The debate over whether Maine should approve a casino operation in Maine for the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Penobscot Nation is largely over whether it is a good deal for the public and state and local governments, so getting accurate information about what is in the agreement is… Read More
From the time parents at Griffin Park in Bangor began wondering whether the awful smell in nearby Birch Stream could be related to the unusually high number of illnesses among their children, all they have requested is for someone in the city to take responsibility for helping them… Read More
The second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is a difficult day of remembrance, a time far enough away from the actual event to begin to forget but a time so close that no one should. For generations to come, Sept. 11ths of the future should be… Read More
Of all the questions surrounding the proposed casino in southern Maine, the easiest to answer is whether Maine will have enough people to staff the estimated 10,000 direct and indirect jobs it is supposed to create. If the jobs pay well enough, people – Maine residents or people… Read More
Getting casualty figures for the war in Iraq and its aftermath is not as easy as you might think. An official Pentagon Web site, DefenseLink, carries a daily tabulation of U.S. deaths. Recent figures were hostile, 183; nonhostile, 103; total, 286. A telephone call to the U.S. Central… Read More
Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland appropriately opened the three-day conference for New England governors and eastern Canada premiers yesterday by saying that electricity will be the key issue at the annual meeting. He could have gone further, however, and added that cutting one of the results of producing… Read More
If a president were able to take back a declaration of victory, President Bush did so Sunday night. He did it appropriately and for the proper reasons. The war in Iraq is not over. It is a different war from what U.S. troops encountered in the spring and… Read More
The long and twisted political history of campaign finance reform often does not make sense, so the public might be excused from being excited by the prospects of a four-hour oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court today over whether new campaign restrictions are constitutional. But the hearing… Read More
Reports of the recent talks in Beijing about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program all have stressed the deadlock. And even last week’s welcome offer from Bush administration officials to gradually ease sanctions came with the warning that the sanctions would remain until North Korea started to dismantle its… Read More
A year ago, many Mainers learned for the first time that hundreds of Central American men spend their summers toiling in the Maine woods. They learned this after 14 of these men died when the van they were riding in plunged off a remote logging road bridge into… Read More
Poverty is rising in Maine, although perhaps not as dramatically as a recent Census report describes. What is more important than the actual number is the trend: More Maine people live in poverty and the increase is more noticeable in southern Maine. The state’s reaction – “I’m discouraged… Read More
It is a contradiction that as Maine acquires more and more public land, the amount of money it allocates to maintaining and overseeing these lands, whether state parks, public reserved lands or other state entities, is declining. The majority of funding for state park maintenance comes from the… Read More
Now that the kids have headed back to school, it won’t be long before they start complaining about the heavy load they have to bear – not all the academic work, but all the books they have to lug around. The overloaded backpack is a real pain, they… Read More
The Bush administration’s announcement yesterday that it wants to grant the United Nations greater roles in peacekeeping and in forming a new government in Iraq marks an important change in U.S. policy for the better. The proposal, in the form of a U.N. resolution, could draw badly needed… Read More
Congress returns this week to try to straighten out an unwieldy energy bill that seems even more poorly assembled after the recent embarrassing failure of a major electric transmission grid and a damning report from the Government Accounting Office. These, combined with lagging gas mileage standards and an… Read More
The platitudes pinned to John Gould run the gamut from witty to one of America’s best authors to, perhaps the most apt, curmudgeon. He was all of these things, but most of all, he was a darned good writer. Mr. Gould, who died Sunday in Portland at the… Read More
Only nine days into his job as director of the state’s Bureau of Parks and Lands, Dave Soucy has already emerged as a voice of reason in the debate over land preservation and land sales in northern Maine. The debate warmed again last week when it was reported… Read More
Lest you’ve forgotten the details, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, held much of the country in a demagogic grip a half-century ago. He intimidated most political leaders and most of the media with fanciful charges that Communists had infiltrated the State Department and successfully plotted… Read More
Ever since President Grover Cleveland signed an act in 1894 making the first Monday in September a legal holiday to honor America’s workers, Labor Day has been a holiday of conflicting themes, an odd mixture of the somber and the frivolous. Even 19th century labor organizer Peter J. Read More
Evidence is mounting that the routine use of antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals is unnecessary and can pose a threat to humans. At the same time, momentum is building to change farming practices to grow healthy cows, pigs and poultry without using drugs. So far the… Read More
Maine towns have grumbled for years about unfunded mandates from the state. Education requirements, pollution control, safety standards – nothing wrong with the rules, locals say, but where’s the money to go with them? In local taxpayers’ pockets, is the usual answer. Think of the contentious property-tax referendum… Read More
The final report from the board investigating the Columbia accident makes it clear that although a piece of foam striking the space shuttle was the technical reason for its disintegration in the skies over Texas on Feb. 1, the spacecraft was really doomed by overconfident management and inattention… Read More
Naturally, it would be better if everybody simply paid their taxes as the law requires. But since this doesn’t happen, the state has decided to offer three months of tax amnesty to scofflaws in hopes of drumming up more state revenue. In an era of budget shortfalls and… Read More
Nineteen states already have prescription-drug monitoring that allows officials to keep an eye on patients who doctor shop – go from physician to physician amassing pain pills that they either abuse or sell so someone else can. Without the information provided by the monitoring, doctors cannot hope to… Read More
Maine is missing from Attorney General John Ashcroft’s 16-state itinerary as he tours the country to defend the USA Patriot Act, a law that gave the government new powers to conduct searches and surveillance in terrorism investigations. From Mr. Ashcroft’s point of view, it’s probably a good thing. Read More
It is easy to deride the French these days; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has built a virtual stand-up comedy routine out of France bashing. But when it comes to the deaths of thousands of French during this month’s heat wave, there are serious lessons to be learned. Read More
While Maine officials tried to put a good face on the situation, the news was still bad: The AmeriCorps program in Maine will be cut by more than one-half. True, this is better than earlier this summer when the downsizing was more to the tune of 90 percent. Read More
Weather permitting, you should be able to get a close look at Mars this week. The reddish planet is already the brightest object in the sky on a moonless night. And on Wednesday at 7:51 p.m. it will make its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years. Read More
Members of Maine’s congressional delegation and state officials had some choice words for a Bush administration plan to weaken a provision of the Clean Air Act to allow manufacturing plants to make major upgrades without installing new pollution-control equipment. The act now requires that new plants have state-of-the-art… Read More
The parents at Griffin Park in Bangor are worried and they are right to be. They report that an overwhelming number of the children in the housing complex are persistently ill and they know nearby Birch Stream, which catches runoff from Bangor International Airport, is badly polluted. Whether… Read More
Five or six years ago, when it was certain states really were going to break up their public electric companies, federal regulators knew the health of the transmission system would decide whether a competitive market would work. So they did what good regulators do – they formed one… Read More
A suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem killed 20 people on Tuesday and shattered the relative calm that has accompanied a cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups. It also imperiled the fragile peace process. Rather than immediately bomb the hideouts of Hamas functionaries as it… Read More
The federal education reform that is supposed to clarify whether schools are performing well offers so many interesting ways for good schools to fail that states will spend the next several years trying to explain why in the muddled matrix of test scores, graduation and participation rates so… Read More
If anything good came out of this week’s bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, it is that it has spurred the United States to seek more international help in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq. Prior to the bombing, which killed at least 20 people, the Bush administration… Read More
As anyone who paraded with a New Orleans brass band, danced to hip-hop and zydeco music or watched Mexican acrobats swirl around their heads last summer can attest, the National Folk Festival is a great time. This year’s festival, now in its 65th year, is the second of… Read More
Maine legislators today will debate whether to add a competing measure to the citizen tax initiative already on the November ballot. They seem as determined to approve a second question as they are certain there are large differences between the two. Though the questions vary in their specifics,… Read More
To get a sense of the struggle states have to balance their budgets and stimulate the economy, consider the holes in their budgets. States are expected to cut spending this year another $45 billion to $50 billion, roughly the amount of the president’s tax cut bill this year… Read More
The day after President Bush clarified his remarks about the extent of combat continuing in Iraq, a truck bomb explosion ripped through a hotel used by the United Nations at its headquarters in Baghdad, suggesting how much fighting is left and how deeply what happens in Iraq affects… Read More
Mixing blueberries into hamburger may seem odd at first, but that hasn’t stopped University of Maine researchers from experimenting with novel uses for one of the state’s most valuable agricultural products. At first scientists paired blueberries with hamburgers in an attempt to eliminate the unpleasant… Read More
This is the time of year when summer house guests are thinning out at last and when some Mainers are considering how to slow down and quiet down the chaos of the summer season. There are those, of course, who just adore the frenzy and constant noise of… Read More
Former C.I.A. director James Woolsey, an early advocate of war with Iraq, now wants to prepare for war with North Korea. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, he called for immediate preparations for a joint U.S.-South Korean air and land attack against North Korea. He… Read More
Man on bended knee, gazing adoringly at beloved: “Darling, would you walk life’s path with me, sharing job benefits and pension funds? You know I’ve always wanted to file jointly. What do you say – let’s qualify for sick leave together!” People get married for… Read More
A massive power outage that brought major U.S. and Canadian cities to a halt Thursday adds impetus to discussions now taking place in New England over building more power lines and, more importantly, who should pay for them. As recent experience has shown, few want electric lines built… Read More
The eight Democrats and five Republicans on the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee got together this week to compromise on a bond question for the fall and instead voted 8 to 5 for the Democratic version, suggesting that their compromising skills were a bit rusty. But lawmakers will have another… Read More
It may not be unheard of for the federal government to quietly encourage others to sue it – think of the Endangered Species Act and how it sometimes takes a lawsuit to prompt the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add animals to the list. But a recent… Read More
California Gov. Gray Davis is now receiving advice from Bill Clinton on how to survive the recall mess. The former president is said to be telling the unexciting Mr. Davis to use the tactics Mr. Clinton used to survive impeachment, raising the question of whether a square can… Read More
The first question senators should ask Michael Leavitt, the Utah governor President Bush has nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is why he would want to head a department that has been disregarded and disparaged by an administration that is viewed as hostile to environmental concerns. The… Read More
So much of government spends so much time reacting to today’s crisis and trying to fend off tomorrow’s that planning often seems like a luxury it cannot afford. But Maine can, and wisely has an agency devoted to the task. In his comments Tuesday introducing his choice to… Read More
Many trends, not all of them good, start in California. The latest – the political recall – may be a laughing matter for talk show hosts and columnists, but its consequences could be severe for California and the rest of the country. California is a huge state with… Read More
It is the nature of opposing parties to oppose, and the number of ways to oppose the handling of the war in Iraq is vast. But Democrats, their many presidential candidates especially, should show patience on the most recent round of news stories that say the White House… Read More
A recent filing from a carmakers group protesting a recent decision in Maine on whether they had to pay a bounty to remove mercury switches from junked vehicles was expected. And as expected, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers opposed Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuck’s ruling based on arguments that… Read More
For years, Maine nutritionists have wanted scientific evidence to show junk food is a big contributor in producing fat kids. They needed evidence to present to food-industry groups and to school administrators who hated to give up the kickbacks and free scoreboards they get from Coke and Pepsi… Read More
Almost unnoticed by the mainstream press, a campaign to draft Gen. Wesley Clark for the Democratic presidential nomination is gaining steam on the Internet. While the former NATO supreme allied commander has not yet announced his candidacy and won’t (quite) even say he’s a Democrat, the campaign has… Read More
The state’s primary challenge to providing health insurance for children is making parents aware of its program. After that, it has to persuade them that the program is not just for the poor. Like many states, Maine concluded a couple of years ago that even if many people… Read More
Prescription medications are a necessity for many Maine residents, but if a current shortage of pharmacists continues, waiting lines for medication could grow even longer. A survey by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores found that Maine has the second worst shortage of pharmacists in the country. Read More
With the decline of the stock market, low interest rates and rising taxes and medical costs, many Maine seniors are feeling financially pinched. A growing number are turning to a fairly new financial product, the reverse mortgage, to use the equity in their home to pay bills they… Read More
The most shocking part of the deaths in Maine from abuse of prescription drugs is in their numbers – more than a sixfold increase in accidental drug deaths between 1997 and 2002, from 19 to 126. Prescription drugs were present in 60 percent of accidental drug deaths. The… Read More
It may only be a small positive development – growth of the holes in the ozone layer high above the Earth has slowed – but it shows what can be accomplished when countries, including the United States, get serious about solving a real environmental problem. Read More
The premise behind the LobsterTales project, the brainchild of the Island Institute, is simple: It is to show consumers, who may buy a Maine lobster at a Wal-Mart in Wisconsin, that lobsters come from real communities, not an anonymous wholesaler or idealized fishing village of yesteryear. The benefits,… Read More
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s novel political strategy last week of denying Democrats what they wanted in an energy bill by giving them exactly what they proposed was … well, novel. What should be of interest to Maine, however, is what remains in the bill as it leaves… Read More
The overhaul of Medicare is sufficiently sprawling and complex to allow all sides to make all manner of claims about it. But unless you are a senior and need specific services, you probably won’t notice the reform’s shortcomings when politicians celebrate its passage, perhaps sometime this fall. So… Read More
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, currently the favorite of the media among Democrats hoping to challenge President Bush, is a refreshing – if flinty – voice in politics. His appeal to disenfranchised voters combined with his mix of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism is the most energizing thing… Read More
The weekend breakthrough on talks with North Korea should be regarded as an opportunity rather than a U.S. victory. North Korea had insisted for 10 months on one-on-one talks with the United States. Now it has agreed to a U.S. plan for talks with China, Russia, Japan and… Read More
To clarify a recent flurry of misinformation about two local suspension bridges, Waldo-Hancock and Deer Isle-Sedgwick: Both bridges are in the good hands of the Maine Department of Transportation and are safe to cross. Neither one has had anything to do with the ill-fated 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge… Read More
Keith Ober, a 28-year veteran school administrator, may not seem like much of a revolutionary. But, as the first superintendent for both Millinocket and Union 113 (East Millinocket, Medway and Woodville), he’s walking into new territory for Maine, or at least territory that has not been visited for… Read More
The history of aquaculture in Blue Hill Bay has so far been short and contentious. Now, environmental groups and coastal landowners are preparing to contest the latest proposal from a small company to place salmon pens off Tinker Island near the mouth of the bay. Erick Swanson and… Read More
A thorough review of the accounting practices at the Department of Human Services released yesterday shows serious flaws in the many bookkeeping systems there and substantiates the observations of Maine Auditor Gail Chase, who first raised questions about them. Encouragingly, Gov. John Baldacci did not try to minimize… Read More
The Maine Community Foundation marked its 20th anniversary this week, but even after raising nearly $100 million during its life, it’s a fair bet that not one Mainer in 100 has heard of it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however, as long as Maine knows about the… Read More
After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Tuesday President Bush said hopefully that the fence currently being built by Israel in the West Bank would become “irrelevant.” Having recently secured from Mr. Sharon promises to release Palestinian prisoners, the president may have reason to remain optimistic, but… Read More
The White House’s mishandling of the Environmental Protection Agency is turning that agency from a usually reliable source of information into one more political-spin operation. Reports this week that the administration had again blocked the completion of a study for a Senate bill to reduce pollution and the… Read More
You might wonder about the difficulty lawmakers are having in Augusta with the debate over the size of this fall’s bond package. News reports say Democrats want a package worth approximately $94 million; Republicans think it should be set at $84 million. Rather than debate over it endlessly,… Read More
Rather than looking at Liberia and seeing Somalia, the administration should see Rwanda, where inaction by the Clinton administration led to horrendous torture and death that subsequent investigations suggest could have been stopped with even a modest increase in an international armed presence. The time… Read More
Of course, 20-20 hindsight over the Sept. 11 terrorist attack is a lot easier than predicting an approaching national disaster. Of course, targeting a few culprits and squabbling over which president was to blame won’t help matters. Even so, the U.S. government and the American people must find… Read More
Maine’s Department of Human Services is popularly represented as either an agency that fails to do nearly enough to stop child abuse or as a hair-trigger reactionary that goes off at the slightest sign of trouble, real or imagined. The sources of these conflicting views are complicated, but… Read More
Above all else, Bob Hope was funny. On the radio, on television, in the movies, around the world entertaining the troops, anywhere he and his much-heralded nose went, he was sure to elicit laughs, whether he was mocking a president or an unsuspecting soldier. He did this without… Read More
When it comes to one of the most serious threats to the planet, global climate change, the Bush administration is content to continue calling for studies of what scientists have already said is sufficiently clear – human activities contribute to measurable changes in the earth’s climate. While more… Read More
Manageable” is the Bush administration’s word for the federal deficit, now predicted to be $455 billion, twice what was assumed in February. Many other words will probably come to mind when Americans hear that the government is the deepest in the red it has ever been. Astounding, maybe. Read More
Maine has leapt some two-thirds of the way to competitive electricity prices and has had sufficient time in the last six years to consider the chasm below were it to stop now. Fortunately, the New England region overall seems determined to complete the jump to deregulated markets, but… Read More
After years of needless legal battles over whether Maine’s wild Atlantic salmon are an endangered species, Gov. John Baldacci wisely ended the dispute this week. It took last-minute filings and assurances from Cabinet officials, but the state has now finally dropped its appeal of the 2000 decision by… Read More
Gov. John Baldacci opposes the November referendum question that demands the state pay an added $260 million annually for schools to relieve the burden on local taxes. Unaffordable, he says, and suggests instead a plan that would add some $200 million. The difference between the two figures matters… Read More
No one can say whether the nation reduced its number of welfare cases a couple of years ago to their lowest levels humanely likely or if a second five years of the reform that moved so many people from federal assistance to self-sufficiency can continue. But since 1996… Read More
The residents of Hancock County should be congratulated for seeking more than just stepped-up law enforcement to counter increased drug abuse in their communities. Residents of the coastal county are wisely asking for more prevention, treatment and educational programs, rather than just sting operations and jail time, in… Read More
The Information Age, that glorious, mythical time that is forever about to begin, will someday arrive via tractor-trailer, if a new government study is correct. It predicts a 65 percent increase in freight traffic on the nation’s highways by 2020, and it further examines which states are preparing… Read More
Trans fats are the latest health threat to worry about. They put on weight and can clog your arteries by boosting so-called “bad” cholesterol and lowering the “good” cholesterol that helps keep the arteries clear. But they taste so good. Consumer Reports called trans fat… Read More
The Senate Intelligence Committee today is expected to receive a 900-page report from the joint congressional inquiry into the events leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, and, more relevantly, what changes in the U.S. intelligence community are required as a result of its failure to properly anticipate that… Read More
China can be the key to solving the North Korea puzzle. The Pyongyang government keeps saying it’s making nuclear weapons, and now a second secret plant for making weapons-grade plutonium is suspected. The Bush administration keeps threatening pre-emptive attack and pressing for “regime change” but hesitates for fear… Read More
Last week’s tragic accident in California, in which an elderly man drove his car into a farmer’s market, killing 10 and injuring dozens, predictably renewed calls to get some older drivers off the road. While periodic tests of seniors’ road skills may make sense, they are useless without… Read More
As almost any parent of small children can attest, ear infections are becoming harder to treat. Amoxicillin was once the drug of choice to cure the common childhood ailment. But its widespread use has allowed bacteria to adapt to and resist the drug. Now more expensive drugs are… Read More
Revised rules for the military tribunals to try prisoners charged with terrorism are so fraught with restrictions that they risk being viewed throughout the world as kangaroo courts. So, it was appropriate that the military trial proceedings against two British suspects were suspended Friday due to lobbying from… Read More
While New England fishery managers met this week at a Portland hotel to consider four options for reducing overfishing, Buoy C bobbed in Casco Bay, collecting information that could be valuable in determining how bad off fish stocks really are. The New England Fisheries Management Council is considering… Read More
Property taxpayers, still smarting from their last local increase, may have wondered last week how it was possible for them to contribute so much toward K-12 education and yet have a new study rank teacher pay in Maine near the bottom nationally. The easiest answer would be that… Read More
The challenge of reforming Maine’s creaky tax system is made apparent by the trouble the Baldacci administration and lawmakers are having as they try to find an alternative to the ballot initiative from the Maine Municipal Association. The governor, like the MMA, has the basics right. But he… Read More
With the House and Senate meeting this week to sort out differences over the $400 billion expansion of Medicare, Maine’s congressional delegation should be clear about what it expects from the legislation and what is unacceptable. Clearly, the Senate has assembled a package that better protects seniors in… Read More
The news about and from Iraq seems unrelentingly bad. U.S. soldiers are killed almost daily by guerrilla attacks, the cost of the continuing occupation has doubled and charges that the president intentionally lead the country into war based on false intelligence reports hang over the whole affair. So… Read More
Who better to point out that state government’s largest agency lacks adequate financial controls than the person who ran it for the last eight years? Kevin Concannon, former commissioner of the Department of Human Services now serving in an equivalent post in Iowa, observed recently, “There’s no question… Read More
Worries about the current economic slump and rising health insurance costs are keeping Maine business people awake at night. And, they’re not convinced that policy-makers, especially state lawmakers – who only received an 11 percent vote of confidence – will allow the restorative powers of sleep to descend. Read More
In the midst of summer in Maine, few people are thinking of snowmobiles. But a major battle over whether snowmobiles should be allowed in Yellowstone National Park, the nation’s first such preserve, is quietly raging in Washington. After a decade of study, the National Park Service in January… Read More
By this time, the main facts are clear about the great uranium/Niger caper. Throughout official Washington, officials had known for a year that the intelligence report was a fraud. Letters said to show that Saddam Hussein had bought 500 tons of uranium “yellow cake” ore were obvious forgeries. Read More
For all those lawmakers who say the state is too deeply in debt and shouldn’t borrow more money for transportation projects, enter exhibit A: the Waldo-Hancock Bridge. Recent work on the span over the head of the Penobscot River has revealed that the two cables holding up the… Read More
The National Endowment for the Arts’ best year for funding was 1992, when it received an annual appropriation of $175.9 million. Its best year as an institution may be this year, when it will launch, most prominently, its ambitious Shakespeare in American Communities, and maintain hundreds of local… Read More