Phil Harriman- Segments 5 & 6

For more than 20 years inside Maine has connected you with the state's top voices, diving deep into the political stories shaping our lives on 985 FM, AM 560, and WGAN.com. Well, good afternoon. It is 1208 here at the studios of WGNN. We're broadcasting live from South Portland, Maine. If you'd like to join us, we have another hour left. All you have to do is dial 879-9-4-2-6-879 W-G-A-N. We're immediately going to go to Kenny Bunk where our friend Scott has been ever so patiently waiting through the break, through the news. Scott, thanks for joining us. The floor is yours. No problem, Phil. When you retire, that's all you got his time. Oh, what a blessing, huh? You'll find out someday if you ever retire. I know, I know. I know. Anyway, my comments on the state of Maine, the situation up there in Augusta, and a couple comments. Maine, and I'm 76, and I'm a fourth generation, Maine, and we used to be known for our work ethic. And when you mentioned Maine, you know, rugged individualism and all that jazz, independent. Now it's not, we used to be independent thinkers. And now we're instead of inventors, we're preventers. And thanks to Augusta and the legislature, which are trying to prevent anything from happening. I don't see them doing anything that grows. Maine's economy. All they're doing is growing a budget, but they're not growing the main economy. There's two ways to get money. One is you tax people to death, or you bring in incentives to get businesses to come into Maine, and they pay taxes. That's how they do it. Well, that Maynail thing, there's one way of driving people out of Maine, because I never heard of a poor person that actually hired somebody. So there goes your millionaires out of there. And I hope people realize when this election comes up, I don't care how many candidates Republicans have. And we have a lot of good ones. We have quite a good slate, actually, this time. But unless we get rid of the legislature and turn both houses around, I don't care who you have in there in the brain house. It won't matter because you look at other states. that are heavy on the Democrat legislature side, like California. They've had Republican governors. You know, but it hasn't done any good because the legislature stays Democratic. You know, so I'm saying the people that are voting, you better aim at the people that are in the legislature if people are running. and change that piece of it first. And then we worry about who's going to be in the Blaine House. That's my comment, Phil. Well, Scott, I have to say you are spot on. As someone who spent eight years in the main Senate, I can attest to exactly what you have said. The governor gets to kind of set the vision and the ceremonial duties.

propose a budget, but it's the legislature that ultimately decides what passes, and then they hand it back to the governor and say, you're the chief executive, go execute what we've just decided. Right. Exactly. So the power's in the legislation, not in the Blaine House. Yeah, absolutely. Scott, thanks for waiting. Good to hear from you. It's Inside Maine with Phil Harriman. 879-9-9-4-26-879. WGAN. Let's go to South Portland and welcome Jim to the program. Hi, Jim. The floor is yours. Well, hi, Phil. Sometime I'd like you to tell you, hey, this is where I get my business news because I know where I get mine. But. You know how sometimes a personal experience changes your whole perspective on things? Yes, I do. Yes. Yeah. So I'm going to be an organ donor. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I went through the process, and it's quite a process. You have to be healthy enough to go into outer space to be an organ door. They just don't take anything, you know. So you go through this barrage of test. And... It's quite an adventure. And then finally, you get to the end where you meet the surgeon who's going to perform. And I kind of bonded with, and I looked at him. He was, you know, probably 45. And I thanked him for who he became. I said, you know, we all got out of high school and went in different directions, but you chose a hard one. And you've committed hours to study and hours to practice. Months and days and years have gone by. And here you are. And I said, there's a big difference between the family doc and the surgeon who's going to replace hearts. And he looked at me and he leaned back in his chair. And he said, you know, Jim, thanks. He goes, because believe me, sometimes you wonder. You know, did he do the right thing? You know, it's been such a marathon. And then, so he shows you everything all about your body, you know, all the test results. You know, there were, oh, just so many tests that were taken. And then he shows you a movie, hey, this is what we're going to do to you, and you watch, okay, and you're watching the movie. And then he took me down the halls and he went. You know, these people over here, they're fighting for one more day. Then he took me down to the heart ward. And these people, they're all waiting. They're on. There's nothing we can do. They're just waiting and hoping that there's a heart available. These people have a week or two months. Then, of course, this is the kidney people. I looked at them, and based on what I'm listening to and seeing what the... Democrats of the dreaded hated millionaire, right? This guy deserves every nickel he makes. He deserves to be a millionaire. And then I, then you go down and you sit in the cafeteria and you look at this big wall, big, huge wall, it's beautiful. And you start on the right, anybody who gave a million dollars.

or less, you know, 12,4006, whatever. Then you go through all these names, these different, oh, the 5 million, 10, and then you finally get to the last wall, and you go, oh, the Robert Kraft family, 25 million. Oh, Cynthia and Sean Fish, I know that. I've heard of them, you know, 25 million. And then you look at these are all hated millionaires. Hated. Hated. By the state of Maine. And then you look up at the top, $55 million, a one-time gift of 50. And next to it, anonymous. And a millionaire who doesn't want to come out of a closet because Janet Mills is looking for it. You know, this is such a sick mind frame of, you know, my father owned a successful small business, 60 employees. five branch offices, probably very much like you, though. And he was a CPA. And to God's sakes, the man was out at 5.30 in the morning and kind of wrapped it up at 8 o'clock at night. And he always said, you know, if you work it like a hobby, it pays like a hobby. But if you work it like a business, it'll pay like a business. And then I come down, driving home, I look at all of that. souls sitting on their front lawn, smoking marijuana next to dumpsters and public housing, hating the millionaire. By God, where would we be without them? Well said. Well said, Jim. I really appreciate the call. Thank you. That kind of puts it into perspective and illustrates that there was a time. I'll just use my own upbringing as an example. We had a roof over our head and closed. We had one car. We got by, and my dad was ultimately successful enough to have us in the middle, middle class economic spectrum. And I remember walking out of my neighborhood. to houses further down the street and seeing how much larger they were and they actually had two cars and their kids had, you know, sports equipment that I didn't have. And I didn't look at them and say, well, I should have what they have. I looked at them and said, how do I become like them? And that was really the motivation. If you, you know, got out of bed and put your feet on the floor and started moving, you could make happen in reality what you dreamed becoming. And today I think there's a sense that, oh, if those people are successful, they must have gotten it on the backs of someone else or they've got more than they need and therefore I'm going to use the power of my office as a legislator to scoop more of your money into the state checkbook so that we can decide who's worthy of additional money. What do you think? 879-9-4-26-879 W-G-A-N.

Donna's been waiting in South Portland patiently. Good morning. Oh, good afternoon, Donna. The floor is yours. Hi, Phil. I have a question. I have a friend who's an NHL ref who goes all over the country and in Canada and officiates games. They take income tax out of his paycheck in every state he works in, but he lives in Maine and derives none of his income from within the state. He yet, he's still taxed on his income by the state of Maine. How is that reasonable? They claim it's because of your, it's your state of residence. But yeah, I can see property tax. Oh, don't get me going on the property tax. Oh, my God. No, no. I mean, he owns a house, so he should have to pay property tax. Right, right. But why should he have to pay income on income he never derived? within the state of Maine? Well, he never worked. There's a lot of people in that predicament. One of my friends who shared with me anonymously how much he's going to have to pay in this millionaire's tax, he doesn't make any of his income here. It's all from private investments taking a risk of turning what might be a good idea into something that is a big idea. And he just chooses to live here in Maine and has some obligations, family obligations that make it difficult to change residency. And what he said, Donna, was, hey, you know, I make this kind of money. I pay my taxes. Now you've added an additional 2%. I don't earn my money here. I give generously to charities here. I've got a choice to make. I'm going to cut back on my charitable giving to make up for what the state is now forcing me to pay as an additional tax. It's crazy. It is. Yeah. It's crazy. I think we're related, too, Phil, by the way. Oh, we are? And my mother was a herroman. Oh, well, we'll have to connect off air and see if we are related. Okay. We'll have to do ancestry check out. Yeah, no. It just makes no sense to me. It seems like there's double taxation. It is. So basically, my friend decided to move. out of a state to a red state, and it's like getting a huge rate. Yeah, I hear that. Many of my, I'm in the financial planning space, many clients, particularly as they migrate towards retirement, it's true. They change residency to avoid the income tax. So if we just made it reasonable, rather than adding a millionaire's tax, why wouldn't we create an environment where we get twice as many millionaires paying taxes? Exactly. Right. Donna, thanks for waiting. Thank you. Appreciate the call. You're listening to Inside Maine. I'm your host today. Phil Harriman 879-9-4-26. Ken is in Portland patiently waiting. Hi, Ken. The floor is yours. Hey, Phil. How are you doing? Good. I know we're not related.

Unless something happened I didn't know about it. You know, I didn't want to talk about the millionaire issue because I'm not a millionaire, so I can't fully sympathize with their choice that they've got to make. But, you know, some other states are going to benefit from their presence because they're going to leave this state. But what I called about was another issue that's hot out of Augusta, and that's this ban on data centers. And I didn't realize it was such a big issue until I was at the Wells GOP meeting the other night. And I guess in New York County, it's a big issue. A lot of interest in building data centers there. And the point I keep trying to make, and I've talked to a lot of people about this. The data center of the future is in orbit. It's not on surface. It's not on the land. And Elon Musk, as smart as he is, it's got this all figured out. If he puts his mega data center in orbit, he can use 24-7-365 unlimited solar power. So you don't have that bill to deal with. There's no property tax in space. Yet. Don't say yet. Don't be a spoiler. It's only money, man. But there's also going to be no income tax. If you're smart, you accept it unless you live in Maine, in which case they'll tax your universal income. But so I have to disagree with the people who are opposed to the ban. I think the ban is going to prevent a lot of failures, a lot of companies going down the tubes, when Elon Musk gets his act together. And at the rate he's going with 30 or so launches a month, once he gets down to the moon, it's going to be data centers in Mars. So I just think we're smart not to get involved in some technologies. We don't have to be the early adopters to everything. Oh, you mean like solar and wind? Well, there's more than that. I mean, we're now looking at hydro and shutting down hydro and stuff like that. And unfortunately, the people who think that's a good idea are hearing it from somewhere else, and it's just not a good idea. We need to stop change. Even though I hate to say that, we need to stop change for a little while and really think through our decisions. Are we making things better or worse? And in most cases right now, it's worse. I have no idea how the Republican governor is going to make those changes unless he has the House and the Senate. At which point I will interject it, people, you've got to get out and vote or go without, plan on a move, and I mean, we'll have a lineup of buses outside the State House on Election Day so we can carry people off to Texas and Arizona. But you've got to make money off this somehow. So that's just my personal opinion, or I should say my professional opinion, but I think there's a lot of things that we could do differently.

I think the biggest thing that people are looking for is change, and that's why there's an attraction to... Well, I think the change, and thanks for the call, Ken, I appreciate it. I think the change that people are looking for is let's stop doing what we've always done and think we're going to get different results by saying, oh, well, the government just needs more money, and if we give them more money, education will be better, welfare will be less and less. Drug... problems will go away, et cetera. I think people are saying, you know what, we've been doing this for decades and things aren't getting better. They're actually going in the wrong direction. And I just feel like we have to stop saying to ourselves, oh, we just need to elect the right governor or the right legislator, and they'll get the message. I'm sorry, but there is a collective culture up there that says to themselves, yes, we were elected and we have these constitutional powers to use what limited time that we have here in office. to be the one that is seen in history as having changed things for the better. And we keep thinking that that mindset is ultimately going to be successful. when I think you can say we've done that, we've tried our best, we've taxed as best as we could, and we're not going in the right direction. What do you think? 879-94-26-8-7-9-W-G-A-N. We're broadcasting live from the studios here in South Portland, Maine. If you'd like to join us, we'd love to have you. I want to touch before we go today on our forest products. industry. I mentioned earlier that I was interviewed by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal on this millionaire's tax. And she was inquiring about the so-called lumber barons. And I thought to myself, boy, those lumber barons were gone long ago. You're listening to Inside Maine with Phil Harriman. We'll be back after news with Tony Randazzo. For over two decades, Inside Maine has delivered sharp political insight and in-depth discussion with Maine's top decision makers on 985 FM, AM 560 and WGAN.com. It's all right now. And we're at the end of the line. And we're at the end. Hard to believe. Three, well, two and a half hours just kind of flies by. It always does. And I noticed that with any guest that comes in for an interview. And they're so surprised that it's all done. You know, Dave E, who has been broadcasting for a long time, more than 30 years. We had a little segment with him, which is on our website.

about a project he's working on celebrating Maine's history during our 250 years of independence. He took off his headphones and he goes, wow, that went fast. I can't believe how quickly that went by. Anyway, I feel the same way and I do this for three hours. Yes. And you've been doing this for over 20 years now. I am the originator of inside. You are. I can't believe it. If you had told me after I was term limited out of the main Senate that I would be in broadcasting. For 20 years, I would have said, no, no, no, no. I was on the other side of those microphones and cameras. Between radio, the television work you've done over the years. I used to write for the Bangor Daily and the Portland Press Herald. Who would have thought? Just a local boy from Yameth trying to make something of himself. I wanted to tee up this next conversation with the impact on the main economy and our forest industry. And I say that because I was... interviewed by a Wall Street Journal reporter earlier in the week, and she was inquiring as part of the interview about where the wealth is in Maine, and she referred to the lumber barons. And I said, well, that's actually a story for another day. There is a whole different perception of Maine's lumber barons and what's reality. But before I get into some of the history and why I think we should be more alert about this natural resource that we have, that some of the best fiber, the fiber in the trees of Maine are some of the best literally in the world. And... Our economic engine is breaking down because of regulation, legislation, taxation, etc. But before I get into my spiel, I want to share with you, Milton Freeman was an economist. best known probably in the 70s and 80s, and I'm going to play a brief part of an interview we had with Phil Donahue, right? I'm sure many of you, baby boomers who listen to Inside Maine will know who Phil Donahue is, but if you're a millennial or a Gen Zier or so forth, Phil Donahue probably isn't a tip of the tongue name, but he had a very, very popular talk show.

on television. He basically founded the whole format. Yeah, he did actually. You're right. So I want to play this clip of Milton Freeman, a renowned economist, I think he was at Stanford, or I think it was Stanford. It doesn't matter. He was a very sought-after economist on the Phil Donahue show. Runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements. of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, or where they have had capitalism and largely free trade, if you want to know where the masses are worse off, worse off, it's exactly the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way. so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system. But it seems to reward, not virtue, as much as ability to manipulate the system. And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, do you think American president's reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know, I think you're taking a lot of things for granted. And just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are... That's Milton Freeman being interviewed by Phil Donahue talking about the... free enterprise system, which leads me into the conversation I wanted to share with you about the plight of our main forests. When I was privileged to be elected to the Maine Senate, I was in the 90s. And during that time, there were a number of activism in the legislature. There was a number of activists in the citizens initiated petition process, all aimed at our forest products industry. And I remember in particular, one was one of my former Senate colleagues. He represented the area of Millinocket, and he was very passionate about controlling the paper mill up there in terms of their air and water quality, as he justly should. And there was a guy named Jonathan Carter. Many of you may remember him. He was a environmentalist, and he put forward several referendum petitions where,

We were asked to vote on forest practices, and there were other pieces of legislation controlling dioxin. And what came to a blinding glimpse of the obvious by the paper industry in particular was, I guess you really don't want us here. So what did they do? They took their land and they sold it. And they reserved or had contractual rights to harvest trees off of the land that they sold. And then they ran them through their paper machines until the paper machines were worn out or broken down. And then they left. They left. And the impact of that... to me, if you do a little research, you'll find that between the year 2000 and 2017, 64% of Maine's pulp and paper mills shut down. Jay in 2023, Madison, Lincoln in 2015. Lincoln in 2015. Bucksport, 2014, East Millenarget, 2014, Millenarquet, 2008, Winslow, 1999. All of these facilities got the message that they really weren't welcome here, and so they closed down. The results? There was once a thriving workforce of 32,000 people working in the forest products profession. Today, about 7,000. You could graduate from the local high school. Walk across the street, if that was your desire. Get a decent paying job with benefits in a retirement plan. Make enough money to buy a home, a car, a snowmobile, a boat. If that was your quality of life, it was right there across the street. And now it's gone. And many would say, well, that's a good thing because the environment is better off because of it. And I would just say that there's always room for improvement. Economic improvement, environmental improvement, technological improvement, all of those things can cohabitate to make things better than they were yesterday. But instead, we basically said, you know, we'll regulate you and we'll legislate you out of here. And so they left. So what's left? All of these towns that once had a heartbeat of economic activity are now shut down. And people who live in those areas of our state who want to live in that rural lifestyle, their economic opportunities are less, and perhaps their confidence in their financial future is keeping them sleeping with one eye open.

But there's more to the story. And I'll get to that after I go to Arburn and welcome Bruce to Inside Maine with Phil Harriman. Hi, Bruce. The floor is yours. Thank you, Phil. Following up on what you're talking about, clearly one of the things, life is competition. And when they think about lowering income taxes on individuals. One of the elements that would do that dramatically is what you were talking about, and that would be if we are able to increase the revenue from our corporate tax base. If we were friendlier in a corporate field and we're generating more in corporate income tax than the individual income tax can go down. But as you were stating, we appear to be unfriendly to businesses at times, and that has shrunk. our corporate income tax stream, in my opinion. I mean, if you look at the 2026 budget on the revenue stream, we're looking at about $372 million for corporate income tax. We're on the income tax side. We're looking at $2.785 billion. Wow. If we could get that to be even, think of the burden that would reduce income tax on the individual. And just, you know, keeping the corporate tax rate competitive, relatively speaking, and be hospitable to welcoming capital and investment. You're absolutely right, Bruce. We could have more taxpayers paying a relatively smaller amount tax rate, and the revenues to the state would grow. So... If you think about the recent situation happened last year. We had a young man, Cooper Flag, drafted number one in the NBA draft, lived this entire life in Maine. And now he's playing for the Dallas Mavericks. Texas is a tax-free income tax state. So competition-wise, how does Maine compete with Texas that has zero-income tax? versus what we have here in Maine to attract Cooper Flag to be a Maine resident. Why would he choose to be a Maine resident and pay probably a million dollars plus on his $13 million contract? What's the incentive? The incentive is moved to Texas. Right, right. So we're competing, if we were competing, if you think about it from a competition standpoint, we're competing for him to be a resident of Maine, what incentive do we have? They say, hey, you know, if you pay that million dollars, your fair share, you could be a main resident. Why would you do that? Right. Yeah. Well, I know in my opportunity to serve in the Maine Senate, we had national semiconductor, formerly known as Fairchild, and I forget the name of it now, that they were preparing to build another chip-making facility, either in Texas, California, or Maine. Yeah. And they ultimately chose Maine for a couple of reasons. One, they had easy access to legislative and the governor. They had a commitment to timely yes or no answers on their permitting process. And we offered them an incentive, a tax incentive to invest here. I forget whether it was a 10 or a 15 year tax incentive.

They ultimately decided to build this facility in Maine. And I swear to goodness, Bruce, I don't think it was, maybe it was four years after I was term limited or two. But that facility that was built in South Portland, Maine, a state senator from South Portland, put in legislation to repeal their incentives because it was considered corporate welfare. Now, what do you think that sends to the message of the leaders of these companies to say, oh, now we put roots down here. They made us all these promises, and now somehow we are on corporate welfare. Thank you very much. No more investment here. And how often does that happen? Look at what we could have done with the Brunswick Naval Air Station. One of the best runways on the eastern seaboard, that facility could have been turned into an international economic hub. Instead, it got turned over to an authority, which I'm sure it's being well regulated, run. But it was a huge opportunity for economic development. And I think Governor LePage sought to do that and was met with stiff opposition. And so my point is we have great potential here. We just don't have the political courage to say, yeah, we're going to trust the private sector to come in and build infrastructure and hire people and tax them fairly so that we all can benefit. I think that and we don't have the reality mindset that this is a competitive environment. We are competing against the other states and now internationally, actually, for people to come locate here, whether they be residents or whether they be businesses. And we have to have an environment in which we can win that competition. Not that we have, we can't just have an environment, so we have an environment and this is what we have and hopefully you'll want to come. No, no, we have to be at the top. in a competitive environment so we can attract and retain business. Well, Seb. Bruce, thanks for the call. Really appreciate you joining us. It's Inside Maine. I'm your host today, Phil Herriman. We've got a few minutes left if you'd like to join us, 879-9-4-26. Let's go to Old Orchie Beach and welcome Geronimo to the program. Hi, Geronimo. Yes, howdy, Phil? I am a Democrat, but I just keep thinking lately that... Graham Cracker Graham Platner is all jive and shock without any oyster pearls of wisdom. And the... And then there's Janet Mills Millstone around our necks. Maine is virtually in debt, still raising taxes despite years of new tax revenue windfalls from cigarettes, gambling, and marijuana. The Janet Mills miracle is that there is no budget surplus. Mills should be leaving us in humiliation.

Wow. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. That's not a common call from Democrats, but I don't, you know, I love the humor, but there's a lot of truth said in jest. It's true. It's like we just got to find a way indirectly, obtusely, or directly to squeeze more money out of the private sector so that we can spend it in Augusta because we know. better than those who are actually taking the risk in making things happen. I want to go back before we close on the forest products industry. You know, we lost, as I was mentioning earlier, 64% of our economic engine in the forest paper-making, pulp-making business. But what I wanted to share with you that in the aftermath, there's still the high-quality fiber of Maine's forest is renowned. What's happening now is that whether it's softwood lumber for framing or hardwood for furniture and flooring and cabinetry, what is happening to the main forest for those manufacturers who are still here, they face these unbelievable increases in electricity costs because of the... the regulation out of the Public Utilities Commission. Fuel costs, as we all know all too well, particularly in the last month and a half, have skyrocketed. Insurance costs have skyrocketed, but equally important, and this is really important for you to understand, is that... The Asians are coming and buying our raw logs, right? Right off the forest floor, don't debark them. Just take the limbs off. We'll buy the logs. They put them on empty container ships from goods that were brought into the United States. They're shipping them back over to Asia, and they're turning them into flooring and cabinetry and so forth. And then they're bringing them back into the U.S. And depending upon the tariff policy, they are unable to compete, particularly in the hardwood flooring. So they're buying our logs, they're raising the prices of raw logs, and then they're bringing back finished goods and not having to pay a tariff particularly on hardwood flooring. And we just saw a 75-year-old business in Milo, Maine.

announced they were out of business. And I just wonder how many other manufacturing companies are on the same path. Thanks for letting me be your host today. It's been Inside Maine with Phil Harriman. We're here every Saturday from 10 to 1. We look forward to your calls and I look forward to hosting you next month. Thanks for listening to Inside Maine with Phil Harriman.