that article smacks of left wing 'journalism' stereotyping 'evil republicans'.
Hatchet job.
Take care lest you use too broad a brush. I believe that every American business man and woman is trying to do the best for their community as they can from their point of view. Ms. Bean is trying to make the best of the economy of coastal Maine and the reporter is trying to tell the story as he sees and interprets it. I don't think it fair to paint one all wrong and another all right. Unless you have been in business it is not possible that you know and understand the extraordinary complexity of the decisions that must be made on both a daily and also on a long term basis.
The conditions that are completely acceptable in a lobster house that has sold to the public for forty years and served on the same tables won't be accepted in a similar establishment that has just opened next door. Here I am not speaking about the health department but rather about the public perception of what a "new" shop should look like.
You mustn't make it too "nice' and you mustn't make it too rustic.
If the class of 2012 at the Harvard Business School came to any town in Maine and studied how it worked and remained a viable economic entity they would probably recommend the changes that Ms Bean is working. At the same time they would have to acknowledge that for some arcane reason it also works as it is.
Change is sometimes not easy to accept. I am a new comer in our county. I bought our house in 1971 and we were the 3rd house from the end of the road. I used to sit on my back porch and shoot tin cans with a .22 rifle with no fear of offending my neighbors. Today there are 500 houses where there once were fields and woods where my children played. People have to live somewhere.
My best friend lives on a farm that has been in his family for more than 200 years. The house was built in the late 1700's. Many of those farms are now housing projects.
Change happens by several mechanisms just like childbirth some are more painful than others.
