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Wealth Creation VS Wealth Redistribution

In 2007 I was browsing the Internet, when much to my surprise I found a database for New England Arts, about which I had not previously been aware. I thought that I had already entered our business information in all the Maine and New England directories. I proceeded to add our information but soon found out that this database was different from all the others, it required agreeing to terms created by The New England Foundation For The Arts. Upon reading the terms, I found them completely unacceptable as it virtually required giving the New England Foundations For the Arts unlimited rights over any information submitted to the database or “deep linked” to the data base- with the term “deep link” left undefined. In 2011 I am growing our business through another arts database, which is popularly known as Etsy . It is for all things handcrafted including paintings and other art works. The work that one can find in this database runs the gambit form the young artisan starting out and cre...

Maine Marxism Takes a great New Leap Forward with The Brunswick Landing Maine Center For Innovation

  THE JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON BUSINESS, RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT if not the most of the Maine legislature have been following a Marxist course for decades, First it was just using tax payer funds as playing card in a game with high growth investors but now the legislature has transformed itself into the investor- acquiring land and property and setting up "funds" composed of every imaginable source of redistributed wealth to channel as much as possible into the hands of the state. They call crown themselves as "the innovative" or “creative economy"- In the Baldacci administration it began with promoting the template created by Richard Florida who set standard rules for measuring "the creative class" and cities, state and municipal governments across the nation flocked to conform to the Florida template by segregating society and economies into “the creative and innovative classes" and everyone else. With flowery language packaging,...

Can a Municipal Corporation be an Instrumentality of the State?

  This is a letter sent to numerous local newspapers. Dear Editor, I am writing to make a public suggestion that when proposed bonds are on the election ballot, that information be included about the current liabilities the taxpayer owes. Also I hope that those who vote in favor of such allocations of the taxpayer’s money will take care to carefully inform themselves about what they are really getting. A bond was passed last summer that allowed 8 million for redevelopment of the Brunswick Naval Air Station to become “Maine’s Innovative Center” a high tech training facility. Leveraging $32,500,000 in federal funds. I am sure those in proximity to the facility looked upon this as something that would raise the property value in the surrounding area. However that fantasy was dashed by the legislation that chartered the Maine center For Innovation Corporation and when the management published a press release purportedly to announce their incredibly original nam...

A Request To Representative McDonald for a Timeline of Changes in LD1 An Act to Stimulate Capital for Innovative Maine Businesses

Much to my surprise, when I recently clicked on my long standing link to LD1, it pointed to completly different content. The content which this link formerly opened is now called "original paper record. I have adjusted my list of links to incorporate the Original Paper Text, The Ammendment , and what is now called Public Law.You can locate them in the right side bar . Without further ado, I am posting the letter I just sent to Representative McDonald in an attempt to establish a time line for the changes in the bill. Dear Representative McDonald, I recently received an email from you saying that you will keep in touch. I was told by Representative McKane that you were on the committee for LD1- which goes by the title- An Act to Stimulate Capital for Innovative Businesses in Maine. You may or not know that I write about the legislation that is passed by our legislature and so I have a list of links on my blog that I reference on a regular basis. The link for LD1 has been there ...

It’s Constitution Time, Governor LePage!

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...

On Maine Web News, Candidates Discuss The Maine Public Empoyees Retirement System but avoid the Constitutional Mandate.

Maine Web News- The Candidates Discuss MPERS Lepage promises to honor promises to state employees pension funds and suggests changing the system for future employees. Lepage says he will have to talk to the legislature, but does not explain why- which is because contractual terms of agreement have been embedded into the Maine State constitution since 1997. For a candidate who is running on a platform that includes respecting the constitution, I find this failure to mention the constitutional mandate which clearly impacts the unfunded liability problem disappointing. Both Kevin Scott and Moody articulate the solution better than LePage, who suggest the same ideas, but not as forcefully. All agree that the problem must be "isolated" to quote Kevin Scott, meaning that future employees must be hired on a different set of terms. Moody addresses the issue of risky investment choices made by the managers of the MPERS fund more forcefully than the others and he brings up a c...

To Profit- Or not to Profit? What the Heck- Why not Both!?!

It has come to my attention, through that grapevine known as "the internet", that under discussion in the Maine state legislature is the creation  of a legal business entity that is a hybrid between the non-profit and "low profit" organizations. I have not yet been able to locate any specifics about the bill as it would stand in Maine. In North Carolina, it includes small manufacturers, but the usual definition of an LC3 is just a manipulation of the non-profit category so that investors can make a profit. Here is a defintion from The Non-Profit Law Blog "The low-profit, limited liability company, or L3C, is a hybrid of a nonprofit and for-profit organization. More specifically, it is a new type of limited liability company (LLC) designed to attract private investments and philanthropic capital in ventures designed to provide a social benefit. Unlike a standard LLC, the L3C has an explicit primary charitable mission and only a secondary profit concern. But unli...