Silence by Manipulation Takes One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

Today my voice in the Boothbay Register discussion Addressing a national crisis locally: Can the Boothbay region solve its housing issues? was again removed, most likely by the user Islandmanz. 

Some months ago, I was confronted in Hannaford by a person employed by the Department of Economic and Community Development. I was told that I had to stop writing about the JECD (Joint Economic Development Council of Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor). There was no collusion between the JECD and Industry Partnerships, I was told by one who obviously had been reading my blog. 

The DECD is the statutory planning board of the Financial Authority of Maine, which concentrates and redistributes capital funds in Maine. What, then, is the DECD's chain of command, if not the regional boards?

§13059.State agencies to cooperate  All state agencies and any other organizations designated by the department to implement community and economic development programs and policies shall cooperate with and expeditiously respond to requests of the department. [1987, c. 534, Pt. A, §§ 17, 19 (NEW).]

If the municipalities have sovereign authority, which they do pursuant to the Home Rule Amendment of the Maine Constitution, then the chain of command for central management to effect its centralized plans over the State of Maine, has to be the regional boards, co-ordinated by the capital redistribution policies of the Financial Authority of Maine, which uses the Department of Economic and Community Development as it's planning board. The Maine Development Foundation was founded by Longley's board but did not have financial capacity. The Financial Authority of Maine was founded in 1985, a year after the Maine Capital Corporation was repealed.

The Maine Development Foundation powers The foundation, notwithstanding the foregoing, shall have no power or authority to enter into contracts, obligations or commitments of any kind on behalf of the State or any of its agencies, nor shall it have the power of eminent domain or any other power not provided to business corporations generally. Bonds, notes and other evidences of indebtedness of the foundation shall not in any way be a debt or liability of the State or constitute a pledge of the faith and credit of the State. [1977, c. 548, §1 (NEW).

The FAME Corporation
§969-A. Powers and duties of the authority 14-A. Receive funds. Receive and accept from any source allocations, appropriations, loans, grants and contributions of money or other things of value to be held, used or applied to carry out this chapter, subject to the conditions upon which the loans, grants and contributions may be made, including, but not limited to, appropriations, allocations, loans, grants or gifts from any federal agency or governmental subdivision or the State and its agencies. ….[1991,c. 780,Pt. P,§1(AMD).]

In 1987 the Department of Economic and Community Development was created. The Charter for the FAME Corporation states only one consideration under the heading 'programs and policies', which is that it will consider the economic development strategy of the Department of Economic and Community Development. The FAME corporation concentrates and redistributes capital funds to the subsidiary corporations in the Maine State corporate network, which then redistributes those funds to private interests. The economic development strategy is planned by the DECD which is also a fiscal agent for the FAME corporation.

The FAME Corporation 3. Programs and policies In implementing its powers, duties, responsibilities and programs, the Finance Authority of Maine shall consider the state economic development strategy and the policies and activities of the Department of Economic and Community Development. [ 1987, c. 534, Pt. B, §§6, 23 (NEW).]

At the time of the conversation in Hannaford, I had recently posted two identical paragraphs, neither by the JECD but one found in the Boothbay Town Report and the other in a 2015 bill passed by the Maine Legislature called Industry Partnerships. The JECD is a public-private group which includes the town managers of Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor so the separation of the town from the group is murky. I was told, adamantly, that I was wasting my time, in a manner that can be taken as a threat, by the government, considering the employer of the speaker. I told the speaker that I had decided to be my own voice, and thereafter I received no further responses in my correspondence related to the speaker's job capacity. This is the world in which we live in the year 2018.

Others are also being influenced to silence their voices if their views do not conform with those of the local power elite. John Seitzer's recent letter to the editor was mostly supportive of new developments but against changing zoning ordinances to allow condos to be constructed 25 feet from the water's edge rather than the 500 feet that the current ordinances specify. A recent story in the Boothbay Register reports that speaking out on the zoning issue prompted email threats from one of our local oligarchs, disturbing enough for the Seitzers to bring it to the public's attention.

“We’ve raised questions and concerns regarding the proposed zoning changes for the east side. (The emails) were clearly an attempt to silence us and stop us from speaking at public meetings.”Seitzers share Coulombe emails, Boothbay Register

In the same article Coulombe is quoted as saying "“I suggested that having nonconforming businesses made no sense for the future of the east side. It has been a full inclusive process with an advisory group that took all the input at many meetings to come to comprehensive recommendations for the planning board. It was a fair and unbiased process having everyone’s interest in mind.” (emphasis mine). "Nonconforming" is another way of saying there will be no divergent views allowed.  This is the rhetoric upon which propaganda is built.

And so the silencing continues, or at least the attempt thereof. Following is the comment
made by reed1v, which remains in public view, followed by my response which has been deleted from view by being marked as spam, most likely by Islandmanz:

First from reed1v:

reed1v  Mackenzie Andersen•9 hours ago  

The federal programs subsidizing the building of low-income housing were pushed through by both political parties at the behest of the construction industry, city and state politicians, and the usual assortment of bleeding hearts. Ongoing for decades. A developer usually gets tax abeyances, cheap construction loans, exemptions from various housing codes, and may even get publicly owned lands to build upon.

It's an area of the real estate market that is marginally profitable. Have a good friend that specializes in such for the past 40 years. In most cases, the developer builds, sells or rents, and then, after so many years, converts the rest to at market rate housing.. If its rental units, then to condos. In the end, poor people just can not afford on their own.convertshousing

Massive storage bins for poor people huge problems. Hiding them in more affluent areas usually isolates them and stigmatizes them.creates
Relocation seems to be a rising star for fixing the from

Mackenzie Andersen  reed1v 4 hours ago 

Detected as spam Thanks, we'll work on getting this corrected.

Relocation seems to be the real agenda-as one time Maine gubernatorial candidate, Steve Woods, once put his foot in his mouth by campaigning that the state should deny infrastructure funding to force the inhabitants of low-income rural communities to move to rural centers, Woods claimed that he was just saying what everyone else was thinking, which is plausible.

The problem with programs designed to help the bottom is that within a short period of time, the upper crust figures out a way to transform it into a benefit for themselves. This is what happened to the Pine Tree Zone, originally designed for low-income high unemployment areas, which many objected to when it was first created because they feared it would soon be expanded statewide. That only took four years, written about as "silently being passed through the Legislature". In 2013 the municipal corporation of MRRA had an average income of $114,864 annually, according to a congressional testimony given by Mr. Douglas Ray, "legislative liaison " for the DECD.

Since the Pine Tree Zone is structured so that each company has to provide jobs that pay "above average" for the area, and the town of MRRA is a designated Pine Tree Zone, that average income has to have gone up since 2013. It is the logical outcome of the thinking found in the Camoin Report that the Boothbay Peninsula will seek to become a Pine Tree Zone, which involves access to complete packages of taxpayer subsidies designed to artificially create an upper crust of the economy. Studies have been conducted showing that the Pine Tree Zone costs the taxpayer far more than it returns but it keeps on keeping on. In 2015 LePage wanted to expand it to companies hiring 1500 people. I figure the only thing that saved us from that was everybody must have been mad at Lepage for single-handedly nixing the multi-billion dollar windmill project that Norwegian company Statoil was ready to invest in, right here in Boothbay Harbor.

So the middle is being drained by both sides but the solution is to bring back the middle because the middle is the opportunity zone for the bottom. It is politically popular to denigrate those at the bottom on welfare while glorifying those at the top on welfare. The system is designed to taxpayer subsidize opportunities to get richer for the top while providing living entitlements for the bottom as long as they agree to stay put. in their designated financial station. It's easier to take away the growth restrictions at the bottom than it is to take away corporate welfare for the top.