BY STEVE PASIERB We get the calls every day. Parents, siblings, grandparents and friends are reaching out to our organization worried that their loved one is abusing prescription medicine. Prescription drug abuse is an epidemic and is skyrocketing among our nation’s teens. Kids are popping pills at an alarming rate. In fact, prescription medications are […]

The argument over measles shots is really about bigger questions — if citizens are free to reject government authority and if science merits the public’s respect. By now, most people are aware of the political debate about the proper role of government. These days, it focuses on the size of government budgets, taxes and the […]

In North Carolina, three young Muslims who were active in charity work were murdered, allegedly by a man who identified as atheist and expressed hostility to Islam and other faiths. Police are exploring whether it was a hate crime, and it spurred a #MuslimLivesMatter campaign on Twitter. And, in Alabama, we see judges refusing to […]

Fifty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, known today as The Moynihan Report. In 1965 more than half of unwed births in America (167,000 of 291,000) were to black mothers, though blacks were only 11 percent of the population. Those 167,000 were 28.7 percent of […]

The world of food and agriculture symbolizes most of what’s gone wrong in the United States. But because food is plentiful for most people, and the damage that conventional agriculture does isn’t readily evident to everyone, it’s important that we look deeper, beyond food, to the structure that underlies most decisions: the political economy. Progressives […]

No matter what one thinks of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is no question that health insurance makes a difference for individual and community wellbeing. Primary care and prevention translates to a healthy and more productive population. The sheer numbers of Mainers who have signed up — 44,000 for 2014 and over 62,000 for […]

Who among us is curious or questioning about recent events in Ukraine? Do we just take as fact what the mainstream media tell us? Is this a story of Russia aggressively preventing Ukraine’s selfdetermination? Headlines speak of war fever and it seems a foregone conclusion that the United States will send weapons to Ukraine. What […]

Your commentary, “Brian Williams misremembering,” appeared in Tuesday’s issue of The Times Record, our local Brunswick, Maine, newspaper. You seemed to take great pleasure in suggesting many people exaggerate certain moments of their lives in order to enhance their role in certain events. A form of “self-aggrandizement ” you called it. However, further on, you […]