Wonder if he'll talk about all the red tape designed to prevent people from voting?

Corporations love complex regulations and rules. Keeps out the small fry competitors.
(link...)

During the hillside plan discussions, developers were constantly talking about how existing regulations are not enforced. TDEC and virtually every agency that is supposed to enforce environmental regulations uses fines and stop-work orders as a last result, after giving businesses every opportunity to voluntarily comply and improve their operations. Such departments are chronically underfunded and understaffed, and they've been facing cuts and belt-tightening for decades.

The GOP has been prattling on about all the waste in government for decades, and with each year's budget the knives come out and slice away another 5 or 10%. We passed the point of diminishing returns on deregulation in the previous century. Deregulation is still a good sales pitch for getting old and gullible people to the polls, but it is worthless as rational public policy. That website proves it.

Republican politics is nothing but snake oil these days.

Can you register at the polls on election day in Tennessee? The legislature in Maine regulated that in June this year, but voters vetoed that regulation by referendum last week.

In between those times, the Bizzarro World Replicants did what they do best. Bill Nemitz @PressHerald reports

A simple and straightforward choice? You’d think so.

But then there’s that ad ...

“Who should decide Maine’s elections? Mainers? Or outsiders from other states?” asks a female narrator while a weird graphic shows the five other New England states and New York creeping up on poor, unsuspecting Maine.

“Today,” she continues, “outside interests are trying to get rid of Maine’s election ethics law.”

OK, let’s pause it right there.

Maine’s “election ethics law"? Where, pray tell, did that never-before-uttered phrase come from?

Good luck getting an answer to that one.

Sussman, according to Dutson, is that “outside interest” mentioned in the ad.

Wait a minute. Isn’t Sussman a legal Maine resident who’s entitled – this being a free country and all – to spend his money wherever and however he pleases?

“Do you know he’s a Maine citizen?” countered Dutson.

Well, judging from the fact that Sussman holds a Maine driver’s license and is a registered voter in North Haven, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say yes, the man’s one of us.

Secure Maine’s Ballot doesn’t have to tell us the source of that money until well after Tuesday’s referendum.

Fair enough. But heck, since Dutson & Company consider funding such a critical component of this contest, why not tell us now?

“Because that’s not the issue,” Dutson replied.

Right. Pardon us for even wondering.

We turn, as a last resort, to the one conservative in Maine who, for the life of him, can’t keep his mouth shut.

Please welcome back Charlie Webster, the irascible chairman of the Maine Republican Party.

WCSH-TV reported Friday that Webster told them “no one in Maine was involved or consulted in the creation of the (15-second) ad.”

Rather, the station reported, Webster said it was the work of “a conservative group from out of state – which he did not name.”

So there we have it.

Seriously, fellow Mainers, you can’t make this stuff up.

Except someone from away, whoever they are, just did.

WOW. Anyway, back to us:

An application for voter registration must be postmarked or hand delivered to the proper county election commission office at least 30 days before an election.

Why?

I guess you saw on the sidebar Tom Humphrey's column entitled "Opinion: Ramsey wrong on unemployment."

There, Humphrey is running an op-ed written by Kingsport-area (Democratic) attorney Bruce Shine, who is rankled by Ramsey's comments to 60 Kingsport-area business owners last week.

Sez Shine:

In a presentation before a luncheon meeting of 60 business executives in Kingsport, "Governor Ramsey" made the bizarre statement that Tennesseans on unemployment enjoy "a benefit ...(which) has become a lifestyle."

Apparently, Ramsey went on to report that TN's unemployment benefit "averages" $285 per week, when in fact TN's maximum benefit is just $275 per week, making it tied for fourth lowest weekly benefit in the nation.

I do hope he doesn't find out about that lavish $37 per MONTH food stamp "benefit" my 52 year-old spouse-less and unemployed friend is receiving.

(Or does some of that lavish "benefit" cover an 8.25% sales tax on groceries, leaving her $34.18 per MONTH for food? Whatever.)

Actually, if you get food stamps that's one time that you don't have to pay taxes on groceries. No room to celebrate, clearly, given the low-level of the benefits.