I’ve been enjoying the clusterfuck that is Maine’s governing system from a time zone away, but I just had a sneaky bastard idea to promote good public policy. First via Wonkette some background on the situation:
Wacky ol’ rubber bag of infected pus and Maine Gov. Paul LePage is one comical fella. Last week, we told you how he thought he had “pocket vetoed” 19 bills by doing nothing about them, but had actually screwed the procedural pooch because the Maine Legislature had not actually adjourned, and so the bills became law. The fun continues, because as of Sunday, Democratic lawmakers say that an additional 51 bills have become law because LePage refused to do anything about them on time. Among the bills was an expansion of Medicaid funding for reproductive health that will benefit some 13,000 women in the Pine Tree State. But not so fast, says LePage — he’s gonna take the whole thing to the state supreme court, and he’ll win, because Democrats are dumm and he is smrt….
the way Maine’s “pocket veto” works is that if the Legislature has adjourned its session, the governor can sit on a passed bill for 10 days, and then it just dies, with no chance for the Legislature to override the veto since they’ve all gone home… But if the Legislature is still in session, the governor’s inaction causes the bill to become law. And so, last week, 19 bills became law after LePage did nothing with them; then this weekend another 10-day period passed with no action, so even more bills became law, YAY
The Maine legislature is at ease right now but not adjourned. They are due back to Augusta soon. The Legislature has repeatedly passed Medicaid expansion bills with bipartisan majorities. Governor LePage has repeatedly vetoed those bills because he is a sadistic fuck.
What if the Maine legislature passes another Medicaid expansion bill and then immediately goes back to “at ease” status before the bill is delivered to the governor’s office. LePage has two choices.
Choice one is to continue to do sit on bills as he is doing now. Most likely the outcome of that choice is Medicaid expansion is declared law by the state Supreme Court and 80,000 more people get health insurance.
Choice number two is to actively veto the bill within ten days of receiving the bill. That produces one hell of a point of evidence that the other 70 bills are valid laws for LePage’s argument is that an at ease Legislature is an adjourned Legislature but he is belt and suspendering his veto on Medicaid expansion which is an “at ease” bill just like the other 70 bills he received from what he considers an adjourned Legislature. Why is that Governor?
What do the Balloon Juice lawyers think about this?
Roger Moore
I think as a practical matter that the State Supreme Court is going to have to rule on the other laws pronto- some of them were passed as emergency measures that go into effect immediately, so there’s a need for a ruling right away- and that will be decided before the legislature gets a chance to do anything on Medicaid expansion.
Gin & Tonic
Another dumb question for Maine: how’s that Eliot Cutler guy working out for you?
boatboy_srq
There are remains of decent journalism in Vacationland. The Portland Press-Herald is still a worthwhile paper, for example, even if it is a former Gannett property and has had its share of fiscal woes. Downeastahs take (or at least used to take) more-than-passing interest in politics. So there’s likely a good solid opposition to letting LePage have his way, and even the least informed legislator or jurist ought to be sufficiently well-versed on the situation to hand LePage’s head to him on this.
OTOH, LePage is typically Teahadi: what happened yesterday has no bearing on what’s done today.
My money says LePage is likely to pen-and-ink veto, then claim that that veto and the “pocket veto” are the same thing, then argue in court whatever he thinks will go furthest (for the other items that he let slip), and watch the court slap him back.
catclub
I would say that depends on the composition of the Maine Supreme Court. Will they back him?
chopper
if O can get shot down by the US supreme court over a recess appointment made when congress is ‘not technically in recess’, then i can’t see exactly how gov. pusbag here is going to win at maine’s court.
catclub
Other dumb question: How dumb do you have to be to let this guy get re-elected?
boatboy_srq
@Gin & Tonic: @catclub: The problem is that both Cutler and Michaud fall into the “just a few more votes and we would have won this” trap: there’s JUST enough strong support for each to prevent the other from winning, but not enough for either of them to win. LePage has just enough support to garner the highest percentage of voters – which while hardly a majority is (just barely) enough to send him to Augusta. Cutler really needs to sit out the next cycle.
jl
LePage is a dummy and has no class. He can’t handle Maine. Give Trump the job, he’ll fix things up.
I am not a lawyer, but so what, Maine needs a political solution.
Sherparick
LePage is a lesson on the power of “ressentiment,” the power of frustration and declining living standards to be directed as rage at “others.” LePage is a creation of this environment, the depressed land of Northern, rural, Maine. An area which is also drowned in a toxic verbal sea of right wing garbage news and talk radio. As result you get a Talk Radio governor like LePage who allows every wahoo in the State to live viscerally through him as he tells the Southern Maine elite to “blank” themselves. The fact that LePage’s actual policies devastate the region and his voters even more seems to make no difference. They just blame the gays and the Kenyan Usurper in the White House.
trollhattan
@jl:
Only needs the hashtag #TweetLikeTrump. :-)
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
Do you mean the guy who lost to LePage by about 2 percent the first time, with Libby Mitchell (Dem) getting about 19 percent of the vote – effectively Nader-izing Cutler? That guy?
Or is this another “LePage got less than 50 percent” snark, ignoring the fact that only Angus King was elected with more than 50 percent, since approx 1986, and that LePage came damn close to 50?
Just wondering.
The Maine voters kinda screwed the pooch in 2014. Shenna Bellows also got destroyed, about 70-30, by someone (Collins) who should have been more vulnerable. OK, maybe not lose-the-election vulnerable, but 70-30? Sheeee-it
mb
They should have done this already. Dem legislatures should be just as insistent on expanding Medicaid as the Reps have been at trying to repeal Ocare. Make ’em veto it over and over again. The Maine Dems should return and pass Mcaid expansion ASAP whether he wants to continue his stand-off RE: signing bills or not.
Tree With Water
Smart people in Maine now know how smart Californians felt when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor.
Sherparick
@boatboy_srq: He still got 48% of the vote, and counties outside of Portland and Augusta. Most of those counties are actually hurt by LePage’s policies since they are poor, but they vote for him because the are angry and resentful, and one thing LePage can channel and exemplify is “anger and resentment.” Their radios and TV tell them that all their problems exists because of “Big Government deficits,” the EPA, and the the Kenyan Usurper, who has created a special super secret welfare fund for Blacks and illegal immigrants. A lot of these counties voted Democratic in the sixties through the eighties, when their Dads had jobs in union factories in the paper and lumber industry. With automation and imports and the take over of companies by private equity firms, those jobs disappeared. The Democrats seem uninterested in doing anything about that (and with the TPP still seem uninterested) and the Republicans Tea Party filled the vacuum by blaming the “other” sitting at the bottom of the social scale.
ET
I don’t watch or know much about Maine politics but it seem to remember seeing how the guv hadn’t exactly endeared himself much to anyone in the state Democrats or his fellow Republicans. Now if he hadn’t pissed what seems to be everyone off he might get more of an assist from Republicans in the legislature despite the fact that they might be jealous of their powers. But I wonder if they are just going to let him swing because he as pissed them off. If they are smart they would do what they can to preserve the status quo because if theory holds the legislature has to deal with a very different – and not in a better way – situation. If he wants to change things they should make it be though changing the law that govern legislative procedures not just cause he says so.
SFAW
@efgoldman:
Maine has a fairly long history of third-party candidates. Not clear that it’s about purity.
ETA: And in 2010, the “vanity” candidate was the Democrat (Libby Mitchell) – Cutler beat her approx 2-to-1 in that election.
Omnes Omnibus
With the caveats that I am not licensed in Maine and I have not read the pocket veto statutes and rules for Maine, if the Wonkette summary is accurate, LePage is screwed.
Bobby Thomson
@Roger Moore: if it weren’t for that, I would say there’s a risk that Richard’s proposal would lead to Moops II: Electric Boogaloo, in which a no-brainer suddenly becomes difficult with added controversy.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Tree With Water:
At least Schwarzenegger was able to read the CA state constitution, or listened to people who did. What a clusterfuck.
Someone needs to Photoshop this guy’s face onto Pee-Wee Herman with his bike — “I meant to do that!”
jl
@Tree With Water:
” Smart people in Maine now know how smart Californians felt when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor. ‘
You mean the Schwarzenegger who was effectively run out of the CA GOP for being a hippie commie? Schwarzenegger had more sophisticated operatives who knew how to hide the dirty work of undoing headline Schwarzenegger initiatives that he was just doing for PR. So, hard to tell when Arnold just did not understand, or when he understood well enough to keep the real policies carefully hidden.
But, OTOH, Schwarzenegger did have a problem of getting frustrated with technicalities of governing process, and pouting in his office, so they had that in common.
mdblanche
Richard, I have an OT question for our resident insurance expert. I have an acquaintance who was it by a motorcycle a month or two ago. His hand was smashed up pretty badly, forcing him to cut back on how much he works. Something did not go right with the first round of hand surgery leaving him in pain exacerbated by inadequate pain management. So the last time I spoke with him he was about to endure another round of surgery. His auto insurance won’t pay for anything since his vehicle wasn’t involved. And terminally nice guy that he is, he didn’t press charges so the cyclist’s insurance isn’t involved either. But his own health insurance is also refusing to pay, leaving him to pay for surgery out of his savings, which needless to say are now in the red. So my question is how the fuck can his insurance get away with that?
mak
@chopper: According to wikipedia, looks like LePage appointed 2 of the 7 justices, including the Chief Justice, but both of those guys had been judges in Maine courts for over twenty-some years (which is only to say LePage didn’t pluck them from like-minded kitchen staff or acquaintances from tea party rallies). Of the remaining 5, 3 were appointed by Balducci, a Democrat, and the other 2 were appointed by Angus King. So, in all likelihood, they are sane.
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW: I mean the guy who got a whopping 8.4% of the vote in 2014.
Omnes Omnibus
@mdblanche: I am not Richard, of course, but declining to press charges should not preclude filing a civil suit.
goblue72
@jl: Or the Schwarzenegger who signed California’s greenhouse gas emissions law, which includes the nation’s only statewide carbon cap-and-trade system in the United States?
Richard Mayhew
@mdblanche: 1st thought is that he should talk to a lawyer for at least an hour.
2 thought is that someone’s insurance will pay eventually.
I don’t think charges need to be filed to get the other guy’s insurance to pay the first $50,000 or $100,000 (up to the per incident limit) and then either your buddy’s auto insurance or health insurance (maybe check the home owners’ policy as well) should take over the rest.
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW: Tactical voting, with a wink-and-nudge from Libby Mitchell. Cutler flat-out refused to even discuss it. The Cutler vote doubled in the homestretch.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
So what was your point?
Look, I’m not happy about Cutler staying in the race, but he did (half-heartedly, perhaps) make noises about people voting for Michaud. But considering that he almost won in 2010 – and it was the Dem who was the spoiler – it was not unreasonable for him to think that he would be the likely lead challenger to LePage in 2014. Turned out he was wrong.
ETA: I have no particular like of Cutler, by the way. I think his ego was and is a problem.
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW: Collins always, except for her first run, wins 60-40 or better. It’s not unheard of her to win a majority of Democratic women voters…
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
I have no idea what that means.
Germy Shoemangler
@jl: Give Trump the job, he’ll fix things up
I check in on TMZ now and then to see what Trump is up to.
Trump has gravitas.
Davis X. Machina
@Gin & Tonic: You can’t blame him, he didn’t leave his party, his party left him.
Cutler was not so much a candidate as an MPBN membership premium…
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
Understood. But Bellows finished 7-8 lower than Tom Allen, which I would think would have been unexpected.
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW: Mitchell voters bailed in the last two weeks and voted for Cutler, with her tacit approval and encouragement. The polls were 21-21-40 Cutler/Mitchell/Lepage in the last week in October.
Omnes Omnibus
@mdblanche: @Richard Mayhew: Another thought is that contacting the state insurance regulator is a way to go. If his insurance does pay, it will almost certainly bring a suit against the motorcyclist and his insurance company.
boatboy_srq
@Sherparick: I’ll freely admit my ME political knowledge is about two decades out of touch… but that still leaves the “who do YOU think should sit out the next cycle” question out there. ME Dems have had their own share of woes (York and Cumberland Counties’ party machinery were FUBAR when I was there), and between the industrial migration and base closures most of the worthwhile employment is now in some other state.
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW:No surprise. Allen had a much longer record and a much higher profile, was Portland based (good for media) and Bellows’ strength was in the wrong part of the state for a state-wide election.
Snarki, child of Loki
The Maine lege should pass a law, immediately go “at ease”, dare LePustule to veto it, yes.
But the law should be one that declares “open season” on any Maine Gov. that pocket-vetos more than 10 bills.
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
They didn’t bail all that much – she ended up with about 19 percent.
And I think Cutler did something similar for Michaud, although I don’t have a cite for that bit of “wisdom.”
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
Are you in Maine? Or just have an affinity for it? (Non-snarky questions)
boatboy_srq
@Tree With Water: At least the Governator was the least bad alternative on that ballot; keeping Davis would have been better, but the GOP (proto-GOTea) alternatives to Ahnuld were FSM-awful. LePage is just plain awful: mean, spiteful and ornery just to be ornery – and it’s catching up with him fast.
Gimlet
With regard to the coming teacher shortage discussed in the last thread.
This is (of course) bad news for Democrats who depend on teachers supporting and voting their candidates into office.
Remember when the President promised to find his comfy shoes and join the teachers on the picket line?
Remember when the demonstrations and potential strike in Madison was quashed because the Democrats promised to politically represent the teachers so there was no need for it?
Zyla
@Omnes Omnibus:
concur, MA atty here, substantially similar law. same caveats
Grumpy Code Monkey
Maine state constitution, Article IV, Part Third:
A non-lawyer’s reading of a single section taken out of context:
If the legislature has adjourned and is not coming back and the bill has not been signed, it does not become law.
If the legislature is in session and the governor takes no action within 10 to 12 days (depending on where Sundays fall), then the bill becomes law.
If the legislature recesses within the 10-day period and does not return before the 10 days are up but does reconvene some time after that, then the governor has 3 days to return the bill to the legislature after it reconvenes, or else it automatically becomes law.
So. Lege sends a bunch of bills to LePage. LePage sits on them. Lege recesses. Sometime after 10 days, Lege comes back.
If LePage did not send the bills back within 3 days of the Lege returning, then he fucked up, and those bills are now law.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gimlet: You probably need to flesh out your last paragraph because, as it stands, it does not match the events that I saw from the Capitol square.
Gimlet
@Germy Shoemangler:
That was from El Guapo, not the son of El Chapo.
burnspbesq
No opinion on the legal issue; state con law is even more esoteric than what I do for a living.
But I do enjoy watching train wrecks. More chips and salsa, please.
Gimlet
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s how I remember it, but I’ve been sifting through many Google links for a supporting account and can’t find the focus I want.
How do you remember the threatened strike (and to some degree the protest) ending?
NobodySpecial
From what I understand, Cutler came within a very few thousand votes last time and claims that he talked to the head of the state Dem party to clear the field for a rematch. Needless to say, decks were not cleared. At any rate, LePage would have won even if Cutler died of Ebola the day after filing, simply because he increased his raw vote share so much. But much more fun to punch whomever around here, I guess, then admit the state Party fucked up.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gimlet: Not with promises from Democrats that they would protect the public employees. The Dems did not have the numbers to do it. They were dumb enough to promise and the protesters would not have been dumb enough to have believed such a promise. Follow court decisions in June, the protests basically ended as people started putting energy into the recall drives.
Gin & Tonic
@NobodySpecial: 2014 raw vote counts: LePage 294,533; Michaud 265,125; Cutler 51,518.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Also, the Wobblies were the ones pushing for a general strike. I don’t recall it getting a lot of traction elsewhere. I wasn’t privy to upper level talks, but I heard very little about go on strike down in the streets.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
SO COOL to know somebody who remembers that! Remember the rubber tip with the slit in it, and remember how it got all crusty if you didn’t use it for several days?
J R in WV
From reading about LePage, it seems like calling him a bag o pus is disrespectful to dead microbes and pus.
And if he doesn’t know how to pocket veto and when he can pocket veto, then he deserves to have the courts tell him he is wrong. Big hopes he messed up on Medicare Medicaid “veto” and people get the health care they need. We have friends w/o health insurance, some of them have had injuries and illnesses that needed care, snake bite, strokes, etc. Charity only works so far.
I liked Maine when we visited, except for the really bland food. We stayed at a camp for a week, and her food was great, as she got instant feedback from people from “away” – also needed references and repeat customers. The restaurants, though, it was a fight to get a pepper shaker… same in MA and NY once you’re out of the cities.
We stopped at a little country restaurant just south of New Paltz, both ordered the turkey and dressing dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans – they had a secretly developed flavor-remover in the kitchen!! You couldn’t taste anything. I added salt, and it had no flavor after it hit the food.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
SO COOL to know somebody who remembers that! Remember the rubber tip with the slit in it, and remember how it got all crusty if you didn’t use it for several days?
Edit: (Please, nobody ever take that last sentence out of context, okay?)
SiubhanDuinne
F.
Y.
W.
P.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Please, nobody ever take that last sentence out of context, okay?
Too late.
JGabriel
Richard Mayhew @ Top:
That is so unfair. Anyone as bitter, angry, ugly, and bullying as LePage is clearly someone who hasn’t been laid, or even masturbated, since the turn of the century. To compare LePage to a fuck of any sort, even the sadistic kind, is an insult to every American who has been at all sexually active at any point in the past decade.
JGabriel
@SiubhanDuinne:
See? This is what Conservatives have done to the sexual revolution. We can’t even have unprotected context anymore!
John Revolta
@efgoldman: Must have been……….fragrant…………around there.
Frank Wilhoit
@J R in WV: Nebraska, too.
NobodySpecial
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, now compare those to 2010:
LePage 218k, Cutler 208k, Mitchell 109k.
Like it or not (and I don’t), LePage found almost 80k more votes in an offyear. They were not gonna beat that, period.
MomSense
@SFAW:
The thing is that in the summer of 2013 Cutler’s polling was at about 19% and it never really increased more than a point or two. In the home stretch of the election, it was lower than the previous summer. He had plenty of signals that his campaign was really not taking off at all. He lost a bunch of his major supporters and donors from his 2010 campaign and I think stayed in because of his ego.
There is more to the Libby Mitchell situation. There was a ton of outside spending by Koch brothers for Cutler and she was slammed for some ads she ran that were considered too aggressive or negative. I honestly think that a male candidate would not have been criticized for those ads.
In the last election there was a referendum question about bear trapping that brought 2nd district voters out in droves. LePage ran on anger and resentment and we had just suffered through months of ISIS and EBOLA coverage non-stop. You may recall that the nurse that Christie kept quarantined returned to Maine after she was released. She and her partner were treated terribly. She received threats. LePage had troopers outside her home to keep her quarantined. I have never encountered such hostility in my phonebanking and I’ve done some tough turf in my time.
SFAW
@MomSense:
As I said earlier: “I have no particular like of Cutler, by the way. I think his ego was and is a problem.” I think he should not have run in 2014. But, his dickishness aside: whether Libby Mitchell was treated unfairly, or outside spending for Cutler, or what, he was the front-runner in 2010. (And, maybe I’m more out of touch than I realized, but I thought Cutler was relatively liberal/progressive [which was why he and Mitchell split the Dem vote], so I’m not sure why the Kochs would support him. I don’t get the impression that ratfucking [so to speak] is their style.)
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW: Lived here for 25 years. Cumberland Co Democratic committee member for most of them.
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
Looking to relocate there some time in the not-too-distant future. Either Cumberland, Androscoggin, or Oxford.
Or some other county.
MomSense
@SFAW:
The vote didn’t break for Cutler until the last eight days. King endorsed him about two weeks before the election when it lookedl like he was more likely to win than Mitchell. So I don’t really think he achieved front runner status. He was the late in the game choice for people who didn’t want LePage.
MomSense
@SFAW:
Lincoln, Knox and Waldo are lovely.
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
By the way: thanks for setting me straight (or straighter?) on some of this stuff.
(You, too, MomSense.)
SFAW
@MomSense:
Lincoln has been mostly drive-through for me.
Knox: used to spend time in Owl’s Head (facing the defunct lighthouse). Liked it, except sometimes the smell from the cannery was a little strong. Also like Thomaston (minus the pen), Saint George, lobstah in Rockland is pretty good (maybe as good as Bayley’s), Camden is interesting
Waldo: mostly drive-through on the way to Knox (MDI, Otis, Ellsworth)
But, in general, I like Maine. It’s the Governor I can’t stand.
AK
@boatboy_srq: Pretty sure you’re thinking of the wrong Gannett. Not the Gannett chain, the local Guy Gannett Publishing Co.
Paul in KY
@Tree With Water: Arnold sounds like a better governor than LePage. Really, I guess Torquemada would probably be a better governor than LePileopus.
Paul in KY
@Germy Shoemangler: Think that is pretty funny. The Donald better understand that the druglord has a lot more money than him & can finance hits, etc.
Don
It would seem to me that the most important thing here is how often this course of events has happened in the past. How many laws have gone into effect in Maine by virtue of this provision of the constitution? One? A hundred? Thousands?
No responsible high court could flat-out reject a clear passage just because of the impact of overturning something, but similarly they cannot throw every conviction and tax assessment of the last eighty years into appeals territory over lines that could be interpreted several ways. The responsible thing to do there is say you need to unfuck your highly recent nonsense using the same legislators who passed these laws in the first place and we’re going to leave decades of history to continue as it has been.
I’m sure there’s a fancy pants term a la stare decisis for this but I don’t know it.