I Have a Dream of Economic Justice

Olympia Snowe has spent the last 33 years in Washington. That’s 33 years -- and counting -- that have made her one of the wealthiest people in America.

Lately, that wealth has been showing up in votes that put profits before people.

When Snowe voted against the Senate jobs bill in October, she identified only one provision of the bill she disagreed with: the surcharge on taxpayers who earn more than $1 million in adjusted gross income.

According to a study by Citizens for Tax Justice, only one-tenth of one percent of Maine taxpayers would be affected by the surcharge — about 375 people.

The legislation would have created 2 million new jobs and cut taxes for virtually all Maine taxpayers. While her constituents struggle to survive the bleakest economic conditions in generations, a small segment of Mainers -- 375 -- have a senator on their side.

Did she vote against a small tax increase for only 375 Mainers because she is one of us?

Or one of them?

According to the Media Matters Action Network, Snowe’s estimated net worth -- between $12.6 million and $44.7 million -- makes her the 10th richest member of the Senate, a millionaire's club in itself.

But she makes only $174,000 a year as a U.S. senator. Though Snowe's most recent official financial disclosure form does not list specific income for her husband, John McKernan, it does indicate two income sources that make them millionaires.

McKernan serves as chairman of the board of directors of Education Management Corporation.

Education Management's corporate filings describe a "McKernan Agreement" under which he is paid an annual salary of $330,000, plus a target bonus of $412,500. McKernan is also a member of the board of directors of BorgWarner, which paid him $328,000 in cash and stock awards in 2010, and he serves on the board of directors of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Snowe's vote against the jobs bill is thus much easier to understand, since Snowe and her husband are among those fortunate few.

Everyone knows we need to change the dynamic in Washington to protect the many against the privileges of the few, to unleash the middle class and create a broad-based economic recovery.

But we can't keep sending the same people over and over again and expect a different outcome.

We need a senator who is one of the people.

A member of the middle class who wants to reduce taxes on middle-class families and keep alive the American Dream. Someone who believes everyone deserves an equal opportunity to succeed.

Someone who demands those who have reaped the biggest rewards pay their fair share to the nation that nourished that wealth.

Olympia Snowe never will.

I already have.

2012 U.S. Senate Race: What would Einstein do?

Will 2012 be the year America gets its groove back, or are we going to send the same people to Washington that we have been sending for decades and hope things will change?

Against all odds I am considering running for the U.S. Senate against Olympia Snowe,  who has been in Washington D.C. since 1979 and is now one of the wealthiest U.S. Senators in America.

Am I crazy? I want America to educate our children, protect our seniors, reward our veterans and keep people healthy and safe. I want corporations and wealthy people to pay their fair share of taxes, and I know that corporations are not people. I want a senator who will stand up for ordinary people and speak loudly for economic justice.

Not since George Mitchell have we had a Democratic Senator in Washington fighting for the middle class and taking a stand for good people struggling to find and keep jobs, put food on their table and protect their families. The Republican Party is out of touch with the challenges American families are faced with, and quickly becoming more and more extremist and obstructionist. Gridlock in Washington is robbing a generation.

I would love to hear from you -- the People I wish to serve. Are you ready for change in Washington? Are you willing to fight for it? I hope so.

Donate if you can! Like our Facebook Page

We are the 100%

What my wealthy father the businessman has in common with my poor grandmother the factory worker now living in a nursing home is this: they both long for their family and mourn missed opportunities for closeness with their children when the holiday season rolls around.

The fad of separating people by their wealth is effective at drawing attention to income disparity, but not helpful to our collective soul. What makes for a good slogan doesn’t tell the full story.

We all yearn for a better world for our children, and because of hard work or worry about the lack of work we miss so much of what they bring to the table -- joy, optimism, imagination and wonder.

Before long they are grown and working. And we miss them more.

America’s fix will involve more than a super committee, super PAC or superman. The greatness of our country is reflected by the values we teach our kids. It’s time to get back to basics while we forge ahead. We’re all alone together.

Occupy the Park!

The opposite of corporate greed is personal generosity. Government policies that enable the former and prevent the latter are both worthy of protest. The people of Maine are being handed a gift of a national park that will create jobs, protect the environment and increase the quality of our lives. It's threatened by anti-government ideology, and it's time for the public to stand up and fight.

Recently Roxanne Quimby, the founder of Burt's Bees and a major Maine philanthropist, was featured in Forbes Magazine. The interview was about the Maine Woods National Park she wants to create by gifting 70,000 acres and $40 million. In the context of how the park would bring jobs, economic diversity and a healthy lifestyle, she was quoted saying:

“We have the most aged population in the country…. I believe we have one of the highest adult obesity rates in New England. We have… oxycontin abuse… [and] Maine’s the largest net receiver of Federal funds, even though we supposedly hate the Feds…it’s a welfare state."


This statement about welfare is now being used against her to detract from the real issue of whether a national park is good for Maine. 


But haven't we heard about Maine's "welfare problem" before? 


Oh, yeah. It was the platform that most of the Tea Party Republicans ran on and won in 2010, including Maine’s current governor.

“Reports” produced by the Maine Heritage Policy Center on this and other subjects found their way in to almost every GOP stump speech.


“Families in your community are trapped in dependence… the skyrocketing level of dependence on Maine’s welfare system is a growing crisis-in almost every city and town in the state!” 

And after chanting "today, one in three Mainers is on some form of welfare" over and over again, one Tea Party whipper-snapper was even hired to write the state’s FY 2011/2012 budget.  


You know the one. It solves our “welfare problem” by cutting benefits to immigrants and gutting pensions of retired teachers, while doling out $400 million in tax cuts that we will pay for later by cutting more programs for people on welfare.


So you have to wonder why certain anti-government elected officials got hysterical when this former hippie-turned-successful businesswoman agrees with their premise.


They are offended not so much that she parrots what their people have been telling people, but rather because the solution she puts on the table is a public park. 

“That is a blatantly false claim that is something that should infuriate all Mainers!”

“She has a great deal of disdain for the people of Maine!”  

How dare she “denigrate the people of the state of Maine!”

She is the “the enemy of the North Woods!” (this, according to the guy who formerly compared promises Quimby made to limit the park’s size to Nazi Germany’s false promises before its annexation of Czechoslovakia and invasion of Poland in 1939.)

“This is not about acres. This is about the federal takeover of the northern woods!”

“I can’t understand why someone who needs the support of the people of Maine would say what she has. To me, it’s like throwing a banana cream pie in your own face!”


Let's pass on the pie. Maine really does have an obesity problem, and this is why we should occupy the park. 

Angry anti-government guys calling the gift of private property for the purpose of creating a public park a “government takeover,” with references to Nazi Germany is the Maine echo of the Glenn Beck ideology and it's not going to solve our welfare problem, or any other problem. 

This same group promised “welfare reform” and jobs in 2010, and have instead rolled back environmental protections and are busy working to gut labor and voting rights. 

This party of “small government” wants a bureaucrat in every woman’s examination room, and a gun in every holster. The hypocrisy is maddening. 


The question isn’t whether Maine is a welfare state.  The question is how can we create jobs in order to lift families out of poverty? 

Quimby also said this in the Forbes article about the proposed Maine Woods National Park:

It would provide enormous economic diversity and opportunity that doesn’t exist now. Prosperity begins with small business, with committed, passionate people and communities and families that care about each other. And that’s still intact up there. It’s pretty amazing…I’ve organized rural America…before, in Guilford, where I started Burt’s Bees, and I had up to about forty-five women and we got the business up to about $3 million in sales. It was like a sheer miracle.


It's a miracle she is working so hard and putting up with so much for the public good. Isn't that supposed to be the job of our government?


It is no surprise that Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, who started her own knitting business on a Maine island by employing local women, supports a national park. 


It's time the rest of our federal delegation hears from the 74% of Maine people who favor the creation and study of a Maine Woods National Park.


Ideology that believes government is bad, and that public institutions and places are not valuable is as destructive as corporate greed. An unfettered unregulated “free market” can't be completely trusted to provide a healthy and bright future for our kids, and neither can the privatization of all places. Erosion of public institutions and parks will be the downfall of the American way of life. 

“Southern” is a State of Mind

“We could tell the pro-park from no-park instantly because the pro-park men wore immaculate hiking boots and the women wore stone faces, graying hair, and no bras.” Mary Adams

The visit by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to Maine last August to Stearns High School in Millinocket, Maine, to discuss the proposed Maine Woods National Park was a brazen violation of states rights, and caused an army of stone-faced, pro-park professional environmentalists from the “south” to invade a small northern town, according to Mary Adams.

Of course “states rights” is the code word for extreme conservatism and has nothing to do with Roxanne Quimby’s proposed gift of 70,000 acres of private property plus $40 million to create and maintain a national park. Adams is a veteran right-winger who is game for any cause that reminds her of redcoats. She is from Garland, Maine (south of Millinocket) and the local face of the angry mob that's crippling America.

The Maine Tea Party and Adams' opposition to a national park serves as a proxy for the anti-government shtick they like to jump up and down and scream about, as our public institutions and infrastructure crumble. They don't care who owns Maine's North Woods, and they don't dislike people from the south, as long as they are big powerful private corporations.

Over the last dozen years without objection by Adams or the Tea Party the great land barons who owned Maine’s North Woods have quietly sold out to real estate investment trusts (REITs), timber investment management organizations (TIMOs) and pension funds from Georgia, Connecticut, North Carolina and abroad. Paper companies now only own about 15% of Maine’s woods, the largest undeveloped forest in the eastern United States.

National Parks create jobs, protect the environment and serve the public good. There is no geographic limit to the need for jobs and corporate accountability. Old weapons such as the mythical north/south chasm, and states rights divide people by shooting the messenger. The message is about government's role of protecting the public interest, not about zip codes and hair color.

Percival Baxter was from Portland, and though many locals in the Katahdin region feel they own Baxter State Park, we all own it. Every Maine tax payer also owns the Dolby Landfill in East Millinocket and will pay over $17 million to clean it up, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to operate it.

The proposed park land is not in Millinocket or Garland or Cape Elizabeth. It sits between Baxter State Park and the Dolby Landfill, and is surrounded by property owned by big corporations from away that are driven by short-term profits only. Everyone has the right to speak up about the Maine Woods National Park, and should.

The Road Not Yet Taken in the Maine Woods

Two roads are diverging in the Maine Woods. Let’s take the one that will make all the difference!

In the final days of June, two different pieces of legislation came before Maine lawmakers, and they put in stark relief our choices and our priorities. One path takes us in a circle right back to where we are now—without jobs, looking in the rear-view mirror for solutions. The other path leads us forward.

The first road was a legislative resolve that gives Maine Governor Paul LePage authority to accept on behalf of all tax payers a “gift” of the Dolby Landfill in East Millinocket – complete with $17 million of clean-up costs and unknown, unlimited future environmental liability. The billion dollar corporations and foreign investment firms that are gifting us their polluted landfill said if we don’t accept it, they will board up the two paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket where the unemployment rate is above 20% and sell off the equipment.

The second road was a resolution opposing the acceptance a different kind of gift. Thousands of acres of pristine wilderness, plus a $40 million endowment to create and maintain a national park in the Maine Woods, just up the street from Millinocket, East Millinocket and the Dolby Landfill. This gift comes complete with economic benefits of jobs, new residents and businesses, in addition to preserving a national treasure.

The two paths – one succumbing to corporate blackmail and clinging to the past, the other charging in to the future with a bold vision that embraces change and aspires to add value – highlight the conflict in America today about the role of government. One view is that government’s function is to serve the interests of corporations. The other view is that government works to protect the public interest and for the public good.

Shall we take the first road because we hope it brings us back to when American paper mills employed thousands of people who lived comfortably within the confines of a union-protected pay check, and when American patron landowners opened the gates to the forest for all to use? With rose-colored glasses shall we deny the realities of the unregulated global economy, and the availability of cheap labor overseas?

Or will we take the second road? The road to a magnificent national park and thriving gateway community. The path to jobs, community vitality and preservation of America's great forest. The road that will make all the difference for Maine people.

Death by a Thousand Tax Cuts

Why has the Governor of Maine ordered $100 million in cuts to state services? So he can finish what he started back in January.

Governor LePage and Grover Norquist don’t believe in government and they want to starve it of revenues by cutting taxes, and then telling everyone we are broke and have to cut spending.

Our Tea Party Governor began starving the beast when he proposed his draconian budget. There was no way to go but left for the Appropriations Committee, who took steps in that direction until Stockholm Syndrome set in.

The hypocrisy of now applauding the state budget that puts Maine in debt, while escalating the rhetoric about our national debt problem is nauseating.

It’s time to stop slapping each other on the back and start looking each other in the eye.

Yes, the budget just signed in to law by Governor LePage lowers income tax rates, lines up state deductions nicely with the feds, gives businesses big tax breaks and incentives, and increases the exemption for big estates by a million dollars.

This sounds really awesome! But there’s just one thing. IT IS NOT PAID FOR.

All these wonderful tax decreases and reforms create a $400 million hole in next year’s budget -- like that fabulous all-inclusive vacation to Cancun for the whole family! Put on a high-interest credit card.

Even the Chamber of Commerce is back-slapping and gushing about how wonderful the session was because businesses are getting tax breaks.

We haven’t got one fatherly lecture yet about living within our means. There’s been no angry rhetoric about personal responsibility. Why? Because the future $400 million hole provides the perfect excuse to further shrink government.

Get ready, though. The Governor’s order to cut $100 million in response to Congress’s “deal” about increasing the debt ceiling will be followed by many rants about the need to pay our bills, and run the state like a household. "Living within our means" when we create a big future deficit means cutting programs.

And how easy it will be to make these cuts with a republican majority in the legislature and a republican governor. There will be no need for a two-thirds vote. A simple majority will wipe out the social programs everyone thought were “saved” in the recent budget.

We will pay the $400 million bill created by tax cuts with all the social programs Governor Lepage set out to eliminate in the first place. School budgets will be cut, and public health programs slashed. “Welfare” will be further restricted to only married heterosexual pro-life women. Roads won’t get fixed. Investments won’t be made in technology, or research and development.

Public institutions will weaken, we will continue to decline as a society, but we will keep hearing how “broke” we are, and how we have to pay our bills.