Here's the meat of my criticism of Gov. Baldacci's State of the State address. I know, it's a few days late, but I promise I won't rehash the stuff that you'll find elsewhere.
The big problem with Baldacci's Weltanschauung is that he sees the state as a Platonic arbiter of economic activity. He and his fellow Democratic philosopher-kings in Augusta fancy that they are better suited to judge the propriety of economic activity than the folks who are actually engaged in it. He wants to raise the minimum wage, and shut out folks from the labor market whose labor isn't worth the minimum wage. He wants to divert taxpayer money into loans and grants to attract philosopher-king approved (big) businesses, at the expense of driving out people who just want to run a small business or make a living and enjoy the environs of Maine.
He wants to use grant money to train more nurses, while Maine has a surfeit of trained nurses who have taken jobs in other areas of the economy. He wants the state to control all aspects of the health care portion of the economy, when the state has already shown, both at the state and federal levels, that it is incompetent even in the part it has already taken over.
Did you see (or hear) the righteousness with which he scolded the feds for their Medicare Part D fiasco? Well, gov, there are still many doctors here in Maine who've been waiting for their Maine Care reimbursements for months.
At this point, there's little on the Republican side of the aisle that inspires confidence, either. I can see why many don't vote, especially most of my fellow left-libertarians.
Peace,
Tor
Categories: Maine, politics
