Professor John Frary for U.S. Congress

Czar Reed on the Democratic Party, 1892: "A hopeless assortment of discordant differences as incapable of positive action as it is of infinite clamor.". How little has changed.

TOP SECRET: Realistically, we know that my prospects of victory rest rather precariously on the possibility that Mike Meeshoo will defect to North Korea with the secret plans for a high-tech forklift; so I'm always looking for ancillary benefits from my labors and expenditures. If I can plant or cultivate some useful ideas in a few thousand minds, then I will be sufficiently rewarded. Professor John Frary

UNION BOSSES STOOGE

I love your site, your honesty and attitude. My only disappointment is that you have completely missed the one HUGE reason that Michaud ever got elected in the first place: UNIONS. Michaud is/has been/ will be in the pocket of unions. (Rumor has it that he had to divide half of his Washington office to share space with his union thug friends.) I'm sure you've heard of the phrase: bought and paid for... If Michaud did an honest tag, his would say "bought and paid for by (insert union organization here)" - a friend in Skowhegan

Another Union Success?

Professor Frary responds:You have a point, one which needs a lot of attention. The truth of what you say is revealed in Mike's FEC report for the 2006 election. He meets the essential criteria for a puppet. He is visually presentable and he has no brain. I'm expecting an essay explaining how the unions, led by Mike and others in the leadership, managed to destroy the Great Northern mill, from a man who knows the story in detail and knows how to write it up. This will go on the website. [see last item below]

WILL THE REAL MILL WORKER PLEASE STAND UP?

JOHN N. FRARY - BIOGRAPHY IN BRIEF: Born in Farmington Maine on Dec. 2, 1940.

EMPLOYMENT: 1952-1965: Frary Woodturning Co on weekends, summers, vacations and one full year in 1955 (his father concluded from his first quarter grades that he would be more usefully employed in the millyard). Worked at the sorting benches, drill press, bench saw, finishing room and shipping, stacking edgings, sticking squares, gang saw, birch-hooking bolter logs, spindle lathe, automatic lathes, and hand lathe.

EDUCATION: Graduate of Farmington High School, 1960.

University of Maine at Orono. B.A. in 1964, followed by one semester of graduate courses in history and political science.

Rutgers University. Studied ancient and medieval history with a specialty in Byzantine History, 1965-1972. M.A. in 1970. Completed language tests, written and oral examinations for PhD.Princeton University 1983, Graduate courses at the Woodrow Wilson School.

ANOTHER SATISFIED CUSTOMER

Personally, I have never liked Mike Michaud. I remember distinctly one of his campaign adds many years ago, in which he expounded his " Working Class" background by driving around on a forklift in a factory/warehouse in Lewiston. He had on a nice brand new yellow hard hat and he was smiling talking about his days when he had to eek out a living, and how he understood Mainers and their economic woes. Michaud was going to bring some kind of change in congress that would bring jobs back to Maine Blah, Blah, Blah. What I did notice is that this Staged act was performed inside of a Factory/Warehouse that was out of business, and to the best of my knowledge, still is. This kind of posturing has never appealed to me as it is false. It is an attempt to fool people into voting for you or your party, the sad thing is IT WORKED!” Slainte/Blighter

MIKE’S BUDDIES

The annual payback dinner by defense contractors who benefit from earmarks by Democratic Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, will be held Feb. 27 at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City in Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington.

Murtha, a close adviser of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is one of the leading earmarkers in Congress. The earmark recipients will be paying the $1,500 a person admission to "An Evening with Jack and Joyce Murtha."

Although the dinner is timed to coincide with the anniversary of Murtha's first special election to Congress in 1974, invitations for it were mailed just before the annual deadline for earmark applications.

My Pulse Almost Stopped

A campaign flack forwarded a press release from our venerable Congressmammal Michaud trumpeting his sole accomplishment (other than drawing his $160,000+ salary, of course), which turned out to be getting ONE house of Congress to pass ONE of his harebrained schemes. The other 55 bills and 500 odd earmarks he introduced over the last 5 years are apparently still languishing in legislative limbo. Thankfully, I am certain.

Needless to say, it was a supremely solemn and boring read - my pulse almost stopped! - but to spare my dear readers, I will summarize the upshot of the “achievement”. Mr. Michaud has apparently almost convinced Congress to flush $40 million of the taxpayers money down a rathole designed to “overcome” the economic malaise along the the northern borders of New York, Vermont and Maine.

Note to Mike: these are the most fanatically overregulated and most heavily taxed regions of the US, and it’s no wonder they are languishing economically. Stop shooting at the alligators and drain the swamp, as a wise man once put it.

IS MIKE REALLY A DUMB FORKER, OR: IS THIS GUY FOR REAL????

In the Autumn of 2007, the stock market began a sickening skid. Banks and brokerage firms trembled as the true enormity of the sub-prime mortgage disaster began to eat away at the very foundations of the world economic order. Oil prices skyrocketed to record highs, wheat and corn prices went into the stratosphere, and the dollar collapsed to its lowest level vs the pound sterling since WWII. The Fed cut rates more sharply than at any time in it’s 95 year history, and pumped money into the teetering commercial banks to keep them afloat. The Democratic Congress’ approval ratings approached 11%, (and heck, you could get an 11% approval rating for botulism, depending on how you worded the poll.)

The world wobbled on the brink of a Second Great Depression.

And what did Maine’s junior congressman do? Our very own Mike Michaud?

HE RENEWED HIS FORKLIFT OPERATOR’s LICENSE. “You never know when it might come in handy.” as Mike put it.

Do you remember the scene in the Stephen King novel Dreamcatcher where the little retarded Maine boy from the run down mill town, facing an alien invasion intent on the destruction of the Earth, got his Scooby Doo lunch box out and set out to do cosmic battle against the invaders? It might come in handy for what follows.

WHERE DID THIS GUY COME FROM?

By Mike’s own account, he says that he was just an ordinary minor union official/millworker in Millinocket when he all of a sudden got an urge in 1980 to run for public office. He won as the union endorsed candidate against an incumbent Republican in a year when darn few Dems won anywhere. For the next 22 years, in his spare time between shifts at the mill, our hero won every election and rose to the President of the State Senate. He introduced no legislation of any import, and always, always followed the party line.. While President of the State Senate spending by Maine government increased 18% a year - the national average at the time was 6.3%

In 2002, the 2nd Congressional District came open when Baldacci left Washington to run for Governor. So Mike, again in his spare time from the mill job he held, was talked into running. He won a narrow primary victory over former Governor Longley’s daughter - she won all the yuppie communities, and he carried the mill towns by landslides. He went on to win narrowly in November in the most hotly contested election in the northeast that year, raising over $2 million, most of it from labor union and out of state donors. Observers pointed out that Kevin Raye, whom he defeated, lost the election when he trounced Michaud in a debate on MPTV that was so one sided that a sympathy vote propelled Mike over the finish line.

Three days after he left for Washington D.C., the Millinocket mills closed, much to his surprise. According to Mike “I planned to go back to shift work on my August vacation, because I liked the work and I missed the guys.”

Mike spent more than $1 million to win re-election in 2004 over Brian Hamel, a business executive that had revived the economy of Aroostook County in a decade of inspired leadership. He heavily outspent Hamel. Again, most of Mike’s money came from labor unions and out of state liberal PACs. And he outspent his next opponent Scott D’Amboise more than 20 to 1, and got his money from, you guessed it, labor unions and out of state liberal PACs.

Mike doesn’t have to make the thousands of calls other candidates do to raise money, but he does have duties, and often begins work in his congressional office at 5AM or earlier. No one knows what he is doing in there, but he is there. He doesn’t read books, he doesn’t formulate policy, and he doesn’t have any area of expertise.

In his 5 years in Congress, Mike has introduced 56 bills. One has now reached a conference committee, but the bill as now written contains no provision for financing the measure in question. . All the rest have faded away. Mike votes 96.3% of the time with the Nancy Pelosi - but is permitted (or directed?) to vote against her the other 3.7% of the time, because he represents a rural seat in Maine.

What are we to make of all this?

Consider the following chart:

RED LINE: Bell curve of IQ, - Members of Congress

BLUE LINE: Bell Curve of IQ - Members, United States Senate

GREEN LINE: Bell curve of IQ - general populace

Please keep in mind that our only source for the info above is Mike Michaud himself, along with some anecdotal evidence regarding people who’ve been trapped in elevators with Mike, gotten stuck next to Mike at a meeting, or listened to Mike while he was trying to explain any issue before Congress.

Is Mike nice? Well, he seems nice. He’ll listen to anybody. But there were plenty of nice people in the worst governments in history. In my opinion, Mike is nice - but the people pulling his strings could be the worst thugs in America.

Something has to be done about this wholly incompetent career politician before he gets into some office where he'd really be dangerous, like Governor. I would hope that we learned our lesson with Baldacci; a person with no management experience and no legislative accomplishments is a poor bet to put Maine's house in order. At least Baldacci had seen how a restaurant was run, poor Mike has only seen how factories are "downsized" etc etc

A Personal History of the Destruction
Of the Great Northern Mill by the Unions

I remember after graduation from high school in 1967 like most of my fellow male graduates, we signed up to “follow the window” hoping to get a job at the Great Northern. If you got hired on Monday you could ask to be cleared for the week. While I was Editor and Publisher of the family owned newspaper I managed to get in on the dreaded third shift work, usually poling wood in the grinder room or swiping in the machine shop (wash floors, window, take out trash etc.) I managed to earn enough money to pay for four years at U of M Orono.

I could have earned more until one day in August I was called into the Union Stewards’ office and informed that if I wished to continue at the mill I would have to join the Union. Being a young uninitiated teenager, it was the first time I realized the power of the Unions. If you don’t follow the Party, oops, I mean Union rules, you are out on your ear. Of course, being raised by forward thinking, progressive parents, I promptly turned on my heels and left the mill with the Shop Steward in tow. He yelled that I could not simply walk out without completing my shift. I remember telling him that this was not a communist country yet and I was free to do as I pleased. He even tried to tell me that I had to return the mandatory steel toed shoes that I had paid for because they came from the company store and I had gotten a big discount. I told him I would return a piece of each shoe based on the percentage discount, as I went through the door.

Growing up in Millinocket, grandson of the President of Great Northern Paper Co. ( then retired) I remember the stories he told of negotiating with the unions. He told me it seldom took more than a couple of days and it was always a very cordial and respectful process. He recalled the during the Great Depression, rather then laying off hundreds of workers, he proposed that every one take a reduction in hours, but not in pay. The unions loved the idea so well that the whole deal was done on a handshake.

Somewhere I have a picture of that event. Those days when the company and the unions operated on the philosophy that each needed and depended upon the other began to disappear in the late 60’s. Pressure from the international unions and pressure from the a stockholders were pulling things apart.

What followed was unheard of in Millinocket; a vote to Strike by the Papermakers Union. The Spring of 1970 was the beginning of the end. Economic forces and some of the highest paying jobs in New England. The Unions dug in their heels, and it was a summer of tension between the company and the workers. In fact, when the local unions finally agreed to accept a new contract, the International Union stepped and refused to sanction the deal. When all the dust settled, the workers got a nickel an hour raise, and a great company started sliding into the abyss.

Next came buyouts and again assets were sold followed by valuable forest lands, watersheds and hydroelectric plants. Soon the company was a mere shell of its’ former self. Without constant rebuilding and upgrading, there was not enough left to regain its past glory. Everyone loses, nobody wins.

And what has all this to do with Mike Michaud? Never mind that all during this time Mike remained silent and did little to help save the various companies.

Mike, while claiming to be a mill worker, (the only window he followed was the one in front of the coffee machine) was and still is handpicked by the union to represent all of us in the second district, like it or not. Earning a healthy stipend and financial support from the unions while drawing down his congressional salary has made his political machine seemingly unstoppable except this time the unions are no longer the powerful force they used to be. As the mill has declined, so have the number of mill workers, to the lowest point in its history.

Mike pulls the party line in his votes and his only legislative effort to date was to call for the impeachment of the Vice-president. Never mind that a heavily Democratic House had already decided that this idea was without merit, and would never pass; Mike jumps on a bandwagon with no horses to pull it. What is even worse is that Mike did this just to get some media recognition for an otherwise completely lackluster legislative history.

In contrast, John Frary is using his personal assets plus a few private contributions to finance his bid for the second district. The people of Second District deserve a congressman who can think beyond the party and special interests. We have serious issues confronting this country and need someone like John Frary who has a deep historical perspective and steadfast principles. If he takes positions, you can rest assured that he has given a great deal of thought and unabashedly defends them.

If you have your eyes open and are not blinded by the money that surely will be spread around by the Michaud machine, you will see that Mike’s positions are based on which group he happens to be talking to at the time.

Mike looks good in a suit, smiles nicely when the cameras are on and can bore you to death without saying one single thing of importance. Trying to pin Mike down on an issue or concept is like trying to grab a fish with your bare hands. And if you manage to catch one, you can never be sure what it is you caught.

A Pox on Both Their Houses?