Wealth Creation VS Wealth Redistribution

In 2007 I was browsing the Internet, when much to my surprise I found a database for New England Arts, about which I had not previously been aware. I thought that I had already entered our business information in all the Maine and New England directories. I proceeded to add our information but soon found out that this database was different from all the others, it required agreeing to terms created by The New England Foundation For The Arts. Upon reading the terms, I found them completely unacceptable as it virtually required giving the New England Foundations For the Arts unlimited rights over any information submitted to the database or “deep linked” to the data base- with the term “deep link” left undefined.

In 2011 I am growing our business through another arts database, which is popularly known as Etsy. It is for all things handcrafted including paintings and other art works. The work that one can find in this database runs the gambit form the young artisan starting out and creating an original product in their living room to artists who have won national awards and been in many museum shows.

Etsy is so far a well known secret, a marketing venue designed for the micro economy that exists beneath the radar of public and private management of the economy which targets concentrated wealth and concentrated job creation. Etsy is a database, of sorts, but it is a visual storefront database, global in scope and conceived from the outset to be affordable to anyone, priced as a marketing venue collecting minimalist fees from those that partake of it. In the publishing world it is a highly recognized resource for ideas and talent, and so for the vendors of Etsy, Etsy is more than a way to sell their handcrafted art, it is also a means of exposure to magazines and blogs- a central piece of the social networking marketing, which is touted as the wave of the future for micro, small, and medium sized businesses.

Contrast this to that other database- The New England Foundation For the Arts that enjoys as its partners all the government art bureaucracies in New England. This is not surprising since the birth of extended government art bureaucracies coincides with the institutionalization of the National Endowments For the Arts. State government art agencies were created as conduits for the flow of capital re-distributed by the federal government through the NEA. The function of state art agencies as channels for redistributed capital has continued ever since. Today it is sometimes hard to distinguish a separation between government, foundations, and non-profit organizations. Just last summer the Maine legislature incorporated a new business classification into the statute governing the LLC. The new classification is known as the L3C designed to (allegedly) make it easier for foundations to give money to private enterprises without violating federal tax codes. One of the requirements for a business to procure L3C status is that it must not “intend” to make an “income”.

In order to have any information listed in the New England Foundation for the Arts Database, one must sign the terms of agreement, which allots onto NEFA unlimited rights over any thing in their database. The language of the agreement has similarities to language used by large private sector businesses such as Google and Adobe, but upon reading those private sector agreements one finds that there are limitations applied to Google and Adobe assuring the user that the company is only asking for rights that are necessary to conduct their businesses and no more. Over the years since 2007 I have written NEFA in objection to the terms of agreement. The phone is answered by voices sounding both young and naïve who explain it away by saying that the legal department just wanted to cover as broad a range a possible (for NEFA). They have certainly done that!

Why would anyone agree to the terms? – First and foremost because they don’t read them, and then because NEFA ties agreement to the terms with access to the inner networks of grants funding. The Maine Arts Commission is now using the New England Foundation For the Arts database to process its grants, which requires applicants to agree to the NEFA terms of agreement if they apply online.

The other night I heard The National Endowment For the Arts mentioned as a possible place to cut to reduce the national deficit. Can we as a nation exist without the National Endowment for the Arts? I don’t know about our government art bureaucracies, NEFA, and the vast network of non-profit arts funding – But Etsy can.

AFTER NOTE: This is an interesting Article on developments in Etsy. When third parties started developing new API's by reversing the Etsy API, rather that suing them, Etsy embraced and welcomed them in a win-win approach to innovative and creative marketing

Maine Marxism Takes a great New Leap Forward with The Brunswick Landing Maine Center For Innovation

 THE JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON BUSINESS, RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT if not the most of the Maine legislature have been following a Marxist course for decades, First it was just using tax payer funds as playing card in a game with high growth investors but now the legislature has transformed itself into the investor- acquiring land and property and setting up "funds" composed of every imaginable source of redistributed wealth to channel as much as possible into the hands of the state.

They call crown themselves as "the innovative" or “creative economy"- In the Baldacci administration it began with promoting the template created by Richard Florida who set standard rules for measuring "the creative class" and cities, state and municipal governments across the nation flocked to conform to the Florida template by segregating society and economies into “the creative and innovative classes" and everyone else.

With flowery language packaging, the socialists ran into little resistance and so they grew bolder. No where is this more evident than in the corporate state that is the Brunswick Landing Maine Center for Innovation – which is envisioned as a walled community  where the favored class will work play and live isolated from the rest of society.

The Marxists in our state government have created a “fund” for at least the airport of their brand new corporate state, which will be funded by all means possible including those that are usually associated with non profit organizations.

The constitution of Maine prohibits the charter of corporations by special acts of legislation, with two exceptions- one being for municipal purposes. There had to be an  exception for municipal corporations because towns are municipal corporations. A town does not exist until chartered and so an outside agency must charter the town – but wisely the legislature assigned the authority to amend the charter to the inhabitants of the municipality.

Thus in creating their corporate state with its walled community, the Marxist in the finance committee declared the corporate state to be “a municipal corporation” and “an instrumentality of the state”- On the website for the corporation it is called a “non-local unit of government” in complete defiance of what a municipality traditionally is. Since it is impossible to determine who the inhabitants of “a non local unit” are- the legislature, in chartering said municipal corporation forgot to provide for a process where by the inhabitants of the municipality can initiate the process of amending the charter.

The legislature did however think to include the right of eminent domain over abutting properties, which happen to be micro business, many of whom have been at that location for decades. They also happen to be “the inhabitants of the municipality”

So when the “Innovative economy" talks about “community’ bear in mind that this means walled communities for the favored classes, which includes the academic sector, and it means doing everything in its means to wipe out instances of the “uncreative” and “non-innovative classes” that stand in the way of its aggressive and rapid advancement.

In the case of the newly chartered “municipal corporation” this means forgetting to set up bylaws for a process by which the inhabitants of the municipality can exercise their constitutional right to amend the charter, and then providing that charter with the authority of eminent domain to seize the property of the inhabitants of the municipality.

I submit the the Maine people who care about the original founding political philosophy need to mobilize for a constitutional amendment that states that by definition a municipality or a municipal corporation is local, has a physical territory and  inhabitants of the territory governed by the municipality.This should be retro active.

Can a Municipal Corporation be an Instrumentality of the State?

 This is a letter sent to numerous local newspapers.

Dear Editor,

I am writing to make a public suggestion that when proposed bonds are on the election ballot, that information be included about the current liabilities the taxpayer owes. Also I hope that those who vote in favor of such allocations of the taxpayer’s money will take care to carefully inform themselves about what they are really getting.

A bond was passed last summer that allowed 8 million for redevelopment of the Brunswick Naval Air Station to become “Maine’s Innovative Center” a high tech training facility. Leveraging $32,500,000 in federal funds.

I am sure those in proximity to the facility looked upon this as something that would raise the property value in the surrounding area.

However that fantasy was dashed by the legislation that chartered the Maine center For Innovation Corporation and when the management published a press release purportedly to announce their incredibly original name, but additionally announcing that the new “Innovative Center” included in its bylaws the “ the power of eminent domain – the ability to acquire property from abutters.” But not to worry because press release also says the Maine Center of Innovation does not foresee using the right.

Does the management of Maine’s New Innovative center foresee the effect such an announcement is likely to have on abutting real estate values- quite possibly reducing potential buyers of abutting property to one- and that of course is The Maine Innovative Center?

This is just yet another example of the usurpation and abuses of power that is going on under the name of a government managed economy. In order to get around the constitutional prohibition against legislative chartered corporations the legislature is calling the Maine Center for Innovation a "municiple corporation" that is the instrumentality of the state". This is the height of creativity and innovation from our legislature as used to get around  Article IV, Part Third, Section 14 of the Maine State Constitution says:
Corporations shall be formd under general laws, and shall not be created by special Acts of the Legislature, except for municipal purposes, and in cases where the objects of the corporation cannot otherwise be attained, and, however formed , they shall feorever be subject of the general laws of the state 

if the Maine Center for Innovation is “an instrumentality of the state”, then can it also be “used for municipal purposes”? Doesn’t “instrumentality of the state” imply that it is used for the purposes of the state ? - Even the name - The Maine Center for Innovation, implies that it is not a municipal corporation but a state corporation.  I would think that a corporation that was used for municipal purposes would be something along the lines a corporation formed to perform public services related and restricted to the municipality. The municipalities are supposed to have sovereignty but where is such sovereignty when the municipal corporation is an “instrumentality of the state?

So the next time you are at the polls- think twice- those bonds may not be what you are bargaining for- especially if you are next door to a muncipal corporation that is the instrumentality of the state, for which the legislature, in chartering said corporation, grants it the right of eminent domain.

Sincerely,

Mackenzie Andersen, East Boothbay, Maine