Monthly Archives: April 2020

The Mills plan for reopening the economy is no plan at all

When a crisis happens, I think most of us try our best to band together and be on the same team. In the year 2000, this country lived through one of the most bitter and miserable elections in American history. In the end, after a month of legal battles and uncertainty, George W. Bush became […]

It is time to (carefully) reopen

This past weekend, something broke in my house that needed fixing. Sunday, I decided to venture out into the vast unknown hellscape now known as “reality” to venture to one of our illustrious essential businesses — a home improvement store — in order to acquire the necessary handful of items that I needed to repair […]

You’re the governor, what do you do?

Congratulations, dear reader. Using my reality bending power to create alternative universes, I have now conjured a world in which you are reading this column in the Blaine House, and you are the governor of Maine. Everything else is the same. Same history. Same first year in office. Same COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe. The […]

How federal regulations helped spread COVID-19

In any crisis, we triage the issues we are facing, and our reactions proceed in relatively predictable ways. The COVID-19 pandemic is no different. In the short term, we respond to the most urgent problems before we do anything else. That means that virtually all of our mental energy is poured into the need to […]

Liberty in times of emergency

Here’s a fun fact you might not know. Your “freedom of association” is not guaranteed specifically by name in the First Amendment. Don’t believe me? Read it again. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or […]