I’m Christopher F. Miller. I’m a Democrat and I’m running for Governor of Maine.
I care deeply about the future of our communities, about my vegetable garden, about this little bit of the planet we call Maine. If we want peace, justice and economic security, then it is our responsibility and duty, as citizens, to say enough! That is why I am running for Governor.
I wonder how much trash Maine can burn, breath and drink. I wonder how many roads we can build and how much farmland we can subdivide.
Where will the Feds send Maine’s Guard next to find the cheap energy and natural resources that feed this growth? Which of our towns will suffer the LNG terminals and lines to feed the cities to the south? How long can this go on? We need to kick this growth habit before it is too late, while Maine still has the strength of community and rural infrastructure to do it with thought and grace.
Every day the sun shines on 21 million acres of Maine. That is our energy income.
The foreign corporations and the World Trade Organization tell us we must sell our water, that our libraries can no longer provide free services, that the power from dams on our rivers must be sold elsewhere while the same dam kills our fish. I wonder, when citizens lose authority over their own communities, what then is a citizen?
To live within our means and under our own control, we will have to learn to share fairly a smaller economic pie. Fairness depends on a democratic economy.
If Maine is to build a democratic economy, we must break up the centralized public bureaucracy that has evolved to serve corporate power, organized money, and the established political class. We’ll have to push power and resources out from Augusta, into our local communities and bioregions. We’ll have to empower our citizens to make decisions about local resources, not the lobbyists in Augusta. No more end runs by corporate predators. A democratic economy is a decentralized, local economy.
The oil is running out. Maine must plan for the transition to a sustainable society, to a fair and democratic economy based in our local communities.
People first, that’s the big idea.
Christopher F. Miller
Gray
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