When Congress cut Medicare reimbursements to home-health agencies two years ago it was warned that the result would be worse care initially and then the demand for more acute care that, ultimately, would cost even more. Considering what has happened since then, the home-care Cassandras of ’97 now… Read More
It has been a month since the murder of Carole Cross, the Lewiston woman who did all the right things to break away from an abusive relationship. She obtained a protection order. She had a police officer and two friends escort her to retrieve her belongs from her… Read More
With his offer of clemency for imprisoned Puerto Rican nationalists, President Clinton has accomplished this: He put a major dent in his wife’s Senate bid; he turned a much-needed act of healing into an open wound; and, most improbable of all, he made terrorists into victims. Read More
One of the things Maine has done well for its children recently is provide low-cost health care and dental coverage for families that qualify. Only about half the children who would be accepted into the state’s Cub Care or Medicaid programs, however, have been signed up. With another… Read More
Demanding that the Indonesian government quell the violence in East Timor, which appears to be the Clinton administration’s strategy, is an inadequate response to the week of mayhem Jakarta may have helped instigate. Threatening the Indonesian government with swift economic pain and supporting international peace-keeping are more appropriate… Read More
Only in a debate over whether passenger vehicles should be held to passenger-vehicle standards would an advertisement by Washington lobbyists telling Mainers to watch out for Washington lobbyists make sense. The Senate has yet to even schedule time to consider whether to allow the National Highway Traffic Safety… Read More
Last January, Kendra Webdale, a 32-year-old aspiring screenwriter, was killed after being pushed into the path of a New York City subway train. Her assailant was Andrew Goldstein, a schizophrenic who had a long history of non-compliance with his treatment programs. In April, Edgar Rivera, father of three,… Read More
A group gathered recently to discuss the future of the pulp and paper industry asked the basic question of how Maine can preserve manufacturing jobs. The short answer is that largely it can’t. And even when circumstances suggest that it should try to hold onto certain jobs, the… Read More
To Asia and much of Europe, add Brazil as registering its doubts about the safety of genetically modified foods. A San Paulo judge ruled recently that Monsanto must perform a one-year environmental impact study before selling its transgenic crop in Brazil. The spreading resistance to these agricultural products… Read More
It’s been about a month since iAdvance, a consortium of telecommunications and high-tech companies, public interest groups and members of Congress, released a report assessing the present and future of high-speed broadband Internet access in the United States. Maine was named as one of the “Disconnected Dozen” states… Read More
Sky-high food prices predicted as a New York City truck drivers’ strike spreads across the river into New Jersey. Holiday weekend death toll reaches 124 on the nation’s highways. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner… Read More
As schools opened around the country this week, parents, teachers and administrators may be confused by the conflicting messages from the U.S. Department of Education and their own memories of the horrors that occurred at Columbine High School. Despite the burgeoning concern about violence, the department reports that… Read More
Sen. Mitch McConnell has long been a staunch opponent of campaign finance reform, basing his argument on the principle that giving money is a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. Now, by his own hand, the Kentucky Republican reveals that the only speech he wants free… Read More
Bill Bradley’s stop in Portland the other day was quick and, admits his campaign manager, basically calculated to get media coverage in New Hampshire. Still, Maine Democrats liked what they saw in the former senator/basketball star, with several commenting on his sincere, caring style. Wes Fraser of Biddeford… Read More
Superior Court Justice Margaret Kravchuk correctly supported Wednesday a Maine law requiring state prisoners to submit blood samples as part of a DNA data bank. Though the thought of state government keeping blood records of a certain class of citizens is creepy, the restrictions on the use of… Read More
Although Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire are once again engaged in a home run race for the ages, and the Red Sox are making a strong run at the playoffs with, of all things, great pitching and defense, the best baseball story this summer is the self-flagellation of… Read More
The best thing about Bill Bradley’s campaign stop in Portland Tuesday has to be the blunt, perhaps inadvertent, honesty of his local campaign manager: The former senator, ex-basketball star and current presidential candidate came not to introduce himself to Maine, but to get the newspaper and television coverage… Read More
Steven Levesque, commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development, says he intends to do what few leaders here have managed in recent decades. He wants to take a hodge-podge of popular state programs, reduce their number, stop them from overlapping and make them more easily understandable… Read More
Maine’s decision on whether to go along with a compromise on clean-air standards for the Midwest or to stick to its earlier demands that power plants there clean up to the same extent as the Northeast is simple. It should reject any compromise at least until it has… Read More
It started back in 1993 as an academic time-killer, a scholarly divertissement, if you will. Three University of California-Irvine researchers, led by psychologist Frances Rauscher, measured the performance of 36 UCI students on spatial-thinking tests (predicting the shape of piece of paper after being told how it would… Read More
The national benefits of two decades of airline deregulation are easy to measure: more people flying more miles for lower prices than ever. But try flying to Presque Isle to discuss those benefits. Clearly, deregulation’s riches have been distributed unevenly, with rural airports receiving the least of all. Read More
The University of Maine Lobster Institute is getting a lot of well-deserved international notice for its Lobster Cam, which provides live worldwide coverage via the Internet of a pair of crustaceans in a trap off Spruce Head. There is one hitch — the light doesn’t work, so pictures… Read More
As the Public Utilities Commission reviews the proposed merger between CMP Group and Energy East, a natural question and one raised recently by an attorney representing an industry group, is whether CMP had other offers that would have given larger and more direct benefits to ratepayers. The question… Read More
It is no great surprise that U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver found that Cleveland’s taxpayer-financed voucher program for private schools might violate the Constitution’s establishment clause. The wall between church and state is moveable and the courts — federal and state — have a long history of remodeling. Read More
A hallmark of Gov. Angus King’s administration has been its ability to attract top-quality people, particularly at the level of department commissioner. A group concerned with the future of mental health care in Maine recently offered the administration some useful advice on maintaining that record as it looks… Read More
Recent public hearings over the proposed sale of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maine to Anthem Insurance brought out at least two things that state regulators might consider as they review the proposal. First, the public is very interested in the future of Blue Cross. Second, it… Read More
You might think that who you call — whether doctor, lawyer, self-help counselor, physic or pizza maker — is your business. If so, you could reasonably assume that how often you call and how long you talk would be between you and the other end of the line. Read More
The results of spending 45 years and $3 billion to find a central repository for nuclear waste are that Maine Yankee and 76 other nuclear facilities are proceeding with individual plans to store the waste. But that doesn’t mean the federal Department of Energy should stop its search… Read More
After feeling unduly pressured in its decision to forgive Bath Iron Works $60 million in state taxes over 20 years, legislators in 1998 passed the Corporate Accountability Act, a law that provides the public with information about which private businesses get state aid and how well they treat… Read More
George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were supposed to be twin planets from parallel universes — similar, moderate political climates, spinning in opposite directions in regard to character. The governor went from a dissolute, privileged youth to a righteous, responsible adulthood; the president from a disadvantaged, high-achieving youth… Read More
From the start, ever since cargo began moving across the makeshift breakwater in 1982, there have been two knocks against Eastport: the reliance upon a single customer makes it too susceptible to the whims of a single industry; its lack of modern ground transportation makes it too much… Read More
Maine’s congressional delegation is urging the Department of Defense to proceed cautiously with its anthrax vaccine, calling for hearings, or in the case of its House members, a suspension of the program. Without judging the scientific merits of the program, the lack of answers about Gulf War syndrome… Read More
Maine’s terrific unemployment figures are built in part on the good news of more jobs and in part on the bad news of long-term population declines. Whichever factor you choose to emphasize, Maine, especially rural Maine, can keep growing only as long as it has people able to… Read More
One of the primary complaints about genetically engineered foods is that federal regulators have allowed them onto the market without knowing enough about them — their long-term effects on wildlife, for instance, or on other crops, pests and human health. These are real issues, and that made the… Read More
A powerful example of public and private sector cooperation is unfolding these days, in of all places, the Maine Corrections Center in Windham. As part of a program called Maine Computers for Schools and Libraries, prison inmates are refurbishing and updating old computers donated by Maine businesses. Gov. Read More
Even as the death toll climbs in devastated Turkey, critics of the way the Turkish government has handled the aftermath of the earthquake point to shoddy buildings, a slow response and disorganized rescue operations. The charges may turn out to be true, but what is important for other… Read More
Few commitments in this country are more inviolate than the one it makes to caring for those men and women who were injured in battle. That commitment is being tested now as dramatically rising health care costs during the last decade have demanded equally dramatic responses to ensure… Read More
Perhaps it was just one of those misunderstandings that happen all the time in large bureaucracies or perhaps the U.S. Department of Agriculture was spending too much time in the fields and got a little sunstruck. Whichever, its refusal to allow Maine to send hay from the northern… Read More
Look at the lawsuit filed last week to list Atlantic salmon on the Endangered Species List as an act of desperation. Certainly, the two groups bringing the suit — Trout Unlimited and the Atlantic Salmon Federation — tried mightily to avoid such a listing, but they feel now… Read More
Monique Dostie ran an impeccable group home for mentally handicapped adults in Lewiston. Her four residents loved it there; they and their families saw her house rules banning sexual activity and pornography as a key element of the safe haven she provided. The Department of Human Services took… Read More
Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Harvard University, makes a compelling case in the latest edition of The Economist for changing the way the world’s richest nations regard the poorest. Though his arguments are on a larger and more dramatic scale, they will sound familiar to those heard in… Read More
Lamar Alexander took six years to run for president and yesterday announced what was evident early in those years to the electorate — that he lacked whatever intangible characteristics are essential to becoming a successful presidential candidate. With his departure from the GOP primary contest yesterday, the race… Read More
For an event steeped more in county fair than political decision-making, the non-binding Iowa Republican Straw Poll proved a couple of things. First, it proved that Iowa Republicans are a hearty and hungry lot. More than 25,000 of them rode cramped buses, stood in long… Read More
The concessions have been made, the deals have been signed. Now it’s time for the healing to begin in Great Northern land. That there is a need for healing at all is the unfortunate and sad consequence of three factors: calculated indifference by Bowater, the… Read More
For those of you with short memories or a naive optimism about the human race, here is a list of mass murders that have occurred in the last few months. April 15: Sergei Babarin, age 71, kills two people and wounds four others in the… Read More
Nothing could illustrate the ongoing conflict between the march of progress and the steadfastness of nature than that between expansion plans for University of Maine science labs and the ancient tree that stands in the way. It’s not just any tree; it’s a very large,… Read More
It used to be said that Americans got the kind of government they deserved. Today, they get the kind of government they can buy. The November 2000 election is shaping as the first $2 billion affair in the nation’s history; it is expected that the… Read More
The U.S. Health Care and Financing Administration’s (HCFA) second report on the Augusta Mental Health Institute was released recently. While not scathing, it paints a rather depressing picture of daily life at the hospital. More importantly, the report demonstrates that little progress has been made in improving the… Read More
It’s synergy. It’s serendipity, too. It’s a concatenation of need and fulfillment, an almost magical amalgam of problem and, at once, solution. It’s skateboards and Wonder Wood. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner = false;… Read More
The Maine Science and Technology Foundation announced its Challenge Grant and Marine Technology awards Monday. The amount of the 20 awards — $2.5 million total — is small by world-class research and development standards, but the very existence of the money says a lot about the new commitment… Read More
Three depressing and rancorous hearings last week on the Appalachian Trail/Saddleback issue settled nothing, but they did prove two things: Grown adults with perfectly valid points of view can behave in perfectly boorish ways; this 14-year-old impasse will never be resolved as long as the two sides continue… Read More
Gov. Angus King’s expressed hope last week that Maine could increase the state’s General Purpose Aid to Education until it became the source of majority funding presented legislators with an opportunity to come together on an area for which there is broad but uncoordinated agreement. The governor’s comments… Read More
Not wilderness and not just another park, the Allagash Wilderness Waterway has been defined by what it is not for as long as it has existed. Is it any wonder that Maine’s Department of Conservation is having a hard time finding a person willing to risk a career… Read More
As if parents weren’t asked to lug around enough guilt about how they are damaging their young children, here comes the American Academy of Pediatrics with a warning about television, computers and other media. What makes the warning so effective is that the sense behind it is hard… Read More
After an exhaustive investigation into why Bell Atlantic customers in several Maine communities, Houlton in particular, had telephone service that ranged from spotty to nonexistent, the Public Utilities Commission this spring reached two conclusions: a surge in Internet use may have caused the glitches, as the company claimed;… Read More
Two years and six months from now, the world will come to Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Added to the usual array of skiing and skating contests will be several new events — plea bargaining, posting bail, doing time. The Justice Department… Read More
Maine’s challenge for the next decade was neatly packaged recently by a think tank called the Northeast Midwest Institute. With a few broad indicators it chronicled the state’s economic record since the mid ’70s, covering the blip of prosperity of the late ’80s and the longterm lag in… Read More
Right in the middle of a long, hot tourist season, Friends of Acadia and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt announce just about the best news possible for the future of Acadia National Park. A major restoration of the park’s famous trails will begin next year with money… Read More
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has begun her campaign for the Senate from New York in an odd fashion. After completing her “listening tour” of a state in which she has never lived, she has now spoken in some detail about her relationship with her husband in an… Read More
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives popped the cork and celebrated the future last week when it passed a $796 billion tax cut, citing Federal Accounting Office projections that the Treasury will show a surplus of $1 trillion in a decade. The celebratory Senate passed a similar bill. Even… Read More
Union workers at Great Northern Paper Co. still don’t know whether the new offer from Inexcon is as strong as possible, but they know it is a real improvement over the offer that stood last week. And they know that the entire proposal for Inexcon’s purchase of the… Read More
It’s good to hear Transportation Commissioner John Melrose acknowledge that the crumbling, narrow, hilly and twisting 53-mile stretch of Route 1 between Topsfield and Houlton is one of the worst sections of road in the state. It’s not good, however, to hear that the Department… Read More
Though it cannot definitively conclude what will happen in next November’s vote on a $50 million bond question to purchase public land, a study from the University of Maine says a lot about how the Maine public views the forest. Kevin Boyle, a professor of… Read More
While most in Congress grapple with the imcomprehensible number 792 billion, Rep. Joe Knollenberg, a visionary Republican from Michigan’s 11th District, is tackling a much smaller figure of much more immediate importance to the average American — 1.6. Not dollars, but gallons; the gallons contained… Read More
Given the recent court decision that concluded the Environmental Protection Agency had overreached its authority in setting clear-air standards, its plan to consider dramatically tougher emissions standards is brave. It is also entirely necessary. A federal appeals court last May concluded that the EPA rules… Read More
Other states may voluntarily surrender welfare money to House GOP members looking for handouts to balance the budget, but Maine’s response isn’t going to be welcomed in Washington. And there’s a good chance the state won’t be the only one to hold onto its money. Read More
Until recently — Tuesday, actually — Mainers hurt by the loss of shoe, apparel and woods jobs could take some comfort in the soothing words of their political leaders that the galloping decline of traditional industries would soon be overtaken by new-economy digital commerce roaring along the information… Read More
Pity the American Psychological Association, the largest and best known professional organization of psychologists in the world and publisher of many of the most rigorous scientific journals in psychology. Last year, an article entitled A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using… Read More
Despite Anthem Insurance Co.’s legal battles in other states, Maine residents should listen in the coming months with an open mind to the company’s plan to acquire Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine. Anthem and Blue Cross, for their part, should met Maine’s open mind with an open… Read More
More than 700 production workers at Great Northern go to the polls today to vote on a package of wage and benefit concessions. All, no doubt, have figured out to the penny precisely what the package will cost them and their families, now and for years to come. Read More
Whether Maine truly is the best state in the nation to raise a child, as a Washington organization announced yesterday, is impossible to say and, individually, depends a lot on local opportunities. Nevertheless, the ranking confirms that Maine does many things well for its children. Read More
Going Postal has a new, happier connotation after American Lance Armstrong of U.S. Postal Service Team won the Tour de France last weekend. It merely states the obvious to say that his feat — winning just 33 months after being diagnosed with testicular cancer — was astonishing. But,… Read More
Bangor city officials and representatives of Eastern Maine Healthcare will meet again this week to try to find an affordable way for the medical center to move into the old Waterworks buildings on State Street. One point for residents to keep in mind during these negotiations is that… Read More
Some harmless partisan tweaking aside, the four members of Maine’s congressional delegation deserve praise for their sensible views of the House Republican’s absurd $792 billion tax cut. Just as commendable is their ability to recognize plain English, even when spoken by Alan Greenspan. The Federal… Read More
Former Sen. George Mitchell, who worked magic in helping broker a plan for peace in Northern Ireland last year, has been called for a return engagement, this time to review what has gone wrong in the stalled process that many hoped would bring to decades of bloody conflict… Read More
One measure of how well the Department of Environmental Protection is changing from a regulation-heavy bureaucracy to a public-minded state service could be found recently in a mistake it made. More specifically, in its response to the mistake. At issue was a DEP regulation on… Read More
This isn’t the first time the Public Broadcasting System has been in trouble with Congress. Before, it’s always been with conservatives who saw liberal bias on the program schedule. Until now, it’s always been about ideology. This time, the trouble is real — and big. Read More
Street demonstrations demanding the ouster of President Slobodan Milosevic are increasing thoughout Yugoslavia. By the tens of thousands, people are signing illegal petitions calling for his resignation and the police are looking the other way. Army reserve units, mad about not getting paid, madder about risking their lives… Read More
The GOP must have been using a well-worn credit card when it ordered up an end to the “marriage penalty” in the federal income tax. Now that the bill has come due, House Republicans figure all they can afford in the minimum payment with a promise to do… Read More
Sheriff Mark Dion has angered a lot of people, including some of his own deputies, by pulling his department out of security detail at the Cumberland County Courthouse. He insists, correctly, that he will not be party to the state’s consistent underfunding of its duty to protect the… Read More
To understand what keeps a city from being just a collection of traffic lights and places to shop, look beyond the strip malls into what its residents volunteer to support. In Bangor, that often means the Penobscot Theatre Company, an unusually successful enterprise about to observe its 25th… Read More
The National Marriage Project of Rutgers University recently published its annual assessment of the health of marriage in America, called The State of Our Unions. In brief, our unions are increasingly suspect, an undesirable trend that may lead current values as much as reflect them. Read More
Having been told that the surplus identified by the House Ways and Means Committee last week was not $864 billion but, more likely, a tiny percentage of that, members of Congress did the only sensible thing yesterday and proposed a tax cut for $792 billion. Read More
By making the modest concession that consumers worried about the effects of genetically modified food are not necessarily kooks, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman recently opened an opportunity to discuss an issue the Clinton administration previously considered closed. The impetus for the secretary’s observation, however, may have had less… Read More
Search and rescue has become search and recover. Barring a miracle that refutes the wreckage washing ashore, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, have perished in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard. For the circle of family and friends, the joy… Read More
It is to the credit of business leaders north and south in Maine that a meeting today will highlight economic opportunities in the northern half of the state. This kind of cooperation is essential for both ends of the state (and the middle, for that matter) to succeed. Read More
Maine voters in November will consider a bond issue for $9.4 million to help Maine Public Broadcasting convert to digital TV transmission. This is not the brainchild of the good folks at MPBN, but an unfunded mandate from Congress as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Read More
The good people of Bridgton are upset that the rather messy Cananda geese they asked state wildlife officials to remove from their town beach were knocked out with drugged feed, then hauled away and shot. The officials say the misunderstanding is due to the technical distinction between the… Read More
No one who has followed the nationwide string of mergers in the health care industry could be surprised this week by the announced merger for Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Maine. Its proposed purchase by Anthem Insurance Co., an Indiana-based company more than 10 times the size… Read More
For most of the last quarter century, Sarah Jane Olson was the model suburbanite: a doctor’s wife living the good life in an upscale St. Paul, Minn., neighborhood; a hostess with the mostest, famous for her lavish dinner parties; a community activist and tireless volunteer for good causes;… Read More
Even in a friendly state like Maine, politics can play rough with a person’s career. While those who keep quiet in do-nothing jobs stay forever, people who really care about the state, who stick their necks out to make things better, sometimes find they are lucky to escape… Read More
The Senate isn’t yet finished deciding what rights patients will have, and already it is difficult not to feel despair like a damp breeze creeping into a half-closed medical gown. The lack of coverage is embarrassing enough for a nation that is supposed to lead the world in… Read More
The Penobscot River and Brewer have a long, glorious history. The large crowd that turned out for the public hearing Tuesday on a plan to revive the slumbering waterfront, and its positive response to that plan, suggest the river and the city have a bright future as well. Read More
New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith is giving up his GOP membership in order to run for president with an “I” next to his name. The “I,” unfortunately, is likely to stand not for independent but for irrelevant. Sen. Smith, like anyone else, is of course… Read More
Bruce Babbitt was a brand new secretary of the interior back in January 1993 when he testified before the Senate that the mess previous secretaries had made of the Indian trust fund program would be cleaned up within 60 days. The record shows the Senate erupted in laughter. Read More
To get an idea of how the state intends to protect the public interest in Maine’s forests, consider this recent conclusion from a report on sustainability by the Maine Forest Service: During the recent Forest Practices Act rulemaking process, it became clear to both the… Read More
The specter of the Columbine tragedy dominated the conversation at a middle school education institute held last week at the University of Maine. Presenters discussed the dramatic increases in violence and threats of violence in our schools, as well as ways of dealing with disruptive… Read More
Sen. Olympia Snowe last week formed a group of local leaders to give her input on economic-development issues in Maine. But if the group works out as well as it could, its findings should be presented statewide as the beginning of a plan to revitalize this state’s economic… Read More
After extensive arm-twisting by Democrats, Senate leaders last week agreed, beginning today, to consider and vote on the Patients’ Bill of Rights legislation that has managed-care companies so unhappy. The upcoming vote prompted these companies to begin an advertising blitz in selected states reminiscent of the Harry and… Read More
E.B. White begins an essay called “Removal” this way: Several months ago, finding myself in possession of one hundred and seventeen chairs divided about evenly between a city house and a country house, and desiring to simplify my life, I sold half my worldly goods, evacuated the city… Read More