Preserving The American Political Philosophy

TWEET THIS  http://goo.gl/If8NuD Part Three -  Continuing the Story:  My Experience at the 2009 Juice Conference Part One  http://goo.gl/hpj63W   Part Two http://goo.gl/xdwZDk Since I did not attend the ballet, I had to ask to find out my status, Once I learned that I had not made it to the semi-finals, I decided to stick around and find out who did.  I looked around the room and noticed a few people wearing badges that said "Art Creates Jobs' Total naivety, I thought, the power elite of Maine is not interested in the small number of jobs that art creates - the Baldacci administration was using artists in service of the gentrification of Maine's towns and cities following social engineer, Richard Florida's "creativity" template.. The cities and towns must present a culturally stimulating face in order to attract the "creative class"- code for the wealthy. In the plans of the corporate state the artists are just the bait used to cat

TWEET THIS http://goo.gl/xdwZDk Continuing with my story from HERE ...(and incorporating a few paragraphs from this earlier but incomplete telling ) Finally, after a year of receiving stimulus fund notices for non-profits only, in the fall of 2009, I received an email from the Maine Arts Commission about a competition for small businesses for what I took to be, a modest grant for the sum of 30000.00 from an "anonymous source". In a moment of hopeful delusions, I imagined that the Maine Arts Commission had come to its senses and realized that they needed to support the private sector. The competition was called an "elevator pitch competition" which means a pitch delivered in five minutes. Even the written answers to questions on the application were required to be answered in a minimal number of words, brevity being stressed as being so important that if your couldn't explain a business idea in five minutes, then one's business idea is simply not

TWEET THIS POST: http://goo.gl/hpj63W My reader might wonder why there is an Image of the book cover for Dharma Art posted on this political blog. Keep reading and you shall see. because now- as promised I am going to continue telling the story about my 2009 face to face meeting with the overlords of Maine's economy at their own pow wow, which they call "The Juice Conference" Somewhere I have records of everything but I am relying on my memory to tell this story as a simple time saving device. 2009 was the year of the Obama stimulus and at that point my primary acquaintance with Maine's government programs was through The Maine Art's Commission , from whom I received their email updates  I never removed my self from that email list but somewhere along the line I stopped receiving emails from MAC.- and so I just now signed up again. Throughout 2009, the MAC headlines announced available stimulus grants but when one opened the link the grants were avai

TWEET with this short link http://goo.gl/zV3VRg This is a story that I have tried to tell for years but could not quite put the pen to the paper. I think I was blocked about revealing the emotional catharsis, which in my view is inseparable from the experience but not a subject matter that seemed appropriate to the context of the blog until now. The story suddenly found it's way out into the larger world when I needed to write an About Us page for the Shopzilla Shop where I am marketing the digital  download  time line that I created as a product to sell in the free enterprise system. The product seems more appropriate to a non-profit organization, but that is not a viable option in the USA year 2014 for the content that I am producing- and thus I went opted for the free enterprise system- which is my preference any way. I am sure that just about everyone will tell me my approach is wrong, and this may be true, but wrong is the only way I know and so I have to function withi

TWEET THIS ! http://goo.gl/YgfpJ1 I have been again looking  for information on the amount of taxpayer money invested in government chartered private non-profit organizations, such as the SEGF (since 2014 known as The Maine Venture Fund), and once again I have come up with nothing. These organizations are so dispersed and intertwined with one another that even if one can find mention of an occasional sum of money invested it is as if finding one little piece of a jig saw puzzle. A few years ago I read The Non-Profit Economy by Burton Weisbrod . Weisbrod discussed three distinct economic sectors- government, private and non-profit. but I do not recall a mention of non-profit corporations which are charted by government legislatures. However there was a lengthy discussion about  entities that have a for-profit part and a non-profit part, with instances found where all expenses would be allocated to the for-profit part of the entity, thereby reducing the tax burden of the for-pro