The weekly Bar Harbor Times makes a strong case that Cottage Street in Bar Harbor is the most accident-prone thoroughfare on Mount Desert Island. The newspaper asked the Maine Department of Transportation for a tabulation of traffic accidents on the island in the past three years. The totals:… Read More
If there ever was a time when the government should not impede an investigation, it is with the national commission created to review the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The plane crashes at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania took thousands of lives and… Read More
The reaction from the fishing industry to proposed new regulations announced this week was swift and predictable. “It’s a bullet, poison, a knife or a rope… Any of these options is death for the industry,” said a Massachusetts fisherman after the New England Fisheries Management Council proposed strict… Read More
A local woman’s bill for minor eye surgery is a good starting point for exploring why medical charges are so high and how the newly enacted Dirigo Health Plan may be able to bring them down. She spent three hours in the Mount Desert Island… Read More
The current stalemate in Washington over how to restore the child tax credit that was wrongly withheld from millions of low-income families could be written off as partisan bickering if the maneuvering did not affect real people, including 44,000 families in Maine. Rather than pass… Read More
A credible witness has stepped forward, and the time is ripe for a full inquiry into what must be regarded as a great uranium hoax. The witness, mentioned but not named until now, is a veteran career foreign service officer and ambassador named Joseph C. Wilson 4th. He… Read More
With 6,600 jobs lost in Maine’s manufacturing sector last year and high energy costs often cited as a reason for mill shutdowns or downsizing, Gov. John Baldacci is right to elevate the visibility and importance of energy policy with the creation of the Governor’s Office of Energy Independence… Read More
There is no question the Bangor Police Department needs a new home. Much of its current location on Court Street is off- limits due to concrete falling from the ceiling as the building precariously tilts toward the Kenduskeag Stream. Because it can’t use the building’s full four floors,… Read More
President Bush is right to say that we “want better than OK in America. We want excellence,” as he did Monday while visiting a Head Start pre-school program in Maryland. The problem is that there is much disagreement over whether changes proposed by his administration will make the… Read More
The chorus of senators for calling for a broader coalition to help keep the peace and rebuild Iraq is growing louder and larger. Sen. Susan Collins, who returned last week from a three-day tour of the country, is now a member of the group. “I am convinced it… Read More
Certifying that forestlands are sustainably managed for wood supply, wildlife and the surrounding communities makes immediate sense to most people, especially those who experienced Maine’s debates in the 1990s over clear-cutting and other forest practices. Rather than trying to decide these issues by referendum, it makes sense to… Read More
More noteworthy than last week’s announcement that the state’s seven technical colleges had been renamed community colleges was the fact that the schools had committed to not raise tuition for the next two years. This means the colleges will have not increased tuition for a total of six… Read More
Without much public notice, the Maine Public Advocate Office has spruced up its semi-annual newsletter, the Ratewatcher Phone Guide. Whether you subscribe to the free publication or catch it on the Internet, it can save you money. The guts of the newsletter, which started publication… Read More
More than half a century ago, alert states ensured their universities got a piece of the rapidly growing research-and-development economy the federal government had created to foster advances in agriculture and aeronautics, medicine and military hardware, and a dozen other fields. University towns became the centers of hot… Read More
The United States cannot, and should not, be the world’s policeman. But the desperate conditions in Liberia are hard to ignore. United Nation’s Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked for an international peacekeeping force to stop the fighting that has driven thousands in the West African country to… Read More
Below is an excerpt from the document this holiday is about. Two hundred and twenty-seven years ago, representatives in the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and adopted their Declaration of Independence. It expressed frustration and anger with the policies of Great Britain and its king. It argued eloquently… Read More
Robert McCloskey was the quintessential Mainer from away. A resident for nearly 60 years, he was originally from Ohio and beautifully expressed a love of the state through his painting and words. His work was a way of seeing Maine that made some of its simplest pleasures sparkle. Read More
The easiest observation from President Bush’s opponents these days is that Republicans demanded President Clinton be investigated for lying about sex, so why shouldn’t an independent counsel investigate the current president for lying about the need for war. No one should wish the zealotry that… Read More
A public boat ramp at the south end of Messalonskee Lake in Belgrade has become the focus of a statewide debate over how best to stem the spread of invasive species in Maine. Leaving the ramp, boaters enter a marsh infested with variable leaf water milfoil, a fast-growing… Read More
Senators from both parties have been asking the Environmental Protection Agency for months to supply them with analyses of air-pollution bills to determine the health benefits and costs of the proposals but have been unsuccessful, it was reported yesterday, as the administration pushes its own version of a… Read More
California lawmakers are fighting over a state budget even as a new fiscal year starts today. Budget battles in California are nothing new. Even state shutdowns because of fiscal disagreements are not a rarity. Last year, bickering delayed a new budget for 76 days. This… Read More
About a third of all jobs in Maine fail to pay enough to live on, even by the modest measures of 185 percent of the federal poverty level or $10.29 an hour for a family of two. The Maine Center for Economic Policy today will describe what it… Read More
At a time when people worry about toxic chemicals in their food and in the air, they often overlook a source of toxins right in their own back yards. Literally. Yard care, the application of pesticides to make a lawn look greener and lusher, is a major growth… Read More
Hans Blix, the seemingly unflappable former Swedish diplomat who is the United Nations’ chief weapons inspector, has been a bit testy lately, and with good reason. He is angry that his agency has been shut out of the postwar search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Shut… Read More
The House and Senate early Friday morning separately approved the largest expansion of Medicare since its inception. After six years of debate and compromise, endless politicking and failed votes, seniors in a few years will be able to buy into subsidized prescription-drug insurance. But the passage of the… Read More
Lawyers for an individual and a business recently brought the power of the class-action suit to Maine in a lawsuit that makes so many serious charges against the origin and quality of Poland Spring water it is amazing the major market share of the bottled-water-consuming public isn’t gagging. Read More
Given the refusal in Washington to seriously consider climate change as an issue, the legislation signed Thursday by Gov. John Baldacci setting reduction goals for carbon dioxide in Maine was a breath of fresh air. And though Maine should be pleased with its leadership on this issue, it… Read More
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is still feuding with France and Germany long after he dismissed them as “old Europe” and courted smaller countries like Bulgaria in his effort to build a coalition to fight the war in Iraq. Times have changed. That war is supposedly… Read More
The Environmental Protection Agency is charged with proposing by the end of the year mercury emission levels for coal-fired power plants using a standard called maximum achievable control technology, under the Clean Air Act. But because the White House wants to emphasize its weaker Clear Skies plan, according… Read More
The news for the British in southern Iraq and for their American partners in peacekeeping is either bad or terrible. The unfortunate loss of life for the British forces and for Iraqi civilians represents far more trouble than any of the pre-war planners discussed publicly and likely more… Read More
Think of the new Essential Programs and Services model, expected to be signed into law by Gov. John Baldacci today, as a public-disclosure document, a sort of trust-but-verify approach to school funding. State lawmakers get a way to judge actual costs at the local level and school boards… Read More
While the United States government looks the other way, Indonesia continues to use its U.S. weapons and its U.S.-trained soldiers to bully groups of its citizens in outlying parts of the sprawling island country. The bullying extends to outsiders, including Americans, who are trying to help them. Read More
The legislative delay on potential tax reform is welcome. Lawmakers do not, as a group, have a clear sense of what they want to achieve and it is better to hold off reconvening until they do. Meanwhile, their leaders have an obligation to continue to look for areas… Read More
It is not often that environmental groups praise McDonald’s. So when they do, it is probably with good reason. Such is the case with the company’s announcement, cheered and engineered by Environmental Defense, last week that it was asking meat suppliers, mostly of chicken, to reduce their dependence… Read More
Information, it is said, is power. And there is nothing more powerless than being stuck in a traffic jam with no end in sight. A traveler information system that went on line earlier this year aims to change this. The premise behind the 511 traveler… Read More
No one should have been surprised to see the Environmental Protection Agency battle over and then lose on the status of climate change. The Bush administration has produced more hot air and less action on the issue than on any other. News reports this week that it moved… Read More
Eighteen Islesford fishermen were bobbing about recently in their red flotation suits off the lobster dock. It was part of a nine-hour training drill. Most of the lobstermen own the inflatable suits, but most of them had never tried one on. It takes some doing. Read More
The president’s task force succinctly identified the problem veterans have when trying to get health care: Between 1996 and 2003, new rules increased the number of veterans in the VA system from 2.9 million to 6.8 million. The health care system had trouble before this increase; since then… Read More
As wars go, the invasion of Iraq turned out to be surprisingly easy. Saddam Hussein’s fearsome Republican Guards, instead of fighting back, mostly threw away their arms, whipped off their uniforms and fled. It was over in three weeks. The Cassandras who predicted that the invading force was… Read More
There is much blame to go around for the massive cuts in the nationwide volunteer program known as AmeriCorps – the agency failed to plan ahead, Congress took away much of its money and federal budget managers can’t agree on how much money should be kept in its… Read More
After repeated stories of hyped intelligence about Iraq’s weapons capabilities prior to the U.S.-led war there, it is good to hear that the Senate Intelligence Committee is reviewing documents and holding hearings to find out what our government really knew before bombing Baghdad. The hearings and document review… Read More
Maine’s interest in the creative economy rises as other parts of its economy – manufacturing, natural resources, low-end service – fade or fail to pay a livable wage. Its interest converges on the idea that well-paying, clean employment through creativity can restore vitality to downtowns and make its… Read More
No Maine governor in recent memory has accomplished more in his first six months than John Baldacci. But for as much leadership as he has shown, he has needed the Legislature to work with him on all major projects – closing the budget gap, setting the June bond… Read More
The headlines, as headlines are designed to be, were shocking – 1,000 whales die daily trapped in fishing nets. Whether they were accurate was another matter. Scientists in the United States and Scotland reviewed statistics for whale deaths, mainly for the United States, and then extrapolated this information… Read More
When schools cut their budgets, development – those innovative ideas that reach students no one thought could be reached – is often the first to be dropped. Given the many and growing number of responsibilities of schools, this is a logical, if unfortunate decision and all the more… Read More
Bringing peace to the Middle East may take a miracle in the short run, but longer term it will take the sustained involvement of the United States and other countries to change the dynamic that now breeds only hopelessness and anger among young Palestinians. The… Read More
When government officials say a new policy is “balanced,” watch out. The latest questionable use of that term comes from Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman. She announced recently that her department was retaining the National Forests Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Then came a raft of exceptions, more accurately… Read More
Common Cause may soon find its donations going a bit soft as its new president and former Maine Democratic senatorial candidate Chellie Pingree tries to explain her fund-raising history to an inquiring Federal Election Commission. It seems that Ms. Pingree’s campaign sent a letter to donors last summer… Read More
The news for the state’s salmon farming industry of late has been unrelentingly bad. First, a federal judge ruled that two of the state’s largest farming operations, Atlantic Salmon of Maine and Stolt Sea Farms, violated the federal Clean Water Act by polluting the ocean with fish feces,… Read More
A fair assessment of the energy bill that plodded out of committee in the Senate this spring was that expectations for it were very low and it met them. No standards for renewable energy, minor incentives for efficiency, more favors for oil and coal, no recognition that climate… Read More
North Korea and the United States are heading toward a conflict that could be far worse than the war in Iraq. The Bush administration fears that North Korea will start selling its nuclear know-how and products of its new nuclear plants or even use the nuclear weapons it… Read More
No one knows yet how much the federal school reform, No Child Left Behind, will cost, but it’s not too soon for states to start asking for more money because a couple of educated guesses suggest the current funding level isn’t all that close. Maine Reps. Tom Allen… Read More
The Medicare reform agreement gliding through the Senate Finance Committee this week is the result of too many years of fighting, a scarcity of money post-tax cuts and an acute sense that failure to have a senior drug benefit ready for the 2004 election would look bad on… Read More
Bangor voters said yes Tuesday to a plan to install slot machines at the Bangor Raceway, which also includes a $30 million makeover of Bass Park. Capital Seven, a Nevada company, plans to rebuild the harness racing track and construct a hotel and conference center. The installation of… Read More
As parents everywhere will gladly point out: Two wrongs don’t make a right. That’s why members of the U.S. House are misguided in their attempt to fix an oversight in last month’s tax cut package by now adding more tax breaks and gimmicks to an already unwieldy package. Read More
It would be hard to overstate the importance of the unanimous agreement Monday night from a special legislative panel formed to review Gov. John Baldacci’s bold health care reform. The plan its members approved is not perfect and it is not finished, but it supports the most serious… Read More
Republicans in the Senate are talking about launching a nuclear attack. They aren’t talking about attacking Iran or North Korea. They’re talking about crushing their Democratic colleagues for blocking two of President Bush’s nominations for the federal bench. A group of Democratic senators opposed to the nomination of… Read More
Maine’s hugely successful college savings plan suffered a minor setback when it got caught up in the struggle to balance the state budget. These savings plans, which allow federal and state tax-free earnings if used for higher education, vary from state to state. Maine has been a fierce… Read More
Depending on whom you listen to, the world’s oceans and the fish that live there are either in crisis and a major change in policy is needed or they are recovering nicely and current conservation measures are working. Recently, assessments of fish stocks and ocean health have leaned… Read More
Ominous incidents in the field of government scientific grants have aroused a flurry of concern and anxiety in the scientific community. Some see signs that the Bush administration and members of Congress are trying to reshape the national’s scientific research programs to conform to a moral code involving… Read More
Do you favor a $60,000,000 bond issue to stimulate economic growth and job creation through investments in research and development, municipal infrastructure and facilities, the Maine Farms for the Future Program and affordable housing, in anticipation of approximately $134,150,000 in federal and private funds? This… Read More
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants to transform the way the 700,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department would be hired, assigned, promoted, paid, disciplined and fired. He would overhaul the very concept of the civil service to create a more flexible, more efficient work force, loosening or in some… Read More
Right out of the starting gate, a proposal to build a combination horse-racing track and casino – known in the industry as a racino – ran into problems. The man behind the plan, Nevada developer Shawn Scott, failed to show up at a Bangor City Council meeting to… Read More
How come President Bush, who has made a massive tax cut his foremost domestic goal, has chosen as his chief economic adviser a leading skeptic about President Reagan’s massive tax cut? The skeptical economist is N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard professor. Mr. Bush has nominated… Read More
The Senate has an energy bill that over-subsidizes fuel sources such as coal, gas and ethanol, under-subsidizes wind power, geothermal and solar; it favors production over conservation; looks minutely for new sources of energy and ignores the polluting effects of the use of all this new energy. It… Read More
A decade ago, a “throw the bums out” mentality swept Augusta. Fed up with scandals and entrenched leadership, voters approved limits on the amount of time lawmakers could serve in the State House. The bums left, some only temporarily, but problems persist. Now, instead of leadership that stays… Read More
Lawmakers are now realizing that in their haste to hand President Bush a tax cut package last month, they overlooked some important details in the tax cutting plan. An important oversight was not extending the increased child tax credit to minimum wage families. That means that more than… Read More
At first, officials from FedEx, the overnight package giant, wondered why they had agreed to meet with an environmental group. Quickly, however, they found out that helping to reduce pollution could also be good for the corporate bottom line. The result of a three-year joint venture between FedEx… Read More
Layoffs in Millinocket, Old Town and Brewer have put big new demands on food banks, pantries and soup kitchens that help feed the low-paid and no-paid hungry people in central and eastern Maine. The current emergency calls for special generosity from the individuals and organizations and business that… Read More
As weapons inspections teams quietly pack up and go home or turn their attention to other tasks, questions continue to mount about the rationale for attacking Iraq. Before the war, President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell repeatedly warned of the imminent danger from Saddam Hussein and… Read More
The compromise announced last week among the Baldacci administration, health insurers and hospitals was a tentative bit of good news in what will be a long process of negotiation and compromise to find a solution to the rising cost of health care. Even with the announcement of an… Read More
Let’s go shopping. It’s all right – this one’s on the state, which is soon to receive $115.6 million from the federal government, thanks to the persistence of Maine’s Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, who demanded that $20 billion in fiscal relief for the states be included… Read More
The vast majority of Maine’s teachers and other educational personnel – 80 percent – have been fingerprinted and had their backgrounds checked. They cannot be unfingerprinted and their records cannot be unchecked. To pretend otherwise, as a bill to restrict the checking to those newly hired does, is… Read More
Head Start, the national school-readiness program, works and should be left alone. Studies have shown that for every dollar spent on quality pre-school programs, up to $7 can be saved on future costs for special education, teen pregnancy and unemployment. That is why the current… Read More
On the day President Bush signed his latest tax-cut bill, astute observers noticed that the increase from $600 to $1,000 in the package’s child-tax credit would not apply to children of the working poor. Families with incomes under $26,625 will remain at $600. By leaving those children at… Read More
Ten years of talking about reforming Maine’s taxes has been both fun and frustrating – all kinds of ideas have been suggested, with new ways of looking at revenue and levels of government examined and healthy debates over how broad a tax should be or how to force… Read More
When green certification, in the form of the Forest Stewardship Council stamp of approval, arrived in Maine, environmental groups hailed it as the solution to divisive arguments over forest practices. Now, with the withdrawal of a major landowner – one of only two to have their land FSC… Read More
A recent New Yorker cartoon shows a corporation chairman telling his board of directors: “Don’t think of them as terrorist states. Think of them as terrorist markets.” It sounds like the Halliburton company, which has made millions in contracts with Iraq, Iran and Libya, and now stands to… Read More
Forty-six states and the tobacco industry agreed four years ago to a settlement to protect cigarette companies from “the further expense, delay, inconvenience, burden and uncertainty of continued litigation,” according to the agreement. In return, the states got $206 billion to support “policies designed to reduce youth smoking,… Read More
There are too many school districts in the state of Maine. That was a blunt assessment of a study group put together by Gov. John Baldacci to look at the efficiency of the state’s K-12 education system. That conclusion, part of an interim report released earlier this month,… Read More
Credit House Speaker Pat Colwell for making a virtue of necessity by reintroducing a government-oversight agency just as the absence of oversight from years past catches up with the state. This nonpartisan agency might not have immediately caught problems that have recently surfaced at the departments of Human… Read More
Long before sales and sports and the three-day weekend, Memorial Day was a day of mourning. Turning grim Civil War battle experiences into something lasting and inspiring, Gen. John Alexander Logan set aside May 30, 1868, “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves… Read More
Did you ever hear of the old Sheltered Workshop on Mount Desert Island? It started in Bar Harbor in 1975, moved to Otter Creek and finally – renamed the MDI Workshop – moved to a big new building on Route 3. As many as 25 to 30 mentally… Read More
Study after study shows that too many fish are being taken from the world’s oceans, yet regulators continue to labor over regulations that encourage fishermen to fish as much as possible. Now add to the evidence a study from the current issue of the journal… Read More
Advances in the science of genetics, including completion of the mapping of the human genome last year, have brought breakthroughs in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and hereditary conditions. But this scientific progress has not been without peril. Knowing someone is predisposed to cancer, for example, an… Read More
Saudi Arabia’s ruling family had its own shock with the coordinated terrorist attacks last week in Riyadh, the nation’s capital. The question now is how the privileged family that runs the desert kingdom will respond. The answer is not yet clear. Evidence is mounting that… Read More
The Department of Defense went to Congress this year with requests for major exemptions from five environmental acts, and though the administration had some valid concerns about the acts, their remedies were too drastic. With vigorous work by Sen. Susan Collins, the Defense Department left the Armed Services… Read More
The soy-based ink could hardly have been dry on Christine Todd Whitman’s letter of resignation as the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before environmental groups blanketed the media with press releases about what they wanted in her replacement. They want someone who will be “an independent… Read More
After months of debate over a major tax cut and with a mere three days before the bill is due on the president’s desk, the Senate discovered this week that it had accepted a miscalculation – off by a mere $70 billion – of what the dividend tax… Read More
Birch Stream isn’t much to look at. The Bangor waterway snakes its way through culverts and under parking lots before dumping into Kenduskeag Stream. No one paid much attention to the glorified drainage ditch until it developed an overpowering odor this winter. Nearby residents complained of headaches and… Read More
Lawmakers are to decide today whether the state should know what it is doing when it enters into multi-million dollar health care contracts. You might think there would be little debate about this, but there is, with some legislators apparently timid about asking whether a contractor had conflicts… Read More
The Supreme Court’s decision to remove an injunction against the Maine Rx program prolongs but does not assure the program’s life. The court correctly saw that the issue of whether Maine Rx violated Medicaid rules was a matter for the secretary of Health and Human Services to determine… Read More
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said last week that stopping Israeli settlements is “not on the horizon right now.” Such comments raise the possibility that the much-touted “road map” for Middle Eastern peace may lead to a place that doesn’t exist. His comments were followed by suicide bombings… Read More
One measure of success for the Baldacci administration’s new health care plan is how well it accepts alternative proposals from interest groups while remaining steadfast in its core principles of lower costs, universal access and improved quality. The administration should be receptive to ideas from the groups –… Read More
The General Accounting Office last week provided one of the first studies of states with public financing for campaigns. The GAO, which examined the systems in Maine and Arizona, generally concludes that it is too early to know the effects on their political systems, but offers some useful… Read More
LifeFlight is the helicopter service that swiftly brings the acutely injured from smaller Maine hospitals to larger ones or, on occasion, carries the injured from an accident scene to a hospital. It sounds like an airborne ambulance but it is not, or it is not only that. It… Read More
When 14 Central American men drowned in the Allagash after the van they were riding in plunged off a logging road bridge, everyone expressed shock and dismay at the circumstances surrounding the state’s deadliest traffic accident. Many voiced concern that the men faced a long commute because of… Read More
The Senate yesterday properly approved financial aid to the states to both support health care for the poor and act as economic stimulus. It was an important advance lacking in the original version of the tax-cut bill offered by President Bush. But this relatively modest good news was… Read More
Much has been made of the problem of liquidation harvesting. One estimate is that 64,000 acres are stripped of trees and sold each year in Maine. Another estimate – probably closer to the truth – is that less than 10,000 acres a year are treated this way. Last… Read More
A little more than a year ago, Gov. Angus King allowed the Legislature to adjourn knowing the state had an unexpected shortfall of at least $180 million in its current budget. The problems that this decision heightened – it wasn’t clear what the governor could do on his… Read More