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[Solitar]

I was stationed at Loring AFB in Maine (three winters north of Caribou, Maine!) This base closed in 1994 and the county lost thousands of jobs and thirteen thousand people (from 1990 to 2000). This huge facility is being redeveloped and is available for commercial development. The local governments are recruiting people and businesses.
Here is a link (scroll down to Loring AFB) about the original base.
http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/ME/Airfields_ME.htm
Here is the commercial page which has become quite impressive.
http://www.loring.maine.com/

Northern Maine loggers want to secede as 51st state?
from:
Wall Street Journal, September 11, 1997, page B1

Most Likely to Secede?
It May Be A Miffed County In North Maine
by Dana Milbank
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
   Call it the Moose that Roared.
   Tempers are hot in the cold north of Maine. There’s a whisper of rebellion in the pine trees: Revolutionaries in Aroostook County, a northern wilderness larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, want to secede from Maine.
   Residents of the would-be 51st state have griped for years about the city slickers downstate who dominate the Maine legislature. But this time, says state Rep. Henry Joy, a northerner, Aroostook “is under the greatest assault it has ever had.” The south is strangling the northern economy with logging restrictions and environmental regulations, the northerners say, and denying them needed funds for schools and highways.
   Mr. Joy introduced a bill calling for the legislature to study “the feasibility of creating two states out of the current Maine territory.” He won funding for a 14-member task force, with a budget of $2,600, which will soon investigate the merits of a split.
   The Aroostookan confederacy would include similarly aggrieved northern counties, says Mr. Joy, who claims to have support from counties as far south as Oxford, in west-central Maine. The rebels count among their supporters a group called Unorganized Territories United, which claims 800 to 1,200 members. “We’re under attack here,” says Roberta McKay, the group’s founder.
   But don’t sew another star on the American flag just yet. Aroostook is poor and has just 87,000 people. “The going joke is we’re going to have to secede from the country, declare war on the United States, give up, allow them to occupy us and receive foreign aid,” says state Rep. James Donnelly, a northerner who has not yet committed to secession. Neither has Leo Kieffer, a state senator from Caribou, who says he’s sympathetic, but that secession “would just make things worse.”
   Mr. Joy concedes that Maine’s legislature is unlikely to approve the split, so, if necessary, he’ll take his case straight to Congress. But the Constitution specifically requires the consent of both before a new state can be created.
   For now, Maine’s loyalists remain unruffled. “We haven’t seen any signs of revolution yet,” says Dennis Bailey, spokesman for Gov. Angus King. “But we’ll keep our eyes open.”

Here are links for the internet addicts.
Group seeks statehood for north Maine
http://www.s-t.com/daily/02-97/02-25-97/a03sr022.htm
The first puts some faces to some names.
http://www.adamsreport.com/articles/enviro_me_980616_3.html

And the Fishermen are angry enough to maybe secede from Augusta along with the loggers -- maybe as a 52nd state!
The following could be to the FSP's advantage or disadvantage, depending on how the Free Staters go about it - as allies of Maine tradition or as newcomers imposing reform.

"We fishermen in Maine are as independent as a hog on ice,"  he said, "and just as helpless. We’re more or less set in our ways and we don’t like to be dictated to."...
"In practice, the feds haven’t taken any action on the Maine lobster front in recent years. But they keep making noises about it, and that’s frightening to virtually everyone in the lobster business, because the federal government can do some drastic and unpleasant things when it moves in. It can set an overall limit on the catch. It can impose a quota on each individual fisherman. Or it can say that all fishing must take place during certain months of the year, and at no other time. For a group of individualistic entrepreneurs who don’t like to be dictated to, that would amount to the ultimate insult.
It is for the purpose of avoiding that insult that Maine lobstermen, over the past five years, have set out to create a wholly improbable new structure  of self-government. They have divided the state into seven lobster-fishing zones. Each zone contains between 8 and 14 districts. Every one of the districts has 100 licensed fishermen. And the job of each of these units is to cooperate in crafting rules that will prevent overfishing and stave off the dreaded intrusion of the federal bureaucrats."

http://www.perc.org/publications/percreports/lobster.html

And how could the FSP's Free State address this question of just who owns the sea and coast?

"It's not just the salmon farms,'' Millalonco said, refilling his coffee
cup. ``It's the privatization of the sea.''...
"They're putting barbed wire across the range,"  said Bruce McInnis, a scallop fisherman in Eastport, Maine, who has found his fishing area shrunk by the farms. "The whole concept of owning public land like that, to me, I compare it to sacrilege."...
"Now three foreign companies own most of the farms in Maine."

http://www.ptialaska.net/~crayola/salmonlives.html

[RidleyReport]

Hmm this is interesting Joe; I'm surprised your not getting more response on this....

[Penfist]

I'm certainly interested.

One thing I'd like to see start happening is members getting together and going on fact finding expeditions.

There is nothing like hearing from group members first hand what the area is like, and talking to individuals in the area to see how receptive they are to the idea of the FSP showing up a few years down the road.

Anyone interested in a 2 or 3 day road trip to northern Maine?

[Stumpy]

Pal,
We have some FSP target-state/area meetings in the near future that may interest you.

The first one is Delaware, I believe the first part of next year.

After this, there are meetings planed for the MT,ID,WY area and the NH,VT,ME area.

These meetings would include area  reconnaissance.

[JasonPSorens]

The original proposal floated was to do Delaware for a weekend in April 2003, Missoula, MT in July for a week (enough time to visit ID and WY as well), and Manchester, NH in October for a long weekend (enough time to visit VT and ME as well).  That would leave out the Dakotas and Alaska among the candidate states we're considering - one idea is to do North Dakota in February 2004.  However, as I mentioned to Doug at the Atlanta meeting, our rate of growth probably means that we will reach 5000 by June or July of next year.  If so, we'll need to speed things up: maybe do Delaware in January, Montana & vicinity in March (spring break time?), and NH and vicinity in May, then the Dakotas in July if there's time.  We could have an Alaska meeting, though I don't know how many people would show, and we don't have a lot of active members in Alaska we could rely on to organize things (same w/ the Dakotas).

[Stumpy]

Jason,

I was getting ready to send you an email about this very thing when I saw your post.  

Regarding the Delaware meeting in January, what are the chances of firming-up the dates?

[JasonPSorens]

Hopefully the chances are very good.  I've sent a message to the business list and to the other organizers about this.  If we want to do Delaware in January, we need to start planning right away.

[Penfist]

The original proposal floated was to do Delaware for a weekend in April 2003, Missoula, MT in July for a week (enough time to visit ID and WY as well), and Manchester, NH in October for a long weekend (enough time to visit VT and ME as well).  That would leave out the Dakotas and Alaska among the candidate states we're considering - one idea is to do North Dakota in February 2004.  However, as I mentioned to Doug at the Atlanta meeting, our rate of growth probably means that we will reach 5000 by June or July of next year.  If so, we'll need to speed things up: maybe do Delaware in January, Montana & vicinity in March (spring break time?), and NH and vicinity in May, then the Dakotas in July if there's time.  We could have an Alaska meeting, though I don't know how many people would show, and we don't have a lot of active members in Alaska we could rely on to organize things (same w/ the Dakotas).

If I get enough advance notice of upcoming meetings, I'll try to attend every one I can. Need some turnaround time though, as I have vowed not to fly commercial until the Feds decide to use common sense in security procedures. Unless an immediate family member is dying it could be years before I fly again, if at all.

[jenlee]

Only if I were able to hit all east coast states then too.

I'm certainly interested.

One thing I'd like to see start happening is members getting together and going on fact finding expeditions.

There is nothing like hearing from group members first hand what the area is like, and talking to individuals in the area to see how receptive they are to the idea of the FSP showing up a few years down the road.

Anyone interested in a 2 or 3 day road trip to northern Maine?