Look beyond the borders

The economic challenges facing Maine and this region are well documented. Struggles to stabilize our historic industrial base; downtowns over 100 years old with infrastructure needing millions to rebuild, and a political system still rooted in the 16th and 17th centuries.

This is not a formula for success.

Woe, the dismal scientists

Well, it seems the "dismal scientists," otherwise known as economists, weren't pessimistic enough last summer.

Colleges are committed to make transfers easy

Recently, the Sun Journal ran a front page feature on college transfer. While I found the piece to be factually accurate, I wanted to offer more on a subject that is critically important to our students and easily misunderstood.

College transfer is both much easier and more complicated than you would expect. Students frequently ask us, "Is this course transferable?" The answer is usually, "Yes."

British Parliament members scornful of public trust

On my last visit to the United Kingdom three months ago, members of Parliament were embroiled in a scandal involving outrageous expense claims for such things as moat cleaning, a baby crib and second homes that were sometimes occupied by friends and relatives, or not at all.

On birth, and the death of conservative movement

My daughter was born in Los Angeles County on Sept. 4, 1990. I know this because I was there. Should that not be proof enough, I also have her birth certificate.

For women workers, unions mean equality

Did you know that in Maine, women earn an average of 76 cents for every dollar that men earn for doing the same work? This inequality is made worse when one considers that women are already more likely than men to work in low-wage, service-sector jobs. Consequently, nearly 15 percent of Maine's mothers, sisters and daughters are living below the poverty line. These women are working and still living in poverty.

This is wrong, and it is happening on our watch.

Earth faces more dangerous threat than global warming

The year is 2109. Celebrations continue as mankind's heroic, century-long, quintillion-dollar effort to lower the global mean temperature by 1 degree has paid off: July 2109 is just as hot as July 2009. Few can contain their jubilation.

Education ties with Iraq key to future relations

Given the 130,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq, it's striking how little attention the media paid to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's visit to Washington last week.

Maybe Americans, or journalists, are weary of Iraq, especially now that a U.S.-Iraqi accord has set an exit date for American troops — by the end of 2011. So Maliki only got media notice when he said Iraq might reconsider the deadline "if Iraqi forces require further training and support."

Liberals' failed social policies at the root of minorities' misery

"I hate to admit it, but I have reached a stage in my life that if I am walking down a dark street late at night and I see that the person behind me is white, I subconsciously feel relieved." — The Rev. Jesse Jackson

Slavery and racism have been like a soiled garment that America has diligently and at great expense tried to wipe clean. President Obama acknowledged at his news conference last week that America has made "great progress" in the direction of racial reconciliation and he is living proof of that.

Every black man has been touched with taste of racism

I'll tell you why Barack Obama said what he did.

When he was asked last week about the racially charged arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, the president could have — and as a political matter, should have — given a diplomatic non-answer. Instead, he gave a forthright response he later had to apologize for: police in Cambridge, Mass., he said, acted "stupidly" in arresting Gates, a prominent black scholar, at his own home, committing no crime.

Health plan surcharge faces stiff opposition

Here's a truism: The wealthiest 1 percent have never had it so good.

According to government figures, 1-percenters' share of America's total income is the highest it's been since 1929, and their tax rates are the lowest they've faced in two decades. Through bonuses, many 1-percenters will profit from the $23 trillion in bailout largesse the Treasury Department now says could be headed to financial firms. And, most of them benefit from IRS decisions to reduce millionaire audits and collect zero taxes from the majority of major corporations.

Just who was more 'stupid' in the Henry Gates arrest?

Henry Louis Gates Jr. just got the subject for his latest PBS series, and it's not going to be a history of the woeful consequences of yelling at cops. The Harvard scholar was arrested for disorderly conduct at his Cambridge, Mass., home in an incident that has earned the Cambridge police a rebuke from the president of the United States.

Many inconvenient truths on health care

Health care in America is a shambles and will, like a critically ill patient, likely collapse if not properly and promptly attended to.

What's all the hurry on health care?

There is an alarming, house-on-fire hurry in Washington to have a government design for America's health care system completed by Congress within days!

President Barack Obama and his supporters are campaigning across the nation, and putting pressure on every member of Congress, to pass a far-reaching legislative overhaul of one-seventh of the American economy that will impact every person in the country. The trouble is, the details of this "change" remain undefined.

It's the politics, stupid

On July 14, the Lewiston City Council fired Jim Bennett, arguably the most visionary, energetic and effective city manager since the job was created in 1980. No rationale was given, though some councilors offered the lame excuse it was time "to go in a different direction." (They did not say if this direction was over a cliff).

How could councilors take such a controversial step without debate, public hearing or stated justification? The answer lies in the nature of the council-manager form of government.

Church leaders forget prime function of church

In the early '70s, comedian Flip Wilson created a character for his NBC television program called "Reverend Leroy" of "The Church of What's Happenin' Now." Like some contemporary "reverends," Reverend Leroy was a con artist who, among other things, once took up an offering to go to Las Vegas, explaining he had to study sin in order to effectively preach against it.

None so blind as those who will not see

Please take a good look at Dr. Henry Louis Gates.

He is 5-foot-7, weighs 150 pounds, wears glasses and uses a cane. His legs are of unequal length, his mustache and goatee are gray. He is 58 years old and looks it.

Re-imagine the island

In the late 1700 and early 1800s, settlers in the vicinity of Lewiston Falls recognized an unique opportunity where the Androscoggin River had one of its greatest drops, second only to Rumford Falls.

It was a different world then, of course. New England was a major economic engine for the United States, as the Industrial Revolution had investors seeking suitable locations to build new planned cities around waterways.

North Korea points out hypocrisy of 'never again'

Perhaps it would be better if we simply vowed to never again say "never again" when it comes to the sort of slaughter and institutionalized cruelty we associate with the Holocaust. Then again, taking the sting out of hypocrisy wouldn't do much for the people of North Korea.

For decades now, we've known that what's going on in North Korea is too terrible to contemplate. Even so, what once haunted us as an ill-defined and foreboding suspicion has clarified into the secure knowledge of broad and systemic evil.

Delegation is protecting Maine's legacy

Maine residents can rest today, knowing that their Congressional delegation is busy ensuring our forests will continue to support communities, recreation, wildlife, the forestry industry and other uses that we all cherish. We can rest, because our delegation in Washington does not.

Powerful Iranian cleric speaks out against leaders

 

In Tehran University's huge prayer hall, the Islamic regime's most powerful clerics deliver heated Friday sermons to thousands. These diatribes are normally accompanied by the chant "Death to America!"

But at the last Friday prayers — an electrifying event that will affect the core of President Obama's foreign policy — the loudest chants were "Death to Russia!" and "Death to China!" Also, "Azadeh!" which means "freedom" in Farsi.

Flood of new spending could sink U.S. economy

"How high's the water, mama?

Two feet high and risin'..."

That old Johnny Cash song is a useful metaphor for an approaching disaster should the Obama administration's "flood" of new programs — and spending on old ones — continue.

Obama offers NAACP suggestions for relevance

How should we think about racism in the age of President Barack Obama? In his first speech as president to the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, Obama's answer to that question was a rich mixture of his presidential agenda, Bill Cosby's self-help spiel, the Rev. Jesse Jackson's political push and rapper Jay-Z's oratorical flow.

Radio Farda important factor for spreading truth in Iran

When their government shut down texting and Twitter, when it bullied Western reporters, when it spread hideous lies through the state-controlled press, many Iranians still had a reliable source of news in Radio Farda, the Persian arm of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

China's dual personality will affect future of world

GUIYANG, China — Before planning for and making the trans-global trek to the most populous country on Earth, I knew mainland China mostly through television and movie screens. My sinologists were Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Egg Shen, the crotchety shaman from "Big Trouble in Little China" — a Cabinet of advisers who left me, ahem, unprepared for my voyage east.