And News about the Unbelievable– A Fair and just company for individual creators!
Portrait of Weston as a young man throwing a vase on the wheel. This is one of the images I will be offering on Art Storefront. It can be printed on a T-Shirt. There are a lot of wheel-throwing potters in this world! The drawing is by my mother. Together my parents established Andersen Design, and so this image has a provenance that allows me to tell the history of Andersen Design, that of individuals against the ruling class empire!
The referendum for the elementary school bond in the Boothbay Peninsula was held on April 24th, The yes vote won the ballot, but as Patty Minerich informed us in a comment in the Boothbay Register, pursuant to state law, the vote is invalid because it was a reconsideration vote, or a repeat of the vote last November.
It was the boards who decreed our school charter would be “aligned with state law” when they took over authority to amend the charter, granted to the inhabitants of the municipality, by the Maine Constitution, and reassigned the authority to themselves, without giving the public a vote in the matter.
At the congressional hearing, I objected to the words “align with state law” interpretable as relinquishing our home rule rights. During the congressional work session, my testimony was not taken up by the legislature, whose members must take an oath to uphold the Maine Constitution.
At first, it was easy to find the Boothbay School Charter in Maine Bill search by entering the word “Boothbay” in the text field and selecting the 130th session. Today the same search produces results that have nothing to do with Boothbay, so I searched this newsletter to locate HP 1149, which being the enacted law does not provide access to the testimony, which is also published in this newsletter.
I went through my newsletter and found the LD number for the Boothbay School Charter, which according to my records is LD 1786 but when I click the link in my newsletter it leads to the enacted law which does not display testimonies. Generally, my practice is that if the link has an LD number, it leads to the bill, not to the enactment. The bill is where testimonies are located. The enacted law does not list the LD number. When I enter LD 1786 in Maine Bill Search LD 1205 is generated instead.
If you search for Maine Bill Search on Google, you will find two sites listed. I usually get better results with the second site, but I decided to try searching again with the first site. This is a screenshot of what happened when I searched for LD 1786
The red letters at the top say “The LD number ‘from’ field contains invalid characters.”, which are the characters “1786.
I sent a letter to the editor of the Boothbay Register titled Vote Invalidated by School Charter and State Law and included a link to the charter, which is the only easy way to locate it that I know about. It should be published tomorrow (Monday).
When the boards amended the school charter they threw out all the work of past generations (consistent with the new “demolish and replace development plan for the Peninsula) and replaced most of the charter, except the parts relating to public bonds, with the words “align with state law”
It is stated in the enacted charter that
Sec. 8. District referendum procedures. The community school district shall conduct referenda for purposes described in this Act or state law in the manner provided for regional school units under the Maine Revised Statutes, Title 20-A, chapter 103-A.
Thanks to Patty Minerich for posting this state in the Boothbay Register comments:
Maine Statute:
Title 20-A: EDUCATION
Part 2: SCHOOL ORGANIZATION
Chapter 103-A: REGIONAL SCHOOL UNITS
Subchapter 5: REFERENDUM
§1504. Reconsideration
The procedure to reconsider votes taken at a regional school unit referendum is as set out in this section. [PL 2007, c. 240, Pt. XXXX, §13 (NEW).]
1. Time limit. The regional school unit board shall, within 60 days, initiate a new regional school unit referendum to reconsider the vote of the previous referendum if, within 7 days of the first referendum, at least 10% of the number of voters voting for the gubernatorial candidates in the last gubernatorial election in the municipalities within the regional school unit petition to reconsider a prior regional school unit referendum vote.
[PL 2007, c. 240, Pt. XXXX, §13 (NEW).]
2. Required quorum. A reconsideration referendum is not valid unless the number of persons voting in that referendum is at least equal to the number who voted in the prior regional school unit referendum.
[PL 2007, c. 240, Pt. XXXX, §13 (NEW).]
2,428 voted last November
1,317 voted on April 24
They came up short by 1111 votes.
Will our boards align with state law and announce of their own initiative that the vote is invalid?
I doubt it. It feels naive to think that the rule of law has any effect in Maine.
Now we have school board elections. The phrase “Do what’s best for the students” will be repeated often but there will be no discussion about what is best for the students. The words are repeated as if there is only one interpretation. What’s best for the students is to spend money on new school buildings. What’s best for the students is to treat them as more important than any other faction in the community, which will be a short-lived importance for the students.
The thought of the state industrialization of our public school system is depressing.
In contrast, what I am learning about Art Storefront is a development I didn’t think possible. Art Storefronts is a company that treats designers greatly and more than fairly. Art Storefronts provides a way to sell products using the artist’s original designs without having to financially invest in the merchandise and the shipping which is handled by Art Storefronts. Instead, artists invest their PsyCap, adding one other essential resource to the standard PsyCap list, our abilities as creative designers and artists.
The corporate and educational partnership came up with the concept of Psycap which is a version of “psychological ownership”. Both are terms for the psychological state of mind sought after in corporate culture as a means to encourage the workers to use their innovative talents for the benefit of the shareholders of the enterprise, who are the real owners. Psychological ownership is what it says it is – an illusion. However, in Art Storefronts, ownership is not an illusion. The face of Art Storefronts are hundreds of individual stores owned and operated by owners like yours truly. It is the model of a government that serves the people rather than a government that treats the people as instruments of a state agenda as is the case with Maine State Inc, no more transparent than in Maine State Inc’s plans for the Maine public educational system:
3. Workforce. Facilitating the creation of a highly skilled workforce and attracting and retaining young workers in a new space economy. The corporation shall work closely with the University of Maine System, the Maine Community College System, career and technical education centers and regions and satellite programs, elementary and secondary schools and other organizations in the State to ensure education, training and recruitment programs are in place for the primary purpose of ensuring the availability of a highly skilled workforce to support the State’s new space economy; The specialact of legislation chartering the Maine Space Corporation
Art Storefronts publishes this blog post How To Copyright Your Artwork
The University of Maine publishes Statement of Policy Governing Patents and Copyrights Statement of Policy Governing Patents and Copyrights (in short the intellectual property belongs to owners of facilities, not to authors)
The setup fee that Art Storefronts charges to the artist is not small but Art Storefront offered the equivalency of a grant that made it possible.
The government and non-profit world, in my experience, functions as a hegemony on a holy war to eliminate individualism and free enterprise from the planet. I have received no support from that sector, and, I am not allowed to make proposals. So, when the conversation in the Boothbay Register turned to the subject of what use might be made of the school buildings if they are not used for the school system, I introduced my idea. That is the only way that I can present a community idea to the community in the community where Andersen Design was founded in 1952,
I am discovering that many of the ideas I suggested for the Makers Network are already in place at Art Storefront
Arts Storefront has made it possible to set up a store without having to make capital investments in merchandise or production and to use the basic services that Art Storefront offers. This includes regular Zoom office hours with one-on-one human support. Later I can add some of the additional services like Co-Pilot. My concept for the Andersen Design Network includes a marketing team. Co-Pilot is a marketing team.
Art Storefront is a great company for independent, individualistic, innovative artists and designers. In a world with so many exploitative practices directed towards creators and other workers, Art Storefront is an exception.
Meanwhile, the Universe has thrown many obstacles in my path. such as lost phones and weird accounts on the domain server, and so my store is still waiting to be launched but that gives time to set the store up. It’s a huge job to move my products to another server. However, I realize I have already put a lot of work into this project for many years.
I have to add descriptions. I do as quickly as I can for now, there is time to reconsider later, but as I am doing so I am conceiving it as telling of the history of Andersen Design.
With ceramics, I have to have the capital to invest in the production and related functions up front, but I can sell prints of varying sizes on various mediums or printed on merchandise like mugs, pillows, T-shirts, and Tote bags without having to make a capital investment in the merchandise.
The cost of everything is built into the pricing of the product. When the customer purchases the product, the printer or manufacturer, the shippers, and the artist-designer are all paid out of that sale, and paid fairly. The suggested markup for the artist is very fair and the artist can adjust it. This is consistent with my idea about the maker’s network with negotiable terms.
Art Storefront is an asset with the potential to transform my other assets into monetary assets
It’s a lot of work that will preoccupy my time for a while but I will still find time to post here because that’s just like breathing. Breathing is necessary for life.
