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Showing posts from October, 2017

When the Maine Legislature Openly Plotted to Undermine the Maine Constitution

Refundable tax credits (redistribution of wealth) came into use in the USA in the mid seventies. Look what happened. Is it time to start letting the economy manage its self? Quote from a Facebook conversation about the New Boothbay Round About : Here's the deal. I don't care one way or another whether there is a frigging roundabout or not but i do think we need to look twenty or thirty years forward when we plan because growth is coming whether we like it or not. I'm not pushing it but i accept that it is coming. A threat? No just just that we haven't even begun to see the changes that will come. Apparently you all have mistaken me for someone who actually gives a shit what happens on the peninsular . as long as my property increases in value I'm good- local Boothbay person on Facebook Many people and politicians conflate economic development with increasing property values. In that case the town is nothing more than a business investment for its stock ho

JECD Group Holds Master Plan Pow Wow for Boothbay Peninsula

The most honest statement to come out of the ringleaders of the Joint Economic Community Development Group in their first workshop program was "none of us are experts on economic development", which in my most humble opinion is evident in the fact that the JECD begins with the premise that economic development can be master minded by central management. The article in the Boothbay Register begins with this paragraph: The Joint Economic Development Committee master plan workshop on Thursday, Oct. 12 discuss findings from stakeholder interviews conducted early last month. The interviews centered around building an overall economic development strategy for Edgecomb, Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor and Southport. Who are the stakeholders?  A search for articles in the Boothbay Register comes up short. Why is the public not told who the stakeholders are. Since the taxpayers of Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor footed the bill for the JECD's consultants, why are they not the stakeh

Boothbay's New Mini-Turnpike- Not for Your Driving Pleasure!

I have now driven around the new traffic configuration at the Boothbay Center from both directions, enough to know that even at times with no traffic I prefer to avoid it. The curves are cramped as the country road is transformed into a mini-turnpike, that driving experience I am so relieved to leave behind when one takes the turn onto the peninsula. Driving on our small town roads seems rational until one encounters this new web of yielding points with traffic converging from all directions. The first time I drove through the new turnpike was during the daytime hours There was an unusually long wait to get through a stretch of road which was formerly a breeze, especially when there were no events taking place in the park. I gave the traffic jam the benefit of the doubt, imagining that it was occurring from still ongoing construction taking place somewhere that I could not see. I waited a very long time for traffic to pass by so that the cars I was following could yield into the patt

How The MPERS Contract Came To Be Embedded in the Maine Constitution

Is The Maine Public Retirement System Unconstitutional? According to the Maine Public Employees ComprehensiveFinancial Report of 2010 , the Maine Public Employees Retirement System was established in 1942 to provide services for retiring public employees. No information is given about how the Public Employees Retirement System was legally structured in 1942. In the report MPERS is described as “an independent public agency of the State of Maine that traces its history to 1942”. Wikipedia  uses the same term but when the link is clicked it reveals that Wikipedia has no idea what " independent public agency " means.  An online search for history of MPERS between 1942 and 1985 comes up empty.  In 1985 during the administration of Governor Joseph E Brennan, the Maine Legislature passed a statute announcing its intentions of using general taxpayer monies to provide for retirement funds and death benefits for public employees, a faction which, incidentally, includes the Le

The Importance of History

A  social enterprise  is an  organization  that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being—this may include maximizing social impact alongside profits for external shareholders. Social enterprises can be structured as a  for-profit  or  non-profit , and may take the form (depending in which country the entity exists and the legal forms available) of a  co-operative ,  mutual organization , a disregarded entity, [1]  a  social business , a  benefit corporation , a  community interest company  or a  charity organization . They can also take more conventional structures. What differentiates social enterprises is that their social mission is as core to their success as any potential profit. Wikipedia When Andersen Design was first approved for fiscal sponsorship for a museum,  I was not enthusiastic. The board of the fiscal sponsor, all from corporate backgrounds, and seemingly very well to do, rejected our creative business ceramic slip-c

The System Outside The System

7. The individual and liberty (11) We were the first to state, in the face of demo liberal individualism, that the individual exists only in so far as he is within the State and subjected to the requirements of the state and that, as civilization assumes aspects which grow more and more complicated, individual freedom becomes more and more restricted. (To the General staff Conference of Fascism, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 280). 10. Conception of the state (20) A nation exists inasmuch as it is a people. A people rise inasmuch as they are numerous, hard working and well regulated. Power is the outcome of this threefold principle. (To the General Assembly of the Party, March lo, 1929, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 24). Fascism does not deny the State; Fascism maintains that a civic society, national or imperial, cannot be conceived unless in the form of a State (Stab, anti-Slato, Fascismo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fa­scista, Milano, Alpes, 1930

An Interview with Richard Light, Maine's Next Governor

An Interview with Richard Light, Maine's next governor. Richard Light talks about getting the profit motive out of the government. In the late seventies Maine's constitutional form of government was replaced the profitas the government took on the role of investment banking.The new definition of government was created by and for a board of Maine's most prosperous businesses. Under Longley's instruction the board lead the Legislature in "running the government like a business" and the Legislature deemed that "Centrally managing the economy is an essential government function, which must be done by public private relationships". Ever since, there has been no room for a true people's voice in the political spectrum. The taxpayers have been the pawns in the game- "other people's money" for which the use is not voluntary but mandated by the public side of the public private relationships replacing our Maine constitutional form of gover

Richard Light, Maine's Next Governor

I am not a Libertarian, I an an Independent but I support Richard Light as Maine's next governor. He touches on many points that are resonate with my own, including that our political power is supposed to be local. That is what the Home Rule Amendment is about added to our Constitution in the sixties. In the seventies the Longley Doctrine was instituted by Legislative Deeming. Governors Longley created a board, composed exclusively of members of Maine's wealthiest and most powerful industries. The board was assigned the role of leading the legislature in creating a new form og government, by and for public private relationships. The newly formed board proposed to change by statutory law, the municipal public referendums which seven years earlier had been added to the Maine Constitution as Section 2 of the Home Rule Amendment. The Report- Governor's Task Force for Economic Redevelopment, Recommended Legislation for an Economic Development Program -110th Congress,