My understanding of the Unified States of America was that by banding together for the strength that the many offer to the one, and by helping each other with problems and difficulties, the individual states would make USA a better place for everyone as well as for each and every state.

Associated Press

Sending firemen to another state with forest fires out of control, or medical aid, doctors and nurses, blood, bandages and masks to states suffering from tornado and hurricane, plague, flooding and sickness was the sort of thing our states could do for one another through their combined strength in numbers.

But busing refugee immigrants up north to Martha’s Vineyard, New York or Philadelphia seems to me to be what the lawyers would call constructive secession from the founding concepts of he Unified States of America. That is, by sending not medical, safety nor professional help to their fellow states, but sending them the problem, you may construe that the busing state has withdrawn, or seceded from the founding assumption of the country as a whole.

Florida has constructively seceded from the union by busing the problem elsewhere.

It’s not kidnapping or trafficking. Busing refugee immigrants up north to Martha’s Vineyard, New York and Philadelphia is more like entrapment. Offering a free lunch and a bus ride up north to a place where they said they want you is more like what we do to lobsters here in Kennebunkport.

We tell them we know they came here for a better life, and we’ll help them get on with it. Just slide over here to this wood slatted thing with a net entrance, squeeze inside to get your garbage lunch, and the rope will bus you right up to where the sun shines, the winds are fresh, and there’s a place for you where you are wanted.

So maybe it’s not entirely honest or patriotic, but what the hey, it’s politics.

Orrin Frink is a Kennebunkport resident. He can be reached at ofrink@gmail.com.