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For the last six years Mackenzie Andersen has been independently researching the history of Maine's economic development statutes. Public Private Relationships and The New Owners of the Means of Production takes all the research she accumulated since 2009 and hones it down into a snap shot. The result is an new perspective on the history of Maine focusing on the years since 1979 when under the Longley Administration, the State of Maine began its transformation into the corporation of Maine.
In 1979 Governor Longley invited the heads of Maine Industry to take the leadership role in writing new statutes which would over ride the Maine Constitution's prohibition against corporations chartered by special acts of legislation. Two corporations were chartered. The Maine Capital Corporation, a private investment corporation subsidized with tax credits and the Maine Development Foundation,which would design and function as activists for corporate development plans for Maine. That was the beginning of an ever expanding network of state corporations.
While this story focuses on the locality of Maine it is both a national and global story. It is both Agenda 21 and global capitalism as both are mutually compatible and both exemplify thinking globally acting locally. The Legislature and administrations of Maine justified the transformation of Maine from a state governed by the consent of the governed, a home rule state in which the Constitution permits local municipal referendums on bonds for economic development- to a state wide corporation governed by corporate bylaws and un-elected boards. The justification used to sell the new political philosophy is that other states are doing it and Maine must follow suit to compete.
While this story focuses on the locality of Maine it is both a national and global story. It is both Agenda 21 and global capitalism as both are mutually compatible and both exemplify thinking globally acting locally. The Legislature and administrations of Maine justified the transformation of Maine from a state governed by the consent of the governed, a home rule state in which the Constitution permits local municipal referendums on bonds for economic development- to a state wide corporation governed by corporate bylaws and un-elected boards. The justification used to sell the new political philosophy is that other states are doing it and Maine must follow suit to compete.
The founders of the Maine Capital Corporation identified two primary goals, one of which was to eliminate public referendums. Public Private relationships and the New Owners of the Means of Production documents some of the innovative ways used by the Maine Legislature to achieve the goal of eliminating local public referendums.
The focus of the story line is Maine but folk wisdom deems that as Maine goes so goes the nation. The corporate state of Maine primarily focuses on leveraging capital as opposed to measurable wealth creation. It is no surprise that since 1979, there has been an exponential increase in inflation in the USA coinciding with Maine's transformation into a centrally managed economy. Since the establishment of Maine's corporate state the gulf between the haves and the have nots in Maine has widened: Mackenzie Andersen examines how the centrally managed economy organized by public private relationships works and mines its historical and political philosophic foundations.
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