The Blessings of Liberty

At times, when reading a statute one finds instructions to interpret the statute strictly or liberally. Instructions found in the statute chartering the FAME corporation (Finance Authority of Maine) are of another sort all together, falling into the category of a justification, as opposed to clarification of how the law is to be interpreted These instructions tells us that "Any benefits accruing to private individuals or associations, as a result of the activities of the authority, are deemed by the Legislature to be incidental to the public purposes to be achieved by the implementation of this chapter. [1985, c. 344, §5 (AMD).]"

FAME is the state corporation whose function is to concentrate and redistribute capital. Even if publicly acquired capital is redistributed to a corporation hiring 1000 or more employees that is but a very small segment of the public, but none the less a segment of the populous which directly benefits from FAME's redistribution of public wealth. The statute tells us that the Legislature deems that the direct benefit to a few private individuals by way of providing them with "quality jobs" or capitalization of privately held enterprises, is to be construed as incidental to "public purposes", which is not the same thing as that other popular phrase "public benefit"

The public purpose is deemed by the statute chartering the FAME corporation to be the following:

§962. Purpose
There is a statewide need to provide enlarged opportunities for gainful employment to the people of the State and to ensure the preservation and betterment of the economy and the general health, safety and welfare of the State and its inhabitants; to provide a more healthy environment through the restoration of purity to the air, the water or the earth of the State which are fouled with, among other things, industrial and other waste materials and pollutants, and to ensure the preservation and betterment of the living standards and health of its inhabitants; to stimulate a larger flow of private investment funds from banks, investment institutions, insurance companies and other financial institutions, including pension and retirement funds, to help finance planning, development, acquisition, construction, improvement, expansion and placing in operation of industrial, manufacturing, recreational, fishing, agricultural, business and natural resource enterprises and eligible projects of the State and its political subdivisions; and to increase the access of smaller business, veterans and students pursuing postsecondary education to financing at reasonable terms and rates.[2013, c. 34, §1 (AMD).]

Compare that rambling wordiness to what is said to be the purpose of government in the Maine Constitution:

PREAMBLE.

Objects of government.  We the people of Maine, in order to establish justice, insure tranquility, provide for our mutual defense, promote our common welfare, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe in affording us an opportunity, so favorable to the design; and, imploring God's aid and direction in its accomplishment, do agree to form ourselves into a free and independent State, by the style and title of the State of Maine and do ordain and establish the following Constitution for the government of the same.

Whether one interprets "common welfare" strictly or liberally, the Constitution implores God's aid and direction, and not the government of man in securing it. The purpose of government is expanded upon by Legislative deeming in the charter for the FAME corporation, which itself is a violation of Maine's constitutional prohibition against the Legislature chartering corporations by special acts of Legislation. There are two exceptions to the prohibition, one being for municipal purposes and the other for objects of the corporation which cannot be achieved another way.

Since the Longley administration, the Legislature has been  deeming all corporation it charters to be  an "essential government function" as if a way around the Maine Constitution's prohibition of legislatively chartered corporations. Seemingly the phrase is to be interpreted as meaning the object of the corporation cannot be achieved another way-such as in the private sector, and of course a centrally managed economy cannot be achieved in the private sector because central management of a state is a government function and a state purpose. However in making an exception for municipal purposes, the Maine Constitution excludes state, and regional purposes. In other words the Constitution's Article IV Part Third, Sections 13 & 14 prohibits state corporatism, which had been popularized by Karl Marx twenty five years previous to the inclusion of Article IV Part Third, Sections 13 & 14 in the Maine Constitution.

§964. Organization and responsibility

1. Finance Authority of Maine.  The Finance Authority of Maine is established as a body corporate and politic and a public instrumentality of the State, and the exercise by the authority of the powers conferred by this chapter shall be deemed and held to be the performance of essential governmental functions.

 While the object of government as defined by the Maine Constitution includes acknowledgement of the blessing of liberty, this acknowledgement is missing from the purpose of government as deemed by the Legislature in the statutory charter for the FAME corporation. That is because the more government expands its own power, the less liberty the people have. The more power government assigns to itself, the more totalitarian it becomes. The three cornerstones of totalitarian government is for government to have control over access to capital, health care, and education.

While the United States Constitution and the Maine Constitution lay emphasis on individual liberty, the concept of a "public purpose" defined by any one entity is collectivist and totalitarian, leaving little room for the mysterious realms of God and nature, despite the rhetorical tribute to our natural environment. In fact it is not the public purpose but the corporate purpose of FAME that the statute defines. In calling it a public purpose, the Legislature takes the same position as Mussolini for whom nothing exists outside of the state, everything orbits around the state, the all knowing provider of all things.