In response to Julie MacDonald-Smith’s list of candidate accomplishments: ignoring the demonizing of Gov. Paul LePage’s public personality, focus only on policy. The administration’s refusal to expand Medicaid as covered by the Affordable Care Law has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars and denied better care to tens of thousands of the most […]

If the Federal Communications Commission and U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawyers ever had an easy-peasy, slam-dunk decision to make, it is to deny the proposed merger of Time Warner Cable and Comcast. Just about the only parties who think that merging the cable colossi is a great idea are Time Warner and Comcast. Comcast […]

The acorns are falling, the leaves not far behind, And I’m bracing for what will occupy the mind Of the man who designed and built a chicken coop, That he filled with actual chickens who roam our yard in a loop. “They are beautiful!” he lies to me on a daily basis. “They lay eggs!” […]

In 1968, the University of Maine System was founded, pulling seven campuses under a single board and chancellor. The Legislature appropriated 15.2 percent of undedicated state revenues to meet the operating budget of the system. In 2013, the Legislature appropriated 6.3 percent of undedicated state revenues to meet these budgetary needs. Put another way, during […]

As this summer waned, the national hot topic once again concerned racism. In Ferguson, Missouri, a police officer shot and killed a black teenager named Michael Brown, whose hands were raised in surrender. We had the same conversation a summer ago after a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. Martin […]

I can’t tell if Julie McDonald-Smith is intentionally misrepresenting and insulting people she labels liberal, or if she is actually that ignorant and misinformed about people who really are liberal.   Her convoluted “reasoning” manages to attribute meanings to “COEXIST” bumper stickers that are precisely the opposite of their true and intended meaning.  Above all, they […]

Has it occurred to Edgar Allen Beem that there are actually intelligent civic-minded Republicans who will not vote for Gov. Paul LePage or Mike Michaud and will choose Eliot Cutler? Has it occurred to him that the waffling on gun control, choice, and demanding accountability from the Veterans Administration are not qualities of leadership, but […]

Many frightened Maine liberals now realize how repugnant their Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Mike Michaud, is to most Mainers. Such liberals as journalist Edgar Allen Beem are now pleading for independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler to “make the ultimate sacrifice for the public good.” In other words, they want Cutler to drop out of the race […]