RE Scott Lansley's article in the Sun Journal- Dig A Little Deeper!

The latest in my letter writing binge ! 

Dear Mr. Lansley,

I read your article in the Sun Journal, It may hurt, but it's time to suck it up and deal.

As suggested, I am sending you my own thoughts on the matter, and I am not going to mince my words. Since you are a former member of the legislature, you may have helped to create what I see as the source of Maine's economic problems, which is it's government manipulated economy, which has grown to the scale of a full fledged corporate state without anybody saying BOO about it, despite the blatant unconstitutionality of the current entrenched economic system.

This system has been constructed by the legislature over the course of at least thirty years. It is designed to "benefit " the "targeted sector"- those businesses that will fulfill the ideological vision of a small elite sector of Maine, which is marketed as "socially beneficial" as a form of self-justification.

The legislature seeks to attract capital to the state and using this as justification it uses the taxpayer money extracted from the many to finance their world view of the way Maine should be and to provide "the targeted sector" with "quality jobs" which is code for high paid jobs with all the best benefits, often paid for by the general taxpayer, in one form or another.

This effectively functions to deplete the "untargeted sector" of capital to develop jobs for those not so favored by Maine's effective House of Lords. The House of Lords has no understanding for or of the "lower classes" , which they have effectively created by default with such arrogant terms for their favored ones , such as "the creative economy" ( primarily non-profit, which is useful as a channel for re-distributing wealth) and the innovative economy( the brave new high tech of which the House of Lords is exclusively enamored). By default the "untargeted sector"- or that sector which is taxed without being represented , is relegated to "the uncreative" and "un-innovative" according to the House of Lord's narrow world view.

The House of Lords justifies the theft of the working capital of the untargeted sector by the rhetoric that they are working for "social benefit" and so they devise entitlement programs for lower classes whereby they give back some of the stolen wealth with heavy dictates concerning how the returned loot is to be spent by the lower classes and including schemes for ultimately acquiring the estates of those who fall victim to this scheme.

Meanwhile much of the high paid salaries, including paid vacations, and the best benefit packages are paid for by the many to the benefit of the "targeted sector" for which there is seldom a pay back plan- least of all when it comes to corporate welfare.

No one ever talks about this. It is hidden in the dark as the lower classes who have fallen victim to the entitlement schemes become the target of blame for Maine's over spending. The entitlement programs become the last resort for the untargeted sector for whom the House of Lords sees little need to create jobs. in fact the House of Lords robs that sector of it's operating capital which might create jobs as an option to entitlements for the "lower classes". It is better not to provide jobs for the lower classes because if one fails to do so, it will be all the easier to continue to siphon off the wealth of the many into the hands of the few - those beneficiaries of the "quality jobs', which are the only jobs that our House of Lords concerns their pretty little heads about.

Once one starts reading the legislation, as I have, that has been passed over the last thirty years, one realizes that the unconstitutional corporate state is heavily entrenched and that accounting for how much money it is devouring from the general economy is like trying to unravel a tangled knot. Further more it seems as if the next new statute is worst than the last one, as the corporate state grows and grows to the benefit of the chosen ones.

And so every one focuses on the easy target- those poor individuals who are to be faulted, for obvious reasons, but who are the victims of this scheme in a way that is not in the least obvious and is never mentioned.

I agree that entitlement programs need to be cut back but that does not get to the root of the problem. One has to look at the entire system that has created the entitlement programs and that view has to include the privileged sector, that is called the "targeted sector" by our legislature- and that has to include the high cost of corporate welfare, and it has to include an investigation into how much of the taxpayer money and operating capital has been extracted from the general economy to the benefit of a privileged subset- for whom there is no plan to lay claim to their estates.


Note added on December 27 
News about business tax breaks being considered in the budget shortfall is encouraging, although it is too early to know what it actually means
 Business tax breaks in budget panel's sight.


The tax breaks offered to businesses in the newly transformed Pine tree Zone are overly generous with clear hints that the targeted sector will be prioritized as usual but using the tax payer's money as investment funds or promised-in-advance bail out funds for high risks investors is not clearly covered by the term "tax breaks".