine Governor will continue to piss people off and kick people until he’s thrown out. And even then he won’t learn.
BTW this is absolutely par for the course for a certain kind of right wing/authoritarian mentality. I get into dustups at the Anne Lander’s blog, of all places, with a frequently enraged right wing poster who when he gets angry enough starts telling us all that we “need” his “honesty” and his brutal insults and that he “won’t stop telling us the truth” because Christ himself was a mean, rude, truthtelling bastard to those evil Pharisees so he’s just imitating Christ. When most people are needlessly rude to others they feel a little shame or embarrasment. But when people like LePage are rude they think they are being brave and speaking truth to the world. So, no, he won’t back down. The entire world is liberal Pharisees to these people.
aimai
Omnes Omnibus
@Joey Maloney: Wisconsin has a long history with the French as well.
Culture of Truth
I must say that ‘let the French do the fighting’ is a novel and refreshing foreign policy.
Forces loyal to Ivory Coast’s former President Laurent Gbagbo have surrendered. Gbagbo’s forces are unilaterally laying down arms and are asking for the protection of the UN.
Scott
aimai, do you have a blog? Please tell me you do, and please tell me where I can read it.
pk
You know picking a fight with the Federal Govt is always a plus for any republican.
I think the next step for LaPage will be to set fire to the Dept of labor headquarters and dance naked around the glowing embers.
jonst
from Maine.
A couple of points: don’t forget the last election was a strange election. You had three candidates running. The independent split the Dem vote with the Dem. LePage is the first gov of French origin in modern times in Maine. He drew a lot of people that often vote Dem…or don’t vote at all.
The mural is big. I suspect he will double down. But the more important story, I would argue, in today’s Portland paper was the story that noted the ENTIRE committee on taxation in the State Legislature voted against one of the centerpieces of LePage’s budget (cough cough) reform plan. The GOP is the majority on this committee. Now THAT is a shot across LePage’s bow. These guys know they have to run in less than 18 months. And they know Mainers are already lining up, I would argue, with a vengeance rarely seen in Maine, to vote. So…stay tuned.
aimai
@jonst:
That makes a really interesting point. I’ve never seen a time politically when the Governors of so many states are so obviously fixated on short term gains over and against their own party legislators who have to actually worry about re-election. Of course, I’m from MA where no governor ever thinks he’ll be governor for long–they all want to get out and run for President as soon as they can. So their long term interests, though totally different from their own party, also don’t include screwing their own party over. In the case of our Republican governors as well they never have a party majority in the legislature so in order to get anything done they need to work with the Dems.
In the case of WI, Indiana, Ohio and now Michigan and FL the Governors are all, clearly, not planning on being career governors while their own majority legislator base are planning on staying in elected office for at least a little while longer–I mean there are only so many federal positions and think tank positions open. This means that the uglier and the more brutal the attacks on the public realm the faster the local republican legislators are going to turn on their Republican Governors.
I don’t think it will be fast enough for the voters. The backlash, when it comes, is going to strike the local Republicans first. Just hope the Dems can get their act together—unlike us in MA with Scott Brown–to take advantage of it.
aimai
eemom
@aimai:
She has a BLOG? Isn’t she, like, dead?
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: Today’s state supreme court election in WI is going to be an early indicator.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Being dead hasn’t stopped Instapundit.
Roger Moore
@pk:
FTFY.
Kilkee
@kay: You are quite likely right about LePage. At the risk of arm-chair psychoanalyzing, I think he does have very deep-seated issues (perhaps stemming from his hardscrabble past) that make him remarkably bad at dealing with people whom he perceives as opposing him. Not a good trait for a politician.
Today’s PPH piece, too, mentioned that a local radio host is organizing “Operation Kleenex” to send tissues to the weak-kneeed GOPers who “whine” about LePage’s style. Apparently the Erick Erikson style has infected even the Yankees.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
I sure hope you win today.
btw, is this “Prosser” any relation to the torts guru?
Joey Maloney
@aimai: I mean there are only so many federal positions and think tank positions open.
I am sure the Koch brothers et al. can expand the wingnut welfare supply to meet the increased demand. In fact, I’m getting half-convinced this is all a massive conspiracy, a set-up from the get-go: Koch money gets these guys elected, they do the biggest smash-and-grab they can in their one term and if they perform well, they’re guaranteed a nice cushy sinecure at a foundation or lobby shop. They’re not expected to get re-elected, just use their one term to steal everything they can for their corporate masters.
As for the long-term damage that might do to the Republican party? Pffft. A, you’re talking about people who don’t think beyond the next quarterly report and B, you think mega-gazillionaires give a shit about the party apparatus? Those people are servants.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I do not think this one is related to that one; at least, not closely.
aimai
@eemom:
Yeah, come to think of it, there haven’t been a lot of updates recently.
aimai
aimai
@Joey Maloney:
Yes, I agree with you about the Governors and certain key legislators. I think in many rural states it is probably cheaper to buy your politicians wholesale, at the get go, with promises of permanent employment than to pay for polls, pollsters, campaign staff, and etc… But I don’t think there’s actually enough money–or enough need–for *all* the Republican legislators to get their beaks wet. You just need to buy the top guys on the committees, after all. And that is why I think we are seeing a nervous reaction. The recall petitions in WI must be freaking these guys out. They all thought they had a two year sinecure.
aimai
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: That’s a tried and true tactic. Does he maybe like to dress up in snazzy uniforms?
Joey Maloney
@aimai:
I don’t even think the recall threat is bothering those guys too much. In fact, one of the key Repubs was quoted recently saying he had expected a recall drive when he made his vote.
State legislator is by and large a shitty job, unless you really like people or power (in the big-fish-in-a-small-pond way). The pay is crap and you’re constantly besieged on all sides. Everyone wants something, and you can’t satisfy even a small proportion and even that pisses off everyone else.
I think their job was to pass that “budget”. They’ve done that and I bet they get the reward they were promised. If they get kicked out in a recall, so what?
Redshirt
Mainer here. So sad to see the carnage LePage has unleashed in such short order.
That said, the larger issue in my mind is national: This is what happens with 3 party elections – you roll the dice on getting the crazy person elected.
We’re all familiar with the 27% rule, so, in any 3 party race, the Wingnut need only convince 10-15% of the non-crazies to vote for him. It’s damn good odds, for a crazy person.
Alas, Maine got Coaklied to a large degree, and now everyone will suffer.
Dave
@Kilkee: Yup. You have to remember that the GOP party up here was hijacked by the whackjobs out of the Knox County GOP, who rewrote the GOP platform to be to the far right of the John Birch Society. So when the last of the East Coast Republicans dare to call for civility, the Tea Party is ready to hang them from the closest rafter.
PurpleGirl
@eemom:
@aimai:
I found the Ann Landers blog and it’s her former agency posting classic old letters and letting comment on them. They also are looking to get the columns back in local newspapers. It’s interesting. ETA: Too bad she’s not around to answer the comments. That would have been fun to read.
Maineiac
I’m going on record here – Just a hunch but I think LePage is going to see which way the wind is blowing and put the mural back up.
scav
Crazy can happen in two-party systems. Don’t get your hopes up.
Redshirt
@scav: It can, but it’s a far better bet in a 3 way race. Sure, it can work for the side of Progress (easy to argue that Clinton got his first election thanks to Perot). But in this age of insanity, it’s a high risk.
thefncrow
The best part of this whole thing is that the deal is that the Governor is going to be asked to pony up 63% of fair market value for the mural. It cost $60,000 when it was first purchased, but you have to figure that the controversy that’s given the mural such wide exposure has to have increased its fair market value significantly since then.
It’s quite possible that the governor has found himself in a situation where it would have cost him nothing to keep the mural up, but taking it down is going to cost the Maine government a fair price more than even the original market value of the mural.
Davis X. Machina
I’d bet my firstborn that that letter from the eight GOP state legislators had its genesis in the office of a certain Maine senator whose husband was the last non-insane Republican governor of the Pine Tree State. Mr. LePage may borrow the Party, but he most certainly does not own it.
One shot, across several bows….
ppcli
@aimai:
“Remember, he was shameless enough, and stupid enough, to pretend to have an “adopted black son” when what he meant to say was that he had a live in black golf caddy.”
Really? I remember his “I can’t be a racist, I have an adopted black son” remark, but hadn’t heard the coda. Fantastic – the hits just keep coming with this guy.
Davis X. Machina
@ppcli: Modern GOP science has created what was heretofore unthinkable: the white Alan Keyes.
Dave
@Davis X. Machina: I think that is a pretty good bet. Problem is that Snowe can’t control the whackjobs at the grass-roots level who vote in the primaries.
Ash Can
Awesome.
I’m envisioning LePage barricaded in his office over this, with his desk tipped over frontwards and him crouched behind it. He’s wearing a cooking pot on his head as a helmet, and is wielding a shotgun, which he has just used to shoot his telephone all to shit in the middle of the floor, because it wouldn’t stop ringing with the DoL’s efforts to collect the dough.
I just hope Maine comes out of its bout of teaparty-itis in one piece.
ET
@roshan: sounds nice but has no practical affect.
maya
@Citizen_X:
“Gubernaculum vello mea digitus”
Literal translation: Pull my finger, government.
Catsy
That would be the safe way to bet.
There’s a saying about drivers in Virginia and the DC area, one that I’m sure applies just as well to some other areas: “It’s not so much that they don’t signal, it’s that signaling is seen as a sign of weakness.”
That’s the modern GOP in a nutshell. What others see as basic courtesy and civilized behavior–to say nothing of obeying the law–they see as a sign of weakness.
This is a deeply sick, deranged political movement that needs to be completely destroyed, not coddled.
dr.hypercube
“It might be the bank teller who won’t cash your check for ten,
The draft board official who wants his job back again,
The rookie cop who will always be a novice,
Those little pricks down at the Food Stamp office,
Stupid people in positions of power,stupid people in positions of power,stupid people in positions of power,
Wicked stupid now.”
– Bill Morrissey (local legend) a long time ago
rikryah
I absolutely love the Government saying GIVE US BACK OUR MONEY…from these GOP CLOWNS who think they can do what they want.
El Cid
“Government by disrespect” is the modus operandi of the post-Southern Strategy Republican Party.
It’s only when it drastically fails that the ‘elders’ begin to moan that such behavior is inappropriate.
priscianus jr
@jonst:
I don’t think it will be fast enough for the voters. The backlash, when it comes, is going to strike the local Republicans first. Just hope the Dems can get their act together—-unlike us in MA with Scott Brown—to take advantage of it.
I wonder if it’s because they assume the more moderate GOP state legislators will be primaried by Tea Partiers? That would make sense as part of the plan for the great fascist takeover. Or at least it would have made sense last year. The times they are-a changin’. So if that’s their current strategy, I think they are in for a big surprise.
Kilkee
@Dave: Did you see the headlines today to the effect that Senator Toomey (TP-PA)will not be endorsing Senator Snowe in her upcoming reelection effort? (Likewise, and more pointedly, Senator Lee is spitting on Senator Hatch.) Olympia will be looking at a TP challenge, for sure. It might actually be in her best interests to let LePage continue to make an idiot of himslef and by extension the Tea Party.
Calouste
@Redshirt:
Get rid of FPTP and replace it with instant run off voting, single transferable vote or whatever you want to call it. Problem solved.
But then again, filling in 1,2,3 instead of just ticking a box is going to be too complicated for most Americans.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Calouste: Good luck getting Republicans or Democrats to allow instant run off voting. Right now they have a very nice cartel going. Either they win or they are the opposition party which is great for fundraising. I don’t think that either institution would allow a system that makes it easier for third parties to win. They’re happy with third parties throwing the election to either the Rs or the Ds.
Redshirt
@Calouste: Yeah, that would solve it. Never gonna happen though, for the reasons Barb highlights.
Davis X. Machina
First past the post does have the effect of amplifying winning margins. Since one party in this country already doesn’t think government by one of the other parties is fundamentally legitimate, even with FPTP, that may not be entirely a bad thing….
aimai
@PurpleGirl:
Oh, Purple Girl, I actually post at “Annies Mailbox”–eemom and I were just joking–Annie’s Mailbox is two of her assistants, not terribly good, giving advice. However the blog below online is hysterical, literally, with a cast of nuts and weirdos among whom I number myself. I decided to do a little subtle politicking over there instead of confining myself to political blogs. You should join us! We drove a young misogynist right off the boards.
aimai