And Now A Word About Events In My State: Impeach LePage But Also Prevent The Likelihood of Another One As Bad Turning Up

I wonder how the people at Maine Public Broadcasting* are going to deal with the very real possibility that their favorite governor,  Paul LePage has made himself vulnerable not only to being impeached but possibly indicted because he openly blackmailed a private school in Maine when they offered the outgoing Speaker of the Maine legislature,  Mark Eves, a job as head of the school.  He threatened to withhold a half a million dollars in state funds for the school which services many at-risk children which would set off a loss of other funds, possibly as much as two million dollars.  The school, which, I think,  has been unfairly accused of caving to the blackmail, had little choice in retracting the offer,  LePage has, since he took office, withheld funding which has not only been approved by the legislature but also by the voters in referendum.  The man is totally out of control, a bloated little dictator who holds that he is above investigation and the greatest argument in our state's history against allowing anyone to take office with less than 50% +1 of the votes with run-off elections to ensure that.  And, as well, making it far harder for a millionaire spoiler like Eliot Cutler to buy his way onto the ballot.   The "liberalizing" of ballot access, one of the flakier ideas to come out of the heady days of the 60s and 70s when it wasn't considered that those laws would be vulnerable to the kind of manipulation they have been put to, not least of which, by egotistical millionaires.

I would love to see LePage not only impeached - preferably after the elections next year, if, as may happen, control of the Senate will return to Democrats and another of his other targets could replace him - but indicted and convicted and imprisoned for the corruption he has brought to Maine politics.  After the governorship of Jock McKernan, widely considered the worst governor in living memory, the LePage administration has, beyond any doubt, taken that title from him.

But most of all I would like to see the elections laws changed to prevent a 38% governor ever taking office again or for a millionaire or millionaire financed spoiler to put someone as obviously unsuited and unqualified to be governor as Paul LePage in office.  I blame Eliot Cutler and the Maine media for this situation as much as I do Republicans who have never given us a worse governor.   And there are many Republicans, even those I would never, in my life have imagined saying it, who want him impeached if not convicted of blackmail, today.   He is a disgrace, the shame of our state.

*  I'm told that their service to LePage was not forgotten by him in his budget proposals, though I'm so disgusted with things in Augusta that I can't bear to read much about it these days.  I've stopped listening to the uniformly LePage friendly broadcast media.  If I saw Irwin Gratz of MPBN,  I don't think I could keep myself from yelling at him, not to mention the people in the other corporate media.  Maine Public Broadcasting is so compromised it should have its licenses taken away and those given to an entity which won't include anyone employed there or on the present board of it.  Anyone who gives to them thinking they're buying an objective and accurate news service is deluding themselves.