25% for You- 75% for Maine State INC in Maine's Put ME to Work Bill

Tweet This   http://goo.gl/3Jlh3a

Link to Part One 

We Can Spend Your Money Because We Know What's Good For You !

As I set out to write the second half of the blog post I started yesterday, I am searching for the actual Put ME to work legislation. I came upon Speaker of the House Mark Eve's promotional editorial in the Portland Press Herald, and found that never once is there a link to the actual bill, or even LD number mentioned. Searching"Put ME to work" produces a video for a song.

The same holds true for the article on the bill for the WBAI website

I can no longer get into the article by Steve Mistler that I linked to yesterday with the Portland Press Herald telling me that I have reached my limit of free articles for the month, although I have never seen that applied to articles which one has already read before and I was on the page long enough to try to click on what appeared to be a link which was dead. Now it does not even appear to be a link,

Also true for Maine's National Public Radio News Source, which is under the jurisdiction of the Maine legislature  via the Joint Standing Committee on Educational and Cultural Affairs and so we can assign responsibility to that Committee for leaving the link to the actual legislation off the Maine public radio web page which displays only a promotional editorial about the bill

Joint Standing Committee Descriptions

  Education and Cultural Affairs.  Department of Education; State Board of Education; school finance, governance and administration; school budgets; school facilities; curriculum, instruction and assessment; teachers and administrators; special education and child development services; education of deaf and hard-of-hearing students; career and technical education; alternative education, school choice and home schooling; truancy and dropouts; educational services at juvenile correctional facilities; adult education; Maine Education Policy Research Institute; University of Maine System; Maine Community College System; Maine Maritime Academy; postsecondary education finance and governance; student assistance programs at Finance Authority of Maine; and cultural affairs, including Maine Arts Commission, Maine State Library, Maine State Museum and Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation

Success ! I found the info on Seacoastonline.com !  LD1373

The text of the bill confirms that the language shift from "above average income" to "high compensation" is not just media spin but is in written into the legislation, which also provides for an executive position at $100,000.00 per year to manage the program:

10% of the funding for this project provides for one new executive position for the Maine Development Corporation at $100,000, annually and provides a view into highly compensated salary expectations for bureaucrats employed at Maine State Inc. I wonder how that compares with the salary for bureaucrats distributing general welfare rations ?



Note that in 2007's  Part 5: POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION
Chapter 428-C: JOB CREATION THROUGH EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM

1. §12542. Program established

1. Program created; goals. 

E. Accomplish all of the goals in this subsection with as little bureaucracy as possible. [2007, c. 469, Pt. A, §1 (NEW).][ 2013, c. 525, §7 (AMD) .

Hiring one bureaucrat at $100,000.00 a year meets the requirement of  "as little bureaucracy as possible" . The goal is NOT to accomplish the goal with as little bureaucratic expense as possible !
A reasonable likely hood is that the new executive position is that of   Forest Wentworth as the MEP/AMC project manager - a new expansion of state owned manufacturing

25% of the expenditure is scholarship money- which is already available through the charter for the community college system as I wrote about in my previous post and through §3305. Industry partnership grant program which was passed by the board of the Maine Development Corporation in 2013. True to form, the board of Maine State Inc just keeps on coming up with the same legislation over and over again, presented as if it is a stand alone bill and completely new.

65% of the funding goes to a matching fund for the private corporation which is having their job training financed by the Maine taxpayer and ever so generously has offered to cover half the cost of their own job training expenses ! The private corporation can afford to highly compensate their employees but not to train them- perhaps there is a relationship between those two conditions?

Or specifically it goes to funding Maine Quality Centers -"quality" being related to "quality jobs" which the Maine Development Corporation defines exclusively by a high rate of pay and top of the line benefit packages. The prose describing "Quality Centers" could mean a lot of things such as The Advanced Manufacturing Center - government owned manufacturing located at University of Maine financed with taxpayer subsidies and using student labor and in competition with the private sector. As far as I can tell the Advanced Manufacturing Center at The University of Maine primarily manufactures prototypes for which the production will take place in global low wage labor markets- a speculation based on the fact that when the Center listed their products on line - only a few that were manufactured in Maine identified where they were manufactured.  Every program that is being advanced by the Maine Development Corporation is being done so aggressively continually upping the rate by which wealth is being transferred from the people to corporate bank accounts- why would the Advanced Manufacturing Center be any different- it must have a need to acquire new equipment, if Maine's job training programs are taking place in state owned facilities rather than on the premise of the privately owned employer. The prose promoting the "Quality Center'" says that one of the advantages is that the private corporation will have access to the state owned facility.

After writing the above paragraph- I found this February 2015 article

UMaine’s Advanced Manufacturing Center expands partnerships throughout Maine

The University of Maine’s Advanced Manufacturing Center (AMC) has teamed up with the Maine Manufacturing Extension Partnership (Maine MEP) to expand their capacity to provide manufacturing expertise and services across the state of Maine.
As a result of the partnership, Maine MEP has hired Forest Wentworth as the MEP/AMC project manager. Wentworth is centered at AMC, where he aids in research, design and manufacturing services 

.......The AMC is part of the University of Maine’s College of Engineering, which provides valuable resources and services to Maine’s manufacturing sector by designing and implementing prototype projects and expanding on product lines. The center is home to a collection of facilities, including a 3-D printing, advanced biometrics, and a mechanical engineering laboratories.

When a company contacts the center requesting services, professional staff travel across the state of Maine to determine a course of action. Once a design has been agreed upon, students are enlisted to assist on specific projects.

“We hire students just like any other company would,” said John Belding, Director of AMC.  “They work for us as a student intern, and are assigned to work with companies and businesses on different projects. These students get hands-on experience on what it is like to be in the field of engineering.”

The cost for AMC services largely depends on the size and complexity of a client’s project. As a nonprofit in Maine, the center only charges the direct cost required to complete a project. Costs include labor, raw materials, and design and manufacturing expenses.

This is the most definitive statement that I have found to date on how students are paid at Maine's state owned Advanced Manufacturing Center. The Center hires students "just like any other company would" but note that the information found on Oregon's work training program, (see bottom of this page) says that because some federal  scholarship programs restrict eligibility if a student is employed - there for some students may elect not to be paid when participating of the work training program -  the same would hold true in Maine. As examined in part one, the costs of the loans for work training programs can be passed on to the Maine taxpayer using the magic of refundable tax credits.  As a non-profit, the state owned AMG only charges for costs ! If (student) labor costs are greatly reduced because of the federal scholarship program, and/or state financing deals, that gives state owned manufacturing a huge cost advantage over the private sector, whether the private sector company is a corporate welfare recipient paying highly compensated wages- or a company operating in the free enterprise system. The Maine Development Corporation is selling it's services at below private enterprise market value in the model of it's Chinese Comrades !  And of course it's all connected to the new Tech Place financed by the federal government and using the identity of The Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, which is a region consisting of  one municipality - the Town of MRRA- which is governed by the state rather than the inhabitants of the municipality. I trust my readers understand which political philosophy is at work here. I won't give it a name because while some are fine with the system ,they do not like it when one identifies the name of the operative political philosophy. I don't want to offend the delicate sensibilities so prolific in the polite society and speech regulated former State of Maine.

2005 §13083-G. Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority established -as a municipal corporation and a public instrumentality of the State

The Town of MRRA also hosts a foreign trade zone

The questions that come to my mind are:

• Why would  a corporation which can afford to pay the high compensation wages required to qualify for Maine's corporate welfare benefits- NOT have their own equipment on which to train employees? And why wouldn't a business prefer to train employees on equipment that the employee will actually be using, rather than on another version of it owned by a state corporation?
• Since the state has it's own manufacturing operation, located at an institution of higher learning, why would the state NOT use its own manufacturing center as the "Quality Center" for the Community College System, which includes the U of M INC?-in fact Community Colleges System of Maine encompass any certified educational institution in Maine, granting the Maine Development Corporation access to Maine's entire educational system to use for its own agenda.

Based on those two questions it seems reasonable to speculate that a large chunk of the 65% of funding for the Put ME to Work bill, will be used to purchase more equipment for state owned manufacturing located at The Advanced Manufacturing Center at the University of Maine or the new Tech Place where the Maine Development Corporation owns the equipment and the real estate. The function of Tech Place falls under the purpose of the  Maine Technology Institute, which has ownership rights to intellectual property written into it's chartering statute:

§15302. Maine Technology Institute

 2. Purpose.  The institute, through a public and private partnership, shall encourage, promote, stimulate and support research and development activity leading to the commercialization of new products and services in the State's technology-intensive industrial sectors to enhance the competitive position of those sectors and increase the likelihood that one or more of the sectors will support clusters of industrial activity and to create new jobs for Maine people. The institute is one element of the State's economic development strategy and will contribute to the long-term development of a statewide research, development and product deployment infrastructure.[ 1999, c. 401, Pt. AAA, §3 (NEW) .]

§15303-A. Maine Technology Capacity Fund

 1. Definitions.  As used in this section, unless the context otherwise indicates, the following terms have the following meanings.

C. "Intellectual property" means any legally protectable materials, including new information, technologies, inventions, designs, works of authorship, any strain, variety or culture of an organism, or any portion, modification, translation or extension of these items, and processes, mineral discoveries and other legally protectable materials, including know-how and trade secrets, that are generated as a direct and indirect result of investments made by the institute through contracts, grants or any other legal agreement. [2003, c. 20, Pt. RR, §7 (NEW); 2003, c. 20, Pt. RR, §18 (AFF).]

D. "Protection of intellectual property rights" means protecting the institute's rights to intellectual property through intellectual property protection mechanisms, including, but not limited to, patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and licensing rights. [2003, c. 20, Pt. RR, §7 (NEW); 2003,c. 20, Pt. RR, §18 (AFF).]

2. Organization.  The board has all the powers and authority, not explicitly prohibited by law, necessary or convenient to carry out and effectuate the functions, duties and responsibilities of the fund, including, but not limited to:G. Owning intellectual property, licensing intellectual property and negotiating for and collecting royalty rights or otherwise realizing a return on investment made under the fund and all programs of the institute when appropriate in order to promote the interests and investments of the State in furthering science and technology; and [2003, c. 20, Pt. RR, §7 (NEW); 2003, c. 20, Pt. RR, §18 (AFF).]

The way the last two paragraphs are written, it appears that the ownership to intellectual property rights belongs to the board of MTI ! -and let us not forget that MTI is a public charity !

§15302. Maine Technology Institute

1. Establishment.  The Maine Technology Institute, as established in section 12004-G, subsection 33-D, is a nonprofit corporation with public and charitable purposes. The duties, activities and operations of the institute are within the provisions of the federal Internal Revenue Code, Section 501(c)(3).
[ 1999, c. 401, Pt. AAA, §3 (NEW) .]

It seems that this charitable public benefit corporation wants something in return for its charitable giving of taxpayers money, which is the intellectual property rights to the projects developed by companies that locate at the Corporation of Maine's  development centers. Maine's state owned manufacturing has the quest for ownership of intellectual property rights of other people's work in common with another of Maine State Inc's partner's- The New England Foundation For The Arts-  a non-profit  foundation that also redistributes tax payers money in the form of NFA grants.

The Advanced Applications Center is listed as a partner of the Advanced Manufacturing Center at the University Of Maine Corporation. This is the description of that center:

Manufacturing Applications Center The Manufacturing Applications Center (MAC) works with Maine’s industries to improve quality and efficiency in production operations. Interactive strategies and assistance are provided on a fee-for-services basis to help companies become more competitive via advanced technologies and world-class manufacturing strategies. Assistance is provided in: technical training, quality assurance, product testing and analysis, reverse engineering, rapid prototyping, production control, project management, CAD/CAM/CIM technologies, lean manufacturing, metrology, plant layout, process analysis and control, push/pull strategies, supply chain management, JIT flow, 5’s, and engineering design. 

And let us not forget that practically every corporate instrumentality of the state chartered by our legislature as part of its mission to centrally control the economy, includes a provision assigning intellectual property rights to the state owned corporation. See UNIVERSITY OF MAINE SYSTEM
STATEMENT OF POLICY GOVERNING PATENTS AND COPYRIGHTS

As written in the prose for the "Quality Centers" The training can take place at the work place or at the government maintained  "Quality Centers"  perhaps at the University Of Maine's Advanced Manufacturing Center- government owned manufacturing- complete with it's own copyrights over ownership of intellectual property ! One doesn't really know what the prose actually means and so speculation is justified. All the economic development programs created by the Maine Development Corporation  are designed to work like cogs in a machine mutually reinforcing each other. Any kind of prose can be written to get the funding needed to keep the corporation continually capitalized using other people's money- sourced in the fruit of the labor of the inhabitants of Maine.

In other words 75% of funding provided for in the Put Maine To Work legislation goes for funding the highly compensated public-private hegemony which routinely arranges for legislation to be written to their own advantage as we saw in the dramatic picture that emerged from the Cate Street Scandal, also sold to the public as job creation, lauding with  Pollyanna nativity the marvels of the public- private relationships. Hillary Clinton sang a similar mantra when she awarded the first Medal of Art to the richest and most cynical artist in the world, Jeff Koons:

"One of the great characteristics of our country are our public-private partnerships. They are really at the core of how we do everything. De Tocqueville noticed that, but we’ve continued to perfect and increase our extraordinary partnerships between government and business, between civil society and academia. Our partnerships are really at the core of who we are and what we do. And this program could not exist without those partners. So on behalf of the Obama Administration, and especially everyone who works in our Diplomatic Corps around the world, we have been blessed by your generosity......Hillary's Amazing Speech

So you can see the logic of why when it came to deciding where to store her Secretary of State emails, Hillary just concluded Public ? Private? What difference does it make? She is after all a head honcho in the global public-private hegemony, providing endless inspiration for Maine's public-private hegemony.
               
               *****************************************************************

I  submit as reasoned speculation that the funds that would be appropriated for this purpose are sourced in bonds that the electorate voted for in 2014 which were sold to the electorate with the "job creation" meme.

The statute establishing the issuance of those bonds states:

Sec. A-6. Contingent upon ratification of bond issue. Sections 1 to 5 do not 17 become effective unless the people of the State ratify the issuance of the bonds as set 18 forth in this Part. 

The Maine Constitution requires that in order for bonds to be ratified certain fiscal information must accompany the bond questions on the ballot.

Article IX.General Provisions.

Section 14.  Authority and procedure for issuance of bonds. 

Whenever ratification by the electors is essential to the validity of bonds to be issued on behalf of the State, the question submitted to the electors shall be accompanied by a statement setting forth the total amount of bonds of the State outstanding and unpaid, the total amount of bonds of the State authorized and unissued, and the total amount of bonds of the State contemplated to be issued if the enactment submitted to the electors be ratified.  

However in 2013 the board of the Maine Development Corporation overturned the Maine Constitution when they passed a new law that directed that fiscal information to be located "outside the guardrail", which simply means outside the voting area and not accessible to the voter when they are voting. There is no provision that there need be any notice of where this information is to be found. Where I voted in Boothbay there was no mention of it. When I called the Town Office after the elections, I was told that this information was in the office.

I submit this in evidence of the degree to which the Maine Development Corporation- which still goes without an official name but has many subsidiary corporations that have official names, has replaced the Maine Constitution as the Rule Of Law  to which the Maine legislature and the Maine administration are loyal, not with standing oaths of loyalty given to the Maine Constitution.

That is why it is accurate to identify Maine as a development corporation and not a state. By definition a state is governed by the consent of the governed as codified in its Constitution.  A corporation is governed by it's bottom line and by the profit motivation. In some states Benefit Corporation laws have been passed permitting corporations with stockholders to be governed by other public benefit considerations, but the corporation of Maine has not passed such a bill.

*****************************************************************

Related to my own efforts to find out side ceramic slip casters to work with to produce our line, I have become interested in what is going on in the state of Oregon where Mudshark Studios has had such a phenomenal success in a few short years. I said to the owner, Brett, that he must have a talent for systems management and he said that he had been helped by a state program in Oregon that provided a more experienced consultant to work with his company identifying the problems and what not and that helped him..

So I have been checking out Oregon legislation, a program that is similar on first impression to Maine's "Quality Center". Both programs have the same goals -helping businesses solve system management problems and employee training but the approach is entirely different. I have been searching to try to find where Oregon might have a state owned manufacturing business hidden away somewhere- equitable to the Advanced Manufacturing Center located at the University of Maine where I have read that student labor is being used but I have yet to come across the terms of that student labor.

I have not come across  a state owned manufacturing business in Oregon. Their student training involves a "public-private relationship" in which a student can receive credit for working on the job at the premises of the private business - not at a state owned facility using state owned equipment which is financed by tax payers.

This from the Central Oregon Community College Manufacturing and Applied Technology Center MFG 280 COOPERATIVE WORK EXPERIENCE GUIDE FOR STUDENTS shows how differently the similar  set of goals is achieved in Oregon.

Oregon is one of the states, as is Maine that has a constitutional prohibition against the legislature chartering corporations. See that section of Oregon's Constitution Here

Note on 6/11/ 2015  I clicked on both of the Oregon Links today and they would not work- I also clicked on the links on Preserving The American Political Philosophy website, where they also did not work and so I set out to find them again where upon I noticed that The Community College Manifacturing Center is just that. I have not examined it in depth to determine if Orgon has established anything comprable to Maine;s state owned manufacturing, Oregon's Manufacturing and Applied Technology Center

I corrected the links . Both had been transformed in a similar way.

The correct link for the guide looks like this when I copy and paste it from the internet address bar:

http://www.cocc.edu/uploadedfiles/academic_programs/manufacturing_technology/matc%20cwe%20student%20guide.pdf

But when I examined the non-functional code it looked like this:

http://central%20oregon%20community%20college%20manufacturing%20and%20applied%20technology%20center%20mfg%20280%20cooperative%20work%20experience%20guide%20for%20students/"

 I didn"t change it . Who ever does doesn't want the information about how a job training program works in Oregon to be easily accessible.

Annotating Jobs For ME - Part Three in Series