I’ll say this for Paul LePage: the man has a way with words, in the same manner that my cat has a way with horking up a hairball in the middle of the night, right at the edge of a carpet but not close enough to make it to the hardwood floor. They both make you sit up and pay attention.

It’s been 10 years since the former governor said guys by the name of “D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty” were coming up to Maine to sell drugs and “impregnate young white women.” My family still makes jokes about guys named Smoothie and Shifty. 

Like a particularly pernicious foot fungus, LePage has once again returned, his double-digit loss to Janet Mills having failed to dissuade him from seeking political office again. (And you know what, good for him, I guess. It’s an important skill to be able to get back in the saddle and try again.) 

His latest, um, quip was that Democrats want to “permanently put you in economic slavery,” uttered at the Maine Republican State Convention. LePage didn’t define “economic slavery,” so I’m not entirely sure what he’s talking about. Also, isn’t pretty much all slavery economic? Performing involuntary, unpaid labor that other people profit from?

I assume it has something to do with taxes. I actually think it’s kind of cute how worked up conservative men get about the concept of taxes in general. It must be nice to live in a world where the most oppressive thing that can happen to you is having to put some money into the public coffers. Unfortunately, the rest of us live in the real world, where people in power can force you to remain pregnant against your will, throw you in prison for a crime you didn’t commit, or take away your citizenship and deport you because you said something the president didn’t like. 

It’s funny how taxation is the only thing this type of business guy who gets into politics considers “economic slavery.” What about the 40% of Americans who are in debt from medical or dental services? What about workers who are paying well over one-third of their income just to keep a roof over their head, who can’t save up for a down payment on a house because all their money goes to their current rent (rent which in most cases doesn’t even help build their credit score, even if they pay it faithfully and on time!).

What about Mainers who paid off their house years ago but can’t afford either upkeep or to move somewhere else and so are stuck in a slowly crumbling structure? What about senior citizens working well into their 70s and 80s because they can’t afford their prescription drug costs any other way? What about young workers who cannot leave a job because they would lose their family’s health insurance?

Heck, if you want to talk taxes, how about the hundred bucks taken out of my paycheck every week for Social Security — a program whose trust fund will run out by 2033? Why should I have to pay a hundred bucks a week to a program that I almost certainly won’t benefit from when I’m old enough to qualify?

(For the record, I am a fan of Social Security and Medicare; in fact I want to see both programs expanded. What I’m not a fan of is the hypocrisy of senior citizens who think their government welfare is good and righteous, but government benefits to anyone else is a waste of resources. LePage, of course, has pledged to not touch Social Security and Medicare.) 

LePage claims he just “says it like it is.”

I also pride myself on being able to tell it like it is. So here it is: LePage should be happily retired on a beach somewhere but, too self-obsessed for that, keeps trying to reclaim his glory days. He’s never gotten more than 50% of the vote. He relies on dividing others in order to succeed.

His website says he’s running for Congress to “take back Washington.” I guess LePage is hoping his voters won’t notice that both branches of Congress and the presidency are already controlled by his political party.

I’m not saying Paul LePage thinks his voters are stupid. I’m just saying he says a lot of stuff that can be disproven by a single Google search or a glance at a newspaper headline. LePage is already past the average life expectancy of an American male. Even if he succeeds at getting into Congress, he’s unlikely to be around for long enough to make much of a difference for Maine.

And he is so lacking in imagination that he cannot bring himself to believe that some elected officials actually want to use government to make people’s lives better.