Tag Archives: East-West highway

May 14 2014

The Trashy Truth

 

 

One of the reasons I hold Paul Davis in such high regard is that he does not dive headlong into situations and issues without waiting to see how the facts will unfold. I have tried to emulate his patience as I have studied the East-West Highway issue. While there are certain edicts of conservatism that I cannot compromise, such as private landowner rights and the rights of the individual, the secrecy that has shrouded the highway has kept me suspicious at best.

 

It is no secret that Doug Thomas and I do not get along. I feel Senator Thomas is a dishonest man. He changes his positions on issues with the regularity of a chameleon. I have had first hand experience in seeing that the good Senator has all the listening skills of a bullhorn. He is one of those types of individuals that Ronald Reagan once said, “Listen with their mouth, not their ears.” I do not trust Doug Thomas.

 

So with this mistrust, I continued to quietly investigate the corridor issue. I recently attended a meeting in Alton, Maine. The meeting had been explained to me as a East-West Highway informational, but when I got there, I found it was about a different issue, but not entirely separate from the highway.

 

You see, Alton has a trash problem and it is a growing problem. Alton is the spot for the Juniper Ridge Land Fill. It sits along I-95. The problem with trash is that once you fill the land with it, you need more land. Juniper Ridge is expanding and there are other interests that want to create another landfill, for more trash.

 

Trash by the truckloads from out of State, coming up interstate to the landfill and, now we learn the corridor is going to cross I-95 right there in Alton. Coincidence? I think not.

 

How did the residents of Alton end up with this trashy problem? It’s the small town dilemma. Not enough votes, not enough voice and not enough clout. So the trash continues to spread up the corridor.

 

I live in Piscataquis County in the foothills of the 100-mile wilderness. We have heard the arguments for this large structure destroying the fabric of the Highlands that we love so much, but the struggles of our friends down in Alton exposed for me a whole new danger that I hadn’t heard before. The more we learn about the Corridor the more it smells, well, like trash.

 

Landfills eventually run out of land and they need more. Remember, they are shipping in trash from other States. As the appetite for more land grows, where do you think they will find it? Where can they find more little towns with a small voice, no votes and no clout? How about Atkinson, Ornville, Charleston, Garland and so many others along the shrouded route? We don’t know, nobody knows, but the trash keeps growing and demanding more land.

 

Have you ever driven through the New Jersey turnpike? God didn’t create those mountains, man created them. We live here in the Highlands for a reason. We love the wild beauty here.

 

The biggest question raised about the highway was how would it be paid for? Trash is a lucrative business. If the answer is to bring in mounds of trash from all over the United States to deposit in our beautiful backyards and contaminate our lakes and streams, then this answer stinks! If you are tired of the trashy truth of Thomas’s rotting lies that keep turning up the more we dig, then its time to clean out the garbage and vote Paul Davis in!

Nov 26 2013

Response to Ric Tyler’s Attack on Paul Davis

 

I wish that I could have responded while Paul was on the radio with Ric Tyler but I was trapped in the cab of my pickup on the way to a Dr’s appointment with no phone, no computer, left only to yell at the radio and pound the dash of my truck.  Now home, I will attempt to engage in a far more constructive means of communication and debate.  There are several things Mr. Tyler needs to be aware of:

 

First, I am one of the several individuals that Senator Thomas called immediately after his conversation with Paul Davis at the Blaine House barbecue to use our friendship and influence with Rep. Davis to ask him to run for the Senate seat.  Doug explained to me that he was tired of the demands of the Senate District, which before redistricting was the largest east of the Mississippi, and felt also that it was important that Paul stay involved in politics.  Doug Thomas also told me clearly that Doug had told Paul that he was willing to step aside if Paul wanted run for the new Senate seat, District 4.

 

I think the heated exchange between Mr. Tyler and Rep Davis on the East/West issue is in itself a flaming example to how this whole project was botched.  Because Sen. Thomas and Peter Vique brought the public sector into the equation with the feasibility bill, Conservatives are now caught in the confusing and awkward debate on whether to defend infrastructure and progress or stand against government intrusion into private business because the two have become entwined and not separated.  These heated debates are happening all over Piscataquis County right now, fracturing and weakening a very strong Republican bastion.  This mismanagement falls directly at the feet of Senator Doug Thomas.  Why was a feasibility study bill even needed when eventually the DOT would have done this very thing as a matter of course? Unless, Sen. Thomas thought this would be his own political crowning achievement; instead, it has become his political millstone.

 

Rep. Davis is right to be concerned that this project could end up on the backs of taxpayers.  Given its clumsy fumble out of the gate, the taxpayers should be wary.  The lack of transparency from the beginning has many strong republicans in the North Woods angry and distrustful of Sen. Thomas.  Paul Davis is right and wise to be running for this seat.  Simply put, the people of the 2nd district trust Paul Davis and they do not trust Doug Thomas.

 

Ric Tyler’s rebuke of Davis’ critique that Vique should have got his plan perfected in private before he went public shows a fundamental misunderstanding of good business.  I am a small businessman.  I can tell you that when I have a new business idea the first thing I am told by those I wish to present it to is that you better have all your plan in place, all your answers ready and prepared to handle the tough questions before you make your presentation.  Peter Vique broke the cardinal rule of business.  He wasn’t prepared for questions.  As a result Doug Thomas, Piscataquis County and Northern Maine are paying the price for being involved either by choice or not.

 

Presenting your plan before its complete and ready reduces the chance of transparency insomuch that as the confusion ensues from lack of information one cannot even begin to present their ideas.  All the time then is consumed by explaining and defending ill-informed attacks, putting out the constant fires of diversion, and all the truth is soon lost in the dust of contention.  This is the East/West highway failure.  Someone tried to expose the process before the product. Someones ego got ahead of common sense.

 

Finally, Ric Tyler’s foolish attack on Paul Davis that his questioning of the East/West debacle shows that Paul is anti-business is reckless at best and at worst a grotesque insult to the great conservative legacy that Paul Davis has firmly imprinted on the whole of the State of Maine.  Mr. Tyler needs to apologize to Rep. Davis for his thoughtless attack.  Spirited debate is one thing but groundless insults are another.  It should be noted that I had to enter the Dr’s office before the conclusion of the interview and perhaps Mr. Tyler composed himself and retracted those errant statements.  It should also be noted that I will be posting this email response on my website at The Maine Conservative Voice.

Apr 4 2013

King Of The Mountain

 

 

It’s a mantra of sorts for some.  It can be seen splashed across the backs of vehicles in the form of bumper stickers.  Groups have formed across the Internet using the phrase as their rallying cry.  The statement is “Not In Anybody’s Backyard”.

The premise of that statement should give any lover of liberty pause.  It assumes that if one body feels their beliefs and opinions are of the utmost importance, than anybody’s opinions should succumb and adhere to the mantra that the body with the loudest voice trumpets. It’s the essence of anarchy, the ruthless struggle of the strongman beating his way to the top of the heap to claim, for the moment, to be King of the Mountain. For a time, he has the opportunity to demand that anybody must embrace the belief system that his body is preaching.

Label me an old fashioned fool if you will, but I am not willing to surrender the jurisdiction of my backyard to any mantra, emotion or activism.  There is no cause so grand that makes my privacy expendable nor should my belief in private property capitulate to the so-called greater good.  Do we so easily lose sight of the consequences of our actions?

We are all creatures of passion, driven at varying degrees by the emotions attached to the things we hold dear.  But when the passion has dissipated, what is the residue of our actions?  What were we willing to sacrifice to gain the prize that fired our soul during the heat of the conflict?

Our Founding Fathers valued a man’s private life, his backyard.  They detested the idea that one man could encroach upon another’s privacy just because he deemed it necessary, a means to an end.  They objected in strong terms to the never-ending cycle of the toppling and resurrecting of strong men, its damage upon the people.

Are we so willing to forfeit the rights to our own land and, for our neighbor, his land, our backyards, to fulfill a vendetta we deem worthy?  Does your backyard belong to anybody or does it belong to you?  Which body should tell anybody what to do?  My backyard is my backyard and I have no interest in allowing the opinions of others, of any stripe, supplant my authority, my rights, on my land.

From the moment we are willing to trade our freedoms and individuality for an emotion and passion, we have begun the slide toward the totalitarian concept where the strongest and loudest dictate the beliefs of others.  Where then, will the freedoms we hold so dear be found?  Quite frankly, not in anybody’s backyard.

Sep 17 2012

Hop, Skip and a Jump

 

“Winter is coming, but these sweatshirts are perfect for fall.”   It sounds like the perfect slogan for the winter front of a department store here in the northern reaches of Maine.  Those of us who are beginning to enjoy the cool bite of fall in the air can fully comprehend the message in those words.  What is incomprehensible is why the Obama campaign would tweet this campaign message minutes before receiving the bodies from the Libyan consulate attack.  Yes, our President had your fall and winter apparel on his mind while the rest of us was recoiling in shock from the brutality of unspeakable monsters.

But it is easy, perhaps, to understand his lack of gravitas in this situation.  Three days before the attacks, security officials from these middle-eastern countries warned our Nation that these attacks from terrorists were imminent.   The President chose to skip every one of these security meetings in order to keep campaigning and no Marines were sent to protect the Libyan Embassy until after the carnage.  Marines at the Cairo Embassy were stripped of live ammunition.

Now his response, in the aftermath, is to blame our freedom of speech.  This has prompted the world at large to begin to now openly mock America’s foreign policy.   Even liberal columnist, Kirsten Powers, has implored the President to “stop blaming the victims”.  This, in light of the fact that the first response from this Administration was to blame a movie for the acts of vile hate, as if someone’s expressed opinion validates a response of murder and hate.

The President and his surrogates have also tried to portray this as an random, spontaneous act, believing that Americans would appreciate rape and pillage better if they felt the terrorists just stumbled into it, forced by the opinions of American filmmaker.  Unfortunately, even this silly notion is not founded on any shred of reason or fact.  The President of Libya has stated emphatically that this was a coordinated and previously planned attack by Al-Qaeda, meant to coincide with the anniversary of  9/11.

While the President has tried to heap blame on the freedoms and liberties we enjoy in this Nation, Governor Mitt Romney denounced the attacks and refused to apologize for American freedoms, imperfect as the expressions thereof may be.  For his show of strength, the President and his media surrogates have vilified Mitt Romney.  Imagine a leader doing something so heinous as decrying evil and defending the United States!  It might even be thought of as Presidential, for shame!

Sarcasm aside, the Democrat Party has a virulent strain of the blame-anybody-else-but-me virus running through its very core of function.  It runs from the White House all the way down to our local Senate Races here in Maine.  In Senate District 27, Herb Clark has been trying to convince voters here in the Highlands that he was duped into sponsoring the bill that called for a feasibility study of the East-West corridor.  That he was somehow forced to hop in front of the cameras when he desired the publicity at the bills signing.  And now that he has jumped off the train, he calls his opponent Senator Thomas a “flip-flop” for calling for a slow down of the train so that all the information can be correctly and clearly disseminated to the people affected by the corridor.  Mr. Clark prefers to apologize for the dispensation of truth and knowledge, something we in the Highlands hold in high regard.  Truth and knowledge has the ring of freedom to it.

How are we in District 27 supposed to trust the Honorable Herbert Clark with the sacred duty of making decisions that effect our livelihoods if the good Representative can’t even trust his own judgment?  People of Maine, we are a people who pride ourselves in our discernment and common sense.  If Representative Clark can be so easily “misled”, so easily confused, and can so easily advocate the shut off of information, then we should be certain that he is a poor representation of the voters of District 27.  We should never apologize for the Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and the Freedom Of Information.  The Democrats seem more concerned with placating maniacal monsters and hiding from truth than defending the very Freedoms that make this nation great.