The Media Mutt aka Al Diamon,makes no bones about savaging those in maine journalism worthy of the favor.
The Mutt and Perc Sane aka Mike Brown - the only media watchers paying attention to media humbug in the dirigo state
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Maine Things semi-Considers Sears Island
"Sears Island's Future May Finally Be Decided!"
The breathless October 15, 2008 announcement by Maine Things Consider's AJ Higgins of a "truce" between combatants over the fate of wild Sears Island made it sound as though a win-win solution were at hand. It just ain't so, AJ.
But how would he know? When he spotted members of Fair Play for Sears Island heading in his direction out in the hallway at the end of MDOT's 45 minute presentation & Q&A session with the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee, A.J. literally ran back into the hearing room, where another issue was being examined by the committee, to avoid having to point his recorder's microphone at them.
That's right, Higgins never troubled to ask any of the no port no way people from Fair Play For Sears Island who were so in evidence at the committee room for their point of view
Instead he tut tuts along with Committee chair Dennis Damon that only the compromiser groups are capable of a "reasonable discussion". Why ask the unreasonable opposition, with their sinister black coffin in the meeting room doorway, and their large color photographs of the port sacrifice zone (how Damon winced at that word "sacrifice"!). Why ask them anything at all?
What sort of unreasonable things might Maine Things Considered's reporter have heard?
They might have told him things that would've conflicted with the win-win greasy skid-ness of AJ's spin of inevitable virtuous compromise.
Ditto for sturgeon. You know, that seagrassy shoal? The one that nourishes Penobscot Bay's juvenile cod and other groundfishes in their first months of life before heading downbay? The shoal that would be dredged out to ease the way in for container ships?
Yeah that one. Indeed Mother Nature is being asked to give up much more than the port wannabes and the easement wannabes combined.
But the moderate green enviros of JUPC are hard pressed to identify any compromises that they forced port developers to make. These former supporters natural island supporters have literally given away the island store. For a fistful of....what?
In 1985, the club prosecuted two federal lawsuits here and here
to protect Sears Island through the federal courts. The Club filed more cases in 1989 and 1990 and 1992
In 1995 Sierra Club helped fight off the 27 acre 1995 port proposal - Helped fight off the LNG follies of 2004, This began in 2005, when Sierra Club let itself be talked into sacrificing ten times as much of Sears Island - 330 acres - the whole western third of the island - to the port wannabes.
Let us clarify: the Sierra Club's Maine leadership did. For the tiny top of the Maine Chapter pyramid decided not to poll its membership. Treacherously, they lied to port opponents' repeated importunings: Sure we'll ask our members, Ken Cline said, from his perch as Conservation Chair of the Maine Chapter of the Club. From which perch he helped stop the porthuggers in their tracks a decade ago.
But (wink wink) he didn't. The legal eagle has become an Administration parrot. He and of-a-feather Maine chapter longtimer Joan Saxe opted to go with the Baldacci flow. Studiously ignoring those industrialists waiting anxiously in the wings for that western shore to be handed them.
Then there's the truly big winner - Maine Coast Heritage Trust - which ould get the north and eastern portions of the island - 600+acres of priceless island public land - given to it free. In perpetuity!
AJ? Maybe you were just in a hurry to go cover the Callahan Mine cleanup story. But always try to do that 'fair and blanced' thing, will ya?
The breathless October 15, 2008 announcement by Maine Things Consider's AJ Higgins of a "truce" between combatants over the fate of wild Sears Island made it sound as though a win-win solution were at hand. It just ain't so, AJ.
But how would he know? When he spotted members of Fair Play for Sears Island heading in his direction out in the hallway at the end of MDOT's 45 minute presentation & Q&A session with the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee, A.J. literally ran back into the hearing room, where another issue was being examined by the committee, to avoid having to point his recorder's microphone at them.
That's right, Higgins never troubled to ask any of the no port no way people from Fair Play For Sears Island who were so in evidence at the committee room for their point of view
Instead he tut tuts along with Committee chair Dennis Damon that only the compromiser groups are capable of a "reasonable discussion". Why ask the unreasonable opposition, with their sinister black coffin in the meeting room doorway, and their large color photographs of the port sacrifice zone (how Damon winced at that word "sacrifice"!). Why ask them anything at all?
What sort of unreasonable things might Maine Things Considered's reporter have heard?
They might have told him things that would've conflicted with the win-win greasy skid-ness of AJ's spin of inevitable virtuous compromise.
He might have heard how the "Joint Use" plan really only engages in planning for a "Single Use" - the dimensions and operations of the entertainment/education complex that the "environmentalists" want to build in the 'protected' north end of Sears Island - while carrying out zero planning for overseeing and managing the other Joint Use: industrial development of those 300+ acres of irreplaceable natural Maine that cover the supposedly 'port-appropriate' side of Sears Island.
Read Summary of JUPC Report Page 1._ Page 2
Had he quizzed opponents of the JUPC plan, AJ Higgins might have heard about the nearly two decade old campaign to re-open the estuarine waterway between the island and the mainland, blocked since the late 80s by a solid fill causeway that isolates the twin ecosystems of waterbodies Stockton Harbor and Searsport Harbor from each other.
A campaign dropped by Sierra Club and by former Earth First! activist Jim Freeman like an overripe haddock. MDOT wants piercing the Sears Island causeway "off the table"? Fine. Into the dustbin of ecological history it goes.
Ditto for sturgeon. You know, that seagrassy shoal? The one that nourishes Penobscot Bay's juvenile cod and other groundfishes in their first months of life before heading downbay? The shoal that would be dredged out to ease the way in for container ships?Yeah that one. Indeed Mother Nature is being asked to give up much more than the port wannabes and the easement wannabes combined.
But the moderate green enviros of JUPC are hard pressed to identify any compromises that they forced port developers to make. These former supporters natural island supporters have literally given away the island store. For a fistful of....what?
Jim Freeman the once-bad boy of Maine Earth First!, 
once indomitable defender of Sacred Wassumkeag against any and all port ventures there; the bane of port wannabe Angus King and Baldacci1, Jimmy seems to have made his peace with the Porties and their supporting cast of politicos like Senator-who-would-be-governor Dennis Damon
It would be a "clean container port" Jim once assured me at an NFN-GOM meeting in Augusta. Besides, he says optimistically, seemingly forgetting that good Green pledge of considering the effect of one's actions on those up to seven generations in the future, "who knows what could happen in twenty years anyway" (mp3)
"No ones really enthralled about having a port there." he told a reporter, ignoring the shipping and rail interests that have surrounded him for two years at every meeting of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee. All of them, the railroaders, the global traders, the shipping industrialists, are enthralled to the gills about having a port there; something Mr. Freeman has made much more likely with his participation in/validation of MDOT's little consensus group. 
He consensed anyway with MDOT Commissioner Cole that a port would be "appropriate" on Sears Island.
Freeman consensed that no environmental review under applicable state and federal laws of the agency's plan of making Sears Island available to containerport builders was needed.
Ditto that the mile long causeway to the island from the Mainland must not be pierced, lest the railroad industry be forced to shell out big bucks for a bridge that would allow upper Penobscot Bay's ecosystem to return to its clam-rich, cod-rich, sturgeon and salmon-rich recent past. Off the table THAT notion went. Big industry's stinginess with Angus King similarly killed his woodchip port proposal.
In 1985, the club prosecuted two federal lawsuits here and here
to protect Sears Island through the federal courts. The Club filed more cases in 1989 and 1990 and 1992In 1995 Sierra Club helped fight off the 27 acre 1995 port proposal - Helped fight off the LNG follies of 2004, This began in 2005, when Sierra Club let itself be talked into sacrificing ten times as much of Sears Island - 330 acres - the whole western third of the island - to the port wannabes.
Let us clarify: the Sierra Club's Maine leadership did. For the tiny top of the Maine Chapter pyramid decided not to poll its membership. Treacherously, they lied to port opponents' repeated importunings: Sure we'll ask our members, Ken Cline said, from his perch as Conservation Chair of the Maine Chapter of the Club. From which perch he helped stop the porthuggers in their tracks a decade ago.
But (wink wink) he didn't. The legal eagle has become an Administration parrot. He and of-a-feather Maine chapter longtimer Joan Saxe opted to go with the Baldacci flow. Studiously ignoring those industrialists waiting anxiously in the wings for that western shore to be handed them.
Then there's the truly big winner - Maine Coast Heritage Trust - which ould get the north and eastern portions of the island - 600+acres of priceless island public land - given to it free. In perpetuity!
But what a quid pro quo these earth defenders agreed to:
Sierra Club, too, meekly agreed with MDOT's very first demand that the island causeway be pierced & bridged, (like other causeways on the Maine coast), unblocking critical nutrient-rich water flows between Stockton Harbor, Searsport Harbor, Penobcot River and Penobscot Bay. The formerly rich shellfish abundance of these waters could be restored.
Maine DOT port wannabes grumped that a bridge that could support heavy rail traffic would cost too much. Bay ecology be damned! The once rich clam beds of Stockton Harbor are to be literally priced out of existence.AJ? Maybe you were just in a hurry to go cover the Callahan Mine cleanup story. But always try to do that 'fair and blanced' thing, will ya?
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Portland Press Herald - failing the Sears Island debate
Portland Press Herald - failing the Sears Island debate
It is with a sense of wonder that one observes the great pains the Portland Press Herald takes to avoid news coverage or even block commentary on the most important coastal issue that Maine has faced in years - the push to industrialize Sears Island at the head of Penobscot Bay.
The natural island - fallow since the dawn of the twentieth century, and recolonized by a remarkable and unique mix of Maine's coastal species; a natural Noah's Ark, if you will - is flanked on the western side by a large eelgrass-dotted shoal.
Here, the brackish waters created by the meeting of fresh river water with salt bay water host the Bay's great fish nursery, as diverse it its makeup as the island above. Here young salmon have their first encounter with salt water, learn to school and head oceanward. Here myriads of the small shrimp Pandalus Montagui prowl the muddy bayfloor, and are greedily seized upon by juveniles of cod, haddock, flounder, themselves heeding the Call of the wild Gulf of Maine.
But this is well known to the Press Herald's Dieter Bradury; he covered the successful fight to block the Angus King port plan for Sears Island, which was withdrawn by King once it was shown the impacts to marnie and upland wildlife would be too severe to mitigate.
Hey Deets! Where are you? Dieter is surely aware of the Joint Use Plan that the Baldacci Administration is pressing forward on. The one that would legislatively zone the western side of the island for a marine container port that would of necessity torpedo this Noah's Ark; the roar and thunder and diesel stench of the container port would drive most wildlife from the island; it would certainly reduce the revenue of the resorts on the nearby coast; the nursery shoal would largely disappear, to the great loss of the Bay's marine ecol9ogy and its fishermen.
But he is silent. As are all Portland Press Herald reporters and the rest of the Blethenian newspapers. Bradbury's last coverage, comically enough, was fawning coverage of a December 07 award & tribute to Sierra Club's Joan Saxe as "Environmental Hero" for, among other things, saving Sears Island from Angus King's machinations. (Joan is presently the Sierra Club point person in selling out the island to the Baldacci port proponents.)
But it's not only Dieter. John Richardson, environment reoprter for PPH is likewise silent.
The Press Herald's editorial staff has apparently decided that public dissent with the Baldacci administration on the future of the island is...too heretical to be allowed to grace their letters section or their op ed page. The perfidy of the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club in supporting the Baldacci plan is likewise not a topic that the Press Herald considers appropriate. Their total editorial section publications on Sears Island for the last three years?
Sears Island report a sensible compromise May 20, 2007
and
Don't foreclose idea of Sears Island cargo port November 24, 2006
Why? How could this mighty newspaper kowtow so deeply to the gods of commerce that they selfcensor with such vigor on this topic?
Is it even smarmier? Are certain editors themselves Sierra Club members, circling the wagons against the besmirching of the Club's honor?
What?
It is with a sense of wonder that one observes the great pains the Portland Press Herald takes to avoid news coverage or even block commentary on the most important coastal issue that Maine has faced in years - the push to industrialize Sears Island at the head of Penobscot Bay.
The natural island - fallow since the dawn of the twentieth century, and recolonized by a remarkable and unique mix of Maine's coastal species; a natural Noah's Ark, if you will - is flanked on the western side by a large eelgrass-dotted shoal.
Here, the brackish waters created by the meeting of fresh river water with salt bay water host the Bay's great fish nursery, as diverse it its makeup as the island above. Here young salmon have their first encounter with salt water, learn to school and head oceanward. Here myriads of the small shrimp Pandalus Montagui prowl the muddy bayfloor, and are greedily seized upon by juveniles of cod, haddock, flounder, themselves heeding the Call of the wild Gulf of Maine.
But this is well known to the Press Herald's Dieter Bradury; he covered the successful fight to block the Angus King port plan for Sears Island, which was withdrawn by King once it was shown the impacts to marnie and upland wildlife would be too severe to mitigate.
Hey Deets! Where are you? Dieter is surely aware of the Joint Use Plan that the Baldacci Administration is pressing forward on. The one that would legislatively zone the western side of the island for a marine container port that would of necessity torpedo this Noah's Ark; the roar and thunder and diesel stench of the container port would drive most wildlife from the island; it would certainly reduce the revenue of the resorts on the nearby coast; the nursery shoal would largely disappear, to the great loss of the Bay's marine ecol9ogy and its fishermen.
But he is silent. As are all Portland Press Herald reporters and the rest of the Blethenian newspapers. Bradbury's last coverage, comically enough, was fawning coverage of a December 07 award & tribute to Sierra Club's Joan Saxe as "Environmental Hero" for, among other things, saving Sears Island from Angus King's machinations. (Joan is presently the Sierra Club point person in selling out the island to the Baldacci port proponents.)
But it's not only Dieter. John Richardson, environment reoprter for PPH is likewise silent.
The Press Herald's editorial staff has apparently decided that public dissent with the Baldacci administration on the future of the island is...too heretical to be allowed to grace their letters section or their op ed page. The perfidy of the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club in supporting the Baldacci plan is likewise not a topic that the Press Herald considers appropriate. Their total editorial section publications on Sears Island for the last three years?
Sears Island report a sensible compromise May 20, 2007
and
Don't foreclose idea of Sears Island cargo port November 24, 2006
Why? How could this mighty newspaper kowtow so deeply to the gods of commerce that they selfcensor with such vigor on this topic?
Is it even smarmier? Are certain editors themselves Sierra Club members, circling the wagons against the besmirching of the Club's honor?
What?
Thursday, January 31, 2008
LD 2029 Hearing - what the People said
For those journalistas who might have even a gleam of curiousity about what the citizens and public interests said about the plan to fuse Maine's county jails and state prison, but couldn't find them anywhere in the printed or electronic media CLICK HERE
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Maine legislative coverage: PPH omits activists POV at LD 2029 hearing
You wouldn't know from the article State, Counties agree 'in principle' on jails that any representatives of the many public interests working to reform Maine corrections law were on hand January 28, 08 when the Maine Legislature's Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee held a hearing on LD 2029, "An Act To Reduce Property Taxes, Eliminate Duplication and Streamline Government by Unifying the State Prisons and County Jails" Sponsored by Committee co-chair Stanley Gerzofsky.
In fact from reading the article, it's a pretty good guess that the writer whomever he or she is didn't actually attend, and is deservedly hiding behind the Associated press cloak of anonymity.
Why some writers don't even bother to listen to the live webstream of these hearings, or record it for later listening bothers me. Instead what is submitted to the public as coverage is but coverage of a shadow of the event: an impressionistic story as seen though other lenses that his or her own.
The Brunswick Times/Record's Victoria Wallack was there and did a better job, but like the Herald, no mention in her piece of the public interest groups who spoke, warning against misuse of the new proposed system for internal exile and worse.
See a detailed article on the proposal and its background from tiny paper All American Patriots of Sweden Maine.
Bad PPH! No donut!
In fact from reading the article, it's a pretty good guess that the writer whomever he or she is didn't actually attend, and is deservedly hiding behind the Associated press cloak of anonymity.
Why some writers don't even bother to listen to the live webstream of these hearings, or record it for later listening bothers me. Instead what is submitted to the public as coverage is but coverage of a shadow of the event: an impressionistic story as seen though other lenses that his or her own.
The Brunswick Times/Record's Victoria Wallack was there and did a better job, but like the Herald, no mention in her piece of the public interest groups who spoke, warning against misuse of the new proposed system for internal exile and worse.
See a detailed article on the proposal and its background from tiny paper All American Patriots of Sweden Maine.
Bad PPH! No donut!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Maine Things Considered flubs big prison consolidation story
It was irritating listening to Maine public radio's coverage of today's hearing (Jan 29, 08) held by the Maine Legislature's Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on LD 2029, a bill authorizing the state taking over Maine's county jails and adding them to the state corrections system. Commissioner Martine Magnusson, here flanked by two county officials , was there. MTC simply didn't trouble to show up.
Nor even bother grab some audio of the testimony from the Committee's live web stream. Instead Maine Things Considered coverage (click on their 01/28/08 Monday progam) featured generalizations and a few phone bites from Dept of Corrections' associate commissioner for PR flackery Denise Lord, and other officialdom, who offered up blandly self congratulatory statements about the process of the proposal, not so much its implications for Maine society.
MTC missed an impressive hearing, and instead imbibed some tepid spin. Has MPBN cut down the number of MTC reporters/producers, or were too many other great things afoot? Let's hope the latter.
Happily while Maine Things Considered's microphones were nowhere in evidence, and WCSH intermittent, three print journalists knelt along one end of the long narrow room, their hands racing across notepads almost in unison, taking it down. Tomorrow's papers will show the result.
WCSH's Don Carrigan and camera guy popped in and out, capturing but a few of the official speakers before heading off to other legislative committee rooms. Maybe he took some shots from the doorway later on...?
The tiny committee room was filled with well-pressed suits and uniforms; a mingling of state and county correctional and law enforcers, none of whom testified on the bill LD 2029.
Neatly holstered tasers, the new electric whips, shone bright yellow here and there in the packed chamber. The atmosphere before and after the hearing was of well-disposed prosperous jailors and prison managers comparing pay packages. There had been some marathon sessions by statewide conference calls connecting all county and state correction officials, at which a major change (throwing more money to the counties) resulted in a shift by counties toward accepting the merger plan
That the commodity, sentenced Mainers in need of "beds", was a sure and constantly renewing resource, requiring long term financial planning and sophisticated inmate resource management, appeared a consensus of this assembly of the security officialdom of Maine, as well as the MM Association.
On the other hand a small number of reform-minded citizens came to the hearing; nearly all spoke precautionary words to the committee on such things as the potential for the merged system to break the vital connection between incarcerateds and their community and family that so demonstrably is needed to provide successful reentry thereto; gulagization: the possibility of the fused jails and state corrections facilities being used to punitively put 'troublemaker' jailees into 'internal exile' by sending them to facilities at distant ends of the state, or even, as the state already does with 'troublemaker' inmates under its supervision, to exile to distant states like Maryland.
In both cases and the risk of the proposed system causing the shunting of mentally ill jail inmates from around the state into a single designated mental ward jail, again far from home, from community support.
Important as the discussion was, apart from the print journalists (who all three likely had well-earned writer's cramps by the time the marathon hearing ended, Maine public radio media flubbed it. Here's a big D- for failing to properly cover the opening salvos of one of the contention over the most societally important bills of the Maine legislature this year. Don Carrigan & crew gets a C+; at least they got some stock footage. The print men and woman? Time will tell...
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