Maine continues to top most other states in the number and duration of power outages caused primarily by severe weather and downed trees, but regulators and utilities are aiming to improve upon that dubious distinction.
Judith Meyer
Judith Meyer is executive editor of the Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal, the Morning Sentinel and the Western Maine weekly newspapers of the Sun Media Group. She serves as vice president of the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition and is a member of the Right to Know Advisory Committee to the Legislature. A journalist since 1990 and former editorial page editor for the Sun Journal, she was named Maine’s Journalist of the Year in 2003. She serves on the New England Newspaper & Press Association Board of Directors and was the 2018 recipient of the Judith Vance Weld Brown Spirit of Journalism Award by the New England Society of Newspaper Editors. A fellow of the National Press Foundation and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, she attended George Washington University, lives in Auburn with her husband, Phil, and is an active member of the Bicycle Coalition of Maine.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
The Suez logjam shows how fragile our global trade system is
The grounding of the Ever Given has graphically shown the world, once again, how vital the maritime supply chain is, not just to those receiving the goods from a particular vessel, but to everyone — and how easily a disruption can occur that affects us all.
advertisement
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Robinhood heads for IPO with a tarnished reputation
While Robinhood’s disclosures have improved, its business model still relies crucially on payment for order flow, a practice that has called into question its ability to satisfy its duty as a broker-dealer to provide the best execution of customers’ trades, even when the companies pay for Robinhood’s order flow.
Posted inMatters of record
Births
Rumford Hospital Delilah Rae Theriault, a girl to Lynda Theriault of Livermore Falls, Dec. 5. Sibling, Gracelynn; grandparents, Melissa Theriault, Livermore Falls, Scott Theriault, Strong; great-grandparents, Wilbur Souther, Livermore Falls, Mary Lou Theriault, Mexico. Rylee Jean Cantu, a girl to Tasha Hutchinson and Michael Cantu of Rumford, Dec. 15. Siblings, Marley Bisson, Ayva Bisson, Willow […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
The Triangle Fire and the fight for $15
From the outset, the minimum wage was designed to be a living wage. Roosevelt had long championed the “change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment,” but he had to rely on voluntary compliance from industry.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
‘I’m so sorry that you and your teammates got mistreated’
A high school football team told adults they were spit on and called the n-word. Nothing changed until a player posted, ‘enough is enough!’
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
The risk of inflation is real — and growing
The succession of government stimulus packages to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the broad supply of money in the United States from $15.5 trillion in February 2020 to a whopping $19.4 trillion in January. That is a record one-year increase, according to statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Biden’s billions will come on top of that.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion, Our View
Our View: Many broad promises, without achieving full broadband access
As we look back on decades of campaign promises and administrative wobbling, and on tens of millions of dollars in broadband investment, Maine is behind and getting behinder.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
History reveals that getting rid of the filibuster is the only option
Not until 1846 did a senator use the filibuster to successfully kill a bill, in this case an appropriations bill funding the Mexican War. With the coming of the Civil War in the late 1840s and the 1850s, lawmakers became much more likely to use floor speeches to obstruct. By 1863, they started calling such tactics the filibuster.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Judging other people’s COVID hygiene is exhausting
Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, historians noted that after the 1918 flu pitted fearful neighbor against fearful neighbor, the people who’d lived through that era really didn’t want to talk about it. I’m starting to understand why.