Preserving The American Political Philosophy

In an article in todays PPH,  Republicans charge House Speaker with conflict of interest.   , there is a discussion of legislative conflicts of interests.  The article is centered around House Speaker, Mark Eves allegated conflict of interest in the expansion of Medicaid (Maine Care) Last week, 26 House Republicans signed a letter requesting that House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, recuse himself from voting on a bill that would expand Medicaid, the publicly funded health insurance program for the poor. The freedom to legislate in areas in which conflicts of interests exists is openly defended by Rep. Lance Harvell, R-Farmington, who said he refused to sign the letter.  "If we start down that road, there isn’t going to be anybody in this damn place who can vote,” The article then cites various instance of conflict of interest covering a range of situations. But if the legislature itself abides by the laws written by that body - it should be standard protoc

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

I have my head in the sand working our redesigning our website- which now comes up three times on the first page of a google search of "ceramic birds" with similar results for other related terms (thanks to my own SEO efforts) . We are getting a lot of phone calls as a result and so the need to get this job completed is all the more important. As long as my energy is focused there, I am not wanting to change that. I feel a bit remis about not attending to this blog but the vise versa is true when my attention is focused here. However- when I recieved an email with this report   from Sam Adolpsen of The Maine Heritage Society about the DHHS deficit in which he advocates cutting welfare and "progressive special interests" . I responded with the following: Dear Mr Adolphsen, Is "Progressive Special Interests" equitable with corporate welfare? How about eliminating the 10% annual investment in the government chartered Small Enterprise Growth Fund, which m

Tweet This !! http://goo.gl/NzVrEe Note. This post was written as my introductory past for Portland, Maine edition of examiner.com. I applied and was accepted by Mr. Rick Brown with the words" You would make an excellent examiner". However when I went to post this article, I encountered a software glitch that prevented me from doing so. The examiner was changing its software and so at first I took it to be that I was encountering a general problem. However the glitch that I encountered was not listed in the common issues. After a week of waiting for a response to my support ticket, and receiving no communications from normal channels, I contacted Rick Brown, who promised to look into it. After another week of waiting for further response form Rick Brown, I wrote and indicated that at that point I was inclined to believe that the software glitch was there by intent. Over a week has passed since then and I have received no further communication from Rick Brown. I no long