Mike Corrigan

By Mike Corrigan

BN Columnist

“The failure of leadership in Washington, D.C. has resulted in a federal shutdown, preventing the flow of federal money to Maine. Unfortunately, this means that a large number of our federally funded state employees may have to be laid off. The state of Maine simply cannot fill the financial gap created by the prolonged loss of federal dollars. It would be unlawful for the state to ask our federally funded employees to continue to work without having the authority to pay them.” — Gov. Paul LePage, last week, just before exercising the special Alexander Haig Clause in the Maine Constitution

Too bad Gov. LePage himself vetoed the “flow of federal dollars” due Maine people through the Affordable Care Act to pay for actual private insurance policies! Because that particular veto could result in the kind of state of emergency where people actually die. Not that sickness and death and The Way Life Should Be have ever mattered to Maine’s governor anyway near much as money does. As Gov. LePage has said many times, “As I have said many times, we all need to die sometime, but not everyone can be trusted with money.”

So now anyway, since we can’t pay some of our bills, we are now somehow under martial law. People have asked me, “Mike, what do you know about this emergency situation? Can I still water my lawn? Am I still allowed to rent movies? Are you ever going to write anything helpful, or what?”

All rightie then. I can respond to a challenge as well as the next man, as long as the next man is dead, or at least sleeping. Here is what you must do now, or never can do again, if you live in Maine.

• Never leave your home without official identification and a semiautomatic rifle (provided that your identification affirms that you are “a good guy with a gun”).

• Bad guys with guns are not allowed in any case to leave their homes, or their prison cells, as the case may be.

• You must respond promptly to any commands from soldiers or National Guardsmen or policemen or vigilantes or good guys with guns to:

…put down the cat and slowly back away

…move to Lewiston

…cancel your health insurance

• Do not water your lawn after 7 a.m.

• You also must follow this secret provision of the law, to be announced next week: “All citizens by this order are required in any state or national election henceforth to vote Republican, unless the candidate is actually a Democrat in disguise, or an ‘Independent,’ like that one who ran against me the last time, who, if I remember correctly, was either from Eliot or Cutler or some other Maine town that wasn’t Lewiston.”

Finally, this public service announcement:

• MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS AND TREE NUTS.

Thank you for your attention to these matters, fellow citizens. You may return to your homes now, provided the bank has not foreclosed on them, or the National Guard has not occupied them under King Paul’s new version of the Quartering Act. Which will be issued tomorrow.

Mike has moved to Lewiston already. Don’t shoot!