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Can De-constructing Maine's Corporate Welfare System Cover Maine's DHHS Budget Deficit ?

I have my head in the sand working our redesigning our website- which now comes up three times on the first page of a google search of "ceramic birds" with similar results for other related terms (thanks to my own SEO efforts) . We are getting a lot of phone calls as a result and so the need to get this job completed is all the more important. As long as my energy is focused there, I am not wanting to change that. I feel a bit remis about not attending to this blog but the vise versa is true when my attention is focused here.

However- when I recieved an email with this report  from Sam Adolpsen of The Maine Heritage Society about the DHHS deficit in which he advocates cutting welfare and "progressive special interests" .
I responded with the following:

Dear Mr Adolphsen,
Is "Progressive Special Interests" equitable with corporate welfare?
How about eliminating the 10% annual investment in the government chartered Small Enterprise Growth Fund, which makes the Maine tax-payers a captive investor in our legislature's designs to transform Maine from God's country to the brave new world envisioned by a class of people that our effective House of Lords has deemed superior to others -using such arrogant language as "the creative class" and "the innovative economy"? This sort of language robs the sector that is being taxed without being represented of its dignity as well as its capital. The legislation is actually a massive re-distribution of wealth scheme but instead of redistributing the wealth to "the people", at least in ideology, it redistributes wealth to a small wealthy elite, that the narrow framework concocted by our House of Lords deems superior to the rest of the economy.

We cannot know what government chartered SEGF is costing the taxpayer because when the legislature chartered the SEGF it stated that the annual report would be submitted to the legislature, even as the Maine taxpayer was signed up to invest 10% of the funds which would always "roll over" to re-invest in "the fund"- contrary to other 90% private "high growth" investor, which demands an exit strategy so that class can make a profit.

I submit that this is a reason why corporations chartered by special legislation are prohibited by Article IV , Part Third Section 14 of the Maine State Constitution. The taxpayer is being forced to invest in the schemes of our legislature and in return all the taxpayer gets is rhetoric about the government "creating jobs".

It is time for the people to demand to know how much taxpayer funds are being invested in the SEGF and the multitude of other government chartered investment corporations which are so well entrenched in our corporate state.

This is WELFARE as well and I would not be surprised to discover that it costs the taxpayer much more than general welfare- but the public is generally unaware of how their tax payer dollars are being spent on corporate welfare to the profit of the few- and many of those few are not even Maine residents.

The corporate state of Maine has become unconstitutionally entrenched over at least thirty years, using the tax payer dollars , signing the taxpayer up as bail out funds for the monied investor, and giving back only rhetoric about creating jobs- and even those jobs are in the service of our legislature's vision of a brave new world designed by them- NOT GOD!- in other words- Godless!


The taxpayer of Maine deserves to know how much of our hard earned money is going to fund corporate welfare. General welfare is set up to acquire personal property from the participants estate but corporate welfare seldom pays the people back.

We can see how well these schemes are creating Jobs from our last place rating on the Forbes list.
Mackenzie Andersen
NOTE
At the time the blog post below was written just a couple of weeks after being signed into law by Governor Baldacci. the law as published  later mysteriously became "the original paper taxt"

I maintained a link to the law as published on my blog but when I clicked on it in Novemebr the entire text had been changed. When I inquired of the legislature's librarian when it had been amended, I was told that it was amended before it was passed into law and signed by the governor. -yet another new defintion of the English language created by our legislature!

The version that existed on line shortly after Governor Baldaccir signed this charter into law gave the Small Enterprise Growth Fund the authority to issue "refundable tax credits" to investors. In the "amended version" that authority goes to FAME.

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