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.

Gambling on voters: Downeast Mainers pin their hopes on the turn of the ballots

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Question 1
Do you want to expand gambling in Maine by letting the Passamaquoddy Tribe build and operate a slot-machine parlor, high-stakes beano games, and a harness-racing track in Washington County?
A gambling operation in Calais, right on the Canadian border waaaay Down East, would be farther from Southern Maine than Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun. The Passamaquoddy Tribe wants to build a harness-racing track (which is not a big money-maker) and then use that track as a site for a massive-revenue-generating gambling hall with up to 1500 slot machines.

Supporters — such as the officials and community members in the TV ads pleading with Mainers to salve their poverty-induced misery with cold, hard cash — say it will be a source of economic development in a depressed area of Maine, and that it will provide more money for the state to spend. Opponents say it will prey on residents of an already poor part of the state, and that gambling isn’t a good method of economic development.

But the real dispute is not about this racino. It’s about whether this racino “opens the door” to more gambling in Maine. It may seem like a funny question, given how much gambling there is already.

We have two multi-state lottery games (Megabucks and Powerball), scratch tickets too numerous to count, bingo halls packing in the players, Penobscot Nation-run high-stakes beano games with prizes as high as $25,000, and nonprofit agencies regularly running benefit events consisting almost entirely of casino games. There’s tons of betting on horses — at the two tracks (to which this would add a third) and the four off-track betting parlors (including one owned by the company the state has hired to monitor slots revenue — see “Jackpot,” by Lance Tapley, June 8) — and the annual agricultural fairs. And don’t forget Hollywood Slots in Bangor, which has nearly 500 slots already, and next year will open a parlor with up to 1500 machines.

Question 2
Do you want to spend $55 million to support business development in Maine, including research and product-development grants, and business-expansion loans? (The grants would attract at least $50 million in federal or private matching funds.)
Nearly all ($50 million) of the money in this bond would go to the Maine Technology Institute, which awards grants in key industries where government officials think Maine has a competitive advantage, like marine-related industry and forestry. Grant recipients must find matching funds from other sources, like the feds or their own pockets. The remaining $5 million would go to smaller loan programs to help businesses expand.

Question 3
Do you want to spend $40 million to renovate and expand buildings at Maine Maritime Academy, at community colleges, and at UMaine campuses, and an additional $3.5 million to support renovations and improvements to schools, museums, historic buildings, and libraries?
Renovations and building expansions at the state’s institutions of higher learning are never-ending, and funding them is downright expensive. They are so costly, in fact, that public universities leave them out of their regular annual budgets, preferring instead to borrow money to pay for the work. This bond also adds $1.5 million into the state’s revolving fund for school renovations and expansions, which already has $6 million available. The extra money means more schools can be fixed up or expanded. And the bond includes $2 million to match funds raised for projects to improve museums, libraries, and other cultural buildings.

Question 4
Do you want to give $20 million to the Land for Maine’s Future land-conservation program, plus an additional $7.5 million to improve state parks, plus $1.5 million to improve irrigation systems, and a further $6.5 million to support river-based economic development programs?
The Land for Maine’s Future program has conserved nearly 445,000 acres of key Maine land (scenic spots, wilderness, shorefront, and easements on working farms and forests), at a total cost of $97 million, or an average of $220 an acre. The new money would continue that effort. And in recent years, state bonds have been issued to promote water-quality projects on farms, to fix up state parks, and for water-related economic-development projects — in this case to revive riverfronts in environmentally sensitive ways.

Question 5
Do you favor extending term limits for legislators from 4 to 6 terms?
Maine lawmakers are prohibited from serving more than four consecutive two-year terms in one house of the Legislature before they have to take a break for at least two years (though the “break” can include serving in the other house). Term limits were imposed in 1996 as part of an effort to get “new blood” into the Legislature, and to expunge inward-looking cronyism from the State House. The previous limit, of four terms, was an attempt to strike a balance between longevity-given experience and fresh ideas; this is a proposed revision to that balance.

Radios, beds, and commissioners
Cumberland County questions explained
Question 1
Should the county spend $1.7 million to upgrade radio and data-transmission systems for police, fire, and rescue personnel to use?
It may seem amazing in the 21st century — and seven years after 9/11 highlighted the problems (and deaths) that can result — that firefighters and police officers from different agencies can’t talk to each other on the radio. Sure enough, that’s still true here. This bond would buy radio and computer systems to prevent that, and would also provide systems that local police departments could use — not just the county sheriffs.

Question 2
Should the county spend $1.1 million to build an expanded medical clinic at the Cumberland County Jail?
Each day, roughly 200 inmates at the Cumberland County Jail need some sort of medical care, whether for an illness or injury, or a chronic condition, or even to deliver a baby. The jail’s 900-square-foot infirmary is too small to handle that amount of traffic — especially when inmates are accompanied by guards, or if someone has to spend the night receiving medical care. If there’s no room, inmates who are sick have to return to their cells, or get treatment at a hospital, which is much more expensive than if something can be handled at the jail. The money would build a 3000-square-foot expansion to the infirmary, allowing nearly every inmate with medical needs to be treated without leaving the jail.

Question 3
Should there be seven directly-elected county commissioners, instead of three?
Cumberland County residents are served by a three-person commission with the power to increase our property taxes. Lots of its spending is for services Portlanders don’t use, like sheriff’s deputies on patrol, who rarely work in towns with their own police departments. (Other county services, like the jail and maintaining property records, Portlanders do use.) With three districts, the same person has to represent the needs of Portland, Falmouth, Cumberland, North Yarmouth, and Long Island. (The other districts stretch from Cape Elizabeth to Standish, and from Brunswick to Bridgton.) This would further subdivide the county, letting each commissioner represent a smaller group of people.

Legislature moves to protect Maine journalists

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In September, Maine Superior Court Justice Arthur Brennan ordered 15 media organizations to surrender videos, photographs, and notes of interviews — including material never published or broadcast — from their coverage of a November 2006 fire in Biddeford.

The organizations, which included community-weekly newspapers, daily papers, and the state’s largest TV stations, were told to turn over the information — whatever still remained — to a private company because the company convinced the judge it feared a future lawsuit in connection with the fire, and needed the information to prepare a defense, in case such a suit was filed.

This case, and others of national prominence in which attorneys — often prosecutors — seek to use information collected by journalists as evidence in court (and demand access to material that had never before been made public) has led to a renewed discussion among policymakers of whether there should be so-called “shield laws” protecting journalists from being forced to disclose confidential sources and information.

“The whole point of these laws is to get accurate, useful information flowing to the public,” says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington DC. “They ensure that the public has a better chance of getting truthful, independently reported information, ... maintain the independence of the media, and also make it possible for sources to come forth and inform the public.”

A shield law “would have helped a lot” in the Biddeford case, says Sigmund Schutz, a lawyer with Preti Flaherty in Portland, who coordinated media outlets’ responses. In the end, all but one of the media outlets had nothing to turn over, and the one — the Portland Press Herald — requested that the demand for information be narrowed. After the narrowing, the Press Herald had nothing to turn over, either, Schutz says. But he says no media outlets objected to the ruling on First-Amendment grounds. “Standing on principle without a shield law is expensive,” Schutz says.

A federal shield-law proposal moved to the Senate floor earlier this month, and Maine lawmakers are being asked to take up a similar proposal.

If legislative leaders agree that Portland Democratic representative Jon Hinck’s bill should move forward, it would be debated by lawmakers early next year. If not, the bill would have to wait until January 2009 before even being considered.

In recent years, federal prosecutors, in particular, have gotten more aggressive at using the courts to force journalists to reveal the identities of their confidential sources, often in order to pursue charges against the source for illegally disclosing the information.

The most publicized example was the New York Times’s Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in prison in 2005 for refusing to identify the person who told her that Valerie Plame, the wife of a US ambassador, was a covert CIA agent. That investigation resulted in the conviction of White House aide Scooter Libby for perjury.

Now, Dalglish says, as a result of “the heightened attention to the issue in the federal system,” many of the 17 states without a shield law are considering them, including Maine.

Journalism organizations in the state are looking closely at Hinck’s proposal; the Maine Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (of which I am vice-president) was slated to discuss it Wednesday, after the Phoenix’s deadline.

Leaders of the Maine Association of Broadcasters, Maine Daily Newspaper Publishers Association, and Maine Press Association all say they will review the bill in the coming weeks, and expect their organizations to back the bill in general principle, while reserving the possibility that they might want some details changed.

Hinck is open to feedback, but thinks the bill is important. “We need a free press, desperately,” he says. “I have sometimes been an intermediary between whistleblowers” and reporters, and he knows it can be difficult to get good information if a source is worried about being discovered.

Suzanne Goucher, president and CEO of the Maine Association of Broadcasters, says one argument against a shield law proposal is that it “becomes a Christmas tree for everything that [legislators] like and don’t like about the media.” But she notes that such a law could be useful, too, citing the September court ruling. “The very fact that the court would grant a motion like this, when there’s no suit pending,” she says. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Press Releases: Straight to video

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Over the past few years, Frank Blethen, the guy in charge of the Seattle Times Company, which owns the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, and the Waterville-based Morning Sentinel, has spent a lot of time supporting federal regulations that limit media consolidation, saying more owners equal more viewpoints, equals better democracy.

But recent moves by the Press Herald suggest that at least the first part of that equation isn’t necessarily true. While the paper may be owned separately from the city’s TV stations, it’s starting to act a lot like them, missing an opportunity to actually serve its audience something new.

Consider, for example, coverage of a vacant house that apparently filled with natural gas and exploded in South Portland on October 1.

Press Herald “online reporter” Dieter Bradbury, who has been with the Press Herald his entire 27-year journalism career, went straight to the scene after hearing about the explosion. Bradbury’s video on the Press Herald’s site was shaky, often without audio, and spent a lot of time showing us fire trucks with flashing lights and police officers walking around. Bradbury and other staffers filed written updates to the story throughout the day, and even into the next.

Other than the video pros covering the silent spots with voiceover, the Press Herald’s work was nearly identical to the TV coverage of the event.

But even Portland’s broadcasters don’t think the city needs more TV news. Two of the five channels that could have their own local news programs instead outsource it to other local stations. WCSH, the NBC affiliate on Channel 6, has a 10 pm news broadcast on WPXT, the Channel 12 CW affiliate. And WGME, the CBS station on Channel 13, puts out a 10 pm news show on WPFO, the Fox affiliate on Channel 23 (Channel 7 on cable).

It’s uncommon for print Press Herald stories to mention the TV coverage of the same events. But editor Jeannine Guttman continues to talk about “convergence” between the paper and the paper's Web site. We should expect, then, a good package story in the paper and online the following day, referencing video, at least, and maybe the previous day’s frequent updates.

Think again.

The 1250-word effort by staff writers Trevor Maxwell and Ann S. Kim on October 2 was written and presented — on the front page — as if no one reading it had heard the slightest rumor of a story that had received blanket coverage from the TV evening news and the Press Herald’s own Web site.

There is no mention — even in the online version of the story — of any video or previous coverage on the Press Herald’s site. And on subsequent days, the in-paper follow-ups repeated information that had been widely available hours earlier from the TV stations. The online follow-ups never once mentioned or linked to any previous coverage on the Press Herald's site, not even the words-only updates.

Let’s not kid ourselves — this was an insignificant story. It had good visuals (if you define “good” as a roof lying on the ground surrounded by tiny bits of wood), but nobody was dead, or even injured. No tragic tale of a life cut short — just a couple of neighbors who were a bit startled by the blast. Not even a family left homeless — the building was under construction and vacant.

The Press Herald has spent a lot of ink on Guttman’s talk of “trailblazing” news coverage. Its staff had a chance at a trial run at collaboration and teamwork on this story, with not much at stake if they did it poorly. Perhaps they gave it a try; if so, they failed so miserably that any effort was completely invisible. Or they didn't try, and will have to work out the logistics while on deadline for a vital story. Either way, they missed a chance to show Portland what they think news coverage should look like.

Gov’t secrecy is fine with Maine’s attorney general

Published in the Portland Phoenix

A man widely believed to be interested in becoming Maine’s next governor, Democratic Attorney General Steven Rowe, is refusing to defend the state’s Freedom of Access Act from a court ruling that would destroy the state’s open-government law almost entirely.

The ruling — that a three-man commission appointed by Rowe can keep its records secret because it was not a government body engaged in government business — is being appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, with the support of the Maine Civil Liberties Union.

If upheld, the ruling would allow Rowe — and any other government official — to “outsource” official business to a purportedly “independent” group of handpicked appointees, in complete certainty that the group’s actions will never become public.

The dust-up centers on the 1989 conviction of then-31-year-old farmer Dennis Dechaine for the 1988 rape and murder of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry, in Bowdoin. Dechaine was sent to prison for life, but a group of citizens who believe he is innocent have subsequently reviewed as much of the evidence in the case as possible — and have taken their efforts to the Legislature and through the courts to overrule repeated refusals from Rowe’s office to turn over documents. One member of the group, James Moore, a retired agent of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, has published two books detailing this investigation and the evidence he has found.

Even without access to crucial documents, Moore’s research raised enough questions in lawmakers’ minds that in 2003 they passed a law specifically forcing Rowe to open his office’s files to the public. And, in 2004, when Rowe violated that law by failing to hand over everything, Moore took him to court and won, getting copies of previously withheld state evidence — including information kept from the jury. Moore and others believe these documents prove Dechaine could not have killed Cherry.

Which brings us back to the Freedom of Access Act. After being forced to release his records, Rowe appointed the three-man commission to investigate the allegations, from Moore and others, of police and prosecutorial misconduct in the case. Rowe promised Dechaine’s advocates that he would publicize the commission’s report, which he did. It’s available on the AG’s Web site even today. It concludes that there was no “substantive merit” to the allegations of wrongdoing.

But when Moore asked to see the commission’s supporting evidence — the documents they reviewed and the notes from interviews they conducted — the commissioners refused, claiming that they are not, in fact, a government agency required to open their files.

In July, a judge agreed with them, but Moore has appealed that decision to the state’s highest court, arguing that the principles of open government demand their files be made public.

Rowe could, at this point, throw his weight behind Moore’s appeal and argue on behalf of the people of Maine that the Freedom of Access Act is gutted by the July ruling. But the attorney general, who has been selected four consecutive times by the Legislature to be the state’s chief law-enforcement officer, and who has once been formally asked by a resolution of the Maine House to support a retrial for Dechaine, appears to be on the side of secrecy. He is refusing to argue — in court or elsewhere — that the commission’s records should be made public.

Despite the fact that Rowe, in his memo appointing the commissioners, wrote that the group would be performing a “very important public service,” he now apparently supports the position that the report was not, in fact, the product of a public body.

Rowe did not return multiple calls seeking comment for this story.

“Presumably what [the commission] found makes the officials look good,” says Moore, professing confusion about why the commissioners have refused to open their files, and why the AG’s office has not gotten involved.

The MCLU is more direct about the long-term consequences of Rowe’s inaction: “The court order, unless overturned on appeal, creates a template by which public officials can dodge Freedom of Access laws by transferring their work to committees outside the scope of the Freedom of Access Act,” says Sigmund Schutz, from the Portland law firm Preti Flaherty, who is helping the MCLU with the case.

While we can lament his lack of resolve as attorney general, we can also act on it should Rowe ever appear on a ballot for governor.

US Rep. Allen to protestors: go directly to jail

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Neither US Senator Susan Collins nor the man challenging her for her senate seat will mention an important difference between the two: First District US Representative Tom Allen, a Democrat, has activists arrested when they demonstrate at his offices; Collins, a Republican, lets them stay.

In February, two anti-war protests at Allen’s Portland office resulted in 19 arrests. There were eight more, on September 25, at a rally supporting impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.

“In Allen’s office, [the staff] really have the attitude like, ‘Why are you coming here? [Allen is] a liberal Democrat. You should be voting for [him],’” says Bruce Gagnon, a longtime Maine peace activist who has been arrested at several nonviolent civil disobedience demonstrations. He says Allen’s staff has been “cold and harsh and even a bit nasty to us” since at least 2005 (see “A Somber Occupation,” by Sara Donnelly, December 14, 2005).

Mark Sullivan, Allen’s spokesman, says the staff calls the police to arrest demonstrators because “at the close of business, we can’t leave the office with people still there.”

“I hope they realized that the man they work for had ordered the arrest of eight of his constituents,” wrote one of the eight who was arrested, Jonathan Queally, in an e-mail to the Phoenix, “whose only demand was that he uphold his solemn oath to defend the Constitution of the United States by holding Bush and Cheney accountable.”

Collins’s office doesn’t feel the need to involve the cops. At a March protest, a member of the senator’s staff was willing to stay the night to avoid throwing the demonstrators out or leaving them alone in the office, says Collins spokeswoman Jen Burita. She says the 12 arrests during that protest were at the insistence of security staff who needed to secure the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building, not at the request of Collins’s staff.

The test of the senator’s hospitality came on August 31, when five anti-war protestors from Farmington visited Collins’s Portland office, which is not in a federal building. The group, all women involved in Farmington’s chapter of the protest group Women in Black, had an appointment with one of Collins’s aides, in which they urged the senator to end funding for the Iraq war. After that, all five stayed in the office and began reading aloud the names of Americans and Iraqis killed in Iraq.

At the end of the day, the aide asked if the women intended to stay. “We said we hadn’t finished reading the names,” says Lee Sharkey, a retired UMaine-Farmington professor who was with the group. The aide’s response made it “clear we could have stayed all weekend,” Sharkey says, but the aide has a family, and she was “uncomfortable” with the idea of staying so late on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. Sharkey says the protestors “had nothing against her” and didn’t want to keep her from her family, so they left voluntarily at around 9 pm. There were no arrests.

“Clearly the senator wasn’t interested in that kind of negative publicity,” Sharkey says.

Activists have had mixed results at the offices of Maine’s other two delegates to Washington.

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe’s office in Bangor has been “very, very bad,” says Gagnon. “The chief of staff ... slams the door in your face, won’t even let you get in.” In September 2006, 11 people were arrested there during a sit-in. Snowe’s Bangor office is not in a federal building.

At Second District Democratic Representative Mike Michaud’s Bangor office on September 26, the staff was so polite and welcoming to anti-war demonstrators, that the protestors “decided not to sit-in his office,” Gagnon says. “They felt they were having a real dialogue.”

Allen’s efforts to avoid speaking with protestors are extensive: those arrested in February were warned that Allen’s staff would have them arrested again if they returned to the building within a year. The protestors objected, saying that prevented them from having access to their elected congressman, and the warning was retracted, according to Kathe Chipman, who was arrested on February 21 and again on September 25.

Chipman, a retired art-and-architecture librarian, chose not to pay a $40 bail commissioner’s fee on September 25, and stayed in jail overnight because, she says, “I believe that sitting on the floor of an office paid for by taxpayers beyond closing time is not a criminal trespass but rather a purposeful presence, one that is the opposite of ‘criminal,’ since the sole goal is to effect honest adherence to the Constitution of the United States.” She was released without being charged the following day.

None of the February protestors at Allen’s office was charged with a crime, says Portland lawyer John Branson, who has represented people arrested at both February events. And Branson doubts the eight arrested September 25 will be charged, though prosecutors have reserved the right to do so.

“It’s a political decision,” says Branson. “This Republican district attorney [Stephanie Anderson] has essentially done a favor for this Democratic member of Congress by making the story go away very quickly” by not charging those arrested at his office. With Allen challenging Collins, Branson wondered aloud how long Anderson’s favors would continue.

On the Web
Video of protest: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=maineactivist | http://www.youtube.com/user/patriciaWheeler

BruceFest: Music Seen at Bubba's Sulky Lounge, September 22, 2007

Published in the Portland Phoenix

On Saturday evening, Bubba's filled with fans eager to hear tributes to the heartland-rocker-in-chief, the gravel-voiced singer wrapped in the American flag. No, it wasn’t Toby Keith at the Tweeter Center (though that, we hear, was a great show, too). It was Portland’s fourth annual tribute to the Boss, Bruce Springsteen, on the occasion of his birthday (he turned 58 Sunday).

Founded and hosted by Phoenix scribe Rick Wormwood and his band, the Rumbling Proletariat, the night kicked off with “Blinded by the Light,” the first track from Bruce’s first disc, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973), performed by Elf Princess Gets a Harley, whose frontman, Brandon Davis, drunkenly slurred half of the song’s lyrics. Few noticed, though: the words are pretty unintelligible anyway.

Next came Handsome Dan Knudsen, whose performances of “My Hometown” (off 1984’s Born in the USA) and “Brilliant Disguise” (from 1987’s Tunnel of Love) had a touch of Weird Al Yankovic. It was a great lead-in to the Peter, Paul, and Mary–influenced quintet Chipped Enamel, whose three-song set started with a cruise in a “Pink Cadillac” (the B-side of the 1984 seven-inch single “Dancing in the Dark”), moved through “Fire” (the oft-covered song not released by Bruce until 1986’s Live/1975-1985 compilation), and ended with “My City of Ruins” (from 2002’s The Rising).

But nobody was quite ready for reverb-heavy An Evening With, who started a disco-fest on the floor with “Dancing in the Dark” (Born in the USA), slowed down with “Streets of Philadelphia” (from the soundtrack to the 1993 Jonathan Demme film Philadelphia), and echoed their way through “Thunder Road” (Born To Run).

By then, the floor was packed for a seven-song J. Biddy and the Crossfire Inferno power-set: “Atlantic City” (Nebraska, 1982), “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” (Born, again), “Prove It All Night” (Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978), “I’m on Fire” (Born in the USA), "Trapped" (The Essential Bruce Springsteen, 2003), “It’s Hard To Be a Saint in the City” (Greetings), and “Born To Run.” The “Free Bird”-like interlude between the last two, however, meant it was time to burn on down the road.

Speak now, or forever pay for copies

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Last month, the Maine court system forbade the public to photograph court documents — a practice it had allowed for more than five years. The order, issued by Superior Court Chief Justice Thomas Humphrey some time in August, was secret . . . and never put in writing.

But after inquires from the Portland Phoenix, the state’s top judge, Chief Justice Leigh Saufley, has promised to revisit the change, and perhaps to formalize permission for the practice, which helps members of the public save money and time when reviewing court documents.

Reversing Humphrey’s order would likely have more impact on poor people involved in legal cases than on journalists or lawyers. According to Gregg Leslie, legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington, DC, “non-media requesters [for court documents] are often people who are having a case brought against them . . . or they’re trying to bring a suit” to protect their rights or property. He also says that many states ban photographing documents to protect court-system revenue that comes from photocopying fees.

Saufley says one reason people may want to photograph court documents more than other government papers is because many agencies provide records electronically on their Web sites. The Maine courts do not. And they do charge photocopying fees — $2 for the first page and $1 for each additional page — that far exceed the actual costs.

By contrast, the federal courts have an online system that costs users eight cents per “page” viewed online, or, for in-person services at the courthouse, 10 cents per page of a computer printout and 50 cents a page for photocopies.

For years, people — including me — have avoided the state courts’ fees by bringing cameras into courthouses to photograph documents. When I was recently barred from photographing documents (based on Humphrey’s verbal order) a member of the Superior Court clerk’s staff told me it was because the courts want the revenue from photocopying.

State court administrator Ted Glessner said that’s not true: “We don’t get to keep or use any of the money” paid for copying fees.

He is technically correct. Court revenue goes into the state’s general fund, but that’s the same fund out of which the Legislature appropriates money for the court system. Lawmakers and court officials regularly talk about both the costs of the system and its revenue to the general fund.

In 2006, Maine’s court costs were $55 million, while revenues were an all-time high of $43 million, up from a meager $32 million in 2002. Of the 2006 record haul, $6.3 million was in “fees,” of which only $155,000 was for photocopying.

It used to be that photocopying was a service provided for the convenience of people who wanted copies of court records. The fees were instituted to cover the costs of photocopying, such as buying toner and paper, and paying for staffers’ time to make the copies (though all of that is already paid for by taxpayers). Now, though, photocopies are treated as a profit center.

Saufley takes pains to say that court-system revenue “has nothing to do with how much the Legislature should spend on access to justice,” but only after saying she might need lawmakers’ approval if the courts reduce their expected photocopying revenue.

She ends on a high note. In words suggesting she leans toward allowing the photographing of court documents, Saufley promises that at the very least the state’s advisory Committee on Media and Courts will discuss the matter publicly, and may recommend allowing the practice. If the practice is to be restricted, she says there will be opportunities for the public to weigh in, including — if it does go to the Legislature — public hearings before lawmakers.

Say anything: A Scarborough man’s new movie shows a lot, but tells little

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Surfers aren’t an especially verbose or articulate bunch, really. They punctuate their sentences with “y’know” and list a lot of things “it’s all about.” But the problem is not a lack of vocabulary or even a reluctance to communicate. It’s that they have a connection that’s hard to put into words.

The surfers and other oceanophiles in BlueGreen, the new film by Scarborough filmmaker and surfer Ben Keller, struggle repeatedly to describe how they feel about the sea. Keller’s first feature-length film, Ishmael (2004), explored the motivations of wintertime surfers who brave near-freezing water and icy wetsuits to ride tiny waves on the New England coast. This time he’s trying to dive deeper, asking why surfers feel what they feel about their watery playground, and — though almost as an afterthought — trying to convince the film-viewing public to get involved with ocean-conservation efforts.

Keller will show the latest cut of the film (narrated by him, for now, for lack of money to hire a professional speaker) at SPACE Gallery on Sunday at 6:30 pm, to raise money to finish the project.

While the people in BlueGreen do articulate feelings merely suggested by other surf films, they still don’t answer the fundamental questions. Describing your testiness after days away from the ocean (as two of the people interviewed in the documentary do) is not an investigation into the nature of your connection with the sea.

The closest anyone comes to an eloquent explanation is Rabbi Nacham Shifren (a/k/a “the Surfing Rabbi” — really), who talks in vaguely clerical terms about how surfers’ attitudes toward life differ from other people’s because they regularly deal with overwhelming power, and manage to connect with — and ride — positive energy in the world around them. Shifren talks of “a drive to make the spiritual physical” that moves surfers off the beach and into the waves.

Less satisfying are clinical observations from scientists (such as Don Perkins of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute here in Portland) about how the health of the ocean is crucial to the health of the planet, and the interview of a woman who lives on a sailboat, in which she discusses her ocean-centered, water-borne life — while she’s sitting under a tree.

The bulk of the film’s joy, where it is to be found, is in the surfing scenes. This is not an adrenaline-filled giant-wave surf movie in the vein of The Endless Summer or even North Shore. Surfing in BlueGreen is ponderous, soulful, full of swells that aren’t even chest-high, and long, slow runs with the occasional turn. Only one guy in the entire film hangs 10. Even the surfboard cameras (including one underneath the board) are used in slow, relatively calm waves, giving a meditative feel. (Jarringly, one more conventional shot-from-the-shore scene features a very clear plumber’s crack on a surfing California lifeguard.)

Underwater footage appears pretty frequently, and again is brooding and slow — not colorful and bright like David Doubilet’s work for National Geographic and its video partners. All of it has a mellow, soulful soundtrack — much of which is supplied by Maine bands such as Seekonk and the appropriately named Harpswell Sound, Cerberus Shoal, and the Baltic Sea.

Watching is relaxing, calming, even soporific. When, 55 minutes into the 90-minute film, several speakers (including Jim Moriarty, executive director of ocean-conservation group the Surfrider Foundation) begin exhorting viewers to get involved in protecting the sea from (unnamed) threats, it’s like face-planting into the surf and getting cold seawater right up your nose.

No wonder Moriarty — in a voiceover for footage of a litter-strewn southern California beach after a holiday weekend — says “it’s hard to get into people’s heads that the problem is as bad as it is.” His own participation in the film comes across as more whiney and lamenting than inspirational.

It’s clear that Keller and those with whom he speaks see the ocean as a friend. But without finding the words to inspire others, they’ll continue to have it to themselves. And maybe that’s what they really want.

On the Web
BlueGreen: www.bluegreenconnection.com

Music industry unites to help Portland artists

Published in the Portland Phoenix

If Austin, Texas, is any indicator, in five years’ time, Portland’s music scene may be even more vibrant than it is today. The Portland Music Foundation (PMF) is taking shape, based on a community non-profit in Austin that has helped boost that city’s bands and musicians into the national spotlight.

Founded in 2002, the Austin Music Foundation (AMF) currently has two full-time employees and one part-timer, plus a vast array of volunteers from throughout the music industry. The organization hosts classes, discussion forums, and small-group seminars about the music biz. AMF’s goal, in the words of executive director Suzanne Quinn, is to help musicians “become entrepreneurs” working to “create sustainable businesses and quit those other three jobs”

The PMF will be the beneficiary of a “Speakeasy” night of hoity-toity drinks and food hosted by booze maker Diageo on Wednesday, September 26, at 58 Fore Street in Portland.

The local group is led by Adam Ayan, a Grammy-winning recording engineer whose involvement with the foundation was inspired, in part, by his mentor at Gateway Mastering, Bob Ludwig. Ludwig lives in Portland, but makes annual trips to Austin’s SXSW music festival, where he works with up-and-coming Austin musicians.

Ayan, who holds the Sinatra-like title of “chairman of the board,” says the PMF will use the money from the Speakeasy event to support its first set of programs, which will teach musicians how to interact with the press, recording professionals, and club booking agents.

“These are three topics that local musicians would benefit from learning more about,” says Ayan, who adds that future forums will address topics suggested by local musicians, who can join the group for $20 for a calendar year. Membership benefits will include discounts at local businesses, and free admission to PMF events and workshops.

At the Speakeasy and at the PMF’s official “launch party,” slated for October 18 from 6 to 9 pm at One City Center, Ayan and the others on the group’s board (who include local radio personality Mark Curdo, music-booker-about-town Lauren Wayne, and Portland Phoenix music writer Sam Pfeifle) plan to do a lot of networking. “We’re hoping that we can just hang out and talk to a lot of people,” he says.

Down the road he sees involvement with area schools’ music programs, scholarships for musicians to help develop their skills, and perhaps even a library of local music (see “Let’s Make History,” by Sam Pfeifle, January 6, 2006).

Austin’s example says that a lot is possible. According to Quinn, the AMF’s most recent gathering drew 330 people to learn about licensing and publishing their music. Twice a month, music-industry types gather at an “Austin Music Mixer” to get to know each other, generating collaborations, ideas, and new business for members. The AMF has received grants from the city of Austin and from the Texas state government (in addition to corporate and private donors), and is applying for money from the National Endowment for the Arts.

AMF co-founder Nikki Rowling has visited Portland to meet with Ayan and others, and says the Maine group is “really quite self-sufficient and doing fantastically well.” She has given information on starting music foundations to people from more than 100 cities, but “the Portland Music Foundation is the first one to really materialize.”

On the Web
Portland Music Foundation: www.portlandmusicfoundation.com

Enjoy the air show — you paid for it

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Let’s move beyond the $320 million in aircraft you have bought that will be performing at this weekend’s Great State of Maine Air Show at Brunswick Naval Air Station. And let’s forget the roughly $12 million in annual salaries you’re paying for the people whose entire, year-round, full-time jobs are to use those aircraft to show off the military prowess of the United States by, um, flying really really fast very close to the ground.

The real concern is, and should be, the attitude of the government toward your money. John James IV, director of public affairs at Brunswick Naval Air Station, originally told the Phoenix no tax money was being spent on the show, in which five of 13 performance groups are funded by the US military. (Two of those are the biggest attractions, the Blue Angels — the Navy’s precision-flight team — and the Golden Knights — the Army’s parachute team.)

James relented under questioning, later saying that “the cost to taxpayers is negligible.” And he kept trying to steer our interview toward what he called “the important things” about the air show — such as its “family atmosphere.”

It’s that kind of cavalier attitude toward taxpayers’ money — and toward America’s military personnel — that has led the US government to spend, according to 2006 Defense Department statistics, $100,000 a minute in Iraq, and $18,000 a minute in Afghanistan. Maine Veterans for Peace members and supporters will be protesting the military’s appetite for money and bodies when they march from downtown Brunswick to the air station starting at 9 am on Saturday.

In case you care about your tax dollars more than the feds do, here’s what you’re buying.

BLUE ANGELS $276 million for 13 airplanes; $5.6 million in annual salaries for 114 personnel.

GOLDEN KNIGHTS $4 million for two airplanes, undisclosed lease payments for two more; $5.1 million in salaries for 90 soldiers.

F-15E STRIKE EAGLE DEMO TEAM One $31 million airplane; $630,000 a year to pay 13 crew members.

US AIR FORCE HERITAGE FLIGHT Older Air Force planes originally purchased for purposes other than air-show performances, with a group of pilots, most of whom are former military personnel; plus the Air Combat Command’s demonstration team, with a $9.8 million airplane and $360,000 in annual payroll for the eight crew members.

MAJOR JOHN KLATT His custom-built Staudacher S-300D airplane (custom-painted with the graphics of the Air National Guard’s “Guarding America, Defending Freedom” aerobatic team) is hard to price; so is the contract he has for his services and those of his three-man team. But his rank and years of service mean his annual Air Guard salary is around $75,000.

Those numbers don’t include the 20 or more military aircraft on display on the ground, training all the people to fly or do their flying-related jobs, or the salaries and budgets of the military recruiters whose efforts these events are intended to support.

The air show does get some financial help from people who attend — who pay reserved-seating fees and buy food, drinks, and souvenirs — and the companies who hawk that stuff, who pay for the privilege. Some of that money goes to pay aerial performers, though not nearly enough to offset their actual costs; rather, James says, it mainly covers food, lodging, and local transport.

What about jet fuel? James says civilian performers buy their own, using some of the money they are paid for performing, but he didn’t know whether the fees paid to military groups are used to reimburse the Defense Department (er, that’s you and me) for the fuel used in the military aircraft.

Related links:
http://www.blueangels.navy.mil
http://www.goldenknights.com
http://www.acc.af.mil/aerialevents

Peace + Justice Center shutting down

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Peace and Justice Center of Southern Maine will close in December, after 10 years as an incubator for fledgling socially-minded nonprofits. The closing displaces several groups, who are looking for new space to replace the small offices and the shared meeting room on the fourth floor of the Cinamon Building at 1 Pleasant Street.

“The [center] offered a low-cost way for small nonprofits to have their own office space,” says Betsy Smith of Equality Maine, one of the founding groups in the center.

Last summer, Equality Maine “graduated,” moving down two floors in search of more room than it had available in the center (see “Equality Maine Moves Uptown, Downstairs,” by Tony Giampetruzzi, July 21, 2006).

That left a sizeable hole in the center’s tenant revenue, which has yet to be fully replaced, though founding member and coordinator Sally Breen says another reason for the closing the center is mission related — member organizations have been so busy with their own projects that they never actually got around to fulfilling the institution’s primary goal of combining forces to host larger-scale peace- and justice-related events.

Other tenants of the four-story complex also face uncertainty: the 12,500-square-foot building, valued by the city at just shy of $700,000, is for sale, with an asking price of $1.3 million, according to its listing with Fishman Realty Group. Ground-floor Indian restaurant Hi Bombay, and second-floor tenants Equality Maine and the League of Young Voters, have no plans to leave, and will wait to see what happens following a sale. One small business on the third floor moved recently; another did not return calls.

The Peace and Justice Center is currently home to Physicians for Social Responsibility (opposing weapons of mass destruction, and promoting environmental stewardship), the Maine Animal Coalition (which works to prevent cruelty to animals, including in agriculture), Maine Interfaith Power and Light (selling renewably-generated electricity to Central Maine Power and Bangor Hydro customers), the Campaign to Defend America (an anti-Iraq-war group), the Environmental Health Strategy Center (fighting toxic chemicals in the environment), and Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights (POWER, working to abolish poverty). It also provides space for meetings of groups like Maine Veterans for Peace and World Can’t Wait (an anti-Bush group).

POWER has told Breen it will move out shortly, but Breen did not know to where, and POWER organizers didn’t return calls. Most other groups in the center are looking for new spaces at the moment, but haven’t found anything yet.

One solution may be finding another building in which to share space again, which is what Physicians for Social Responsibility executive director Melissa Boyd is hoping to do.

Some local nonprofits have already banded together as part of the Community Building Collective, which has proposed using the former Adams School building as a shared community building with residences, gathering rooms, and — you guessed it — shared office space for nonprofits.

Former Peace and Justice Center tenant Peace Action Maine has already arranged to share space with the Foglight Collective (formerly People’s Free Space), in the site of the former Tea Time Antiques and Collectibles store at 644 Congress Street.

The groups have named their office the Meg Perry Center for Peace, Justice, and Community, in honor of the People’s Free Space organizer and Frida Bus leader Meg Perry, who died December 10, 2005, in a bus crash while on a Katrina-relief trip to New Orleans (see “N.O. Peace for Perry’s Mourners,” by Jeff Inglis, December 16, 2005).

The Meg Perry Center offers a library and free Internet access, workshops on various practical skills, showing videos, art shows, and musical performances. When the relevant city permits come through, “we also will start selling more things,” starting with books and coffee, to help pay the rent, says Foglight organizer Johan Fertig.

On Friday, for the First Friday Art Walk, the Meg Perry Center will open to display works from local artists and musicians addressing the themes of peace and community, from 5 to 10 pm.

On the Web
Peace and Justice Center of Southern Maine: www.peaceactionme.org | www.peoplesfreespace.org | www.communitybuildingcollaborative.org

Press Releases: Laid off

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Here are two items major Maine newspapers would rather you not know about.

First, THE PORTLAND PRESS HERALD AND MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM HAVE LOST ONE-QUARTER OF THEIR ADVERTISING REVENUE over the past two and a half years.

That’s what they told members of the Portland Newspaper Guild, the union that represents most of the daily’s employees, to explain why eight advertising-related workers would be laid off and an unspecified number of vacant positions would remain unfilled, according to a summary of the conversation distributed by e-mail to guild members on August 17.

Aggravating those hefty losses is a cruel summer: “the company cited a very poor July [and] an August that’s shaping up to be even worse,” according to that same e-mail.

In roughly that same time period — from March 2005 through March 2007, the papers’ circulation has dropped 7.6 percent on Sundays, and 5 percent from Monday through Saturday. But compared to what the paper’s filings with the Audit Bureau of Circulations claim are its recent-history high (in September 2004), the drop is even bigger: down 21 percent in Sunday circulation, and 16 percent in daily circ (from 129,931 to 102,204, and 79,957 to 67,250, respectively).

And no wonder — by its own account back in June, the paper’s “Community Council” — the group of readers who help guide the paper’s coverage — has always had “hefty representation” from Baby Boomers and “World War II-generation” readers, whom Press Herald editor Jeannine Guttman calls “our core audience.” US government data estimates that roughly 2500 Maine World War II veterans are dying each year, which could help explain some of the decline. (In fact, if every single Maine veteran subscribed to the Maine Sunday Telegram, the WW2 vets’ deaths would account on their own for a full third of the subscription drop.)

The company’s statements about the August layoffs blame a “seismic shift” in the “newspaper industry,” without noting the particular problems in daily newspapers, or describing the shift as the solidification of a long-emerging trend in which consumers who are attractive to advertisers (the much-ballyhooed 18-to-34 set) are not reading daily newspapers.

This is, however, neither seismic nor — even if it were — unanticipated.

All newspapers have been facing the onslaught of the Internet for more than a decade. But it’s been the mainstream dailies, who experience the shift to online as a loss of new readership, who have felt it most sharply.

And while the pressure has risen sharply in the past 10 years, the Press Herald has been facing competition from community weekly newspapers — who focus exclusively on local news while the Press Herald touts its local devotion but then expends gallons of ink printing Associated Press stories about the Iraq war — since 1965, when former Portland Evening Express editor Harry Foote combined two smaller newspapers to create the weekly American Journal, based in Westbrook, which has covered all sorts of things the Press Herald staff never learned except by reading his paper, now owned by Current Publishing.

Second, THE BANGOR DAILY NEWS IS NICE AND COZY WITH SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS, who is seeking re-election in 2008. How cozy? BDN executive editor Mark Woodward is married to Bridget Woodward, who works as a “staff assistant” in Collins’s Bangor office.

Neither of them returned calls seeking comment, leaving us to wonder how their connection relates to the BDN’s outrage that Maine Democrats were videotaping Collins’s appearance in a public parade, allegedly as part of a coordinated effort to catch her saying or doing embarrassing things, clips of which could then be posted on YouTube.

With a tip of the hat to the contributor called “maineiac” on DailyKos.com.

Group seeks to hold Maine to UN standard

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Next week Portland-based prison activists will be knocking on Munjoy Hill doors collecting signatures to oppose the “legalized abuse of prisoners” in Maine and throughout the country.

The Black Bird Collective was originally formed earlier this year to support Maine inmate Deane Brown, a key source for the Portland Phoenix’s series on conditions at the Maine State Prison, whom prison officials shipped out of state in retaliation for his protests. Their latest efforts will launch a statewide petition drive as part of what the group hopes will be a national effort to enact state and federal laws requiring that “all prisoners and detainees . . . be treated in accordance with the UN Convention Against Torture.” (The US has signed and ratified the convention, and participates in its international governing body.)

Such laws would ban, among other practices, the use of “electro-shock devices, ... restraint chairs, chemical sprays, and prolonged periods of isolation,” all of which are commonly used to discipline, punish, and control inmates in Maine’s correctional centers.

Black Bird organizer David Bidler says his group is “trying to show any potential legislative supporters that there is community support” for humane treatment of prisoners. “We’re looking for someone to step up” and lead the legislative fight, he says.

The call has been put out nationally by an organization calling itself the San Francisco Eight, made up of former members of the Black Panther Party (the militant black-power/community-action group from the 1960s and ’70s), who were arrested earlier this year on charges stemming from the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Some of the Eight had been similarly charged in the mid-1970s, but their cases were dismissed when a judge ruled that some of the suspects had been tortured during interrogation.

The Black Bird Collective will meet with supporters at the Home Grown Herb and Tea shop, 195 Congress St, at 5:30 pm on Monday, September 3, to talk about the campaign, distribute literature and petitions, and begin collecting signatures.

On the Web
Black Bird Collective: blackbirdcollective.blogspot.com

Internet disconnect: Getting online in Maine can be painfully slow. And the planned Verizon-FairPoint merger won’t help.

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Most of the objections about the Verizon-FairPoint telephone-company merger proposal do not hinge on whether either of them is providing any kind of worthwhile, valuable, or useful telephone service.

The proposal, in which industry giant Verizon would sell the wired-telephone parts of its business in northern New England (including the wires, switching equipment, maintenance staff, and everything else) to industry midget FairPoint Communications, is relevant in Maine — and New Hampshire and Vermont — mainly in terms of what it would mean for rural customers who want high-speed, broadband Internet access.

Everyone involved — the two companies, the merger’s opponents, and state officials — talks about the deal’s impact on bringing DSL broadband Internet service to rural Mainers. This is indeed a concern in many remote parts of Maine, although state figures show that, overall, 85 percent of Mainers already have the option to choose broadband service via cable-Internet or wireless access, if not DSL.

While the states’ public utilities commissions technically regulate only telephone service, and not Internet access, DSL enters the discussion because it can be provided over regular old copper telephone wires, so long as those lines are properly maintained and equipped.

The trouble with this debate is that DSL is the wrong topic. We should be talking about fiber-optics technology, which transfers data over laser beams through glass wires. Because fiber-optic lines are capable of handling telephone, Internet, television, and other communications of the future, fiber optics is widely accepted as the immediate future of high-speed Internet connections. It is currently being rolled out by Verizon in major population centers around the country, including New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC. Whether the $2.7-billion Verizon-FairPoint deal goes through or not, the problem is that our state officials haven’t noticed that DSL is the wave of the past.

Lighting the world
Nationally, Verizon operates about two-thirds of the 1.3 million fiber connections to homes, according to the Fiber to the Home Council, a nationwide non-profit agency combining towns, utility companies, real-estate developers, and Internet service providers working to encourage the connection — by whomever is best equipped to do so — of fiber to every home in the US. (Today, just under two percent of US homes have fiber connections, the council says.)

Verizon’s fiber customers are primarily in large urban areas where population density (and therefore the number of prospective customers) is high enough to justify the cost of installing fiber. But many of the homes connected to fiber other than Verizon’s are, perhaps ironically, in rural places where town officials or smaller companies have decided to install it to boost economic development, according to FTTH Council president Joe Savage.

Seems like a good idea. “We’re the slowest in New England as far as download speeds,” says Peter McLaughlin, the business manager of the union representing Maine’s Verizon employees, which is a member of the national Communications Workers of America union’s research project on US Internet-access speeds. The union — looking to expand employment opportunities for its members — is lobbying to get companies to increase bandwidth, and to get government regulators to require universal Internet availability.

Through a variety of initiatives over many years, Maine has been trying to build rural economic development, including DSL-focused efforts to bring better Internet service to the hinterlands. The state is even looking to boost the number of telecommuting workers; Savage suggests fiber to the home may be faster than businesses’ office connections. But not even the few legislators who have commented to the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) about the FairPoint deal have mentioned fiber; one didn’t even mention DSL.

That’s too bad, because Maine actually has a lot of fiber already. Many Maine high schools and colleges are connected by a fiber-optic “ATM” network, which is mostly used for videoconferencing now. Maine has fiber-optic backbone running throughout the state, between telephone-company switching offices, in major connections by cable-television companies, and in downtown Portland and Lewiston-Auburn. Oxford Networks sells fiber to the home — in Maine. And Verizon is letting homes in a few Maine towns right on the New Hampshire border get fiber service from its Portsmouth center.

Vermont is in about the same place as Maine: Verizon provides no fiber to Vermont homes, though some communities have it, through either municipal initiatives (like Burlington’s) or small, independent companies. New Hampshire is better off, at least in the southern part of the state, where Verizon does offer fiber connections to homes in some areas.

In Maine, aside from those few homes next to New Hampshire, Verizon has no fiber to the home. FairPoint, which has phone customers in 18 states, offers fiber-optics to residential customers in four states (none in New England), but only in sizable housing developments being constructed on land with no previous telephone or Internet service.

Fiber free
If the Verizon-FairPoint merger is approved, FairPoint says it will spend about $40 million ($13 million to $14 million in each of the three states) to expand DSL service to some areas that don’t have it, and roll it out over the next few years to cover as much as 93 percent of their customer base here.

By that time, we’ll be behind again. Savage, from the fiber council, estimates that in 15 years, 80 percent of US homes will have fiber connections.

Not us, though: Maine public advocate Richard Davies (the state official whose job is to represent Maine consumers in public-utilities deals) just made a deal with Verizon in which the company agreed to invest $12.5 million to expand broadband in Maine, but not with fiber. “Because they’re looking to sell out, it was not logical” to ask for anything other than DSL, he says. Verizon, in exchange for installing old technology, gets to wait until next year before PUC officials will determine whether the company has been overcharging customers by as much as $30 million a year for the past six years. (By that time, Verizon won’t be here, and Davies’s agreement will leave the rate battle to FairPoint.)

The head of one telecom company in Houlton (where Internet service is provided by small, independent local companies) suggested the $12.5 million be given to the ConnectME Authority, a state agency set up to bring broadband Internet to rural Mainers without any broadband options at all.

That sum would dwarf the $500,000 the Legislature has allocated to be split among several companies seeking to debut broadband service in rural areas of Maine. The rest of the money to fund ConnectME will come from Mainers, who this fall will begin paying an additional monthly surcharge (0.25 percent) on their telephone and Internet bills.

Of course, ConnectME has no plans to roll out fiber-optics anywhere in Maine, either, and is just hoping to get any kind of broadband at all to rural Maine before we’re completely left behind. “DSL is certainly not the leading technology, like fiber,” says Phil Lindley, acting executive director of ConnectME, “but it’s certainly something that will serve people’s broadband needs for a while.”

Left in the dark
Verizon knows fiber is the real future: the company has been taking profits from Maine and other rural areas around the country (like the rural Midwest and West Virginia), and investing that money not to improve telecommunications in the places the money came from, but to put the real broadband, fiber-optic cables, in densely populated areas like New York City, Boston, and the area around Washington, DC.

Now Verizon wants to get out of northern New England — and its other rural landline businesses (see sidebar, “Verizon Unloads”) — to focus on fiber elsewhere. In getting out, Verizon would leave us to a small, heavily indebted company (FairPoint) whose best plan is to invest less money in system upgrades than Verizon ever did, and to have those system upgrades get Mainers’ service to a level city-dwellers are already beginning to discard as too slow.

What if the deal failed, and Verizon had to stay (at least until it found a new buyer)? Verizon spokesman Peter Reilly said the company wouldn’t comment on what would happen in the “hypothetical” case that the sale — which must be approved by three states and the federal government — could fall through, leaving us to put the pieces together on our own. The picture isn’t good.

In Maine, Verizon is already the subject of some complaints to the Public Utilities Commission from rural customers about the unavailability of high-speed Internet (including one titled “Request for commission action to implore Verizon to implement the use of DSL” from 21 business owners and 12 residents in The Forks and West Forks, the central-Maine home to the state’s whitewater-rafting industry).

Verizon has made clear its lack of interest in being in the landline phone and wired-Internet business here. If the sale to FairPoint is blocked, Verizon will have no incentive to maintain its services, wires, or anything else — in fact, neglecting its customers and employees will serve to shift opposition to the sale into support as people insist on getting decent service.

Davies says the PUC has “very broad powers” to force Verizon to provide minimally acceptable telephone service, though that may involve going to court if Verizon is reluctant to do what is required. And those powers don’t address broadband service, which is not regulated by the PUC or state law.

Davies thinks that if Verizon tried harder to market its landline and broadband services — and if the company expanded broadband offerings in Maine — the company could do better here. As it is, “they’ve sort of said over the last couple of years, ‘we’re not going to invest in the state,’” Davies says.

Seeing the light
And while FairPoint talks a great game about how they will bring outdated, slow DSL to rural Mainers who are still stuck on dial-up, they’ll have to spend a lot more than they’re expecting, to do even that.

There is no outside evaluation of the condition of the wires Verizon would transfer to FairPoint (it’s protected as a company secret), but there are people who have a good idea of what they’re like.

McLaughlin, whose union members maintain the lines, estimates that FairPoint should expect to spend “a couple hundred million” dollars just to repair the existing copper wires to a condition where they can handle DSL traffic.

“Publius,” a pseudonymous Verizon employee who started the VerizonVsFairPoint.com Web site to distribute information about the sale, says FairPoint is dreaming if they think it will be relatively cheap to improve service in northern New England.

“There is absolutely no way” that the installation of the equipment FairPoint is talking about would, on its own, bring broadband to the rural masses, says Publius, who withholds his real name for fear of losing his job.

The wires are in terrible condition, he says, many having been in place for decades and repeatedly spliced back together after wind or trees or car crashes knocked them down. Not all of those splices (of between 1000 and 2000 tiny 22-gauge copper strands in each wire) are perfect, as you might imagine, and there are plenty of places — such as the Concord, New Hampshire, neighborhood discussed in an August 2 Concord Monitor article — where the combination of age and bad connections means that Verizon phone service cuts out whenever it rains.

So repairing them will be expensive. And if FairPoint is going to invest millions — much less McLaughlin’s projection of hundreds of millions — what about fiber-optics?

Rather than replacing the old copper wires with new copper, Savage of the fiber council suggests installing new fiber — he even says doing so can be cheaper in some circumstances, but not really in rural areas where the distances are great.

In places like that, he says, our best bet is to arrange some sort of joint venture between the government — local or state — and telecommunications companies, in which the government would grant some sort of benefit to the company in exchange for bringing fiber to homes.

If only our state officials thought about fiber.

Verizon unloads
For seven years, Verizon has been busy getting itself out of the landline business around the country, and around the world. Here are the highlights:

2000 Verizon sells 133,000 landlines in WISCONSIN to a couple of local telephone companies for $365 million.

SEPTEMBER 2002 Verizon sells its shares in NEW ZEALAND Telecom, a landline company in that country.

SEPTEMBER 2002 Verizon sells 675,000 telephone lines in MISSOURI,KENTUCKY, AND ALABAMA for $2.6 billion to CenturyTel, a publicly traded company based in Louisiana.

APRIL 2004 Verizon announces it will sell Verizon Dominica (serving the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC), and its shares of phone companies in PUERTO RICO AND VENEZUELA, to a couple of Mexico-based telephone companies for $3.7 billion. The deal affects 15 million landline, broadband, and wireless customers.

OCTOBER 2004 Verizon announces the company is looking to sell 15 million of its nearly 50 million landlines AROUND THE NATION, to focus on wireless service and high-speed Internet connectivity.

MAY 2005 Verizon sells 700,000 lines in HAWAII for $1.65 billion to private-equity firm the Carlyle Group (a company backed financially by both former president George H.W. Bush and members of Osama Bin Laden’s family).

MAY 2006 Verizon’s hopes to sell 3.4 million landlines and related operations in ILLINOIS, INDIANA, MICHIGAN, AND OHIO are reported in the Wall Street Journal Online, and is seeking to earn between $5 billion and $6 billion from that deal. In addition, its hopes to sell its northern New England lines for between $2 billion and $3 billion.

JANUARY 2007 Verizon announces that it will sell its NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND operations, including 1.6 million landlines, for $2.7 billion to FairPoint Communications.

Air apparent? McNallica finishes fourth in the US

Published as a Web exclusive at thePhoenix.com

Maybe New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell is a breast man. That’s at least what Jason Jones of The Daily Show implied, as Jones introduced his score for McNallica at the US Air Guitar National Championship, held Thursday at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City.

But we get ahead of ourselves.

McNallica, the Portland and New England air-guitar champ (who works by day at a Portland mortgage company under the name Erin McNally), had traveled with about a dozen friends and supporters to NYC, after months of practice and performance (see the other stuff we’ve written about her). “I just really want to make it to the second round,” she said, knowing that would make her one of the top five air-guitarists in the country.

She was up against 13 other competitors (12 men and one woman) from around the nation for the US title, which comes with tickets to Finland for the world air-guitar championship in early September. She had prepped in a few special ways for this performance, MySpacing the last US winner in Finland (Sonykrok, from 2004) to “get her blessing,” and getting Jen Moore from Sanctuary Tattoo to bless her fingerless gloves. She was as ready as she would get.

The opening set from New Jersey-based hair band Satanicide warmed up the crowd with such timeless classics of guitar rock as “Pussy and Ice Cream,” a Satanicide original angst anthem about, well, it’s fairly obvious, and “Twenty-Sided Die,” an ode to Dungeons and Dragons.

After a few butterfly-calming PBRs and Buds with her fans, McNallica got serious to prepare for her performance, getting quiet, still, and moving her fingers up and down in the air as if, well, she were playing a guitar. Rhinestones flashed from her arms, and diamond “M”s dangled from her earlobes. “The theme of Finland this year is bling,” she explained.

McNallica went seventh in the first round, introduced by MC Bjorn Turoque, who never won a US championship, but has become the celebrity spokesman for US air guitar. In Boston, at the New England regional championship, he had been a judge and gave her perfect 6.0 scores in each of the two rounds and called her “the future of air guitar.”

This time Turoque reminded the audience that “this woman blew my mind in Boston,” and let her go. She leapt, kicked, fingered, and tongued her way around the stage to Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart,” from the 1989 album Dr. Feelgood.

And then, amid the crowd’s cheers, she awaited the scores. Up to that point, the scores – and the performances – had been dismal, slow, pedestrian, even anemic. But McNallica opened the field, and the judges’ hearts.

Jones and Gladwell (who also wrote The Tipping Point, about the effects of social behavior) were two of the four celebrity judges (the others were Rachel Dratch from Saturday Night Live and Ben Wizner from the American Civil Liberties Union).

Gladwell had given Portland and New England air-guitar champ McNallica the first 6.0 maximum-point score of the night (there would only be one more, from Gladwell to McNallica in the second and final round of competition).

She took the 6.0, and Jones’s dismal 5.2 (which got him boos and the finger from the crowd), a 5.7 from Wizner and 5.9 from Dratch, and squeaked into the five-person second round in a tie for fourth place.

In the second round, in which she didn’t get to choose the song, she went first. But as the five finalists were allowed to hear the selected song for the first time, McNallica went wild. She knew the song, chord for chord: “Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Motherfucker,” by Darkness (off 2003’s Permission To Land). She started playing even just standing there on stage with the rest of the contestants, among whom was reigning US champ Hot Lixx Hulahan.

But despite her best efforts – her extensive and complex fingerwork on the fretboard, her lip-syncing, even her throwing of the guitar and her subsequent catch – it wasn’t enough. The only woman in the final five, she landed another perfect 6 from Gladwell, a 5.7 from Wizner, a 5.8 from Dratch, and a 5.7 from Jones (who had given her the 5.2 in the first round). Her total, 23.2 points, made her the fourth-best air-guitarist in the nation. (There was a tie for third place.)

The other four’s performances included crowd-surfing (exemplified by The Rock Ness Fucking Monster’s effort, in which he stayed standing, supported by a few sturdy new friends), acrobatics that lost their grace and surrendered to drunken uncoordination, and spraying of beer and energy drinks all over the stage and the fans.

But in the end, McNallica was a good sport, applauding – even worshiping – as the new champion was crowned, the man who had the home-field advantage from the beginning: William Ocean of New York City.

Will there be a next year? Will she become a coach for other female air-guitarists? Will she get knee replacements to be able to subject hers to the abuse Ocean gives his (she thinks they’re titanium; we think they’re jelly, at least now)? For the answers to these questions, we must wait.

But McNallica, on her way back to Portland on Friday, rocks on.

McNallica heads to nationals

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Portland’s air-guitar champ, also New England’s top atmos-instrumentalist, will compete in New York City on Thursday, August 16, for the US title, which would get her a slot in the world championship competition in Finland in early September.

McNallica, whose unassuming day job is at a mortgage firm, says she has been contacted by some of her 13 competitors, asking for video. No dice, she says. Portlanders, of course, know what her routines look like (see “Music Seen,” May 4, by Sonya Tomlinson and Jeff Inglis; “Support the Portland Air-Guitar Champ,” June 8, and “One Step Closer to Finland,” June 15, both by Jeff Inglis).

But even Mainers who attend will get to see new material, as she has a serious practice regimen: “yoga, the gym, finger exercises, lots of rocking.” Tickets ($18.50) are still available to the show, which starts at 8 pm at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza, between Third and Park Avenues on East 15th Street (near the Union Square subway stop). And Greyhound Bus Lines have a $30 round-trip Boston-to-New York special if you book online.