Candidates were asked what they would have done to help save a cannery from closing in Prospect Harbor, how strongly they would advocate for Maine fishermen, and what can be done to attract seafood processing plants to Maine.

Green Independent Lynne Williams said the state has fast-tracked approvals for wind power projects and should do the same for seafood processing plants.

“We need to identify those economic entities we need in this state and then go after them,” she said, adding, the state needs to do a better job of courting seafood processing companies to locate in Maine, thereby reducing fishermen’s transportation and fuel costs.

Kennebec Journal

Bangor Daily News

The article passed by 67 percent, a clear recognition that townspeople believe we should be spending our tax dollars here at home, not for the occupation of foreign countries.

The Resolution declared that an inordinate level of military expenditure is being made by the U.S. federal government for warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the residents of Deer Isle are collectively paying for the war but receiving “no identified public benefits.”

It said that education services, infrastructure repairs, and other essential public services throughout Maine have been substantially reduced in order for an excessive portion of federal funds to be diverted from the constructive economy to unnecessary warfare,

The resolution urged Congressman Michael Michaud “to oppose all legislation brought before the U.S. House of Representatives that provides further funding of the U.S. warfare and U.S. military occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan” and asked Michaud to “take strong and forceful action to influence the full U.S. House of Representatives to terminate funding of these military operations.”

Town Meeting is the highest manifestation of direct democracy, and Maine town meetings are invaluable for soliciting and hearing the voices of the people of this state. So often our legislators are either unwilling or incapable of addressing the needs of the people that elected them. At those times, it is incumbent upon Mainers to join with their neighbors to bring their issues to town meeting.

This is exactly what the citizens of Deer Isle did – they spoke and we all hope that Augusta is listening.

Maine Green Independent Party gubernatorial candidate Lynne Williams on Friday joined with other Green Party candidates around the country in reaching out to those involved in the national “Tea Party” movement and inviting them to consider joining with the Green Party if they are looking for an alternative to the Democratic and Republican Parties.

See what the Times Record in Brunswick has to say about this idea.

Many Tea Partiers have legitimate concerns about the direction health care reform plans are taking, and about trillion-dollar taxpayer-funded giveaways to Wall Street firms, and “are as outraged as Greens are about how both Democrats and Republicans are coddling CEOs, major stockholders, and other wealthy elites while preaching sacrifice for the rest of us,” the Green Party leaders said.

For her part, Williams cited many issues that provide common ground between Greens and Tea party members, and explained how the two groups could make a difference by working with each other.

“We need a Tea Party movement that opposes warrantless surveillance of American citizens, torture, invasion of other countries, and other violations of the US Constitution,” she said., “and a Tea Party that calls the ‘general welfare of the people’ – including the right to medical care – more important than the right of insurance and pharmaceutical companies to shake down patients and deny treatment.”

“It’s not a left-right thing,” Williams said, “it’s about people wanting their government to work, wanting their government to behave, and to listen to them.”

Williams said Maine Greens have teamed with opponents of a Democratic tax plans, partnered with libertarians in supporting issues such as marriage equality, and worked to make it easier for non-party candidates to gain ballot access.

“Recently I stood with Maine’s pro-gun lobby on one side and the Maine Civil Liberties Union on the other as we supported a bill in the Legislature to limit automated
police video surveillance,” she said, “I’ve had good meetings with Maine Tea Party members and with Refounders groups, and have support in that community as well as from the left because I believe in civil rights, local control and individual freedom — all of which are concepts found in our 10 Key Values.”

“There is a lot of common ground for all of us who are disappointed in the way the two corporate parties are behaving,” Williams said, ” A real Tea Party movement would look like the Green Party.”

Here in Maine, we already have a third party, the Maine Green Independent Party. The Bangor Daily News has said what our party has been saying all along — that the two-party-system has become a one-party system, where those in office care more about re-election than about the public.

We see this in the conspiracy of both parties to continue to fund illegal wars, to refuse to take real action on single-payer health care that would help businesses and individuals alike, and in their refusal to come up with any sort of energy policy that doesn’t cede public resources and financial gain to large corporate projects instead of  advocating true conservation and individual solutions.

As the oldest Green Party in the nation, the Maine Green Independent Party can help solve these problems.

The editorial said, in part:

To some degree, partisanship is exaggerated by the fun-house mirrors of talk radio and preaching-to-the-choir networks like Fox News and MSNBC. Votes in committees often do not follow party lines, but rather break by geography, rural vs. urban, and other parochial concerns.

It’s a long shot, but the two-party standoff would end if another party asserted itself. The Tea Party may provide that impetus, although its recent convention was more of an Obama-bashing festival. Or maybe the Libertarian Party, which saw new life in the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. The Green Party also could provide a third way.

When the views of Ralph Nader, said to be on the far left, and Pat Buchanan, said to be on the far right, begin to sound harmonious on some issues, it suggests Democrats and Republicans have imposed a two-dimensional view of politics that is not accurate. A viable centrist or other third party could force a sort of parliamentary approach in Congress, creating coalitions and compromise.

Read the entire editorial at http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/137082.html

Read more about why you should register as a Maine Green.

A group of Penobscot County residents called Friends of Lincoln Lake took its concerns to Maine’s Supreme Court justices this afternoon. The residents are appealing the Maine Wind Energy Act, a measure designed to expedite the permitting process for setting up a wind farm.

LISTEN to the MPBN Report:

Today is Lynne Williams’ 60th birthday. That’s right, she’s finally reached the big 6-0.

We’d have a party except that she’s spending her birthday in front of the Maine State Supreme Court, defending the due process rights of neighborhood groups who want to retain their right to appeal decisions of state boards and commissions like the BEP or LURC.

So let’s give her a surprise party, instead, and surprise her with a birthday contribution to her campaign.

Our goal is 60 people contributing $60. If you can’t afford that, $6 is fine. And if you want to head a little further down the contribution road, how about $66?

Want to really make her day? A $600 contribution would keep her smiling. Or $606, or even $660.

And if you’re really feeling in a particularly devilish mood, there’s always $666.

It’s easy to m ake an on-line contribution. Or you can sned a check in the mail.

Just go to http://www.lynnewilliams2010.org/contribute and you’ll find all the details on how to quickly make a contribution. Any amount from $1 to $750 is welcome.

Thank you.

We’ve been agonizing over this for several weeks, and while we solidly support the concept of public funding for gubernatorial elections, it appears the position of the Maine Legislature is to dilute the fund and also make it harder for Clean Election candidates to qualify for what will be left. This is hardly in keeping with the spirit of the law as it was approved by more than 320,000 Maine citizens back in 1996.

Members of the Legislature have continued to support using public money to fund their own campaigns, but they made several major changes to the rules for gubernatorial funding that have despoiled the spirit of the law.

Moving forward as a privately funded campaign will have its limitations, but in the end, in light of the current fiscal mismanagement we’re seeing in Augusta, I could not, in good conscience, take public money that might be better used to help people in real need.

The original concept of the Clean Elections law was to remove the fund-raising burdens on gubernatorial candidates in exchange for their agreeing to limit their campaign spending. Under that concept, candidates would be free to discuss the issues, rather than spending much of their time raising money, which would in theory result in a better-informed electorate.

But last year the Legislature changed the law to say that before Clean Election candidates for governor could qualify for public funding, they had to raise a significant amount of private money – $40,000 – from Maine voters in increments no greater than $100.  At the same time, the Legislature raised the private contribution limit for non-Clean Election candidates from $500 to $750 per person.

Basically, the Legislature said that in order to avoid the influence of private money, we have to raise private money. It makes no sense.

In addition, the Legislature increased by 30 percent, from 2,500 to 3,250, the number of $5 “qualifying contributions” – money paid directly to the state – that gubernatorial candidates must solicit from supporters in order to qualify for Clean Election funding.

We’ve spent far more time per dollar raised than I would have had I run as a conventionally funded candidate in the first place. It seems all these Legislative changes were designed to make it harder for third party and independent candidates – those without large donor bases – to qualify for public funding.

This convoluted process has left hardly any time for critical policy discussions – and maybe that was the point.

Also factoring into my decision is the precarious condition of the Clean Election Fund itself.

Right now the state is on track to spend at least $2 million dollars this year just in the Democratic and Republican primaries to help the major parties decide who will represent their parties in November. Couple that with the fact that the Baldacci administration has stripped close to $3 million from the fund in recent years, and with the very real possibility that the Legislature will forego its legal obligation to add money to the fund this year, and it is clear the Clean Election Fund itself may be in jeopardy.

It is entirely possible, that the State Ethics Commission will tell Clean Election gubernatorial candidates this fall that they will have to resort to some private fundraising anyway.

Given all that, she said, it made little sense to continue with the Clean Election program.

We will return to sender all the $5 “qualifying contribution” checks the campaign is holding, and will also help people who made a $5 QC via credit card on the state’s website try to get their money back from the state Ethics Commission if they wished.

Tux Turkel’s piece in Sunday’s Portland Press Herald (January 31, 2010) was only a keyhole look at the influential connections between industrial wind industry executives and functionaries and Maine’s power elite.  The defensive responses of those with such connections, that their behavior is legal and appropriate, is not unexpected.  However, legality does not equate to moral or ethical.

And what the industrial wind giants, with the complicity of state leaders, are doing is immoral and unethical.

State government has a responsibility to protect the safety and happiness of the populace, as we can read in Article I of the Maine Constitution, which states that “all people are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and of pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.”

Yet state government, in not only facilitating, but expediting, the process for those companies that seek to transform Maine into the Saudi Arabia of wind – is that really something we should aspire to, being a desert ruled by a hereditary monarch – is not protecting the safety, and certainly not the happiness, of Mainers in impacted communities.

It is appalling that the head of the Maine Center for Disease Control, Dr. Dora Mills, has belittled and marginalized those who live near wind turbines and are suffering insomnia, headaches and other even more serious health impacts, by saying that the impacts are merely annoying.  Dr. Mills’ mandate is to protect the health of Mainers, not the health of the wind companies’ bottom line.

Local elected officials in potentially impacted communities, even those with financial connections to a wind company, only seem to recuse themselves from voting on a wind project when they are directly confronted by town residents, and then are annoyed (there’s that word again) that they must refrain from voting to benefit their benefactor.  Likewise, wind companies select and pay for attorneys to advise towns during tax increment financing negotiations, flipping the concept of independent counsel on its head.

Most disturbing, however, was the behavior of the members of the legislature’s Energy Committee when wind activists appeared before them on January 28th.

A Committee Member whined about how they had been there since 1 pm and at 7 pm it was cutting into their family time.  Look, Mr. Committee Member, you are the one who decided to get elected to office, so do your job no matter how much time it takes.  And all of you should try to remember that you work for us – we put you there, and we can dump you too.  So try your best to listen to those citizens that come before you, rather than being impatient and angry that anyone would dare to come to Augusta to petition their state government.  Forgot about the Bill of Rights, didn’t you? And besides that, Mr. Legislator, you’re fortunate to live in a place where you can enjoy family time. If you lived in parts of  Freedom, Mars Hill or Vinalhaven you might have welcomed an opportunity to stay away from home a little longer.

So, that brings me back to our state constitution. While Article I, Section 1 talks about natural rights, as noted above, Section 2 states that all power is inherent in the people and the people have an “unalienable and indefeasible right to institute government, and to alter, reform, or totally change the same, when their safety and happiness require it.”

For over two years Augusta has been welcoming industrial wind with open arms, facilitating their colonization of our state.  Maine state government has become the King George of our time and for those of us who are working to stop this travesty, these are the times that try men’s (and women’s) souls.  These are also the times to work together to, as our Maine Constitution states, alter, reform or, if necessary, totally change our state government, because our safety and happiness truly does require it.