If there's one issue I am passionate about, it's transforming Maine into a place where young people can obtain economic opportunity. I often hear folks I've met on the campaign trail say that Maine's environment is "anti-business" and that we need to do more to attract good paying jobs. I believe that it's time to shed that reputation and recognize how business-friendly Maine can be. We've got a wonderful quality of life, a low crime rate, beautiful scenery, and great geographic resources like deep water ports which are ideal for transport.
Rob Brown, the executive director of Opportunity Maine, recently co-wrote an editorial which outlines a wonderful plan to get Maine on the right economic track. As some of you may know, Opportunity Maine is a program which allows those who earn an associate or a bachelor's degree at a Maine school to be reimbursed for education loan payments through a state income tax credit during any year in which they continue to live, work and pay taxes here after graduation.
Programs to guide Mainers to self-sufficiency
A new joint effort focuses on meeting high-wage employers' needs by helping low-income workers develop their skills.
By ROB BROWN and AUTA MAIN
The days when a high school diploma assured a good job for life are long gone. Like most growing industries, even Maine's manufacturing sector now frequently require education well beyond high school just to get in the door, let alone advance up the career -- and income -- ladder.
To make better jobs available to more Maine people, we must better align educational programs that should be ladders from poverty to self-sufficiency.
To that end, Maine's Department of Labor and Opportunity Maine are working together to promote a more comprehensive vision of work force and economic development that will improve business growth, create good jobs and raise incomes in Maine.
Maine has the lowest incomes and the lowest rate of degree attainment of all the New England states. We have a surplus of low-skilled workers and a shortage of middle- to high-skilled workers, leaving many businesses struggling to grow.
For the sake of our economy, common sense dictates that we invest in developing the ability of those low-income workers to gain the skills needed to meet this shortage.
Recent business surveys bear this out. For the National Association of Manufacturers, 90 percent of respondents indicated a moderate to severe shortage of skilled employees.
For the Maine Development Foundation, 42 percent of respondents ranked "educated work force" as their No. 1 need, ahead of other concerns such as taxes, transportation or utility costs.
Furthermore, Phillip Trostel, a research economist at the University of Maine's Margaret Chase Smith Center and School of Economics, has demonstrated that the states with the highest percentage of degree-earners also have jobs that pay the highest salaries. High-wage employers in need of high-skilled workers are not going to locate in a state with a work force like ours.
To improve the composition of our economy, we need to change the composition of our work force. We must invest in educational opportunity. Any economic strategy for Maine that does not have coordinated investments in the skills and capacities of our work force at its core is not sustainable and would not be likely to succeed.
Recognizing this fact, Maine recently passed two innovative laws aimed at increasing access to higher education and developing the state's work force:
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About Me
- Andrew O'Brien for District 44!
- My name is Andy O'Brien and I am the Democratic candidate for the Maine State House of Representatives in District 44, which includes Islesboro, Lincolnville, Hope, Appleton, Searsmont, Liberty and Morrill. I was born in Lincolnville, Maine and I attended local schools. From 2001 to 2007, I lived and worked in Taiwan as a teacher. In 2007, I returned to the US to pursue a degree in education. I was elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 2008. When I am not serving in the Legislature I work as a landscaper. I am currently in my second year of graduate school at the University of Southern Maine. These past two years have been rewarding and educational. Although our state continues to face hard times, I believe strongly that where there is hardship, there is opportunity. In my work, I have met countless local small business men and women who form the backbone of the Maine economy. As your representative in Augusta, I will continue to stand up for working Mainers and look for innovative ways to build a more sustainable local economy in which small businesses are supported and not hindered by state government.
2 comments:
I just got a handbill from you on my front door. Before and if i vote for you i need a few questions answered to see where you head is at. do you support the national i.d. card with the radio frequency id chips in them that will cost maine millions of dollars to implement? i noticed you mentioned global warming in your speel there on your homepage. are you aware that the icecaps on mars are melting at the same rate as the earths? are you aware that the sun goes through solar cycles and that 1,000 years ago they were farming in greenland and northern norway? do you support the carbon tax or carbon credits that the central banks are trying to push on us through this global warming nonsense? carbon dioxcide what we breath out not carbon monoxcide that comes out of our tail pipes. the former is what plants breath and it is shown through history that higher levels of it bring forth higher crop yields and better growth equaling more oxygen. made man global warming is a farse on its face any scientist knows that man can only account for 3% of the heat generated 60% is the chemicals spewing from active volcanoes and the rest has to do with solar flares and how hot the radiation from the sun is. thats what brings about the 1,000 year hot and cold cycles that this planet has gone through for millenniums now.
do you support the democratic congress man Dennis Kucinich and his 35 Articles of Impeachment Against George W Bush? How do you feel about the growing police state ,lack of freedoms, and the subversion of the constitution? do you support the war in Iraq? if so pls answer why you would support an undeclared war preemptive war of agression on a country that didnt have wmd's wasnt involved in 911 that we got lied into not to mention the growing gas prices as a result of it? do you support nancy palosi? you do realise the american public voted the dem's into the senate to clean house and stop the war and instead we get palosi making the whole party look bad. its ok though palosi's husband vacations with bush over at bohemian grove every summer. do you support the free speach zones being issued around the country for demonstrators having to apply for a permit to speak freely and organize and then being issued a place and time they are allowed to do so (free speach zone)? all over the world unions are popping up. the african union the european union the asian union the south american union and most importantly the north american union is being planned for. if you read the spp documents detailing and outlining the deep harmonization economically and militarily between the united states mexico and canada. what are your thoughts on the growing harmonization the central banks seem to be setting up without a vote from the people? what are your thoughts on illegal immigration and the lack of prosecution for the employers that higher them? what are your thoughts on the deception of the drug company's and the Ritalin and numerous other speeds tranquilizers and other drugs they are forcing our children on and also what are your thoughts on how the schools are given money from the federal government for every kid they get on these Ritalin type drugs? what are your thoughts on thermerisol (mercury based preservative) being put in all the vaccinations that have brought about this 1 in 50 kids getting autism in this country and bringing about the rise of alergies in people? all countrys used to use thermerisol in their vaccines but in 1977 russian scientists realized that it was killing some kids and giving disorders to the rest since then every country in the world has taken thermerisol out of the vaccinations except for the u.s. because instead of throwing the vile away after giving the child his or her proper dose acording to weight and height they can re-cap it and give it to the next kid saving billions each year? would you support internet2? it was shot down last year by only 2 votes in congress and would tax and restrict the internet giving everybody a single ip and account and force it into sort of like a cable package making you pay extra for large use of bandwidth tax emails and make only websites from the 6 largest telecommunications companys free to visit and tax all the rest? how do you feel about the second amendment? would you ever support further restricting guns? do you support the local check points the police sets up where they randomly search people for no reason laughing in the face of the 4th amendment? will you fight to stop the state and local police from doing so? i have about a zillion other questions but i think if i get your take on each of these i will know what kind of person you are and what you will or wont do for this district. my email address and my msn is broilingh8@hotmail.com in case you want to further this conversation or would like links to research any of the questions or complaints i've brought forth. pls take a look at these 2 sites and do some reading they might give you a whole knew angle on the direction and concerns of the voting public. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
http://www.infowars.com/
how do you feel about states rights? i know maine as a whole voted for medical marijuana about 8 years ago and the federal government stepped in and threatened to take away all our federal tax money. do you agree with this article?
Why the Drug War is a Crime against Humanity Explained
By Carmen Yarrusso
09/08/08 "ICH" -- - Like the Iraq war and the “war on terror”, the so-called “drug war” is a government contrived “war” based on lies that generates massive profits for a few while causing massive suffering for many.
The drug war is futile by design (and thus never-ending) because it doesn’t “fight” drugs—quite the contrary—it strongly encourages production and distribution of prohibited drugs by guaranteeing extremely high profits.
But the most insidious and evil aspect of the drug war is it manufactures its own enemies by criminalizing the most basic of human rights—the right of sovereignty over your own body. The drug war could not exist without first inventing a bogus crime.
Our government wastes billions of tax dollars each year harassing and jailing millions of decent, productive Americans for a government-invented “crime”. The use of drugs (even dangerous drugs like alcohol and nicotine) simply doesn’t meet any reasonable definition of “crime”.
Real crime requires action that harms another. Real crime requires both a victim and a perpetrator. For example, robbery harms another and has both a victim and a perpetrator. Only a corrupt, depraved government could invent a crime you commit against yourself.
If you use certain drugs, our government claims you’re both a criminal and a victim at the same time. Since the perpetrator can't be separated from the victim, the victim is further punished for the “crime”. This pathetic perversion of justice is vigorously championed by our government for selfish political reasons.
More than 50 government agencies share billions of your tax dollars each year “fighting” a government-created crime. Of the millions of illegal drug users, the vast majority use marijuana. If marijuana were legal like alcohol, these government agencies would suddenly lose billions of dollars because millions of former “criminals” would suddenly be granted sovereignty over their own bodies. The vast army amassed to fight the drug war would need to be dissolved at great cost.
That’s why our government strongly opposes even honest debate about marijuana legalization because this massive money-making scam would soon end.
Ingesting nicotine, alcohol, fatty foods, or certain drugs may be unwise. But why is it a crime? If a drug user or a non-drug user harms another they should be treated equally. But the bogus “crime” of drug use doesn't require harming anyone. Nor does it require a victim and a perpetrator. It only requires a government-invented, bogus criminal/victim, a drug user.
By using lies and deception our government convinces gullible Americans that simply putting something into your own body is a serious crime. But evidence clearly shows that nearly all the harm associated with drug use is caused by creating the bogus crime, not from the actual drug use. There are millions of drug users, but relatively few are harmed by their drug use. These few should be patients, not criminals.
But it’s not just the millions arrested for drug use who suffer from this gross injustice. We gullible Americans have allowed our government to invent a bogus crime that causes massive misery worldwide while costing the taxpayers billions.
Consider the following list of easily avoidable human tragedies that are the direct result of a government-invented, bogus crime: A tax-free, unregulated, multi-billion-dollar drug industry necessarily run by violent criminals; a giant law enforcement bureaucracy wasting billions in a futile attempt to curtail this drug industry, which, in fact, guarantees its extreme profitability; a deteriorating public education system robbed of billions to support this law enforcement bureaucracy; courts and prisons overflowing with non-violent "criminals" while murderers, rapists and real criminals go free; tens of thousands of children enduring the suffering and stigma of having one or both parents in jail for a bogus "crime”; the gradual erosion of our Constitution as more and more civil liberties are sacrificed to fight a crime "made in USA."; rampant corruption of foreign governments (like Mexico and Columbia), so driven by US drug profits that life and human rights are secondary; thousands of adults and children infected and dying from HIV because distributing clean needles is a “crime”; violent street gangs with little incentive for education or legitimate jobs reaping huge drug profits made possible by a bogus crime; a growing death toll from police breaking down doors to catch people using substances less dangerous than tobacco, alcohol or fatty foods; a growing cynicism and disrespect for all laws and authority fueled by the knowledge our government can arbitrarily invent a bogus crime…
This sordid list goes on and on.
We're appalled when Islamic regimes invent bogus crimes against reading certain books, or listening to certain music. Using certain drugs is our government's version of the same thing. But the worldwide consequences of US drug prohibition are far more serious and severe. All of these "crimes" lack the moral basis of real crime. All are clear cases of a repressive government dictating the private personal behavior of its citizens.
If real crime is knowingly causing harm to others, then the real crime here is not drug use, but making drug use a “crime”. And the real criminals are not drug users, but ordinary people like us, who sit back and condone a ruthless scam that has been exported and exploited around the world leaving massive human suffering in its wake.
Carmen Yarrusso
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