Jon Reisman

The Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee held a late-announced additional work session on LD 1578, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. There was one significant change that suggests the League of Women Voters may not get their wish to disenfranchise every right-of-center voter in the 2nd Congressional District and abolish the Electoral College by doing an end run around the Constitutional Amendment process. Rep. Karen Montell (D-Gardiner) changed her vote from ought to pass as amended with a statewide referendum to ought not to pass, period, joining all the Republicans on the Committee. 

Ought to pass as amended with a referendum was supported by the two Democratic Senators on the committee, including the Chair, Senator Craig Hickman. Interestingly, Montell went against her own Senator (Hickman) as well as fellow Kennebec County solon, Senator Matt Pouliot, the only Republican co-sponsor of LD 1578. This increases the likelihood that the NPV may fail due to either Democratic House defections or disagreement between the House and Senate. Here’s to hoping. I wonder how the League of Women Voters feels about a first-term female Representative changing her vote to oppose a League policy priority. I guess she could plead that she was opposing toxic masculinity patriarchy.

Climate Cult Crusade

The ongoing climate alarmist “net zero” agenda seeks to end:

Fossil fuels, replacing them with ruinously expensive and unreliable solar and wind. So far, the virtue-signaling crusade has wasted trillions of borrowed dollars and succeeded in dropping American reliance on fossil fuels from 81% to 80% of our energy generation while averting no global warming whatsoever. It has damaged American energy independence and national security while boosting Russia, China, Iran, the Democratic Party, and their assorted green ideological sycophants and crony capitalists. Like the open border, the intentional result is the true policy goal: end American freedom, prosperity, and capitalism.

Beef, replacing it with delicious bugs. Greta Thunberg is the new Marie Antoinette: let the peasants eat crickets. Could I have some A-1 sauce with that?

Relying on science, the scientific method, tested hypotheses, and replicable data and experiments and replacing them with green faith and moral certitude, climate models with no predictive validity, green agitprop, hypocrisy, and manufactured “consensus.” Consensus is a political -- as opposed to scientific -- term. Democrats, including Governor Mills and whoever speaks and writes for President Biden, routinely claim that recent weather events are certifiable proof of human-caused apocalyptic climate change when the historical record and objective analysis suggest no such thing. WLBZ proudly broadcasts climate agitprop in every newscast, noting their financial partnership with the Nature Conservancy. Sears Island, saved from development by environmentalists dedicated to protecting eelgrass (which, according to WLBZ and the Nature Conservancy, is critical in absorbing CO2), will now be sacrificed to Big Offshore Wind because…do not ask questions, peasant. Especially about the carbon footprint of Big Wind, the likely damage to lobster fishing (they are killing whales, so who cares anyway?), and the security issues involved with protecting transmission cables (who did blow up the Nordstream pipeline and release all those greenhouse gasses?)

A House Divided by Collars and Class

Finally, this gem from Steve Hayward at Powerlineblog.com on blue vs white collar political donations. It puts the climate crusade and Republican vs. Democrat policy, priorities, and proclivities into sharp focus: (See graphic above). 

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own, and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here or to him directly via email at [email protected].