In the Era of Gaslighting, Fake News, and False Narratives, Support Independent Journalism at the Roots!
In the Era of Gaslighting, Fake News, and False Narratives, Support Independent Journalism at the Roots!
Don't Be Complacent About Home Rule! Support Proactive Defense of Maine's Constitutional Rights!
In the Era of Gaslighting, Fake News, and False Narratives, Support Independent Journalism at the Roots!
I need to do a fundraiser for me! My economy was tied to Elise’s economy since we shared a place and now a big chunk of my economy is gone.
I also have more space so I would like to try an archival printing service. There are a lot of artists around, Quality prints make a difference. an activity that would balance with my other activities because print making is a sensual activity, very different from intellectual thought. Soothing to the soul! I have been printing for years and pay much attention to small details in the balance of tones that make a difference
I could also make larger prints of Elise’s work which I always thought she should do.
That will not happen immediately. It will take some time to get through the transition but today I have to manifest $1000.00, preferably by Monday.
Financially successful content providers write many stories about their side hustles and income streams. These are mine. At this time the most lucrative “side hustle” as they call it today (I hate that term but it identifies!) are the vintage ceramics.
There are also paid subscriptions for this newsletter, which after putting myself through testifying in the public hearing on the school charter, I surely do deserve, since testifying is an extension of the mission of this newsletter. I didn’t want to read my testimony out loud but felt it needed a spoken delivery to make sure that the Legislature is aware that it is there.
As I was listening to the previous testimonies for other bills, I felt that I could have delivered the long testimony but as I was giving my testimony, I was thankful that I chose to read the short version because I was uncomfortable and my delivery was, well, not exactly slick. Both testimonies will be included in the congressional record.
The delivery was pretty bad, but in contrast to all the others who testified often sounding obsequious as they made jokes and complemented the Legislature while saying absolutely nothing about the content and the substance of the charter except that it aligned with state law, just as they have talked about the charter locally without ever mentioning what is in the charter, as if the actual content of the charter is of no significance at all. In that case why bother with it at all?
For anyone paying attention, the pro-testimony couldn’t have worked better to substantiate my against-testimony if I had planned it. Superintendent Kahler said that three lawyers approved of the charter, as if to give it a legal stamp of approval, without saying anything about what is in the school charter.
I said that the statements that say that the District School Charter is governed by state law need to be struck out. We do not know how the courts would interpret those words. It is as if the boards are relinquishing our local charter and replacing it with state law.
Over and over again the other pro-charter testimonials said that the replacement charter aligned with state law without ever explaining any reason why our local charter should do so, as if we are not a home rule state.
To my view it should be in our local school charter that the Maine Constitution will be introduced in secondary school, which is not to be found in state law. The fact that the Maine Constitution is not taught in our public-school helps to gaslight our local communities into believing that we are governed by the state in matters local and municipal in character.
I pointed out that even state law, Title 20 Chapter 105, which the pro-charter advocates repeatedly referenced, says that when there is a conflict between private and special law and state law, that private and special law is prioritized. It has to say that. Maine is a Home Rule State.
Testifying in favor of the charter were Holly Stover who was sponsoring the bill, Boothbay Town Manager Dan Briar, Superintendent Robert Kahler and Denise Griffin, former Boothbay Harbor Town Selectperson, and there was one person on Zoom. Underneath the surface they did not seem comfortable as it appeared that they felt their mission was to convince the Legislature that there was a valid reason for them to repeal the old charter and replace it with a charter “aligned with state law” at this time, as if to say, no need to examine what is in the charter because the district educational system will be a subsidiary corporation of the state, so nothing to look at there.
The reason why they needed to repeal and replace the District School Charter, they said, echoing the mantra of the Coulombe, the Doyles, and their supporters, is because since 1953 the school charter had been amended many times! They didn’t say “How incompetent!” but it is inferred when they said they were fixing it once and for all so that no one in the future would ever have to deal with amending the charter again. Are they unaware of how many times state laws are amended? In other words, they were taking away local power and delivering the Boothbay school system to the state for the use of state purposes, surely the state will be pleased. That’s how you fix it once and for all so that the local community will never amend its school charter again.
Below are links to the Private and Special Laws re The Boothbay School Charter from 1953 and 2019 and the current proposed school charter:
P&SL 1953, c. 156: http://lldc.mainelegislature.org/Open/Laws/1953/1953_PS_c156.pdf
P&SL 2019, c. 11: http://lldc.mainelegislature.org/Open/Laws/2019/2019_PS_c011.pdf
Both my long and short testimony went into the nuts and bolts of what the state laws do and the effect it has on our communities. By deferring to state law, the boards provided the perfect opportunity to submit a congressional testimony about the effect of those laws on the whole society. Home Rule allows local communities to have a push back against some of those policies- such as funding our educational system with conditional gifts, which I favor prohibiting in our local school charter, while the school district committee decided to go that route on with the new school system as revealed in a previous FOAA request.
The pro-charter advocates were probably not expecting any against-charter advocates to testify. The hearing was not advertised other in my own letter to the editor in the Boothbay Register and so I was the only one there to say- Wait a minute! This isn’t right! Or for that matter, arguably, it isn’t legal.
The pro-charter advocates repeatedly framed the process as what “The boards” had done, which makes appropriate framing for these words in my short testimony:
There is also the issue that the inhabitants of the community had no say in approving the school charter as it went straight from the school district committee to submitting it to the legislature. The constitutional Home Rule Amendment says the “inhabitants of any municipality shall have the power to alter and amend their charters on all matters, not prohibited by Constitution or general law, which are local and municipal in character.” and I submit that “inhabitants of the community” is a significant choice of words.”
Meanwhile all the others are likely being paid for their services, one way or the other, even though they gave little input on the subject of the law under evaluation. II, however, am not paid and I provided a lot of relevant content pursuant to the matter at hand.
I thought about trying to raise funds to support this newsletter through fiscal sponsorship, since this newsletter is the only way that the Field could have known about me when they sent me an invitation to apply for a social justice scholarship account. However, I realized that I want to have complete political freedom to go where I want to go with this newsletter which might not always comport with the standards of a 501 c3 organization and so I decided to go free enterprise all the way with this newsletter.
At the same time, I have no will to create paywalls within this newsletter as the reason I started blogging in the first place was because way back then, fifteen years or so ago, I saw that there was no political voice in the Maine main stream media that represented alternate views and values. I created a voice, and fortunately along the way Substack was born, which has been the best vehicle for individual voices that I have found. The whole point is to widen the conversation and to bring together the world outside of Maine State Inc, or whatever name it goes by where you are, because although I am telling a local story, it is a version of a story that is happening everywhere across the globe.
And so the way I would really love to support this newsletter is through Paid Advertising, the good old American free enterprise way. Paved placed The Individual vs the Empire in the books advertising category. I would also love advertising for activists’ organizations, many of which are non-profits and have much larger budgets than I do and the people who work for those organizations also get paid. I would love for advertisers to also widen the conversation. Its a time for a united but decentralized movement!
This is my Paved Profile ”Where Brands Connect With Communities”
“Discover email newsletters that fit your customer profile and effortlessly launch newsletter sponsorships.” Paved Home Page
Paid advertising can be developed into an ongoing stream of income, just as it does for larger publications. Public conversation is undergoing a process of decentralization, for better or for worse. On the better side, it makes the media conversation more accessible for outsider voices, like my own. It is no coincidence that it was when I set up my profile on Paved that I learned that I have a Domain Authority Rating of 85-91, depending on the source. 65 is considered excellent.
This truly matters in this day and age of fake news and false narratives. I believe that I have that rating because I take care to reference and document my sources, which is what I also did in my long testimony against the proposed new Boothbay School Charter. I was able to do so because I have been at this for a long time without getting paid, simply because I am mission-driven. But now, today, I really do need to get paid and that needs to continue into the future.
As an inwardly directed individual, I do not consciously plan things out but I do have strong confidence that my inner directive knows where it is headed, even if my conscious point of focus is unaware and so the plan is revealed in contemplation.
It worked that way in writing my testimony against the proposed new school charter. When I listen to what is said in the testimonies for the school charter, mine could not have been better coordinated!
If I had not been independently studying the state laws for years, I probably would not have figured out that the school charter had already been sent to the state legislature and could be found with a Maine Bill Seach. Since this hearing was not publicly announced, it would have been only the boards and other leadership who are clearly all in bed together and who are the ones who wrote the words in the charter replacement that say our school charter is aligned state law and testify for the charter while avoiding all discussion of what the charter actually says and does as well as what is in state law.
I was the only one there to testify in support of Home Rule and as it happens, I know a lot about state law which informed my testimony.
Not to be forgotten, I set out to do a KickStarter event and then life, and death, happened.
But I am processing the plan. The Kickstarter format I have chosen will raise funds to hire an equity firm, possibly Marquee Equity with whom I have been in conversation, using ceramics as the reward. Marquee Equity can then help to raise greater sums of money for my plan for the productivity assets that I inherited from Andersen Design.
Andersen Design was founded on a philosophy very much in line with that of Lewis Mumford. You can download Lewis Mumford’s The Culture of the Cities here, which is a long history of the cities starting in medieval times into midcentury where, at the local level, Andersen Design picks up the story. It’s quite amazing that my parents started this business from scratch without any background in running a business other than my Dad grew up on a family farm, and so did I, a family ceramics farm. I grew up in the midst of a small and very complex free enterprise. The accountants would often remark about how complex the business was and indeed it was and being immersed in that experience t formed by ability to think systemically and intuitively. Today there are computer programs that calculate all the complex chemical interrelationships that go into designing ceramic bodies and glazes but my Dad figured all of that out on his own with handwritten recipes.
So don’t let anyone tell you that because you are not a big bag of money that you are not a professional.
Thanks to Boothbay Harbor for just saying NO to the new Town ordinances aligned with state law! I think they get it!