Buyers beware.Crooks have moved to exploit the new Medicare prescription drug benefit that President Bush signed into law in December.Beginning in May, Medicare recipients can sign up for government-approved discount cards that could save them up to 25 percent of their drug costs. Some low-income seniors also will be eligible for a $600 stipend to […]

The campaign season is still young, yet we already have a strong contender for what might be the most dishonest paragraph of this election year. It was spoken by Sen. John Kerry, by way of explaining how a candidate wrapping himself in Vietnam veterans made his public reputation by accusing them of war crimes.In his […]

President Bush has the right idea with his calls late last week and over the weekend for a substantial crackdown on the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology and materials.Many of his ideas are right on track, but ultimately they are undermined by two serious inconsistencies in U.S. policy.The president says he wants to expand the […]

Municipal association would leave citizens in the dark about government’s business. We own government and all of its records because we are government and its business is our business.It’s a revered rule that dates back to the foundation of this country and was drafted precisely because King George preferred secrecy over openness. He restricted access […]

Political warfare between Democrats and Republicans in Augusta is threatening an important initiative to protect and improve the health of all Maine residents.The two parties need to bury the hatchet – and not in each others’ backs – long enough to pass an amendment to the state’s Constitution that would protect money from the tobacco […]

Political relationships are always a dance of mutual self-interest gussied up in the language of public interest. Even so, you rarely see the nakedness of these transactions quite so pornographically as when the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) dumped Howard Dean a few days ago. This came, of course, after the […]

Sometimes bigger is not better, and the readers said so. I was on vacation in a warm place far, far away, when the Sun Journal building was hijacked by a group of gremlins.Nasty bunch. Ugly, too.They got together and decided to play a trick on our unsuspecting readers. They thought and thought: What could they […]

It’s time the state gets serious about enforcing clean water regulations.Enforcement is lax, and the entire state suffers.According to a report from the Environment Maine Research and Policy Center and records from the Department of Environmental Protection, 83 percent of the state’s mills, factories and municipal sewage treatment facilities have illegally polluted lakes, ponds, streams […]

For months, President Bush has been a sitting duck, taking incoming rhetorical fire from Democratic opponents and a willing media eager to bring down his poll numbers so they can have themselves a contest. The poll numbers are down, and it appears there will be a real contest. It is time for the president to […]

Bangor Daily News, Feb. 12The Maine Taxpayer’s Action Network, intentionally or not, couldn’t have given the state more chances to avoid its property-tax cap, a sledgehammer blow to municipal budgets that likely will go to voters via citizen’s initiative either in June or November. Where MTAN warned, the state dithered. It delayed. … Years went […]