While driving a friend’s daughter to her home in Windsor on Saturday morning, during the slip and slide morning of rain and sleet, I nearly skated off a back road that still had ice and snow from the last storm. The roads had not seen sand or salt since before Christmas, according to my passenger. The roads were in dire need of assistance but had been neglected and apparently forgotten.

What a great metaphor for the way our governor has been behaving lately: Neglect and denial have this state sliding down a very slippery slope. Under Paul LePage’s watch in the last week alone, directors at the Department of Health and Human Services said they shredded legal documents, acting like the Third Reich before being invaded by the Allies; taxpayers paid nearly a million dollars for a study that revealed EBT abuse, something we already knew before the study; and the governor took an illegal stance to withhold public information.

LePage is a pro when it comes to creating headlines because he knows how to create smokescreens and illusions to the public.

One example: “Instead of offering clear-cut examples of welfare abuse, however, the LePage administration’s list arguably illustrates why the national campaign to crack down on questionable purchases with welfare funds is so difficult — and why politicians’ black-and-white portrayal of alleged welfare abuses often differs from the fuzzy reality.”

The fuzzy reality is that LePage continues to throw the scent off his lack of vision, and has all of us following the larger, watered-down pulse of the nation.

DHHS, EBT and the governor thrive on ineptitude and expensive studies: They are all in business to stay in business.

Gary LevineAugusta


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