Maine politics question (taxes, live, land)

[maineguy8888]

Back to Maine politics: it's refreshing to see Poliquin far ahead of Cain. I see her new ads stress that "she's a Mainer, through and through". Her campaign must have polled and found out that people know she's from away.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

She has never held a job in the private sector. All of her employment experience has been on government payrolls, some on no-show jobs.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by maineguy8888

Back to Maine politics: it's refreshing to see Poliquin far ahead of Cain. I see her new ads stress that "she's a Mainer, through and through". Her campaign must have polled and found out that people know she's from away.

Lets see, hmm. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, she grew up largely in Illinois and attended High School in New Jersey. She studied at University of Maine - Orono and got a Bachelor of Music, then on to Harvard University in Massachusetts and got a Masters in Education.

Over all it sounds like she would be a good high school music teacher.

Is that not "Mainer, through and through" ?

Wiki says that her father used to sell shoes down in Kennebunk. That ought to make her a Mainer.

[maineguy8888]

Originally Posted by Submariner

Lets see, hmm. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, she grew up largely in Illinois and attended High School in New Jersey. She studied at University of Maine - Orono and got a Bachelor of Music, then on to Harvard University in Massachusetts and got a Masters in Education.

Over all it sounds like she would be a good high school music teacher.

Is that not "Mainer, through and through" ?

Wiki says that her father used to sell shoes down in Kennebunk. That ought to make her a Mainer.

Sub, don't take this personally!
No, she's from away.....like many of our "leading Maine politicians". I don't like that.

[ladyalicemore]

I don't live in ME. I visit several times a year.

To me, people in Maine live in two states, and that is clear from the threads here that impinge on politics. Being from Maine is more important in the Northern countries, a different electoral district in ME. In the Portland area and a bit northward, being well-qualified to hold public office, with a tactful sense of what public discourse is, is more important than a "birther" type credential.

Will I retire in ME? I just can't decide. I have found some of the posts (not on this thread at all, very civil, but in the course of the election as a whole) that support my sense that ME can be a very small-minded culture with no sense of world issues. Where retribution by vitriol punishes any kind of dissent. To me, the repression of dissent is not American. It's village-think on a macro level, and such communities will never prosper, imo. We live in a world economy, not a village economy.

Yet Maine is the most beautiful, most community-engaged (in the mid-coast area) place I have ever known. Lots of positives, too.

Parochialism isn't one of those strengths, nor xenophobia.

I may have to stop posting here after saying this, so it was nice knowin' you all. I've been thinking about these issues all summer and have on the whole been very disappointed with ME. Yes, you'll do fine without me, and yet I am very active in community issues and am thought to have had a good impact where I live now. I have worked in communities since years ago, when I was active in Manhattan politics on the lower East Side. Before then I was active in communities in VT.

I'll tolerate everything except hatred of people designated as "foreigners," outsiders. Cross-pollination of ideas creates growth. Circling the wagons creates . . . nothing but a closed circle. Physics tells us that a closed system increases entropy. Nineteenth-century physics. It's closed systems that shut down, as entropy always increases. No energy available for work.

What most places would like going forward is lots of energy for change, not the "heat death" of all energy. Sometimes I think ME is on a death-trip. But maybe the whole country is, at this point. No one seems to believe that change can be for the better, and often it is. Not always, for sure, but often. Voting for no-change means no change. People with ideas will go elsewhere. Some of those ideas will be unsuitable, but others might change the game. This is why cities progress faster than rural areas: they are more mobile and change is (while never easy) easier than in other places.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by maineguy8888

Sub, don't take this personally!
No, she's from away.....like many of our "leading Maine politicians". I don't like that.

I understand. No problemo here.

I admit I am also 'from away'

I think it is funny that she claims to be "Mainer, through and through"

[maineguy8888]

Originally Posted by ladyalicemore

I don't live in ME. I visit several times a year.

To me, people in Maine live in two states, and that is clear from the threads here that impinge on politics. Being from Maine is more important in the Northern countries, a different electoral district in ME. In the Portland area and a bit northward, being well-qualified to hold public office, with a tactful sense of what public discourse is, is more important than a "birther" type credential.

Will I retire in ME? I just can't decide. I have found some of the posts (not on this thread at all, very civil, but in the course of the election as a whole) that support my sense that ME can be a very small-minded culture with no sense of world issues. Where retribution by vitriol punishes any kind of dissent. To me, the repression of dissent is not American. It's village-think on a macro level, and such communities will never prosper, imo. We live in a world economy, not a village economy.

Yet Maine is the most beautiful, most community-engaged (in the mid-coast area) place I have ever known. Lots of positives, too.

Parochialism isn't one of those strengths, nor xenophobia.

I may have to stop posting here after saying this, so it was nice knowin' you all. I've been thinking about these issues all summer and have on the whole been very disappointed with ME. Yes, you'll do fine without me, and yet I am very active in community issues and am thought to have had a good impact where I live now. I have worked in communities since years ago, when I was active in Manhattan politics on the lower East Side. Before then I was active in communities in VT.

I'll tolerate everything except hatred of people designated as "foreigners," outsiders. Cross-pollination of ideas creates growth. Circling the wagons creates . . . nothing but a closed circle. Physics tells us that a closed system increases entropy. Nineteenth-century physics. It's closed systems that shut down, as entropy always increases. No energy available for work.

What most places would like going forward is lots of energy for change, not the "heat death" of all energy. Sometimes I think ME is on a death-trip. But maybe the whole country is, at this point. No one seems to believe that change can be for the better, and often it is. Not always, for sure, but often. Voting for no-change means no change. People with ideas will go elsewhere. Some of those ideas will be unsuitable, but others might change the game. This is why cities progress faster than rural areas: they are more mobile and change is (while never easy) easier than in other places.

We get tired of people from away coming in and calling non-xenophobes "xenophobes". If the shoe were on the other foot, YOU would get tired of it too, methinks.
That's all.

[ladyalicemore]

If you dislike "people from away," you don't like outsiders. That is a form of xenophobia.

Outsiders might have suggestions worth listening to. They might be able to tell you something about why Maine is struggling more than many states. Why only older people migrate to Maine.

Older people, including myself, do not need jobs, don't need viable options for growth. Don't need a hopeful future for their kids. Change just for its own sake makes no sense, but it is not nonsense to think about change. Ideas can't be judged by who has them. They should be judged by whether they might work. JMO.

[Mark S.]

Originally Posted by maineguy8888

We get tired of people from away coming in and calling non-xenophobes "xenophobes".

The problem is that some who think they are non-xenophobes are in fact xenophobes.

Just read through this page. No one is addressing the issues espoused by the candidates. They don't like Cain because she isn't from Maine. Under what definition is that not xenophobic?

[Zymer]

Originally Posted by ladyalicemore

I may have to stop posting here after saying this, so it was nice knowin' you all.

Nah, you don't have to leave. There are lots of opinions here, and you know what they say about those...

There may be *some* who hold some strict opinions about 'people from away', but there are a lot of 'people from away' here, or people who went away and came back, who don't necessarily subscribe to those same opinions.

I didn't even know where Cain was from, my issue with her is watching her flat out lie, even though the truth is available and has been known for *years*.

In this particular case, of course, I'm referencing her story about Poliquin and his RE taxes and his 'pretending to be a logger'. I wanted to know the truth so I spent some time the other day, hunting it down. Here's the *real* story:

Poliquin owns/has owned and/or developed a number of properties in the state. The property in question consists of twelve acres. As is legal and acceptable under the program as it currently stands, he put 10 acres into the Tree-growth Program...just as many more of us do. The two remaining acres, with the house on it, with a multi-million dollar valuation was not included in the Program and he paid the usual taxes on it, with no discount. The land in the Program was taxed at the rate for the program.

There was no violation of the law, he merely used it in the way many of us are permitted to do. The rub came about when it turned out that a 'conservation' group had been able to get a restriction placed on the deed (when it was held by a previous owner) that limits the amount of trees that can be cut. There arose a question of whether the deed restriction would so limit cutting to the extent it could not be properly managed as per the forestry plan that had been filed.

So, rather than participate in what could amount to an expensive legal battle for *all* parties, the authorities agreed that the property in the Tree Growth Program could be could be transferred to the Open Space Program (which is similarly tax-advantaged) without incurring any penalties for removing it from Tree Growth.

There was no violation of law, the ten acres of land in question remains in a tax-advantaged program, and the multi-million dollar property consisting of two acres and his house is assessed and taxed at the normal rate, which he pays.

I don't care where Emily comes from, she is dishonest and a liar. What's more, the fact that she has latched on to this and twisted it, and continues to lie about it (as recently as last night) when the truth is so easily found, marks her as being exceedingly stupid- too stupid to serve in the capacity she is trying to obtain.

Her sponsorship of LD 1886 in 2007 was also mind-blowingly stupid. Yes, it contained 'opt-out' language, but the default was to go ahead and collect the weight data. How many parents would have known that they could opt out? Nothing in the bill specified that parents would be notified, or informed that they *could* opt out.