Pain is real. Darned if you don’t learn every day talking with people, listening to their stories, soaking up their concerns – working to understand. As a candidate for Maine’s governor, I learn every day.
Some lessons are sobering. People are hurting. People who did everything right watch as Maine’s Democrat-controlled government betrays them, takes what they worked for. Examples are legion.
This week, a senior couple who had done everything right, worked hard, paid off their home, raised their kids, and hoped for a peaceful retirement – reached out to me. They had gotten their property tax bill. It went from $2700 a few years ago to $8900 this year, utterly unaffordable. They are in distress.
“Why?” they asked me. Answer: Maine, under Democrat control, pushes endless mandates on towns and counties, death by a thousand cuts, everything from new accompaniment requirements for non-violent offenders to prisoners’ dental work, pop-up drug treatment to school mandates. This drives up property taxes.
At the same time, the costs of education are themselves rising. In Maine, they doubled between 1986 and 2006, doubled again early 2000s, and now – and “to what end?” Sadly, to no good end. Scores for 4th and 8th graders went from best in the country in 1992 to “dead last,” 50 of 50, last year.
Dig even deeper. Why did that happen? Teachers’ unions, driven by nationals but paid for by local teachers, take millions from Mainers – then use that exact money to push political mandates on schools, creating huge bureaucracy, distractions, politicization, and minimizing life skills learning.
The administrators protest that statement, another thing I have learned. I get mouthy, belligerent blowback from them. As they used to say in the military, “If you are taking flak, you know you are over the target.” The resulting bureaucracy – in Maine and other blue states – is suffocating teachers, depriving students of time for math, reading, writing, science, history, and shop.
But it is worse, if you can believe it. Beyond declining life skills and emphasis on soft learning, emotional sensitivity (versus mental toughness) and indoctrination, costs just keep rising.
Unions push the Democrat legislators to create more administrators, using teachers as a foil – while these unions pay themselves more. The top eight union staff in Maine make $200,000, five times what an average Mainer makes, multiples of what a Maine teacher makes. Is that fair?
The kicker is our miserable results in schools, 70 percent of 4th graders unable to read or read at level, and almost the same percentage of 8th graders unable to do basic math. That is the outrage –no accountability, more spending, more administrators, low teacher morale, unprepared students.
So, why does that couple stand to lose their home? Simple, excess of mandates, endless new regulations, pressure on schools to conform to political absurdities – like boys in girls’ sports – and on towns to keep spending. And do not forget that the Democrats dominate school boards.
Young Mainers – again, a lesson learned last week – do not get the privilege of paying exorbitant property taxes, because they cannot afford to buy a home. As a young US Marine – in his late 20s – told me at the Wayne Memorial Day parade last week, “Sir, you had the American Dream, rent, save, get a mortgage, own a home, pay it off, and live well – we do not believe in the dream anymore.”
I asked, rather shocked, why not. He patiently explained, as Marines are trained to do. “To buy a home, you need a good job, not minimum wage, but a career, then be able to afford your rent and save for a downpayment. My family ten years ago paid $800 a month in rent for an entire house; today, I cannot get a studio apartment in Portland for $2000 a month.”
Bottom line: Rich, out-of-touch Democrat leaders, more interested in progressive subsidies for “green” nonsense, electric buses, wind towers, and solar forests, quick to buy administrators, votes, and illegal aliens, are bankrupting Maine, corrupt at the top, unable to see the damage.
Lessons were sobering, especially the lack of affordability, driven by endless new taxes, driven by endless new spending, driven by basic indifference to that older couple and younger Marine. Words are cheap, happy talk fake, and Maine’s pain – lesson of the week – very real.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).
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