Frozen, With Earthquakes; Local Journalism

Maine Public Broadcasting reports this morning that the state has had five earthquakes since Sunday. Meanwhile it's been modestly cold. When the salt marsh freezes, it needs to accommodate the rising and falling of the tide every 25 hours.

Here's what the loop of the Dyer River under my window looked like yesterday after the tide went out:

Yesterday I mentioned the Forbes survey saying that Maine was the worst place to start a business. Actually, for the second year in a row they said Maine was the worst place to conduct a business. Others beside me questioned the Forbes article. While the Portland Press Herald often disappoints when real journalism is called for, Maine has plenty of others who know how to report and  write.

For example, Meredith Goad, in the Kennebec Journal, points out:

"Never mind that just last spring, an Ernst & Young report claimed that Maine's tax climate is the best in the nation for new business investment.

And in July, Forbes ranked Portland, Maine's largest city, one of the 15 best places in the country for young professionals, in part because it has the highest number of small businesses per capita of all the cities surveyed.

Garrett Martin, associate director of the Maine Center for Economic Policy in Augusta, says such rankings should be read with "a grain of salt" because what they say depends upon what they measure and who is doing the measuring."

http://www.kjonline.com/news/maine-worst-state-for-business_-depends-on-who-you-ask_2011-12-12.html