Gov. Paul LePage Will Protect Maine From Threat Of Decent Wages

Maine Gov. Paul LePage is working really hard to earn the title of Most Loathsome Governor in America, which is a difficult task in a nation containing Rick Scott, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Sam Brownback, and so many other worthy candidates. We're thinking his latest dick move, pushing a bill that would prevent Maine cities from setting a minimum wage higher than the state's minimum wage of $7.50 an hour, just might be the thing to make him stand out from the rest of the crowd of assholes, making him the dickhead of all dickheads, or cazzo di tutti cazzi. 

The bill, with the beautifully Orwellian title "An Act to Promote Minimum Wage Consistency," is yet another of those brilliant rightwing efforts to promote States' Rights -- particularly the right of states to keep troublesome municipalities from having any of that "local control" stuff that is good when Republicans run a city, and terrible when Democrats do. It seems that Mayor Michael Brennan, of the People's Republic of Portland, wants to raise the local minimum wage to $9.50, and in the Revolutionary Democratic Collective of Bangor, Councilor Joseph Baldacci is pushing for a minimum wage of $9.75, to be phased in over several years.

This is obviously just too much democracy for LePage, who knows that if you give local control to the wrong people, they'll do all kinds of crazy cockamamie stuff like insisting that good virtuous job creators pay something more than starvation wages to the undeserving wretches who work in minimum wage jobs. It's bad enough that Maine is already -- according to LePage -- just crawling with lazy unemployed human garbage, but now municipalities want to pay semi-decent wages to the lazy jerks who do work? How will the poors ever get off the couch and learn that work is a noble, honorable means of self-improvement if we don't keep them from actually benefitting from work? Where's the incentive in that?

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Besides, if cities are allowed to set their own minimum wage, then no one will want to do business there, as has been proven by Seattle, which is rapidly becoming a ghost town now that it's raised its minimum wage. As the great economist Yogi Berra said, nobody goes there anymore, because it's just too crowded.

[ Bangor Daily News via Bob Cesca / LAT ]