Jon Reisman

If you think area chambers of commerce, prominent banking institutions, and government-supported nonprofits such as the Sunrise Economic Council are doing everything they can to defend Washington County’s way of life based on America’s founding principles, think again.

The Sunrise County Economic Council (SCEC) is a left-leaning 501c3 nonprofit with a stated mission to build a better future for Washington County by initiating and facilitating the creation of jobs and prosperity, working with a consortium of community-minded businesses, not-for-profit organizations, municipalities and citizens. You might think that with a mission like that, and a board of directors representing most of the economic and political establishment of Washington County, along with extensive backing from Machias Savings Bank, that the SCEC would be a promoter of market capitalism. After all, it is the economic system with the best track record of promoting economic growth and prosperity. 

But you would be wrong. Why? Because the SCEC, like most of America’s institutions, has been “captured,” the technical term used by economists, i.e., taken over by the long march of the Left dating to the Sixties. These institutions—governmental, academic, cultural, the media, and increasingly corporate (See Disney, Bud Lite, Target, et al)—are fully “woke,” as expressed in current political phraseology, and working to recast America as we know it. The SCEC views Downeast Maine much as woke institutions see the country: Its inhabitants are misguided serfs who can only arrive at a better future as envisioned by the elite progressive establishment, where freedom and prosperity are not only eschewed but understood as white privilege tools of oppression.

Capitalism is an economic system where the means of production are owned and controlled by the private sector (as opposed to the government). The SCEC is pursuing policies that will result in greater government ownership and control of the means of production and crony-, as opposed to market-capitalism, where government policies favor certain politically correct businesses. We see it all around us, as local crony capitalists jump on the bandwagon of subsidized government enterprises, to include the ubiquitous (and expensive and unreliable) solar panel arrays and wind farms now destroying our viewsheds and endangering our wildlife habitat, values the environmental left once championed but now forbear in deference to their ideological political goals. 

Here are some policies along with facts and figures that the SCEC has embraced:

• Climate alarmism, which seeks to end capitalism and is promoting doubling public land ownership in Maine and the nation. The state and national goal is 30% public ownership, which Washington County already exceeds. That 30% is the result of the salmon listing and aggressive funding of land trusts and climate alarmism when the state goal was 15% overall public lands. If the SCEC and the climate alarmists have their way, 2/3 of Washington County will be taken out of private tax paying ownership and our future as landless serfs will be assured (for one town well on its way in this direction, check out how the property owners/taxpayers of Lubec are reacting to their latest revaluation. But no worry for the green elite and SCEC aristocracy advocating for all of this, they are likely to be comfortable and probably safely ensconced in too-well-formed communities where lattes are the beverage of choice, virtue-signaling pervasive, and heterodoxy bullied.

• National Park Service Heritage Planning Grant Funds, which according to SCEC, can only do good, as if letting the environmental left repeat the greenlining atrocities they committed 30 plus years ago but the SCEC hopes no one remembers could possibly be a good idea. Does anyone remember how the Park Service tried to designate most of the Bold Coast as a National Natural Landmark, a camel’s-nose-under-the-tent scheme to lock up the privately owned land until the feds could seize it? Even George Mitchell couldn’t stand by and let that ruse continue. The principal and likely only beneficiaries of the up to $2 million a year in the “no-strings-attached” Park Service Heritage funds, will be the SCEC planners, the Democrat Blueberry crony capitalist who pushed the Heritage scam and assorted associated leftist activists and non-profits. 

The SCEC is holding its annual economic summit at the Cobscook Institute on Tuesday October 24. The title this year is “Prosperity in the Long Term.” The keynote speaker is Stephanie Eglinton, the Executive Director of the Maine Children’s Alliance (MCA), a noted left-wing advocacy group for more state intervention “for the children” and an ally of teachers unions that conspired with public health officials for covid school closures and useless mask mandates that caused untold harm to our children and, as a result, to our future. The MCA has been an opponent of school choice and likely approves of the National School Board Association and Biden Department of Justice policies to brand parents who disagree with leftist Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Transgender Indoctrination efforts as domestic terrorists.

I am taking a break from my sabbatical to attend the summit to ask Ms. Eglinton and the SCEC some pointed questions. I hope I don’t need to be bailed out of the Washington County jail because we all know that the left is no longer a believer in free speech or equal justice for all, and the no-cash-bail and catch-and-release rules only apply to leftist miscreants and illegal immigrants, certainly not retired conservatives.

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here, or to him directly via email at [email protected].