Here’s a modest proposal to help Maine’s citizens judge the effectiveness of Gov. Paul LePage’s new A-F grading system for public schools. For the 2014-2015 school year, teachers and administrators at the Falmouth Elementary School will exchange places with teachers and administrators at Lewiston’s Longley Elementary School. Falmouth Elementary got an A in the recent […]
Our View
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Governor should extend Medicaid to more Mainers
Our governor has a short fuse, and his anger toward Barack Obama was on display Monday in Washington when he pledged to do whatever he can to kill ObamaCare in Maine. But Gov. Paul LePage’s political differences with the president should not prevent 65,000 Mainers from receiving basic health care coverage at no additional cost […]
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Consolidation isn’t working. Let it go.
Let’s just call former Gov. John Baldacci’s 2007 directive to consolidate jails a fail. There’s no point in tiptoeing around it any more. The consolidation plan — in which the state would take over control of the jails — was pitched as a way to ease overcrowding and relieve local costs, but jails are more […]
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Charter schools deserve time to prove worth
We expected a sharp left turn when Democrats regained control of the Maine Legislature last year. But the surge in largely Democratic legislation designed to cripple the state’s nascent charter schools is unseemly and inappropriate. One of Gov. Paul LePage’s priorities was passing a charter school law to give students here alternatives to traditional public […]
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Governor’s sources often anonymous
Gov. Paul LePage Tuesday brushed aside accusations that he tried to pressure unemployment hearing officers to rule more often in favor of employers. But in doing so the governor made two questionable assertions. First, LePage said he suspected a lawyer representing other employment lawyers fabricated the accusations against him. The governor should have been up […]
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Jeers and cheers: Of theft, neighbors, violence and a pledge
On Wednesday last week, Terri Arsenault of Mechanic Falls was sentenced to serve 6 months in jail on two charges of felony employee theft. What made the charges felonies was the amount stolen: an estimated $15,000. On Thursday, MaineToday Media CEO and Publisher Lisa DeSisto circulated a letter to employees reporting that Traveler’s Casualty & […]
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Collins showed her courage on recent gun bill
Lost in the week of Boston-bombing chaos was a gutsy announcement by Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins that she supported extending background checks to people buying guns at gun shows and privately advertised sales. The bill, titled the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013, was ultimately pulled when a variety of less-courageous senators decided […]
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Be strong, do strong, think strong
When the Red Sox emerged from the locker room Saturday, they weren’t sporting their regular home game unies. Instead of the usual “Red Sox” lettering, the jerseys had “Boston” stitched across the front. They were no longer mere professional ball players. They were — and are — Boston. And if that wasn’t a grand enough […]
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Depending on the courage of first responders
If there was ever a doubt of the danger police officers, firefighters and other first responders face every single day, that doubt lessened Wednesday in Texas and vanished altogether Friday in Boston. On Friday, an estimated 1,000 city, state and federal police officers searched the streets, homes and businesses of Watertown and Cambridge, hunting for […]
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Hearing officers felt governor put thumb on scales
Allegations that Gov. Paul LePage injected partisanship into Maine’s unemployment compensation appeal process have been met with the predictable public-relations response from his spokespeople: It’s “political,” they have said. The governor’s opponents initiated this “attack” meant to distract the public from more important issues, they said. The hearing officers, meanwhile, are described as “disgruntled employees” […]