Acting Locally

For those of you in Maine or wishing (wisely) that you were -

Today is a special election for the empty state senate seat here in District 20. This would be a really good time to go vote for Chris Johnson, if you haven't already. His opponent Dana Dow is pledged to work for the re-election of Gov He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. 'Nuff said - except Dow's silly statements aside, Johnson is a smart, well-prapared and progressive guy we'd be very lucky to have in Augusta. http://chrisjohnsonforstatesenator.org/

Bigfoot Henry, by Julia

I'm on call to drive people to the polls. I should only drive people voting for Dow, given how likely I am to get lost.......

The Maine Center for Economic Policy www.mecep.org has done a report showing that Maine lost more jobs per capita in 2011 than any other state. Way to go, job-creating Republicans!

Paul Krugman and many others are pointing out that once again Romney may have actually lost an election he's supposed to have won, since some Maine Republican Caucus votes from Ron Paul-rich territory weren't counted. Wait a minute, those Republicans who worry so much about voter fraud have been monkeying with election results? I am shocked, shocked!

The Maine political blog Dirigo Blue www.dirigoblue.com reports (based on a NYT reference, the Dirigo link to it is broken) that 38.4% of income in northern Maine's Washington County comes from some sort of government assistance. They also tell us that Medicare accounts for 7.25% of income in cold and I mean cold Aroostook County.

Frances Perkins, smiling

You might consider "friending" Frances Perkins on Facebook, she has good recent posts on why Social Security is a good investment, and the real effects of stagnant worker wages. Actually, our country's first female cabinet head and inventor of much of the New Deal doesn't post on Facebook, she died before the Internet was invented. The Frances Perkins Center http://francesperkinscenter.org/
carries her work into the 21st Century and maintains the Facebook page.

Wiscasset Community Center

Yesterday as I was heading into the Wiscasset Community Center http://www.wiscassetrec.com/ gym, people were saying since this winter there has been so little snow, they were having trouble with their tradition of complaining about the weather all winter. I suggested that they consider complaining about having nothing to complain about. This idea was met with scattered applause.

Maine Yankee, from their web site

The Wiscasset Community Center is a wonderful facility, by the way. Where did this small town come up with the funds to build such a place? It was built just when the Maine Yankee Nuclear power plant http://www.maineyankee.com/ on Westport Island (part of Wiscasset's tax base) was closed for safety reasons.

The group Citizens for Safe Power that had opposed the plant didn't succeed in stopping construction based on safety concerns, but the eventual failure of the facility on safety grounds is a reminder that they were right, nonetheless.