Welcome to Maine in the year 2019.
|
|
You visitors from 2009 will be amazed at the technological advances that have taken place in a mere decade.
We’ve got flying cars.
We’ve got cyborgs that shoot laser beams from their eyes.
We’ve got a Rudy Vallee revival. Literally. He’s doing that zombie thing. We’re working on reanimating Michael Jackson and Elvis, too. We’re thinking trio.
Swine flu? We discovered the cure for that in 2010, when a vial of H1N1 germs was accidentally left near the podium where Republican gubernatorial candidate Peter Mills was speaking. By the time he finished explaining his 12-point program for prosperity, the poor little boogers had shriveled up and died of boredom. Today, a member of the Mills family (thanks to cloning, there are now about 14,000 of them – and that’s only counting the ones in state government) visits every school district in the state (due to the failure of consolidation, there are now about 14,000 of them) to give a lecture. After just two hours, all the students are disease-free, although we let the Mills-zoids ramble on for another 30 minutes just to be safe.
Some things are much the same as they were in 2009. Maine still doesn’t have a casino, although there’s been a proposal to legalize gambling on every ballot for the last decade. Everybody thought it was going to pass last year, but CasinosNO! spokesman Dennis Bailey (yes, he’s still around, but he’s mostly a cyborg now – not as much of a change as you might think) showed up at the polls on election day and used his laser-beam vision to evaporate voters who looked like slot-machine addicts.
Tax reform? According to Democratic state Rep. John Piotti Version 3.0, this is the year it will finally pass. Piotti 3’s compromise measure calls for extending the sales tax to laser-beam vision (according to state estimates, only Dennis Bailey will pay more) and using the extra money to lower the income tax. It’s being opposed by Republican Party state chairman Charlie Webster, who was recently designated as a National Historic Landmark for preserving opinions thought to have been extinct since the Middle Ages. Webster claims taxing lasers will have a disproportionate impact on low-income cyborgs, since they won’t have the extra cash to pay for zapping each other out of existence, thereby making it more difficult to decrease the welfare rolls.
Maine’s economy is still heavily dependent on tourism, although thanks to flying cars, we no longer have to worry about highway congestion keeping people away. And since we built a dome over the entire state, weather’s not an issue, either. The shopping mall covering the area where the North Woods used to be also helps in attracting travelers from regions more prosperous than Maine, such as Somalia, North Korea and Detroit (flying-car sales are so strong that General Motors may be able to pay back the government for its bailout in another 10 years or so).
As for gay marriage, we put that controversy to rest long ago by working out a compromise. We passed a law that said people of the same sex can marry in Maine, so long as one of the partners is on record as having voted against legalizing homosexual unions. Opponents figured that would effectively ban the practice, but failed to take into account the large number of repressed gay men and lesbians in their ranks. Today, we’re a healthier state, psychologically, and inciters of homophobia can’t appear in public without receiving marriage proposals.
The Green Independent Party took control of Portland’s government in 2012, and after a series of pogroms to eliminate drinkers of bottled water, eaters of meat, users of fossil fuel and anyone connected to a franchise business, the group succeeded in establishing a utopian community based on subsistence farming, methamphetamine production and creating energy by burning the siding on your neighbor’s house. It’s actually not all that different from when the Democrats ran the city.
You’re probably wondering what happened to some of the prominent people from your era.
Democrat John Baldacci completed his second term as governor, after which the grateful people of Maine took up a collection to have him stuffed and mounted in the state museum. He’s next to the moose.
Democratic state Rep. John Martin of Eagle Lake was euthanized by Obama’s death panel after he took the term “budget battle” too literally. Martin employed gunfire to fend off critics who claimed he’d exerted undue influence in having the University of Southern Maine and Mount Katahdin relocated to his district.
In 2017, GOP U.S. Sen. Susan Collins finally took a position on health-care reform, a move so alien to her constitution that she spontaneously combusted. A nice same-sex couple in Portland is now using her to heat their home.
Who’s the governor now? Gee, ever since the last newspaper went out of business in 2015, it’s been tough to get that sort of information.
Beam your comments to me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
You’re on a roll! :)
If the important issues were interesting our political landscape would look quite different. Yes, Senator Mills has been talking about the exact state of our debt for years with more facts and figures than anyone wants to hear. But if people don’t start listening 2019 Maine will be too poor to buy any flying cars.