Maine

In Maine, the Graham Platner Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

How did this happen?

Maine’s Democratic governor Janet Mills announced yesterday that she is dropping out of her campaign for the U.S. Senate. Now certifiable wacko Graham Platner is her party’s presumptive nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Mills had been regarded as having a good chance of unseating RINO Senator Susan Collins, a key piece of the Democrats’ quest to flip control of the U.S. Senate in November. Platner, in contrast, either is unelectable or should be. The RNC quickly crowed, “In November Susan Collins, a proven leader with an indisputable record of delivering for Maine, will face a Nazi sympathizing self-proclaimed communist with a record of hate-mongering and dishonesty.”

Well, the part about Platner is true, at least. He has said women who are raped are at fault. He said that blacks don’t tip. He has called called white, rural Maine dwellers stupid. He uses “fag” to describe gays. Platner praised Hamas, rationalized urinating on corpses, and has denigrated police officers. He once referred to Jesus as a “zombie” and the Virgin Mary as a “skank.” He also had a Nazi tattoo on his chest and defended it for years.

On the plus side, Platner approves of political violence, so at least in that sense he’s a mainstream 2026 Democrat.

Conservatives are confident that Platner will be an 800 lb. albatross around the necks of other Democratic candidates, as they will be placed in political zugzwang, with their choices being to condemn fellow Democrat or endorse sexism, misogyny, homophobia, bigotry, violence and blasphemy. Once again, as in 2016 when Donald Trump was running away with the Republican primaries, I don’t understand why a either political party cannot, in an extreme situation, announce that Candidate X does not represent that party’s values and therefore is rejected as a party candidate. Democrats and Republicans have an obligation to the Republic to place only competent, responsible Americans on the ballot. True, neither party is very good at doing that, but it still is an ongoing obligation.

The Democrats, to have any claim to competence and responsibly at all, should tell Platner that the party will not allow him to run as under the party banner. Let him sue, let him run as an independent, let him rant. At least they would demonstrate that the party has some standards, and cares about the public good.

Of course, we now know that today’s Democratic Party has no standards or principles, so this is a useless flight of fancy on my part.

Never mind.

In fact, it is not inconceivable that Platner can win. He was leading Mills in polling 2-1. And Trump Derangement among Democrats and progressives is so rampant that many would literally vote for Satan if they thought it would rid the nation of MAGA madness. After all, Bernie Sanders has endorsed this creep, who is, in addition to all I mentioned above, a Neo-communist like Bernie. As Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote last Fall,

“Andy O’Brien, a former Democratic state legislator and newspaper editor, told me that outsiders didn’t fully understand how radicalizing the second Trump presidency has been for ordinary Democrats. Even senior citizens, he said, were becoming “fire-breathing leftists. They’re just pissed off.” These voters understood that Platner had made mistakes, but they saw him as a fighter. “Five years ago, he would have been dead in the water, I think,” said O’Brien, who now works with the labor movement. “But this is such an unprecedented time. I think a lot of people really believe that we need somebody who can effectively fight against fascism.”

Yikes.

Meet JoAnna St. Germain, the Face of Trump Derangement

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

JoAnna St. Germain, a public school teacher (for a bit longer)at Waterville High School in Waterville Maine, personifies what the decade-long hate, fear and anti-democracy campaign from “the resistance,” Democrats, and the mainstream media has inflicted on the soul of America. Once, presumably, she was a normal, rational human being like you. Now, she posts screeds like this on social media:

The Secret Service has the perfect opportunity, if they choose to step up and take it. You are the ones with power. Coordinate. Take out every single person who supports Trump’s illegal, immoral, unconstitutional acts. Look at the sycophants and give them what they’re asking for.
 
Every other country sees what’s happening and they are taking stands.
If you step up, we can avoid a civil war. I’m not talking about assassinating a president. A president is a person duly elected by the American people.
Tr*mp has shamelessly bragged openly about stealing the election. He is making plans to give himself a third term. I’m talking about Americans recognizing a fascist dictatorship and standing against it.
 
Secret Service, you are Americans.My beloved military, you are Americans.
We, the people, are counting on you.

Nice. Even with rampant madness oozing through social media and the op-ed pages every day, calling for the execution of the President of the United States and all of his supporters from someone not in already in restraints like this guy…

…is unusual, especially when the provocateur has been entrusted with molding young minds. A few hours later, the teacher wrote, “I have zero shame about what I’ve said. I’m not backtracking a single thing. I believe Trump and every sycophant he has surrounded himself with . . . needs to die,” adding that she posted “knowing I’d likely lose my job and benefits.” When her call for violence was reported in some media outlets, JoAnna “doubled down,” and quite arrogantly too, writing a week ago on her Facebook page:

Apparently, I have made the news. People are quite angry with me for stating openly that Trump and his cronies need to die. Gosh, I fear I may have “Trump Derangement Syndrome”!
 
I’m going to hold your hand when I say this, and I say it with my full chest:
Fuck fascism. Fuck a country that suppresses the media. Fuck a country that moves to weaken the education system in order to produce weak-minded people who will follow orders. Fuck a country that sends innocent women and men to die thinking they’re defending democracy when they’re really defending the rights of corporations to fuck over the very people lining their pockets.
 
If you’re mad at this post, knowing that I just threw away a decade of experience teaching the truth, fully knowing that my superintendent will have to fire me? If you’re mad that I’m speaking truth to power?
 
Fuck you. I’ll still take a bullet to keep your child safe.

Niiiiice!

Later, as she had to know would happen, Waterville Public Schools Superintendent Peter Hallen emailed a statement to parents that said in part, “Please know that I have taken steps to ensure everyone’s safety and am, along with the appropriate authorities, actively investigating the incident.” St. Germain’s reaction:

Well all righty then!

Observations:

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From Maine, A “Nah, the Democratic Party Doesn’t Embrace Censorship!” Head-Exploder….

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Reacting to Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby‘s tweet above, the Maine House speaker and majority leader (Guess which party…) demanded that she take it down. Libby refused, so the body’s Democrats introduced a censure resolution. Their contrived reason: her post included photos and the first name of a minor, the male athlete who was allowed to compete in female-only sports. Both the photo and student’s name were publicly available and had been published by media sources. Obviously, this was an effort to silence an effort by an elected official to have the public understand “what’s going on here,” and, as we all know from the motto of an Axis-supporting newspaper of note, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

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Observations On The NeverTrump Section 3 Big Lie Push

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Maine joined Colorado in barring from its GOP primary ballot yesterday, as Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) decided that she “had no choice.” She had no choice because she is a rapid partisan Leftist who, like many Democratic operatives in various positions of power within the legal establishment, she is determined that President Biden be rescued from his election peril by any means necessary. Trump’s actions before and during the January 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol do not justify charging him with inciting a riot, much less an “insurrection” that would trigger Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Maine’s completely partisan and anti-democratic move is sure to be appealed along with Colorado Supreme Court’s finding last week that Trump could not appear on the ballot in that state under the 14th Amendment provision designed to keep members of the Confederacy that prevents insurrectionists from holding office. The U.S. Supreme Court will review the case, one hopes quickly, and had better resolve the issue of whether Trump can run again or if the nation will be thrown into Constitutional chaos by allowing some states to block him.

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Comment Of The Day: “Really, New York Times?…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Arthur in Maine, who doesn’t live there now but used to and for a long time, has typically astute reflections to pass along in this Comment of the Day on the Lewiston shooting and more. Here he is, responding to the post, “Really, New York Times? Stephen King’s Facile, Ignorant Appeal To Emotion And Anti-Second Amendment Bias Is Worthy Of Space On Your Op-Ed Page?”:

***

I am still trying to process what happened in Lewiston – a place in which I spent as little time as possible during the many years I lived in Maine. The town is gritty, an ex-mill town, and I rarely there unless I had business. In my last eight or ten years in Maine, I lived about 30 miles down the road.

Between 1977 and 2017, with a year or a season off elsewhere, I lived in northern New England – specifically, Vermont and Maine. I moved to Vermont in the autumn of 1977 and, with the exception of a year in France in the early 1980s, lived there until 1987, when I moved to Maine. And I lived in Maine far longer than I have lived anywhere else.

In 1983, when I was still living in a tiny town in Vermont, there was a murder. In a town of several hundred, in a state of less than a million, this was shocking news that stayed in the headlines for a week. The victim was a young woman. She was a sweetheart, had a Russian accent, and she and her common-law husband, ran the local gas station/convenience store. He was an Iranian immigrant, gruff and taciturn, but capable of great kindness, which I witnessed more than once. I liked them both very much.

He wasn’t there the morning that Bill Harvey walked into the store and shot her point blank. I knew Bill, too. He was quiet and mousy and shy; he was the guy who serviced the gas equipment at the area restaurants I worked in. He was odd, but he did know his trade; he brought more than one expensive piece of kit back to life over the several years I watched him work.

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And Speaking Of Not Being Able To Trust Public Schools …KABOOM!!!!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

In Fairfield, Maine, Eric Sack father discovered a plastic baggie containing doses of prescription anti-depressants in the possession of his daughter. His daughter told him that the pills had been provided to her by the Bulldog Health Center, a School Based Health Center (SBHC) at Lawrence High School, where she is a student.

Yeah, right. I thought she was lying too, but the daughter wasn’t wasn’t. The federally funded health clinic that operates within the school gave the pills to her without his knowledge or consent.

How could this happen?

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/12/2020: The “I’m Sorry I Ignored Veteran’s Day But I Was Distracted By The Enemies Of The People” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

The reason for the choice of song will reveal itself at the end of the post…

1. No 2020 Election Train Wreck update this morning, because there are only a few items to report. One stinker from yesterday: the New York Times had an across-the-front page, “This is important!” headline that read, “ELECTION OFFICIALS NATIONWIDE FIND NO FRAUD.”

How did the Times’ ethics fall so far, so fast? That headline is pure propaganda, deceitful on its face. Do the editors think even the most partisan of their readers are that gullible?

2. Then there’s the Washington Post. I almost hate to post this after trying to talk commenter of the day Steve Witherspoon off the ledge in the previous Ethics Alarms entry. USPS whistleblower Richard Hopkins has demanded Tuesday that the false Washington Post story claiming he ‘recanted’ his sword statement regarding directions he was given by his Erie, PA postmaster to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day. He did not recant. In a video, the veteran says,

“My name is Richard Hopkins, I’m a postal employee who came out and whistleblew on the Erie, Pennsylvania postal service, postal office. I am right at this very moment looking at an article written by the Washington Post—it says that I fabricated the allegations of ballot tampering. I’m here to say that I did not recant my statements, that didn’t happen, that is not what happened. You will find out tomorrow, and I would like that the Washington Post recant their wonderful little article that they decided to throw out there, out at random.”

He has been placed on non-pay status by the Erie Post Office, which seems like a violation of whistle-blower laws to me, but I haven’t checked. GoFundMe, based on the Post story, erased the effort to provide him and his family financial support while he is being punished by the USPS.

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#MeToo Ethics: Prosecuting To Stigmatize The Accused

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

It’s not just the impeachment..apparently prosecutors are beginning to adopt the Democratic Party’s theory that it is appropriate to force a trial when there is no chance at conviction just to stigmatize the accused. This is a clear breach of prosecutor ethics, but ethics schmethics, the ends justify the means, right?

The area in which this despicable strategy is surfacing is—and this should be no surprise—the realm of #Me Too. In Maine,  Natasha Irving , who is the top prosecutor for Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc and Waldo counties,  wants to reform how the legal system prosecutes sexual assault cases, believing all women so those who come forward know they’ll be “supported.” This means, according to  Irving, that prosecutors shouldn’t decline to prosecute a sexual assault case just because they “think it’s too hard to prove.”

“Individually, I think that response is very damaging to a survivor,” she says. “If they weren’t believed initially, they don’t have faith that they’re going to be believed if they come forward again. Or that they somehow will be put on trial for what happened instead of the perpetrator. There’s a lot of shame and blame that the victims often carry.”

Yes, that’s a problem. A greater problem is prosecutors bring cases to trial when the don’t have enough evidence to prove the defendant guilty. Then they are just counting on an incompetent jury, which isn’t that much of a longshot. The attitude Irving is endorsing is how black men end up in prison for murders they didn’t commit. Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Warm-Up, 10/6/2019: Fan Ethics, Hospital Ethics, Vandalism Ethics, And Diplomatic Immunity

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Well, I woke up…

…and as my father was fond of saying, that should be enough. Of course, he adopted that philosophy during combat in World War II…

1. I have been asked, “With your beloved Red Sox out of the post-season, are you paying attention to the play-offs?” The answer is, “Oh, sure.” I’m not like Yankee fans, what my dad called “summer soldiers.” In fact, the post-season is a more enjoyable, less anxious, purer experience for a fan when his or her team is absent. I can just enjoy the beauty, suspense and constant surprises of baseball without being distracted by my emotions, conflicts of interest, and bias. Post-season baseball is the best of the game; when I am trying to introduce baseball to neophytes, this is the best time to do it. Yes, the dumbed-down broadcasting by the networks is annoying, but it’s always been that way. And yes, I still have some rooting biases: most of my friends  are Washington Nationals fans, do a piece of me is supporting them. I like underdogs, so the Twins, Rays, and every National League team but the Dodgers have my sympathies. The Yankees have had such a courageous, astounding season, winning over a hundred games despite having more significant injuries than any MLB team in history, that I even find myself rooting for them, because if any team deserves a championship, the 2019 New York Yankees do.

2. First, do no harm. Second, don’t be an asshole...This is incredible. Employees at a St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine  created a “wall of shame” where they displayed confidential medical records of disabled patients in 2016, the state Human Rights Commission has found.

The records posted on the wall concerned sexual activity, photos and descriptions of  body parts and bodily functions of patients. St. Mary’s told CNN that it is “fully committed to ensuring this doesn’t happen again.”

Gee, that’s comforting. How did this happen in the first place?

The Shame Wall was revealed as part of a harassment complaint. MyKayla McCann, an employee who had been treated at the hospital, said that the existence of the “wall of shame” constituted an “abusive environment” where hospital staff displayed open hostility to those with disabilities.

“Coworkers constructed a workplace display ridiculing patients with disabilities. [McCann] encountered the display every day as part of her regular environment, making harassment pervasive,” the investigation said. “The information posted on Shame Wall was intended to demean and humiliate and included supposed ‘jokes’ about the hospital’s physically and mentally disabled patients.”

One employee was fired and another was given a warning in response to the incident. It took the hospital  four months after McCann’s complaint to take the Shame Wall down, according to the report. How caring. How efficient.

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Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/5/19: Bait And Switch, Inconvenient Honesty, Fake News

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Oh, good morning, I guess…

1. Once again: this should be illegal, because it is unconscionable. Recently re-elected Rep. Don Marean, a multiple term Maine state legislator from York County, announced that he was leaving the Republican Party to become an Independent.  In a Friday text message last week, he said that “out of respect” for House Republicans  he would not  comment on the resaon for his decision and would let it “speak for itself.”

It does speak for itself; it tells us that Marean is an unscrupulous, liar who gained election to office fraudulently. Elected officials who betray voters this way have an ethical obligation to resign from office and run again under the party affiliation they will stick to.

2. Keep it up! Please! The freshman Democratic House members, in a single day, managed to strip away the mask of the Democratic Party and expose more of the ugliness beneath than the party veterans deemed wise. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) refused to be sworn in with her hand on the traditional Bible,  and insisted that a law book be used for the purpose instead. She is a member of the party that has been questioning whether Catholics are fit to be federal judges, and the message that one party is openly hostile to religion is becoming clearer and clearer. The Bible is a moral/ethical document, and accepting it for the purpose of a binding oath should not be a problem for anyone unless they are trying to make a point. Using a law book is no more appropriate or meaningful than using a Harry Potter novel: oaths are declarations of duty, honesty and integrity, not law. Continue reading →