by Jonathan Reisman

December has been a bit of an emotional and political rollercoaster, which can make focusing on weekly wordsmithing problematic. End of year Christmas and New Year’s columns often have early deadlines, and that is the case this year. On top of that, my head is spinning from a strange combination of sadness and grief one year after my wife’s passing and confident optimism, pride, and pleasure in my writing and political and policy productivity. The result is a somewhat scattershot column.

Equity and ME

In 1998, during one of our televised debates, Congressman John Baldacci and I differed over a policy — it might have been affirmative action, my memory is less than perfect more than twenty-five years later. Representative Baldacci won the argument by declaring, “That’s not fair.” It was the first time I directly and personally encountered the power and ubiquity of undefined equity claims. 

Maine has a number of statutes pursuing equity, and numerous state agencies and public K-12 and higher educational institutions pursue equity loudly and proudly. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that there is no definition of equity across state government or the University of Maine System that equity advocates care to share with the public, and they get very testy and defensive about it when an uppity, conservative, retired policy Ronin challenges the legality and wisdom of pursuing undefined policy goals.

House GOP leader Billy Bob Faulkingham is the lead sponsor of an Act to Define and Assess Equity. The legislation does not define equity but insists that state agencies and public K-12 and higher education institutions who pursue equity in any policy area must define it and develop metrics to assess it. I think the legislative hearings will be quite the show. I cannot wait to hear why defining and assessing policy goals is a really bad fascist idea/plot. It could well be a big story on public radio and the Pravdas on the Penobscot and Presumpscot ... Alternatively, they might just try to ignore and censor it. I am sure they will try to be … equitable.

Get along little DOGE

The Department of Government Efficiency is apparently pronounced DOES or DOESH, but I cannot see Vivek or Elon without thinking, “Get along little dogies” (https://youtu.be/Q2cFji4CmHE) and recalling this lyric snippet:

Whoopie-ti-yi-yo, get along little dogies

It's your misfortune it ain't none of my own

Get along, get along, get along little dogies

Bruce Willis repeated the Whoopie riff in that wonderful Christmas movie, “Die Hard.” He added Samuel L. Jackson’s familiar ending.

Elon, Vivek, and President-elect Trump did a major service in criticizing the sausage-making involved in the continuing resolution and hopefully pruning it down — at least at the time this was written. Mr. Jackson’s pithy phrase may have been uttered late in the night in Speaker Johnson’s office.

Heinlein Revival

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote a number of stories that eerily predicted current events.

In “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” we meet entrepreneur, billionaire industrialist, and space/technology visionary D.D. Harriman. Harriman is driven to move humanity beyond earth, using all his wealth and power to do so. Elon Musk is D.D. Harriman.

Heinlein also wrote about gender identity and what we now euphemistically call “gender-affirming surgery” in “I Will Fear No Evil.”

I would recommend his 1961 Hugo award-winning “Stranger in a Strange Land” if you want a good winter read. I wonder if the term “grok” might be revived.