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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 16073
[Politics]
Date Posted:
8/20/2006
3:13:14 pm EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 7,761
RSS: 21,209
Comments: 9
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Are Political Pros Preying On The Vulnerable?
Author: David Farmer Source: SunJournal.com (ME)
Title: ARE POLITICAL PROS PREYING ON THE VULNERABLE?
On Monday, a former Green Independent candidate from Cape Elizabeth wrote to the state's ethics commission, saying that she had been manipulated into running for public office by two Republicans, themselves candidates for election at the time, and an activist for the Green Independent Party, who were all working together.
The accused denied the allegations quickly and without reservation.
And, while the potential practice of recruiting one's own opponent or "fragile" candidates in other races in order to attract more public funding for a campaign or to pull support from another campaign does not appear to violate state law, it does raise numerous ethical questions.
The scheme appears to have been designed to draw money from the state's Clean Election Fund and to put electoral obstacles into the path of political opponents and to utilize candidates that would not be able to mount legitimate campaigns or be credible witnesses in any public proceedings.
Independent state Senate candidate Julia St. James of Hartford, who is a self-described weed farmer and Wiccan, was fined $13,000 and ordered to repay $11,088 in clean election money she had received. Green Independent candidate Sarah Trundy of Minot was fined $500 for failing to keep records of how she spend clean election money and ordered to repay almost $3,000 of her clean election money.
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Community Thoughts: There are 9 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Why Even Mention... | Aug 21st. at 4:06:10 pm EDT
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Ellen (East Hartford, Connecticut) - Email Me
What I take umbrage to is even the mention of the candidate being Wiccan. Not one other person in the article is identified by religion, only political affiliation.
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| Weed Farmer Does Not Mean Pot | Aug 21st. at 9:43:17 am EDT
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Ceol (Commerce, Georgia) - Email Me
An earlier poster felt that describing herself as a "weed farmer" was bad for the pagan community, apparently linking the word weed with marijuana. Both the terms "weed farmer" and "grass farmer" are common descriptions of people who own acreage but do not have active farms. The have nothing but weeds and grass growing, and not the illegal kind.
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| Tangled Web With Not Enough Information | Aug 20th. at 8:58:16 pm EDT
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Stormsinger (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) - Email Me
This is a really complicated issue, and what we are getting doesn't even qualify as Cliff Notes. Whatever the "Wiccan weed farmer" may have done or said is pretty much open to speculation, 'cause there's nothing here that tells me she's either smoking her own inventory or was manipulated by a bunch of sharks who told her it was fine to do something they knew she'd get nailed on.
This is an example of how fine the lines both have to be drawn and walked. On the one hand, there must be enough freedom to allow people to run even if we think they don't have a chance -- remember the "vampire" from Minnesota who tried to run for governer -- and the wrestler who did it and won.
On the other hand, what these jokers appear to have done to these candidates is what we from the South call "carpetbagging." They come in, choose vulnerable targets, and with their slick hard-sell talk people into doing things they later realize are improper or inappropriate. Not everyone thinks well on their feet or can examine a situation dispassionately in the "heat of the moment."
I hope there will be more information on this as well as more action. So far, only one thing is clear: the laws need some refining.
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| I Take Issue With The Weed Farmer | Aug 20th. at 8:01:48 pm EDT
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Aritimi Morgana (RotterdamJct/Schdy/Scotia, New York) - Email Me
.....maybe it's just me, but St.James just doesn't strike me as a very good pagan. What about 'perfect love and perfect trust'? I know the saying's trite, but think about it; what exactly was she doing with that money that earned her a whopping fine? And being a 'self-described weed farmer' just doesn't increase my trust of her. I think she's lacking a few brain cells in all that weed she must be inhaling---crap like this gives us pagans a bad name. I am fed up with the fringe element of paganism getting all the bad publicity!!
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