Anti-activist bill backed by Collins, Allen, and Michaud

Published in the Portland Phoenix

US Senator Susan Collins and both of Maine’s US representatives are backing legislation that could result in more incidents like the November 2 run-in between police and eco-activists in Greenville.

Environmental and civil-liberties advocates fear that the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007,” which has already passed the US House, would make such intimidation by police more common — and more legal.

The bill creates a commission to study ways the government can prevent “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence” by anyone, including American citizens, “in furtherance of political or social objectives,” or “to promote . . . political, religious, or social beliefs.”

US Senator Susan Collins, who is seeking re-election next year, is the bill’s lead Senate sponsor. Her chief challenger for re-election, 1st District Democratic representative Tom Allen, voted with the 404-member House majority in favor of the legislation on October 23. So did 2nd District Democrat Mike Michaud. (Six members of Congress were opposed, and 22 abstained.)

All three Maine lawmakers — through their spokespeople — say they support protestors’ First Amendment rights and reject any suggestion this bill could result in intimidation of peaceful protestors, but activists fear increased bullying all the same.

“It’s inappropriate for the government to determine what is or is not an extremist belief system,” says Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. “This bill goes too far in attempting to limit freedom of thought and expression.”

“Any folks who have a dissenting opinion could be endangered,” says Emily Posner, one of three Native Forest Network volunteers cited November 2 for trespassing on the parking lot of Plum Creek corporation’s Greenville office, while filming footage for a documentary on the company’s proposed resort-development project around Moosehead Lake, which the NFN opposes.

Plum Creek officials told the Bangor Daily News they have been rigorously enforcing their “no trespassing” signs since 2005, when the company’s equipment and property was vandalized, and some was stolen.

The encounter went beyond a parking-lot standoff: after the NFN volunteers were cornered by a private security guard, they were allowed to leave, but were later tracked down by members of three law-enforcement agencies (a Greenville policeman, two Piscataquis County sheriff’s deputies, and two Maine Game Wardens) and questioned further, including about whether the group — armed only with a video camera — was violent or had any explosives, according to Posner.

Posner says she denied an officer’s request to search her car because he lacked a search warrant, and adds that the officer responded that her answer made him suspicious. She quoted him as saying, “It seems like you really know your rights, but you’re trying to hide something.”

She fears the new law could make things even worse, with activists “being tied up the courts,” distracted from their constitutionally protected activism.

And even the proposal of the law is an obstacle, Posner says, noting that now people who would otherwise be calling attention to social and environmental problems have to lobby DC politicians to keep their First Amendment rights unsullied.

Talking about Verizon and FairPoint on MPBN's Maine Things Considered

Aired on Maine Public Broadcasting Network's Maine Things Considered

Exclusive: No raises for seven years - That’s just one way FairPoint plans to pay for northern New England's Verizon buyout

Published in the Portland Phoenix

If regulators allow FairPoint Communications to buy Verizon’s telephone lines and systems in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, its 3000-plus employees can look forward to seven years without a raise.

Further, FairPoint customers will benefit from no additional spending on telephone or Internet operations for the next seven years. FairPoint has pledged to buy and install new telephone and Internet equipment in all three states, but as of now, the company has no idea how much it will have to spend just to get the existing Verizon equipment working properly — something that must be done before the first upgrade project can even begin. And the company plans to spend the same amount running its systems in the year 2015 as it will in 2008.

Shareholders will be worse off than customers — apparently even more so than they’re expecting. According to filings with the Public Utilities Commission, FairPoint is predicting shareholder equity will decline by $1.1 billion (a figure 25 percent higher than the $900 million drop the company has publicly projected elsewhere).

The company as a whole will also be in bad shape. One possible scenario FairPoint has presented to Maine regulators would leave FairPoint with “essentially no cash left after payment of expenses, interest, taxes and dividends” — leaving it nothing to pay off the $1.5 billion in debt the company will incur in the $2.7 billion Verizon deal, much less the $625 million it currently owes its creditors. (And if that scenario doesn’t happen and there is cash left over, FairPoint has refused to promise regulators it would use the cash to pay off debt.)

If the proposed Verizon-FairPoint telephone merger is approved, the quality — and even the existence — of land-line telephone service throughout northern New England, will depend on FairPoint’s ability to make good on several key financial assumptions. But analyses in PUC filings call those assumptions “inappropriate” and assert they “do not reflect reality.”

The publicly traded North Carolina-based telecommunications company, which runs small local phone companies in 18 states (including Maine), has gone to great lengths to assure the public, politicians, regulatory officials, and industry analysts that the deal’s finances will work out. Its chief operating officer, Peter Dixon, told Mainers back in June that the money coming into FairPoint from former Verizon customers’ monthly service fees will be more than enough to pay for FairPoint’s increased expenses, including repaying outstanding loans. But the company’s internal financial projections, summarized in PUC records, say money will be so tight that success depends on, among other specious ideas, the price of gasoline remaining constant for the next seven years. (Another of those specious ideas is that the unions, whose contracts expire in late 2008, will accept zero-percent raises for the next seven years.)

That’s all beyond the fact that FairPoint almost certainly knows (and Verizon definitely does) that the sale price itself is far too high — nearly two-thirds higher than the amount at which Verizon values the assets that are being sold.

FairPoint executives’ financial plans for life after the merger include the assertion that the company will pay down $318 million in debt over the next seven years, though they don’t say how, and have not promised — or disclosed to regulators any possible plans — to do so. Even worse, the company is basing its financial predictions on interest rates being lower than they are today. Even if they are, PUC filings say FairPoint will have to refinance as much as $1.5 billion in debt to extend its repayment period, in order to continue to afford debt payments.

The FairPoint/Verizon deal has come under withering fire in all three states, with Maine’s Office of the Public Advocate recommending 24 conditions be imposed if our Public Utilities Commission approves the sale — including dropping the price by $600 million. Vermont’s Department of Public Service has recommended that state’s Public Service Board impose as many as 56 conditions before the sale is approved, such as requiring state approval before FairPoint can transfer any Vermont revenue to company operations outside the state. The New Hampshire Office of Consumer Advocate has not specifically recommended conditions, but has testified before its state’s Public Utilities Commission that there are major problems with the proposed deal.

FairPoint has countered those criticisms, claiming it will be a financially viable company, and pledging to expand high-speed Internet access in all three states (see“Internet Disconnect,” by Jeff Inglis, August 24).

But its own plans, as described in PUC filings, indicate that its finances will, in fact, be tremendously shaky, and that any expansion of service will have to cost the company nothing beyond the initial investment to install equipment. Another big problem, the documents at the PUC say, is that the broadband service FairPoint is promising as a great boon — to regulators, shareholders, and the public — actually “loses more and more money as time goes on.”

Kennebunk library cancels, reinstates art show

Published in the Portland Phoenix

An art show that has been in the works for more than two years was abruptly canceled last week by the Kennebunk Free Library — before the art even was on the walls — and then, almost as abruptly, un-canceled in time to be installed for its opening reception on Tuesday.

The exhibit, “Portraits in a Time of War” by Kennebunk artist Gerald “Bud” Swenson, is a series of stylized faces made from cloth pieces cut out of American flags. According to Swenson, the library agreed to display his work two years ago. Two months ago, he reports, he showed library trustees some of the portraits and “told them it might be controversial” because of his use of flag fabric.

“They approved the show. They sent out a press release, and then the day before the show they called and said it was canceled,” he says, adding that he was told the library had received a single complaint, about his cutting up American flags.

That was on Halloween; he was scheduled to hang the art November 1, and open the show to the public November 2. (The artist’s reception was to be on Election Day.) Swenson did not hang the art as scheduled, but did pass the word about the cancellation among the state’s arts community. That resulted in the library receiving several letters and phone calls in support of Swenson’s art. And on November 2, the library trustees met and decided the show would indeed go on; Swenson hung the work Monday, and the reception was happening as scheduled at press time.

Library director Janet Cate says the show’s month-long run will now be augmented by two yet-to-be-scheduled public forums, where anyone can come and discuss the works, the means by which they were created, or anything else relating to the show.

“I’m very pleased,” says Swenson. “Censorship is stopped cold.”

“Portraits in a Time of War” | works by Gerald “Bud” Swenson | through Nov 29 | at the Kennebunk Free Library, 112 Main St, Kennebunk | 207.985.2173

On the Web
Gerald “Bud” Swenson: www.geraldbudswenson.com

It’s one in the morning — how sweet!

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Officials in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, are considering a new way to reduce violence and other problems at bar-closing time: handing out chocolate. (Seriously! They say it lessens the likelihood of fights. Maybe it’s because eating chocolate triggers the production of endorphins, the brain chemical some call “natural opiates” that make people feel happy and relaxed. Or maybe it’s just hard to punch someone while holding a piece of candy in your hand.)

The NZ idea is based on success with a similar initiative in the English seacoast tourist town of Bournemouth, where businesses and city officials have devised ways to make nightlife both safer and more fun. It comes in the wake of an announcement by a group of local bar owners that “the behavior of a small minority of drunken youths threatened the future” of the downtown “party zone,” according to the Wellington Dominion-Post newspaper.

As Portland continues to grapple with managing the Old Port’s nightlife (see “Growing Pains,” January 27, 2006, and “The Freakin’ Weekend,” February 17, 2006, both by Sara Donnelly), we might consider making like the Kiwis and stealing a couple ideas from Bournemouth (pop. 160,000).

We’ve heard of a couple of their concepts before, specifically getting better support for an all-ages venue and having a night bus to get people home safely — and quickly (see “Ideas From Away,” by Jeff Inglis, January 5). And we actually have in place another one — HomeRunners, which drives you and your car home if you’ve been drinking. (Bournemouth’s service uses compact scooters that fit in the trunk, rather than a second car, like HomeRunners does.)

But there are some new ideas that could work, too, and are worth at least talking about here in Portland:

Number one, of course, would be the chocolate giveaway (though with Fuller’s Gourmet Chocolates gone from Wharf Street, the epicenter will by default have to be Old Port Candy on Fore Street instead). Also:

Having social-service agencies send counselors to bars, to offer support to people in need.

Getting the City Council to grant some (or any) late-night licenses (possibly without alcohol, but letting people hang out and maybe eat something), to both spread the mass release of revelers across several hours, and to let people wind down the night in a more relaxed way.

Asking bars to voluntarily agree to a minimum drink price (so no participating bar will offer specials cheaper than that amount), to reduce binge drinking of cheap booze.

But let’s just start with the chocolate. In England at least, the cops like it, the bars like it, the local government likes it, and we can only assume the staggering drunks getting the handouts like it. We know we would.