Category: Victoria Ekstrom
Maine’s Manufacturing Industries being Replaced by Service Industries
Industry
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
5/02/2008
WASHINGTON— Lisa Northup never thought she would be changing careers at age 41. But after more than 20 years at Moosehead Manufacturing, the furniture factory shut its doors, changed owners, consolidated and left Northup jobless last June.
Rather than find work at a different mill, Northup, who lives in Guilford, chose a more stable path and in September began classes at Bangor’s Beal College to become a medical assistant.
“There’s so much in the medical field. We can all find a job,” Northup said. “But there really isn’t a lot of call for jobs in factories like Moosehead.”
Maine’s once flourishing “icon industries” – paper and lumber, as well as shoes, potatoes and blueberries – are quickly leaving the state with the expansion of free international trade, economists said.
Taking the place of these manufacturing industries are service industries like tourism, freight transportation, financial services and especially health care, said David Douglass, an economist at the Maine State Planning Office.
Maine has lost about 22,400 jobs in manufacturing in the last decade. The state gained about 29,000 jobs in education and health services during the same period, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Because of the thousands of people affected throughout the country, trade has become a hot-button issue on Capitol Hill and along the campaign trail, as the presidential candidates argue over their positions on the North American Free Trade Agreement. All of the members of the Maine delegation want to take a second look at NAFTA, the free-trade deal signed by President Clinton in January 1994 that eliminated import duties on most products traded among the United States, Mexico and Canada.
The main arguments over NAFTA and other free-trade agreements revolve around job losses caused by competition from countries that sell similar products at cheaper prices, often because of lower wages.
Advocates argue that the United States benefits because a rise in exports adds jobs. The Department of Commerce estimated that U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico after NAFTA went into effect created more than 600,000 jobs, according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
But in the decade after NAFTA’s authorization more than 1 million jobs were lost because imports increased, said the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“That’s why I never supported NAFTA,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. She said she thought it disproportionately affected Maine and some of its industries.
As free-trade deals make it cheaper to manufacture goods in other countries, Maine’s traditional industries are “indisputably” affected, particularly in lumber and paper, which lost four mills and 200 jobs in the last four months alone, Snowe said in an interview.
When thousands of jobs are lost in a state, its residents suffer as revenue sinks and less money is available for basic services. In Maine, a state with one of the oldest populations in the country, those basic services include providing help to struggling seniors and boosting the quality of education in schools to help retain young people.
“The impact of mill closings on Maine’s communities is obviously devastating, especially on the middle class,” said Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, who said he is working to increase aid to laid-off workers.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, also is working to assist these workers and is a cosponsor of a bill to reauthorize Trade Adjustment Assistance, the program that provides additional training and money to workers affected by trade agreements.
In addition to helping those hurt by deals like NAFTA, Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, is working on legislation to create a new trade model. NAFTA became the model for subsequent free-trade agreements in Peru, Panama and South Korea, which have contributed to additional off-shoring of jobs.
“I think that’s a failed model,” Michaud said about NAFTA. “You look at shoes, the textile industry, the paper industry – they’ve all dramatically been affected [by free trade] because it’s very difficult to compete with countries that pay very little.”
Forster Manufacturing Co., the Maine wood product factory that invented the toothpick, closed in 2002.
Great Northern Paper Co. , which made a third of the paper used for American newspapers in the 1950s, filed for bankruptcy in 2003.
Northup’s former employer, Moosehead Manufacturing, a family-owned furniture company founded in 1947, closed its doors in 2007 before being sold and consolidated.
These closings are regularly offered as evidence that Maine’s forest industry, which began producing wood products in the 1640s, is facing severe economic pressure from foreign countries. When the same chair that Moosehead sells for $120 can be made in China for $18, Maine’s companies can’t compete, said John Wentworth, the former president of Moosehead Manufacturing and grandson of one of the company’s founders. Wentworth is now the sales and product manager of the new Moosehead Furniture, which continues to have facilities in Maine.
“The furniture industry is pretty small now in Maine,” Wentworth said. “For a state that has the highest amount of forest land, to have such a small industry is a testament to how hard it is to have a manufacturing company in the state.”
Forestry is the largest manufacturing industry in Maine, where 89 percent of the land is covered in trees, said a 2007 report by the North East State Foresters Association. The industry contributes more than $5 billion to Maine’s economy each year and employed close to 18,000 Mainers in 2005. This included landowners and foresters (who grow the trees), loggers (who cut them down and bring them to the mills), and manufacturers (who make the lumber into products like paper and furniture).
But “our extensive forest cannot shelter us from the chill winds of international competition,” said Lloyd Irland of The Irland Group, a Maine consulting firm that focuses on forestry matters, in a 2004 report.
This trend in the forest industry is similar to what Maine’s shoe industry experienced in the mid-1990s. Once famous for its Bass and Dexter shoe companies, Maine’s shoe manufacturers moved overseas after a 1993 trade agreement.
But while many in the forest industry expect to have a bad year, most believe the industry will never completely disappear. One reason industry experts give for this is that the industry is suffering not just from competition as a result of trade, but also from a worsening U.S. economy and housing market, said economist Charles Lawton, who works for the Maine consulting firm Planning Decisions, Inc. If these factors improve, so could the industry’s outlook, he said.
While overseas trade has greatly affected paper and furniture manufacturers, Maine sawmills continue a struggle with Canada that has rocked trade relations for decades.
Unlike the American system governed by market prices, the Canadian government owns 97 percent of the forests and can set cheap rates to cut trees, called stumping fees. If a Canadian mill has trouble surviving, the government lowers the price, causing the price of lumber in Canada to be cheaper than lumber in the United States. Along with these government subsidies, energy costs are lower in Canada. Canadian companies also don’t directly pay for their employees’ health insurance because the country has a nationalized health-care system.
To equalize trade deals, Canada and the United States came to an agreement. In the 2006 Softwood Lumber Agreement, Canada agreed to place a tax on exported lumber to bring the price up to the market value.
While the agreement has helped, Snowe said, it took more than 25 years to reach. “In that time the Canadian subsidies were eroding the foundation of our manufacturing sector in the state of Maine,” she said. “And we’re still having huge challenges with failure to uphold the agreement” because Canada isn’t collecting some of the taxes.
While the Canadian government argued the subsidies were going to communities, not companies, Snowe said the money to these towns went toward building roads and other uses that were directly tied to the lumber sector.
It would be impossible for the United States to cut ties with Canada completely, regardless of how unfair the pricing system may be because ties between the countries are so strong that both country’s lumber industries would greatly suffer without the other, said Eric Kingsley, vice president of the environmental and forest industry consulting firm Innovative Natural Resource Solutions LLC.
Fraser Papers, a pulp and paper mill company with operations in New Brunswick, Quebec, Maine and New Hampshire, is one example; one of its pulp mills is located in Canada, and its paper mill is just across the border.
“As much as it’s easy to focus on Canada because they’re right next door to us, it depends on the day whether Maine and Canada have a symbiotic or antagonistic relationship,” Kingsley said. “Like any relationship, it’s not all rosy, but it is longstanding.”
Because of the aging population of the state, it may be a “natural evolution” for the number of jobs in health care to grow, Snowe said. But Snowe does not believe the forest industry should be neglected.
“If you think about where the job loss is occurring in the plant and lumber mill closures, they’re happening in very rural areas of our state,” Snowe said. “It’s very difficult to replace those jobs.”
Collins agreed, calling these forestry jobs the “backbone of Maine’s rural economy.”
As a new generation of workers leaves their families in rural Maine to go to areas with better job markets, the abandonment of natural resource industries like forestry means families will be less rooted and there will be “fewer opportunities for multigenerational families to be in touch,” Irland, of the forestry consulting firm, said.
“Small-town life in many parts of Maine will never be the same,” as the forestry industry becomes one of the last manufacturing industries to leave, Irland said. “Yet in all the change and gloom, we should remember that a key trait of Maine has always been adaptability.”
“Maine workers are very resilient,” said Adam Fisher, a spokesman for Maine’s Department of Labor. “Some of the issues around trade have hit rural places hard. It’s a challenge to come back from, once you’ve lost a job, especially one you’ve had for a while. It’s hard for those workers.”
That’s where Susan Moore steps in. Moore helps to run a Dover-Foxcroft career center which gets federal funding to train workers who have lost jobs because of trade. Moore has urged Northup and others to enter the medical industry.
“The labor outlook indicates that jobs in the medical industry are growing,” Moore said. “We’re here to get people trained and skilled to find a good job so they will get employed after they leave.”
For Northup, medical assisting is something she hopes will “open up a whole lot of possibilities” for her future.
Collins Seeks to Have Iraq Shoulder More Financial Burdens
Iraq funding
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/18/2008
WASHINGTON – Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is urging Senate leaders to take steps to require Iraq to shoulder more of the financial burden of rebuilding their own country.
Collins was joined by Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., in proposing legislation at a Capitol Hill press conference on Thursday.
The legislation would require the Iraqi government to reimburse Americans for fuel they use in Iraq. It may also include having Iraq reimburse for the salaries, equipment and training Americans provide Iraqi soldiers. Reimbursements would come in the form of direct initial payment or subsequent payment on American loans.
The three legislators attempted to pass similar legislation in 2003, when the rebuilding of Iraq was in the early stages, but that legislation did not get passed. Had Congress passed the legislation then, they said, the Iraq government would need to repay the more than $45 billion the United States has spent on Iraq reconstruction in the last five years. Collins also said she believes that if the first $10 billion allotted to reconstruction in 2003 had been a loan, the reconstruction would be further along because the Iraqis would have had a stake in the process.
The United States is paying about $90 million a month for the salaries of the Sons of Iraq, the local security force, which was critical in the progress made in the Anbar province and around Baghdad, Collins said.
Additionally, while Iraq oil revenue is estimated to be about $56 billion, American gas prices have reached record highs, negatively impacting the U.S. economy. Some economists have said that America is nearing a recession, and yet the United States spends about $10 billion a month in Iraq.
“It’s one thing to be asked to help those who can’t help themselves,” Bayh said at the press conference. “It’s another thing entirely to ask the people to borrow more money from China that our children will need to repay, with interest, to give to a country that is running a surplus and is not spending its own money to help itself.”
While American troops in Iraq spend about $3.23 a gallon for gasoline for military vehicles, Iraqi citizens spend only $1.30 a gallon because of government subsidies, Bayh said.
“Why are we paying that cost?” asked Collins at the press conference.
“You don’t do that to your friends,” Bayh said.
The three senators wrote letters to the Senate leadership, Appropriations Committee and U.S. State and Defense departments presenting these policy proposals.
“The time has come to end this blank check policy and require the Iraqis to invest in their own future,” said the April 17 letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “It is not our intent to punish or harm the government of Iraq; rather, we believe this is an opportunity for Iraq to demonstrate its desire to act independently from the United States.”
Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, who is running against Collins for the Senate, said he agrees “that Iraqis need to take more responsibility for their country,” but the best way to account for the taxpayers “is to set a deadline to bring American forces home responsibly and end our involvement in Iraq’s religious civil war,” he said.
Congress recently enacted legislation written by Allen to establish a bipartisan commission to root out waste, fraud and war profiteering.
Collins is looking to make her legislation part of a war-funding bill that Congress will consider in the next few weeks. She believes it will be met by “overwhelming support.”
“This idea’s not a Democrat or Republican idea. It’s just plain common sense,” Bayh said.
Collins said several of her Republican colleagues have already pledged their support, some wanting to be cosponsors.
In contrast to 2003, Collins said she believes the administration has evolved in its thinking and is more open to the concepts being presented, “but I have a feeling that we will want to go further than the administration will want to go,” Collins said.
Some in the administration are saying that these proposals are already being done in Iraq because the Iraqis have begun to take over some of the reconstruction costs. But the senators distinguish the difference between the natural process of assuming the costs of reconstruction and the need for the Iraqis to begin to pay the salaries of the Iraqi soldiers and to reimburse the United States for the oil Americans are using in Iraq to help the Iraqi people.
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Collins, Michaud Attend Mass with the Pope
Pope Reaction
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/17/2008
WASHINGTON – Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, were among the 46,000 to crowd the new Nationals Park on Thursday for a Mass with Pope Benedict XVI.
Collins called the Mass one of the most memorable experiences of her life and found the pope’s homily to be exactly the right message for American Catholics.
“It was heartening and hopeful,” Collins said in an interview Thursday afternoon. “He recognized the contributions of the American church and its diversity.”
Also in his homily, the pope “expressed a profound regret” for the sexual abuse problems, Collins said.
At the Mass, Collins had a cross necklace blessed. She had gotten the necklace from Rome when she attended Pope John Paul II’s funeral in 2005.
“It was a tremendous honor to hear his message of hope and renewal,” said Michaud, who called the Mass a once-in-a-lifetime experience and a high point in his life as a life-long Catholic. “The Pope’s message was a clear call to Americans of all faiths and walks of life to push for a more just and more peaceful society.”
Michaud, like Collins, attended the White House greeting of the pope on Wednesday and called that event a “great honor” as well.
Collins, along with her guest, Sister Mary Norberta, president of St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor, dined at the Italian Embassy Wednesday night for a birthday reception for the pope, who turned 81 on Wednesday. Another dinner occurred at the White House. The pope had a quiet evening in the Vatican’s house, close to the Italian Embassy, and did not attend either of his birthday celebrations despite rumors that he might.
Though the guest of honor was not present, opera singer Denyce Graves led the gathering of about 300 at the embassy in wishing him happy birthday.
“It was a lovely evening nonetheless,” Collins said. “And perhaps he heard us singing from across the street.”
Thursday’s Mass was the last chance for most Washingtonians to see the pope before he headed to New York City Friday morning. Before leaving Washington, he met with the leaders of Catholic colleges and universities at Catholic University and representatives from other religions at a separate gathering at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, located next to the university.
Events in New York include an address at the United Nations, a visit to Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center once stood, and a Mass at Yankee Stadium.
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Martha Stewart Tells Senate Panel to Focus on Caring for Aging Citizens
Aging
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/17/2008
WASHINGTON –Martha Stewart, who is already there, told a Senate panel Wednesday that as the first of the nation’s 78 million baby boomers reach their 60s, their health needs will grow but not the number of trained professionals needed to care for them.
Stewart, who is 66, was among those who testified about the need for more and better trained caregivers for the elderly at the Special Committee on Aging hearing.
Stewart told of how experiences with her mother inspired her to establish the Martha Stewart Center for Living, a clinic providing geriatric outpatient services at the Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. Stewart donated $5 million toward this project and said she hopes it will recruit more doctors to specialize in elderly care.
The center is located on the Upper East Side of New York City, but Stewart said in testimony on Wednesday that “it’s difficult, especially in smaller cities and rural locations, to find doctors experienced in the specific needs that arise with age.”
Stewart, who spends her summers on Maine’s Mount Desert Island and has given to local Maine charities, has not indicated whether she would set up in Maine a program modeled after the Mt. Sinai program.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the committee, cosponsored legislation in March that would strengthen recruitment and retention for geriatric caregivers. The AARP, an advocacy group for people over 50, endorsed the measure.
The most rapidly growing segment of the nation’s population is 85 and over, Collins said at the hearing. “Maine is disproportionately elderly,” she said. “I’m very concerned about access to health care as my generation and others join me in this population segment.”
The hearing reviewed the findings of a report issued on Monday by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, which was created by Congress to advise the government.
The report found that there aren’t enough geriatric specialists to care for the growing aging population. There is one geriatric-certified doctor for every 2,500 elderly Americans.
Medicare is also a problem because it does not pay doctors as much as they would get if the patient were not in Medicare, according to the report. This hinders patients from getting the best care because their doctors are forced to treat short-term problems rather than deal with the larger chronic conditions.
Dr. John Rowe, chairman of the Institute of Medicine committee that issued the report, said at the hearing that the health care workforce needs to be better trained to cope with an aging population and that more attention must go to recruiting and training geriatric specialists.
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Collins Says Pope’s Message ‘Inspiring and Filled With Hope
White House
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/15/2008
WASHINGTON – Pope Benedict XVI was greeted Wednesday morning at the White House by President and Mrs. Bush and thousands of invited guests, including a child holding a “Welcome Pope Hope” sign.
Among the crowd of more than 9,000 on the South Lawn were Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, minutemen in colonial garb, military personnel, Roman Catholic cardinals from throughout the nation and U.S. senators, including Susan Collins, R-Maine.
“I thought the pope’s message was inspiring and filled with hope,” Collins said after the ceremony. “He is bringing a message of hope and healing to our country and has the opportunity to inspire and strengthen America’s Catholics. His approach seems to be very warm and welcoming and invitational to encourage a stronger faith that I believe will be well received by Catholics and all Americans.”
Collins’ described the event as a “moving experience.” It was the first time she had seen Pope Benedict, though she had met the previous pope, John Paul II. Collins said she was surprised to see many of her Senate colleagues in attendance, some of whom weren’t Catholic, like Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., but wanted to be present for the historic event.
Wednesday’s presidential greeting of Pope Benedict was only the second time a pope has visited the White House and the first in 29 years. Pope Benedict greeted the crowd of more than 9,000 invited guests, making the event the largest in White House history.
In addition to a 21-gun salute and soprano Kathleen Battle’s rendition of The Lord’s Prayer, the crowd sang happy birthday to the Pope, who turned 81 on Wednesday.
The President and Pope Benedict share many of the same views on matters like abortion and stem cell research, but one matter they disagree over is the Iraq war. Alluding to this, the Pope maintained his hopeful stance.
“In moments of crisis, Americans continue to find strength and commitment,” he said. “Freedom must always be fought for in the name of the common good…. I am confident that you will use diplomacy to solve international problems.”
The president assured Pope Benedict that in America he will find a nation of compassion, where “faith and reason coexist in harmony.”
“You’ll find in America a people whose hearts are open to your message of hope,” Bush said. “In America and in the world we need that message.”
After the greeting on the South Lawn, the pope met privately with the president. From there, the “popemobile” traveled among a crowd of well-wishers to the Vatican Embassy, across from the vice president’s residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue.
Pope Benedict visited the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Roman Catholic Church in North America, on Wednesday afternoon.
Wednesday night Collins, along with her guest, Sister Mary Norberta, president of St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor, was scheduled to have dinner at the Italian Embassy. There were conflicting reports on whether the pope would attend this dinner or have a quiet dinner at the Vatican’s residence in Washington. He had earlier indicated that he would not attend the White House dinner in his honor Wednesday night.
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Government Leftovers Would Go to the Poor
Hunger
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/10/2008
WASHINGTON – Despite millions of Americans who go hungry every day, government leftovers have been going straight to the trash because of strict liability laws.
Those rules may soon change thanks to legislation cosponsored by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that would encourage the government and its food contractors to donate their extra food to soup kitchens and food banks.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which Collins is the senior Republican, passed the measure on Thursday. It now goes to the Senate floor, where it is expected to pass. The House passed a companion bill at the end of last year.
Collins’ measure would require that all federal contracts above $25,000 for food services include a clause encouraging the donation of excess, wholesome food to nonprofit organizations. The law also would protect the donor from civil or criminal liability, a move Collins calls “common sense.”
Maine is the 11th poorest state, with nearly 13 percent of its citizens going hungry, said the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit that works to wipe out hunger in the United States. A 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that of the 35.5 million hungry Americans, 12.6 million were children. There are more than 6,000 poor children in Penobscot County alone, according to 2006 Census Bureau data.
Because of the sinking economy and escalating oil prices, “families are being forced to choose between paying their bills and buying food,” Collins said after the committee’s passage of the measure. “This, combined with grocery stores becoming more efficient and donating less, has caused the demand for food to reach a record high.”
Collins told of a teacher who couldn’t afford food because of skyrocketing heating bills and unexpected medical costs.
While donations seem to have remained the same at the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Brewer and Auburn, the demand for food has increased, said Paul Tarr, warehouse operations manager of the food bank. Tarr, like Collins, attributes this to the price of fuel.
“If the price of fuel goes up, the price of everything else goes up,” Tarr said. “Everything someone needs to spend more money on is less money they have to spend on food.”
Because of higher demand, Good Shepherd is “moving food out almost as fast as it’s coming in,” Tarr said.
Tarr supports the legislation, saying he believes it will bring in more food in larger volumes to food banks and pantries throughout the nation.
Portland’s Preble Street, the largest soup kitchen in northern New England and one of 250 food shelters in Maine, is experiencing bare shelves for the first time in decades.
Serving more than 330,000 meals a year, Preble depends on donations for 90 percent of the food it serves. But its supplies have become meager at a time when poverty is on the rise.
“We all know it makes sense to share, it’s one of the first principles we are taught as children,” representatives from the soup kitchen said in a letter of endorsement for the legislation. “We all know that in this richly blessed nation, there is ‘enough to go around.’ Nothing makes more sense than to make our inclination and obligation to care for our neighbors in need part of our federal administrative practice.”
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Reed, an Early Example of Maine’s Progressive Politics
Reed
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/9/2008
WASHINGTON—Tucked in the southwest corner of the nation’s capital near the Potomac River is the home of Maine’s oldest living former governor, John Hathaway Reed, who served in the early 1960s. The third-floor condo is much the way it was when his wife of 60 years died four years ago, with a grand piano, 2 step-stool-sized Vietnamese elephant figures and bronze-gilded French décor.
Reed, a lifelong potato farmer and horse lover, sits surrounded by the exotic trinkets and regal furniture collected from years abroad as ambassador to Sri Lanka and his travels as governor.
Described by friends and former colleagues as a progressive Republican, the 87-year-old Reed is an early example of a moderate Maine leader who believes in bipartisanship, qualities that today characterize and separate Maine’s leaders from much of what is considered the “norm” in politics.
“When you were around John it didn’t matter if you were a Republican or Democrat, you always had a good discussion and would come out still friends,” said former U.S. Rep. Peter Kyros, who served Maine’s 1st District from 1967 to 1975 as a Democrat and who is a friend of Reed’s. “Likeability is probably the number one reason why we choose people as leaders. John was a reflective, thoughtful and deliberate man and a highly likable man, and that’s why he was successful.”
Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, who is married to John McKernan, the only Republican governor since Reed, said Reed has “demonstrated a commitment to public service that has transcended partisan politics.” She recalled the first time she met Reed during her senior year in college.
“I attended a reception he hosted during the presidential inauguration in January 1969 and I remember even then enjoying his graciousness and great sense of humor,” she said.
Reed always made up his mind on a case-by-case basis, said Jeff Akor, a former Reed spokesman who first met the governor while covering a story on budget cuts for the University of Maine at Orono’s school newspaper.
Perhaps the best example of this is Reed’s position on the Iraq war, which he has been against since the beginning.
“You don’t attack someone who’s not attacking you,” Reed said in an interview at his home. “I could not believe President Bush was going to start a war. I really was astounded. I was shocked. It was a mistake.”
It was “ridiculous” that former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, “who had never been in a war,” believed the oil supply would benefit the United States and that the Iraqi people would “welcome us with open arms,” Reed said. “Well, it hasn’t turned out that way at all.”
Reed’s bipartisan and progressive spirit began as a child when he would act as the peacemaker, Reed’s oldest daughter, Cheryl Reed, was told by a relative.
Born on Jan. 5, 1921 in Fort Fairfield, Reed was the grandson of a prominent potato farmer. Reed carried on the family business for much of his life, later selling all but 70 acres of the farm.
“I’ve kept it because I’m always going to have a piece of Fort Fairfield and have it so I can still call myself a potato farmer,” Reed said with pride.
Reed never intended to be a politician and thought he would serve a few terms in the state legislature and give it up.
But “he enjoyed his associations in government and in public policy, and so it became his life,” said Don Larrabee, a Washington journalist who covered Maine from 1948 to 1978 and who is now a friend of Reed’s.
Reed attended the University of Maine, where he was required to go through military training in his first two years. He wanted to continue the training, but wasn’t chosen. When World War II broke out, Reed was finishing college, and many of his friends who had been accepted into the training program were shipped to Germany and eventually died in combat.
“Fate plays a hand, and you might be disappointed one time,” Reed said, “but later on it turns out to be a blessing.”
He joined the Navy and when he went to turn in his papers, he said, there sat a “beautiful, vivacious redhead,” Cora Davison, who would become his wife.
Reed, who was not sent overseas until late in the war, spent much of his time on bases in Rhode Island and Florida training troops.
After the war, Reed and his new wife settled in Maine, where Reed worked his way up the political ladder. He began as a state representative in 1955 when his hometown representative retired. Two years later Reed became a state senator.
Because of a love for horses, Reed frequented races and fairs, making many friends who were involved in politics.
“It’s kind of a grassroots sport, and that’s where the harness horses were too,” Reed said. “So I had built-in contacts that helped me a lot.”
Reed used his network to help him get elected president of the Senate. Then, in December 1959, of Gov. Clinton Clauson died of a heart attack and Reed became governor.
As governor, he started educational television in Maine and created a network of University of Maine colleges. He also combined school districts to save money, something again occurring in Maine today.
But Reed’s largest accomplishment was the way he touched individual lives, visiting factories and farms and bringing himself closer to everyday Mainers.
“These are hard-working people, and I wanted to look after their interests,” Reed said.
“He was very attentive to the feelings, the needs and the desires of the people,” said Reginald Bowden, a Reed spokesman from 1961 to 1965. Bowden said there wasn’t a day in his administration that Reed didn’t get out and visit people.
“Dad has a natural ability to make friends,” Cheryl Reed said. He “has no need to impress or be anything other than who he is in all circumstances. He is the same whether talking to the lowest or highest.”
Reed made friendships with some of the highest.
At a National Governors Association conference in Hawaii in June of 1961, Reed split from the pack, who went golfing, and took the opportunity to visit then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson. The two non-golfers quickly learned that they had something else in common: both grew up on a farm. The two reveled in their shared experiences and Johnson invited Reed to visit his Texas ranch, which he later did.
“Over the years I developed a good friendship with him, even though I was a Republican and he was a Democrat,” Reed said.
In fact, he recalled, Johnson had asked him to send him a couple of male deer, hoping the Maine deer would help to increase the size of the deer in Texas.
“So I did,” Reed said. “I never did find out how it worked out.”
A few years later, in 1966, the United States was in Vietnam and Reed, who was now the chairman of the National Governors Association, joined other governors on a trip to the White House. After his White House meeting, Reed came out in support of Johnson’s Vietnam policies, said Larrabee, the Washington journalist. Larrabee also said Reed was echoing the sentiments of the governors at the time.
Later that year, after Reed lost his bid for reelection, Johnson appointed him as one of the five original members of the National Transportation Safety Board. After a year as a member, Reed became chairman of the board and served for eight years, the longest of any chair, before being appointed ambassador to Sri Lanka by President Gerald Ford.
After Jimmy Carter became president in 1977, Reed served as director of government relations for Associated Builders and Contractors Inc., a Washington lobbying group. Upon the election of President Reagan, Reed was appointed to his old post as ambassador to Sri Lanka and served until 1985.
While on this tour, a civil war broke out in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tigers, an ethnic minority fighting to create an independent state in the north and east of the island.
Reed said it was “so sad” that the war continues today, but he is very much removed from the country he once called home.
Now, he busies himself with simpler activities like daily walks along the Potomac and occasional trips to Baltimore, where, surrounded by Orioles fans, he proudly wears the cap of his beloved Red Sox.. He spends part of each summer along Maine’s North Pond, where he has summered since he was just 1year old.
He continues his political friendships as a member of the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill and of veterans groups, while also spending time with his daughter Cheryl, who works for a large law firm in Washington. His other daughter, Ruth, and three grandchildren live in Massachusetts and Maine.
He said he “feels great,” noting that he has no health problems, and doesn’t have any regrets in his life. Though he never intended to live the life he has, he succeeded with a blend of fate and friends.
“Fate opens doors and you take advantage of them,” Reed said, but “you’ve got to have a lot of friends who believe in you…. I guess in life it’s that way, but certainly in politics.”
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Renewable Energy Tax Credits Pass in Senate
Housing
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/9/2008
WASHINGTON – The Senate Thursday approved energy tax credits proposed by Maine’s two senators and aimed at helping businesses and homeowners struggling to pay their bills in the sluggish housing market.
The credits were part of a broader bill directed at the current home foreclosure crisis. The bill, which cleared the Senate overwhelmingly, 84-12, now goes to the House, which has some different ideas for easing the housing crisis.
Home prices dropped by 11 percent last year, according to a letter Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, sent to President Bush on April 1 urging him to act.
“In my home state of Maine, price declines are becoming an unfortunate staple of kitchen table conversation,” Collins said in the letter. “Although foreclosure filings in the state of Maine are occurring below the national pace, state officials tell me the numbers are rising and are expected to worsen.”
To help, Collins and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, proposed measures to extend renewable energy tax credits and give homeowners a tax credit for buying more energy-efficient wood stoves.
Their proposals, which were added to the bill in committee, would extend incentives to improve energy efficiency and encourage investment in renewable electricity sources such as wind, biomass, hydropower and sun.
“We must do more than pay lip service to alternative energy production and conservation,” Snowe said, while recognizing that high energy prices are one of the reasons for the current economic downturn. Snowe also said in a January letter to Senate leaders that promoting long-term clean electricity would lower home-heating costs and stimulate job growth and the economy.
Snowe’s proposal extends for one year deductions to build more energy-efficient homes and make existing homes more efficient. Additionally, credits for using energy-efficient technology to build homes would be extended for two years and a credit for making energy-saving appliances would be extended for three years. More than 100,000 Americans could be put to work this year with Snowe’s tax credits, her letter said.
The Snowe proposals were from a 2005 energy law she sponsored that is set to expire at the end of this year.
Collins’ proposal would give $300 tax incentives to people who purchase new wood stoves or exchange their old wood stoves for newer and cleaner versions. The new wood stoves are 70 percent cleaner and use a third less firewood than older models. Sponsors say the new stoves are also a healthier option, as the old stoves can aggravate asthma and bronchitis.
“Wood is a renewable resource, and its increased use for home heating is inevitable in these times of high oil prices,” Collins said. “We have the technology to make its use better for the environment and for human health, as well as safer and more affordable.”
By switching from old to new, homeowners would save on their heating bills, improve their health and help the environment, but the new stoves cost more--$1,500 to $3,000, on average--making the tax credit a needed incentive, Collins said.
In addition to renewable energy tax credits, the housing bill would also provide $10 billion in tax-exempt bonds to help first-time homebuyers and at-risk borrowers. An additional measure by Snowe would add $930 million for small states, increasing what Maine would receive from $43 million to $90 million.
Similar measures were proposed in the House by Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Barney Frank, D-Mass. The president unveiled his own more moderate housing plan on Tuesday.
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Trading “Pork” for Lobsters in Maine
Lobsters
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/3/2008
WASHINGTON – Some of Maine’s leaders were accused this week of trading “pork” for lobsters by Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-partisan watchdog group that monitors government pork-barrel spending.
The group released its 2008 Pig Book Wednesday, listing government pork projects and gave one of its “Oinker Awards” to Maine’s Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and Democratic Rep. Tom Allen. They received the Taxpayers Get Steamed Award for $188,000 that was given to the Lobster Institute, a research and education program at the University of Maine.
One of the institute’s projects, the lobster cam, is a small underwater video camera attached to a lobster trap,
“If we’re going to fund a lobster cam at a time when we’re at war, we’re not making good decisions, said Sen. Jim DeMint, R- S.C., at a press conference. Appearing with DeMint were a guy in a pink pig suit, five other members of Congress, Tom Schatz, the president of the watchdog group, and two live pigs, Winnie and Dudley, who munched on treats.
The Pig Book defines pork as spending that meets at least one of seven criteria: requested by only one chamber of Congress; not specifically authorized; not competitively awarded; not requested by the president; greatly exceeds the president's budget request; not the subject of congressional hearings; and serves only a local or special interest.
This definition encompasses spending earmarks, the practice of designating money for local or special-interest projects.
The Lobster Institute earmark went to fund lobster health research, which is vital to the lobster industry, said Robert Bayer, head of the Lobster Institute.
“Lobsters get sick just like any other animal and sometimes what they get sick from kills them,” Bayer said. “Some of these health issues are from pollutants that come from us. We want to know what those health issues are and how we can mitigate them.”
Bayer stressed that while people can’t be harmed by these lobster health issues, determining what makes lobsters sick should result in more lobsters to eat.
“It’s not trivial. It’s about the survival of the industry,” Bayer said, noting that people eat Maine lobsters all over the country and even in Canada and that “one of the reasons people come to Maine is to see the quaint lobster villages and eat lobster.”
There are more than 5,800 lobstermen in Maine, and Maine supplied 70 percent of the country’s lobsters in 2006, according to the office of Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine.
The institute is funded mostly by those affected every day by the lobster industry: lobster associations, fishermen and their friends. It relies on sponsors and endowments so that it will not need to rely on the federal government, Bayer said.
“While I did not in fact make this specific request…the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine seeks to enhance our understanding of the impact of the environment on this vital resource as well as on food safety,” Snowe said. “These objectives, which the appropriation would support, are important given there’s no question our lobster industry is vital to the economy of Maine.”
Congress spent more than $17 billion on pork projects this year, according to the watchdog group. Maine received less of this money on a per capita basis than most states, dropping from 28th in 2006 to 41st this year on a state ranking list. Projects in Maine received more than $29.5 million on pork-barrel projects, the group said.
The Maine members of Congress said pork spending can get out of control but many of the projects are important.
“I will continue to fight against government waste, and to make sure that our tax dollars are spent wisely,” Michaud said. “At the same time, I will also continue to advocate for appropriate federal investments in high-priority needs in Maine.”
Snowe and Collins released a list of their requested earmarks last year to maintain an open process, a spokesperson for Collins said. Michaud and Allen did not.
“Sponsors of earmarks should make their requests public, as Sen. Snowe and I have done,” Collins said. But “when subjected to thorough scrutiny and transparency, earmarks can be an appropriate exercise of Congress’ constitutional budget authority.”
Allen does not disclose all of the earmarks he requests.
“Publishing information about requests that are not funded could undermine the constituent's efforts to secure funding from other sources,” a spokesperson for Allen said.
Allen does display all earmarks he has secured on his Web site.
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Allen Ocean Observing Bill Improves Fishing and Port Safety
Oceans
Bangor Daily News
Vicki Ekstrom
Boston University Washington News Service
4/2/2008
WASHINGTON – Legislation sponsored by Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, that would strengthen ocean observation techniques and improve understanding of the nation’s bodies of water passed in the House on Monday.
Under the bill air, land and sea observations, which have been carried out by many government agencies and private organizations with different techniques and goals, would be coordinated under one integrated system allowing the nation to make better use of the information.
“We watch weathermen on the news and we forget that behind those reports is this vast network of weather satellites and other apparatuses,” Allen said in an interview on Wednesday. “An integrated system provides that data. A similar kind of data flow is what the integrated observation system provides.”
Allen’s national integrated system for studying the oceans is based on Maine’s Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System, or GoMOOS, which studies the Gulf of Maine to improve safety, increase understanding of weather and contribute to climate change findings.
GoMOOS was the model for regional observing systems throughout the country, but each year GoMOOS struggles to obtain funding, said Philip Bogden, head of GoMOOS.
“This bill will certainly help to sustain the data flow, but I think we still face significant challenges ahead,” said Bogden, who is exploring an alternative business model as well because, he said, GoMOOS can’t completely depend on the federal government.
In addition to establishing a funding mechanism for regional systems throughout the country, the bill “will provide a steady stream of real-time data about what’s happening offshore,” Allen said.
Allen recounts speaking with a Rockland, Maine, fisherman several years ago who told him how fishermen benefited from GoMOOS.
“Instead of trying to guess what the weather was going to be seven miles away, he could turn on his computer and get real-time data about what was going on out there and decide whether it was safe to go out and fish,” Allen said.
“I think it will have a major positive effect on the industry,” said Patrice McCarron, head of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association “The fishermen have become very dependent on the buoys to find out sea conditions and help tell them not to go out when it’s not safe…. This makes a system that was pioneered by Maine a national priority for the country.”
Allen also said the bill would help scientists who are “trying over an extended period of time to figure out what’s happening with the oceans.”
A coordinated observing system also would help to lessen erosion and pollution, strengthen the protection of ports and improve predictions of climate and weather changes and storms, like hurricanes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would be the lead agency to oversee and allot money to the new ocean-observing system.
The bill has been introduced in the House in the past, but “never went anywhere with the Republican Congress because even though it’s not a lot of money, it’s money,” Allen said. The initial investment for the integrated system was estimated at $138 million by the National Office for Integrated and Sustained Ocean Observations, or Ocean.US, the federal agency that would develop this effort.
The Senate’s companion measure was introduced by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and approved by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee last summer. A full Senate vote has not been scheduled. When introduced in the past, the legislation has passed in the Senate, her office said.
“Despite the constant interaction between our lives on land and the natural systems of the ocean, the physical properties of nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface remain a mystery,” Snowe said after Monday’s passage of the House bill. “This bipartisan effort will help our country uncover those mysteries by developing a national integrated system.”
A nationwide observing system was one of the Bush administration’s top three recommendations when it announced its Ocean Research Priorities Plan and Implementation Strategy in January 2007.
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