Auburn voters should vote “yes” today on the School Department’s proposed $34.7 million budget. Though the process for reaching this compromise was frustrating and difficult, the budget represents the best possible compromise in extremely difficult times. The budget actually requires slightly less property tax revenue for schools from local taxpayers. It does so, however, by […]
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Three ideas for making driving safer and easier
People feel passionately about cars and about the bad driving habits of other people, judging by the periodic “Gripes” column in the Sunday Sun Journal. We probably get more mail on driving issues than any other subject. With that in mind, we have collected three opinions on automotive ideas and innovations for your reading — […]
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Responsibility for our own correspondence
On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee voted to pass LD 1082 on to the Legislature for approval. It’s a bill that would make personal information a constituent chooses to include in any communication with an elected official confidential. What that means, specifically, is any information about a person’s health, credit, character or finances. The bill would […]
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MaineCare cut would result in phony savings
Message to governor: A budget cut is not a cut if taxpayers end up paying the bill, anyway. And that, we fear, would be the result of Gov. Paul LePage’s plan to remove as many as 30,000 adults from the state’s Medicaid program. This is a new budget cut the governor is proposing to deal […]
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Get personal house in order first
A special state Senate election Tuesday between a liberal and a conservative is being seen by some as a referendum on the popularity of Paul LePage’s policies. It was not. Democratic state Rep. Cynthia Dill of Cape Elizabeth hammered Republican businessman Louis Maietta Jr. by a 2-to-1 ratio for a seat in the state Senate […]
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Boxing rings produce serious brain injuries
Boxing has a long and colorful history in Maine, and Lewiston has often been at the epicenter of the sport. But professional prizefighting in the state ended in 2005 when the Legislature disbanded the Maine Athletic Commission to save money. Now, some would like to again stage professional fights here. Before that happens, however, the […]
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The victor is the one with the most votes
A little more than a year ago, President Barack Obama and Democrats pounded the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through Congress despite cries from the right to be more deliberative about the process, with Republicans strenuously arguing for a slow-down so we all had a full understanding of what ObamaCare might mean before it […]
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Celebrating the mothers among us
Let’s consider — on this Mother’s Day — the numbers of our mothers. There are, according to the latest U.S. Census figures, 85.4 million mothers in the United States, which represents 54 percent of women ages 15 to 44. Of those, an estimated 37.8 million mothers have children younger than 18 years old living with […]
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Conspiracy theorists will never go away
In 2009, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin was confronted in public by a man making a “documentary” movie about how the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was faked by the U.S. government. This is, of course, a stupid conspiracy theory that just never goes away. Aldrin graduated third in his class at West Point and flew […]
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Maine needs smaller, tighter state Legislature
There are four proposals to reform the state Legislature, which is in itself an example of why the Legislature needs reforming. Typically, 1,600 to 2,600 bills come before the Legislature in its first session, many of them slightly different approaches to solving the same problem. So, LD 669 and LD 153 both seek to reduce […]