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Republicans lawmakers across the country have attacked public employees, cutting their wages, slashing their pensions and, in some cases, eliminating their bargaining rights.They all preach the need for fiscal austerity and budget belt-tightening.
In Maine, Gov, Paul LePage is neither practicing what he preaches nor tightening his belt. Even state employees are being forced to pay more in contributions for their pensions, one isn’t: LePage. He exempted himself from the new pension formula, reports Mike Tipping in the Kennebec Journal.
On top of that, Page's pension—unlike those of public employees—isn’t calculated on length of service but is automatic. He will receive three-eighths of his salary when he leaves office, $26,600. A teacher in Maine would have to work more than 25 years to get the same annual pension.
BTW: Over the past eight years, Maine's teachers and public employees already have been subject to more than $150 million in take-backs to their wages and benefits.
WASHINGTON -- At the Maine GOP convention on Sunday, Gov. Paul LePage (R) received an enthusiastic standing ovation from his fellow Republicans for saying that all able-bodied out-of-work Americans need to "get off the couch" and go find employment.
LePage called on the state legislature to pass structural changes to welfare, saying, "Maine's welfare program is cannibalizing the rest of state government. To all you able-bodied people out there: Get off the couch and get yourself a job."
"I understand welfare because I lived it," he added. "I understand the difference between a want and a need. The Republican Party promised to bring welfare change. We must deliver on this promise."
In response, the governor said state government is too big and too costly and that the state workforce is part of the problem. LePage told the crowd that he has control over appointed state workers, but has little authority over middle managers and other unionized state employees.
"The problem is, middle management of the state is about as corrupt as can be," LePage said in remarks first reported by MaineToday Media.
With the remark buzzing around the State House on Friday, LePage sent an email to more than 11,000 state workers to clarify his remarks, praising the majority of state workers but saying that some union bosses and state workers are intent on maintaining the status quo.
Offering no apologies, LePage had a blunt message for those workers who've been "corrupted" by a bureaucratic mindset that's intent on "doing the same thing because it was always done that way" and for the "union bosses" who he said have urged workers to resist the administration's changes.
"If you are dragging your feet because you do not like the direction the administration is headed, then it is time to either get on board or get out of the way," he wrote.
When George W. Bush proposed a huge, regressive tax cut in 2001, Snowe, sitting at the heart of a decisive block of centrists, used her leverage to support the passage of a modestly smaller and less regressive version. When Barack Obama proposed a large fiscal stimulus in 2009, Snowe (citing fears of deficits that she had helped create) decided to shave a nice round $100 billion off his figure and call it a day. If a Gingrich administration proposed spending a trillion dollars to erect a 100- foot-tall solid-gold Winston Churchill statue on Mars, Snowe would no doubt decide, after careful deliberation, that the wise course was to trim the height down to 90 feet and perhaps use a cheaper bronze alloy in the base.
The characteristic Snowe episode came during the health care fight. The Obama administration, desperate to win her vote, wooed her with endless meetings and pleas, affording her a once-in-a-generation chance to not only help pass health care reform but make it smarter, more efficient, and more compassionate. Instead, Snowe tormented the administration by dangling an elusive and ever-changing criteria before their noses. She at first centered her objections around the inclusion of a public option. Democrats removed it, and she voted for the bill in the Finance Committee, only to turn against it when it reached the decisive vote on the Senate floor. Snowe complained that the process was happening too fast, and that it was too partisan, which seemed to be her way of saying she wouldn’t vote for it unless other Republicans joined her.
LP - The conservatives in the Republican party, that is on national display in the debates, can't get what they want without a few fake liberal Republicans to hide what their doing. Goodbye Ms. Snowe, they'll have to find someone else to play that role. Next up Collins of Maine and Brown Massachusetts. Good decent Americans who'll get terrible bills across.
Tom Rizzo, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in northern New England, said it is still too early to know exactly what kind of impact the layoff of 120,000 Postal Service workers nationwide might have in Maine.
Rizzo said he thinks the cuts would likely affect northern New England proportionately to the rest of the country.
National and local unions reacted furiously Friday to a proposal by the Postal Service to lay off the workers by breaking labor contracts and shifting workers out of federal employee health and retirement plans into cheaper alternatives.
John Riley, former president of the American Postal Workers Union in Portland, called the proposal "the fight to end all fights."
"This is part of a right wing push to manufacture 'crises' that are not real to destroy unions and the middle class," Riley wrote in a mass email he sent Friday to postal employees in Maine. "Unfortunately, it is being enabled by weak Democrats and a President who barely seems to be aware there is a labor movement and working class."
The Postal Service has lost some $20 billion in the last four years amid a 20 percent drop in mail volume.
Labor experts and other unions also sounded the alarm that any move by Congress to break postal contracts would further wound an already ailing labor movement, much as former President Ronald Reagan's firing of striking air traffic controllers did in 1981.
Maine’s Governor Paul LePage is not just the darling of the tea party, but he has also proven himself to be one of Maine’s leading resident art critics, as well as someone willing to take the bold step of reversing Maine’s laissez-faire attitude toward its own children and clearing a path for the tykes to again toil for the rich and powerful. LePage captured just 37% of the vote in a three way race to become the governor of Maine. He came under fire early on when he refused to attend a dinner that the NAACP sponsored for Martin Luther King. Lepage responded by telling the organization that they could “kiss my butt.” These were strong words for anyone independent enough to take on a constituency that makes up just 1.2% of Maine’s population. It showed that LePage wasn’t going to be bullied by a belligerent, yet non-existent, special interest group.
When the labor wars heated up in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan LePage opened a new front by demanding that his state’s department of labor take down a pro-labor mural that hung in its lobby. The reason he gave for doing so was because it did not depict both sides of the labor issue. The justification for taking down this mural came from one single anonymous letter complaining to the governor. Originally it was reported that the complaint had come from a fax but, this would have had produced a time stamp on it, so it was later changed to a letter. LePage said, “This is a public building that works with employees and employers. What is it that they don’t understand that it takes two to have a job. It takes somebody to hire you. It takes someone to work. It’s not just the employer.” (NPR 3/28/11)
It quickly brought to mind the administration of George W. Bush when the labor department was against labor, the environment protection agency was against protecting the environment, and the security and exchange commission was against regulating security and exchanges.
The mural that LePage had a problem with contained Rosie the Riveter and the first woman appointed to a US cabinet post, FDR’s labor secretary, Frances Perkins. The mural also depicted first time unionist were allowed to vote anonymously to a 1973 strike that took place for better working conditions for women. Judy Taylor the artist who painted the mural said, “There was never any intention to be pro-labor or anti-labor. It was a pure depiction of facts.” (Talking Points Memo 7/4/2011)
LePage also had a problem with the fact that the rooms were named after labor leaders like Caesar Chavez, Perkins, and even Republican state legislature William Looney who helped end child labor in the state. To this point there is still no word yet whether Maine’s Chamber of Commerce will have to change the names of their meeting rooms and alter their pictures to make them more labor friendly.
At least one of the issues on that mural that LePage seemed to want to erase was Maine’s past with child labor. Maine has regulated Child Labor since 1848. In 1938 a federal law ended the exploitation of children nationally. The minimum wage is Maine is $7.50 an hour but Lepage wants it lowered to $5.25 for the first one hundred and eight days. This new training wage was presented as a positive as it would help younger workers gain work skills that they wouldn’t have had because before they undersold their labor business couldn’t have afforded to hire them. He also wants to make sure that these workers in training can work longer hours during the school year, up to 24 hours a week, and it would allow them to work even longer during vacations, at the reduced rate. This will certainly put even more pressure on Maine’s 7% unemployment rate. Almost without any sense of America’s recent child labor past LePage has said, “I went to work at 11 years old. I became governor. It’s not a big deal. Work doesn’t hurt anybody.”
“The governor’s office argues that allowing students to work more hours could help them save more money for college, citing increasing loan debt among Main students…Opponents argue that if employers were allowed to pay student less than other worker, they might start firing longtime employees in favor of cheaper labor, or firing students as soon as they became ineligible for the lower wage.” ( Melissa Maynard Stateline Staff Writer 4/27/11).
