I live very close to Maine; walking distance from Pun Salad Manor across the bridge to South Berwick is, according to Google Maps, about 0.9 miles.
Also, it turns out the most direct route to the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library takes me down Maine State Route 236. Where I swear the most common phrase on the roadside signage these days is "Recreational Cannabis".
A few years back, Maine's official tourism slogan was "The Way Life Should Be". (Pic at your right.) Which I always thought was kind of arrogant for a state in 43d place among the 50 states in terms of personal and economic freedom.
They have recently changed their tourism motto to the less offensive "Welcome Home". (And every time I see it, I mutter "I'm just going to Portsmouth, OK?")
They are insufferably statist, have been for a long time, but even that didn't prepare me for the recent news, as described by Emma Camp: Maine Legislator Barred From Voting Over Social Media Post.
A Maine state legislator has been prohibited from speaking or having her votes counted—all for a social media post critical of transgender athletes participating in women's sports. Rep. Laurel Libby (R–Auburn) has attempted to challenge the legislature's actions against her in court but has faced several defeats. This week, Libby filed an emergency injunction asking the Supreme Court to intervene.
"If this statement were made by a non-member of the legislature . . . it would clearly be constitutionally protected," Nadine Strossen, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tells Reason. "So the only argument they can possibly make is that somehow you have fewer First Amendment rights when you are an elected member of a state legislative body than an ordinary citizen would have, which is completely counterintuitive and counter to not only fundamental First Amendment principles but fundamental principles of representative government."
In February, Libby made a post on Facebook and X criticizing the state's decision to allow a transgender girl to compete in a high school track championship. The post included the name and an unblurred photo of a transgender athlete who had won the girls pole vault after previously competing as a boy.
The usual progressive sites that are (often rightly) irate over the Trump Administration's efforts to suppress free speech are, as near as I can tell, silent on this. Dissent from transgender ideology is effectively heresy for progressives. And must be punished by whatever sanctions are at hand.
At National Review, Dan McLaughlin calls it: Maine’s Shocking Assault on Democracy & Free Speech. Sorry, no gifted link. You can get the gist from his headline, though.
But Laurel Libby did not call for a killing spree on her political opponents. That would be a different Maine resident, as reported by Jonathan Turley: “Take out Every Single Person Who Supports Trump”: Maine Teacher Calls for the Secret Service to Go on a Killing Spree.
We have been discussing the increasing political violence on the left. That includes a student who published a column recently on “when must we kill them?” I noted that such views are often reflections of the many extremists currently in teaching. That was evident this week in Maine, where English teacher JoAnna St. Germain of Waterville Senior High School called upon the Secret Service to kill Trump and his supporters.
On Tuesday, St., Germain called on Facebook for the Secret Service to “step up” and avoid a civil war by killing Trump and his supporters. She insisted that it would not constitute an assassination because Trump is not a legitimate president “duly elected by the American people.”
She explained that “If I had the skill set required, I would take them out myself.”
Whatever “skill set” St. Germain possess, sanity does not appear to be part of it.
St. Germain later responded to the shock of many that a teacher would be advocating murder, posting “People are quite angry with me for stating openly that Trump and his cronies need to die […] If you’re mad that I’m speaking truth to power? F**k you.”
Yes, an updated Ring Lardner witticism: "F**k you, she explained."
Maybe I should stay on this side of the state line for awhile.
Also of note:
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Boon, meet doggle. The Daily Wire reports on a small part of Uncle Stupid's business-as-usual: Federal ‘Job Corps’ Spends Up To $764K Per Graduate. Participants Go On To Earn $17K Annually.
A Labor Department program designed to train 16- to 24-year-olds to join the workforce spends more per person annually than Ivy League colleges, but participants wind up making minimum wage on average — raising questions about whether it should continue to exist.
The Job Corps pays teenage runaways, high school dropouts, and twentysomething ex-cons to live in dormitories and receive their GEDs and vocational training. The national cost per graduate was $188,000, with the average graduate staying 13.5 months. Of more than 110 campuses, the 10 least efficient averaged a cost of $385,000 per graduate. Job Corps participants earn $16,695 per year on average after leaving the program, according to new government data.
Nearly $2 billion in federal taxpayer money is spent annually on residential Job Corps campuses, a boon for the for-profit contractors who run them. But the dismal statistics about the program’s efficacy have never been fully public until the Trump administration released a “Transparency Report” last week.
A sweet deal for those "for-profit contractors", in other words.
The New Hampshire Job Corps campus is pictured here. I have no idea whether they have any more cost-effective results than the US average, but I have my doubts. I assume it's yet another example of the Pun Salad adage: When Uncle Stupid starts dropping cash from helicopters, there will be plenty of people out with buckets.
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Well (ahem) I believe it. Steven Davidoff Solomon, lawprof at UC Berkeley, has the clickbait headline: You Won’t Believe the Tax Breaks for Professors (gifted link).
Stanford brags that “it’s pretty ‘sweet’ to be connected with Stanford” thanks to the perks its professors and staff receive. Perhaps the sweetest perks Stanford and other elite universities provide are the multimillion-dollar tax-free housing and tuition stipends they lavish on faculty, staff and their children. They’re tax giveaways most Americans don’t get to enjoy, though they effectively cover the cost. It’s long past time to close these tax loopholes.
Need I confess: the tuition discount was a perk Mrs. Salad and I took advantage of for our kiddos when they attended the University Near Here.
To be honest, I thought of it as more of, um, a scholarship. Yeah, that's the ticket! But Steven's right: it's an income transfer from ordinary joes and jills to some pretty well-off folks. Should go away.
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