Nothing personal, readers. The feeling encompasses the entire blog these days.
Try to think of it as the "summer of Langlais."
"Building an art trail through Maine; Colby art museum, a nonprofit, land trust bring work to public" by Geoff Edgers | Globe Staff July 06, 2014
CUSHING, Maine — The summer of Langlais, a series of shows and installations, dedicated to a Mainer most famous for the 62-foot wooden Indian sculpture that sits in the town of Skowhegan, is launching this month.
The project is startling in scope, as unorthodox as the artist’s career, and the result of a complex collaboration between a college art museum, land preservationists, and a Wisconsin-based nonprofit art foundation. For the public, the benefit is much simpler: a chance to explore one of New England’s most underappreciated artists....
I don't mean to under appreciate the altrui$m of my ba$tion of corporate liberali$m here, but.
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Also see: Rescuing Central Maine
One guy who tried.... and was viciously attacked for it:
"Maine governor criticized on meetings; LePage foes say group he saw is antigovernment" by Alanna Durkin | Associated Press July 06, 2014
AUGUSTA, Maine — Governor Paul LePage’s political foes say recent reports that he held meetings with an antigovernment group — one that a new book links to a domestic terrorist movement — raises concerns about his personal beliefs and judgment.
When they start waving that brush look out!
I find the hysteria distasteful myself, and makes those behind it even worse in my eyes. Think what you want of this guy, but those are charged terms.
What about those who wanted and still want a lawful and representative government rather than the corporate-controlled piece of crap we have now?
Or is just voicing such things the sign of a "domestic terrorist?" -- even though all the domestic terrorists and government-created, -funded and -directed false flag fronts for fictional enemies and patsy plot set-ups.
Sorry, Globe and the like, but it's over! Time to man-up, start reporting the real stories, and stop dabbling in this endless shovel of pure stink propaganda and ax-grinding agenda-pushing.
Or do you just not know way other way? In that case we need to get you to a doctor.
But despite attacks from his opponents in the close three-way battle for the Blaine House, the latest controversy surrounding the Republican governor with a tendency to speak bluntly won’t likely erode support from his loyal base, political observers said. Even so, it could affect fund-raising and further galvanize voters already eager to defeat him in November, they said.
‘‘I think that it’s different than the off-the-cuff comments, and it could have the potential to be more politically dangerous for LePage,’’ said Jim Melcher, a political science professor at the University of Maine Farmington.
In an excerpt from an upcoming book, liberal activist Mike Tipping wrote that LePage met with members of the Constitutional Coalition at least eight times last year, citing recordings and documents obtained through the state’s Freedom of Access Act.
Tipping links the group to the sovereign citizen movement, which is characterized by antigovernment views and sometimes violence, earning it the label of a domestic terrorist movement from the federal government.
I suppose I am to a certain degree since I want to secede from my state and declare and independent county, but am I out there with the flint lock?
As for the federalis, I've given up on that corporately-captured in$titution. There is no redemptive value there at all.
Members of the Maine coalition deny they’re associated with the movement, but acknowledge they share many of its views.
Yeah, you gotta disown 'em.
LaPage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett said the governor regularly meets with people who hold a variety of ideas, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with all of them. She declined to make him available for an interview.
No kidding? So he's kind of being an elected representative type taking all voices into consideration.
LePage ‘‘believes a healthy democracy requires public officials to hear all varying viewpoints from the people of Maine,’’ she said in a statement. ‘‘Here, the group continued to request meetings and, in line with his open door policy, he agreed.’’
Must be why we are in such sad shape these days.
His campaign contends that the issue has been blown out of proportion and that Tipping is trying to damage the governor’s reputation and sway the election. Tipping works for a liberal activist group that has endorsed LePage’s Democratic challenger, Mike Michaud.
Aaaaaaaaah!
Yet LePage’s solid base of support — the 38 percent of voters who propelled him to victory in a three-way race 2010 — is unlikely to shift no matter what he says or does, said Christian Potholm, a political strategist and professor at Bowdoin College.
They tried to steal it from him, too!
‘‘It’s a phenomenon that’s very unusual in politics,’’ he said.
What, principals and loyalty?
Wayne Leach, a member of the coalition, rejects the notion that they’re radicals and said they’re peacefully trying to eliminate laws and amendments that infringe on their constitutional rights.
That is why they are under attack and assault by my mouthpiece media.
With about four months until Election Day, the news that LePage met several times with the group — while at the same time refusing to meet with Democratic legislative leaders — drew fierce criticism from Michaud and the third candidate in the race, independent Eliot Cutler.
Oh, he stepped on toes and hurt feelings!
Get over it!
Ben Grant, chairman of the Maine Democratic Party, said the issue will further energize voters already embarrassed by the governor’s often off-color remarks.
You hope.
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Related:
Maine Spitzing Tipping Point
My Maine Man
On the Same LePage
Turning LePage in Maine
I don't know about LePage, but what I do know is when you are disliked by the ma$$ media flag$hip you must be doing something right:
"Paul LePage toes hard line on drug crisis; Supports enforcing laws over treatment options" by Brian MacQuarrie | Globe Staff July 07, 2014
LEWISTON, Maine — When Massachusetts’ governor invited his New England counterparts to a meeting last month on the surge in opioid overdoses, the only no-show was Governor Paul LePage of Maine.
See: New England Newborns Hooked on Heroin
And LePage abandoned them?
Governor Deval Patrick urged reporters after the meeting not to read anything into LePage’s absence. It’s just a scheduling problem, he said.
But LePage’s press secretary, Adrienne Bennett, had a different take: The governor felt staying in Maine to talk with veterans and release crime statistics was “a higher priority than a photo-op with other New England governors,” Bennett said.
But they told Patrick's office no, scheduling conflict.
To his critics, LePage’s decision to bypass the Waltham, Mass., meeting struck them as combative business as usual for a governor who, alone in New England, is emphasizing law enforcement over treatment as a response to the drug crisis.
What weaponry is he carrying and has he got his orders for Iraq yet?
Related: The DEA's Heroin Hustle
Meaning addressing either side of the choice does nothing to solve the real problems of where it is coming from, who is bringing it here, and who is laundering the money.
And you wonder why I'm not into this?
While other governors have called for hefty increases in funding for treatment, LePage called for $2 million to hire 14 drug agents, four judges, and four prosecutors to target a drug trade he said is ravaging the state.
“We must hunt down the dealers and get them off the streets,” LePage said in March when he proposed beefed-up enforcement.
Well, as long as the cops and feds aren't blowing people away.
The proposal foundered when LePage, at the 11th hour, would not agree with Maine’s House of Representatives to scale back the package to 10 agents, eliminate the judges and prosecutors, and keep $750,000 for treatment that had been added in earlier negotiations, said Kathleen Newman, the governor’s deputy chief of staff.
“They didn’t want to give the governor a win,” Newman said.
But to many Democrats, the Republican governor’s stance proved he is a my-way-or-nothing politician, a throwback in the decades-old war on drugs.
And apparently, after all those decades of wrecked lives and ma$$ive costs, we are in the worst shape ever in the war on drugs.
What gives?
It is a persona that might have roots in LePage’s own story, Maine lawmakers said. One of 18 children from an impoverished home in Lewiston, he fled an abusive father at age 11, lived on the streets for two years, but eventually attended college and forged a successful business career before becoming mayor of Waterville.
That Horatio Alger tale is laudable, some critics say, but they suspect it has made it hard for him to see nuances in crime and punishment, hard work and hard luck, and the morality and biology of drug addiction.
Unless you smoke pot. That seems to be a real bugaboo.]
Prescription pharmaceuticals? Power 'em down. Leads to heroin, but you know.
“Overemphasis on enforcement without an equal commitment to treatment is just spinning the merry-go-round faster and faster,” said state Representative Mark Dion, a Democrat who is cochairman of the Criminal Justice Committee and a former Cumberland County sheriff.
“Jail doesn’t work, I can tell you that, and it’s because addiction is compulsive,” said Dion, who served as deputy police chief in Portland for 21 years.
You can go down to Wall Street to see first hand.
LePage’s staff said the governor sees treatment as important, but that he wants to ensure that funding for these services is spent wisely.
The governor, who declined to be interviewed for this article, rejected federal funds to expand Medicaid. The money would have extended coverage for substance-abuse services and other health needs to an additional 70,000 residents, according to Maine Equal Justice Partners, a nonprofit legal-aid provider.
That never makes certain people look favorably on you.
LePage vetoed a good Samaritan bill in 2013 to give legal protection to people who call 911 to help overdose victims. And this year he refused to sign a bill, which became law anyway, allowing first responders and family members to carry Narcan, a drug that reverses the effects of opioid overdoses.
“It’s an escape,” LePage has said of Narcan. “It’s an excuse to stay addicted.”
But it boosts the profits of the pharmaceutical that makes it.
According to health workers in Maine, the number of addicts and other people who need substance-abuse help is rising sharply. But LePage has “a level of unwillingness to help those people for whatever reasons,” said state Representative Sara Gideon of Freeport, a Democrat who sponsored the Narcan bill.
He's mean!
Marty O’Brien, who founded the Grace Street Services recovery center in Lewiston, said he is turning away more and more uninsured addicts in the city, where 22.8 percent of the population lives below the poverty level, compared with 13.3 percent statewide, according to a US Census Bureau estimate for 2008-2012. On a recent weekend, O’Brien said, seven people he knew had overdosed.
Dr. Michael Kelley, a Lewiston psychiatrist who is chief of behavioral health for St. Mary’s Health System, said more than 80 percent of patients in the hospital’s detox unit have an opioid addiction. When he started work at St. Mary’s about 15 years ago, Kelley said, the figure was 10 percent.
And in Bangor, Pat Kimball, executive director of Wellspring substance-abuse services, said she has a waiting list of 80 people, many of them uninsured, for 28 beds.
“I’ve never had to fight so hard for people to get well, and I’ve also never had to fight so hard for the money to support it,” Kimball said. “You have an administration that wants to go back to the old war on drugs.”
Welcome to 21st-century AmeriKa!
From 1986 to 2010, drug arrests increased 238 percent in Maine and accounted for 10.9 percent of all arrests in 2010, according to a study issued last year by the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. Only Connecticut, at 13.3 percent, had a higher proportion of drug arrests in New England that year.
After LePage took office in 2011, total spending in Maine on substance abuse treatment, excluding federal funds for Medicaid, fell to $19.95 million in fiscal 2013 from $20.16 million the previous year, according to state data. In that time, health care admissions for opioid abuse rose to 8,783, from 8,591.
“Our resources don’t match the level of the problem,” acknowledged Guy Cousins, director of the state Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services.
Cousins said all parts of the response — law enforcement, treatment, the courts, and others — need to be connected and coordinated to make headway against opioid abuse.
LePage’s staff said he is not opposed to investing in treatment. State officials have met with treatment providers “to talk about success rates and how the state can support programs which are proven to provide successful outcomes and opportunities for Mainers with addiction,” said Bennett, LePage’s press secretary.
“It is simply not enough to throw money at drug addiction without examining if the programs are effective,” she said.
The state also has shown significant progress in reducing the prescription of opioids, Bennett said. In 2013, the 76.9 million pills prescribed in Maine in 2013 were 4.8 million fewer than in the previous year, she said.
Even LePage’s critics agree that enforcement must be part of the plan. But symbolism is also important, they said, which is why they wish he had traveled to Brandeis University to meet his fellow governors.
I'm so sick of $ymboli$m, imagery, illu$ion, and all the other staged and scripted psyop mind manipulations promoted by the ma$$ media.
Sorry.
“We have this opportunity for a fresh look, a new approach, and our governor refuses to participate,” said Alison Beyea, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.
“He’s up here railing in the newspaper that he’s trying to get something done and that no one will cooperate with him,” said state Representative Drew Gattine, a Westbrook Democrat who sits on the Health and Human Services Committee. “So, not only does he not go, but he sort of talks about it in a negative way, and unfortunately that’s kind of our governor’s style.”
To LePage’s staff, however, that is so much empty bluster.
The suggestions that emerged from the Massachusetts meeting “about sharing data and working together could have been accomplished in a 15-minute conference call,” Bennett said. “The governor chose to stay in Maine and work on the issues.”
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Also see: Maine struggles with white pine needle disease
They are calling it the LePage Pine Killer Plague.
Maine’s shrimp fishery may face new restrictions
I shrunk that read article down to a link. Sorry.
