Earlier today, horror novelist and symbol of Maine Stephen King tweeted out the following:
Governor Paul LePage implied that I don't pay my taxes. I do. Every cent. I think he needs to man up and apologize.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 20, 2015
And the world went, what?! Stephen King is in a feud with the Republican governor of Maine? How did this happen? Is there a doppelgänger involved?!
Let’s explain: LePage, who’s been campaigning to kill the state’s income tax for the past year, recently went on a radio show to push the details of his plan, and used Stephen King as an example of how the income tax, implemented by the former Democrat governor, drove Mainers away from the state to live elsewhere. “Well, today former Governor Ken Curtis lives in Florida where there is zero income tax,” LePage said during his weekly radio address. “Stephen King and Roxanne Quimby [the founder of Burt’s Bees] have moved away, as well.” (His plan involves reducing the state’s income tax and replacing that revenue with an increase in sales and service taxes.)
King, a prolific Democrat donor, hit back yesterday on his own radio station. Via the Portland Press-Herald:
On Thursday, King, the author of 55 novels, many with a horror theme, sent a response to The Pulse AM 620 radio station in Bangor, which he owns, to set the record straight.
“Governor LePage is full of the stuff that makes the grass grow green,” King said. “Tabby (King’s wife, Tabitha) and I pay every cent of our Maine state income taxes, and are glad to do it. We feel, as Governor LePage apparently does not, that much is owed from those to whom much has been given. We see our taxes as a way of paying back the state that has given us so much. State taxes pay for state services. There’s just no way around it. Governor LePage needs to remember there ain’t no free lunch.”
LePage’s team hurriedly deleted the reference to King and Quimby from the webpage with a transcript of the governor’s weekly address, but so far, LePage hasn’t issued an apology.
Which now means that he is going to die by the hand of Randall Flagg.
[h/t TPM]
[Image via Featureflash / Shutterstock.com]
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