Conservative 99% dupes support 1% candidate for U.S. Senate

Maine State Treasurer Poliquin worked for the 1% in CT and NY managing pension funds (check his resume) and now he wants to represent them in the U.S. Senate.

Naive state legislators -- like mine, Phil Curtis, and perhaps yours -- think this will be good for their constituents in Maine. Nothing could be further from the truth -- but maybe it's their own campaign coffers they are thinking of?

Scroll all the way down to see Poliquin's bogus claims. Then join me in writing a truth-filled letter to the editor today.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bruce Poliquin <info@bruceforsenate.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 6:15 PM
Subject: Our campaign is moving fast!
To: Patriot <lsavage3@gmail.com>

 

Dear Patriot,

Our campaign for U.S. Senate is moving faster and faster every day!

Last week, Utah Senator Mike Lee endorsed me with an announcement to his national network of conservative supporters.

Earlier today, eight fiscally conservative state legislators from across Maine also endorsed my campaign:

Representative David C. Burns (R-Whiting)
Representative Phillip A. Curtis (R-Madison)
Representative Larry C. Dunphy (R-Embden)
Representative Jeffery A. Gifford (R-Lincoln)
Representative Peter B. Johnson (R-Greenville)
Representative Mel Newendyke (R-Litchfield)
Representative Beth A. O'Connor (R-Berwick)
Representative Deborah J. Sanderson (R-Chelsea)

 

Rep. David Burns from Washington County said "I am pleased to support Bruce Poliquin in his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.  Since coming to know Bruce in 2010, I have been impressed with his strong conservative values and the tenaciousness with which he works for this State and our citizens.  I believe that Treasurer Poliquin would be a very dynamic member of the U.S. Senate from the very beginning and would truly represent well the interest of all Mainers."

Rep. Peter Johnson from Piscataquis County stated "I am excited to endorse Bruce Poliquin’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate.  He has been a great Treasurer for the State of Maine.  His aggressive leadership on the boards of many quasi-government organizations, like the Maine State Housing Authority, has uncovering wasteful spending and potentially illegal practices.  Bruce has proven that he has the ability, initiative, and toughness to uncover waste in complex government programs while withstanding criticism for doing what is right.  He will do the same as our next United States Senator from Maine.”

 

Rep. Beth O'Connor from York County commented "It is a pleasure and an honor to support Bruce Poliquin for U.S. Senate.  He has been strong on all fiscal issues regarding the State of Maine, and has put us on a much more secure financial footing.  Bruce is the most fiscally conservative candidate in the race for this open U.S. Senate seat.  With his tenacity and excellent grasp of the financial difficulties we face as a nation, I believe Treasurer Poliquin is the only candidate that can help restore fiscal sanity in Washington and safeguard the purse strings of the American people."

Every day, more state and national leaders believe that I am the Republican who can beat former governor Angus King in the general election.  I am honored to have their support, but am really depending on people like you to give our campaign the momentum necessary to win!

With three other U.S. Senate seats poised to shift Republican, the balance of power in Washington could very well hinge upon Maine's open seat. 
...
The financial crisis in Washington worsens.  This open U.S. Senate seat in Maine is a rare opportunity for you to help send to Washington a fiscal conservative with 35 years of private sector experience who is not a career politician.

Please help me join a growing group of fiscal reformers in Washington to address our nation's out-of-control spending, rising debt, and unaffordable entitlements  --  just like we've done in Maine.

Best regards,
Bruce

 Occupy Mainers in Portland say: TAX THE RICH!

"Emergency" rolls on

In recent news...the Patriot Act was renewed yet again, signed by alleged constitutional scholar, President Obama, while on imperial rounds in Europe.

Your tax $$ at work  Video powered by ComeWatchMe.com

Simultaneously, an amendment removing the checks and balances in our Constitution over the Commander in Chief exercising the power to make war passed in the House, tacked on to the gargantuan FY12 Defense Authorization bill that included a tidy $118 billion for occupation expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Good article by Medea on Common Dreams here.) While layoffs of public workers rolled on, schools and businesses shut down, and foreclosures showed no signs of abating.

Locally in Maine we hear that the Navy cannot wait to get their hands on the latest nuclear capable warship due to roll out of General Dynamics-owned Bath Iron Works, and to launch it will have to dredge the river in August instead of winter, which is bad for the critters.

The Navy appears to be in a hurry to move that ship into position surrounding the holder of a ton of U.S. government debt, China. Right at this moment preparations are underway to entomb a coral reef on Jeju Island off South Korea's western coast, to build a big U.S. Navy base, while hunger strikers are going on two months of fasting resisting the rape of their coast.

Local resistance to Jeju Island naval base construction

General Dynamics is in turn owned by the Crown family of Chicago, who helped bankroll the senator from Illinois' election as president, in much the same way AIPAC bankrolls the re-election campaigns of the congresswomen and men who gave right wing extremist Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel twenty-nine standing ovations while he denied the occupation of Palestine.

Tripoli in Libya received its worst pounding with NATO air strikes yet, after weeks of all kinds of bombing which I think even the mainstream media has stopped characterizing as humanitarian.

Tuition at state universities where many working class kids have been able to afford a college degree is skyrocketing, as graduates staggering under six figures of debt enter a flat job market -- one, in fact, said to discriminate against those who are unemployed. And there is no federal jobs program. Oh, wait, there is the one that spends $2 billion+ a year to make you feel how empowering working for them will be. You'll finally get the respect that a low-income youth does not have any way of earning, short of making a lot of money, or being gifted at entertainment.

While the rate of joblessness and homelessness and suicide and divorce among veterans of the endless war on terror continues to climb. While the public schools are dismantled and turned into what they've been trying to become for years, free public babysitting. While idealistic teachers are being deliberately discouraged and driven out, to make room for "troops to teachers." A former Army officer with little prior experience in education was made superintendent in Providence, Rhode Island -- and he sent every teacher in the district a layoff notice.

The dictators of the Arab spring are firing on demonstrators (Syria, Yemen), disappearing and torturing demonstrators (Bahrain), and building up private armies of foreign mercenaries under the management of the former Blackwater, now Xe's CEO, Erik Prince (United Arab Emirates). And the U.S. is silent, or mouths a few empty phrases.

But the U.S. cheers when Israelis take over land in Palestine by force of violence, disrupting ancient agriculture, stealing the water, with settlements employing private militias of their own. It used to be said that Israel had no partner for peace in the Middle East, despite U.S. client states like Egypt and Jordan cooperating with Israel – both in denying Palestinians the right of return, and in enforcing the siege of Gaza. It is the Palestinians who, in truth, have no partner for peace, as an increasingly belligerent Israel continues to be enabled by its best buddy, the bully U.S.A.

And middle income U.S. citizens are subject to taxation without representation, in order to fund the wild joyride of empire to its bitter, inevitable end.

More than 2,600 political activists have been arrested since Obama took office, there have been FBI raids of organizers homes where their doors were kicked down and their computers and other belongings were confiscated. Ongoing assaults on poor people, and mass incarceration, are the order of the day. Deportations have increased under this Administration as well. And Bradley Manning, whistleblower, just completed an entire year in mostly solitary detention without standing trial.

The struggle for information is what I can participate in right now. I'm honored to think that Bradley and I might be compatriots in that way. And when the people have finally had enough, and they take to the streets and squares of their cities and towns, here will be their cry: “Tax the rich! And bring our war dollars home.”

Dungeons & Dumb-dumbs

Dirty Tricks Department: Maine's (doubly) historic labor mural was removed over the weekend. The price tag for much maligned state workers to do so is undisclosed. Where the mural will end up, nobody knows. The City of Portland is backing away from enabling the sneaky removal, and may not offer it a home in City Hall after all.

The same week Gov. LePage announced he would remove the mural from a lobby in the Dept. of Labor because it is one-sided, he also announced that he would tax the rich in Maine, but he can't find any.

He said this once in class (see John Harlow's video here), and then repeated it for a newspaper reporter covering his appearance at University of Maine's Farmington campus.

Meanwhile the history buffs among us watch censorship rear its ugly head right out in the open. In the corptocracy, it usually works invisibly by shutting out much that is possible. The closing down, boarding up, tearing down style reminds us more of earlier eras of governments that worked on behalf of business, not for the people. Governments that controlled a restive underclass by whipping up hatred for scapegoats. As we now see in the many actions including preemptive prosecution against Muslims simply for being Muslim.

They and Bradley Manning are held incommunicado for immense stretches of time in a young human life, without being suspected or accused of any violent crime. They are in jail for what they believe, and because they are in one of two special prisons called Communication Management Units (article here about CMUs on Democracy Now!), there are twelve year-olds haven't spoken to their father in four years. Special prisons for ideological crimes looked too racist, so the prisons now receive environmental activists and animal rights activists to balance out the demographic of thought criminals.

Meanwhile, Governor LePage has special prisons in mind for Maine's indigent and homeless: “If it were up to me, I’d find a dungeon very cheaply and house them all.” Full report here on The Maine Campus.