Professor Jon Reisman: Attorney General Mills: Gut the First Amendment

November 2016

Attorney General Mills: Gut the First Amendment
By Jon Reisman
The Maine legislature will be electing constitutional officers in December. The expected candidacy and reelection of Democrat Attorney General Janet Mills will have important and far reaching implications for climate change policy, freedom of speech and association, partisan temperatures and the 2018 gubernatorial election.
Mills, daughter of a prominent western Maine family, has served the State and her political party as Attorney General, State Representative and as Democrat Party official. She has championed and advocated numerous progressive social justice causes, and is arguably the most public and recognized opponent of Republican Governor Paul LePage. She is a likely candidate for Governor in 2018. Her re-election as will put Maine on a collision course with President-elect Trump. While 1st District Trumpaphobes may rejoice at such macro-aggressions, 2nd District Trumpaphiles will not be amused
General Mills has adopted, endorsed and promoted several elements of the Democrat platform calling for government censorship of political speech and religious liberty- in other words, amending (as in gutting) the First Amendment.
The Democrat platform and progressives continue to call for campaign finance reform by reversing Citizens United and 40 years of precedent that money is speech. Attorney General Mills is all-in on how important it is to censor political speech, especially corporate political speech. Senators Collins and King, Representative Pingree and the League of Women Voters agree with her. The American Civil Liberties Union has not even raised a peep on government censorship of political speech, because speech from corporations, conservatives and other deplorables shouldn’t be protected. Super PACS are very, very bad, even if they were created by campaign finance reform. The Maine Conservation Voters PAC, which has spent close to a million dollars since 2010 opposing Gov. LePage and promoting statist environmental policies, is just fine however. Only the PACS promoting deplorable policies will be targeted by progressive speech nannies and General Mills. And there’s not a smidgen of evidence they will be held accountable for it.
The Democrat platform also contained a plank calling for the investigation and prosecution of climate change skeptics as racketeering enemies of the planet who must be punished and silenced. Green Pope Leonardo DiCaprio, speaking for the millennial sustainability caucus, said that believing in climate change should be a requirement for running for and holding public office, and apparently General Mills agrees with him. She joined 17 other Democrat State Attorneys General in an investigation of climate change skeptics which has subpoenaed think tanks and is clearly trying to chill political speech that the Democrat AG’s and environmental interest groups they work with and for want stopped. When President Trump vacates the executive orders and the Obama/King Paris climate “treaty” which is not a “treaty”, any defense of such unsustainable planetary malice must be prevented.
The most prominent Maine climate policy skeptic is not included in the investigation, and General Mills has apparently not devoted a lot of taxpayer resources to her prosecutorial effort…it’s just a show investigation after all. A federal judge found sufficient evidence of potential prosecutorial misconduct in New York and Massachusetts to allow Freedom of Access discovery requests which have shown a very cozy relationship between the Democrat State AG’s and environmental interest groups. Apparently the Sierra club uses Mill’s personal g-mail address; unfavored and unwashed non-progressives must contact her through her minions and state web site, where they might or might not get an answer. I went almost 6 months without being favored with a reply; one finally came hours after I complained to an equally non-responsive Maine Civil Liberties Union.
Janet Mills is likely to be reelected Attorney General by Democrat legislators next month, and she will undoubtedly continue to pursue and advocate for progressive policies to gut the First Amendment. Having an Attorney General and potential Governor who openly opposes freedom of speech should trouble even leftists and the mainstream media, but apparently not. The Maine Civil Liberties Union is unconcerned, as are legislative Democrats. The narrowly divided legislature is hoping for some degree of bi-partisan comity, but the 2018 gubernatorial race and the progressive agenda to regulate and control political speech may prevent it. Attorney General Mills and the Maine Conservation PAC have open invitations to speak at the University of Maine at Machias, but I don’t expect them to accept. Sunlight is a bit too good a disinfectant.
Jon Reisman (jreisman@maine.edu) teaches environmental policy at the University of Maine at Machias.

Also see the following:

JReisman_Ellsworth%20American%20-%20Copy.pdf

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Comment by Bob Stone on December 10, 2016 at 6:01pm

Any lowering of First Amendment rights are the first step down the slippery slope.  I am so thankful that Trump will control the next few SCOTUS appointments.  That was the key issue, for me, in this campaign.

Comment by Eskutassis on December 10, 2016 at 5:29pm

I just read an article that gave the final numbers for the amount taken in and spent by the two campaigns during the 2016 election cycle.  Clinton took in and spent $1.2 BILLION (she spent all of it) and about 20% of it came from 5 individual donors, one (the largest) being Donald Sussman.  Remember him?  The donor who gave King Angus the startup money for First Wind. One of the other five was George Soros.  Trump raised half that amount, $600 Million, and had $7.5 million left over at the end.  

I really don't want to hear from her side that there has to be an end to CItizens United.  The hypocrisy of their side is out of control, just as the play doh, crayon rooms and crying towels that have been so prevalent for the last four weeks have been.  It's really hard to be a loser . . . . I know because I was one for eight years, but I gutted it out and made the best of it.   

Comment by Bob Stone on December 10, 2016 at 4:44pm

Many Maine towns have adopted resolutions supporting the repeal of Citizens United decision.  I was able to stop it in the City of Auburn when I explained to the then sitting City Council that this is simply an attack on our First Amendment rights.  I doubt many of the other towns had the benefit of an explanation before voting to support the repeal.  This is a sinister movement that goes far beyond the assault on the 1st Amendment.  They are going for multiple Amendment protections.

Comment by Eskutassis on December 10, 2016 at 3:36pm

It is interesting that AG Mills is interested in doing away with Citizens United, while they take huge amounts of money from George Soros and his many tentacles when he is a confirmed Internationalist/Socialist/Nazi sympathizer.  Ever read his bio?  And they rail against the Koch Brothers who run a legitimate business employing more than 100,000 people.  Go figure.  

Comment by Eskutassis on December 10, 2016 at 3:30pm

Quite honestly, I am not particularly concerned with the AG railing on about her problems with the First Amendment and the climate change problem she and her cronies are going to face in the first one hundred days of next year.  The Paris Climate "Treaty" is an Executive order and can be undone with a "pen and a phone'"  Governor LePage is going to be around for a couple of more years, and if Collins and King don't want to play ball, maybe they can be replaced, too.  

We are in for a whole new ballgame, one that lets us swing at the ball without our hands being tied.  Our First Amendment rights have been restored and we have an advocate in our corner for a change.  Real science is going to expose "Climate Change" for what it is, a fraud that is part of the Globalization of America.  We have a window to do it right this time and we have to make it work.

 

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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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