The largest and most influential media empire in the state of Maine, Maine Today Media, was rocked yesterday by the “resignation” of CEO Richard Connor, who has been at the helm for roughly three years. Maine Today owns The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal, the Morning Sentinel and the Coastal Journal. In [...]
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There is something very wrong in this country, and your average resident is, in a word, apoplectic. In February 2009, CNBC business news editor Rick Santelli stood on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and launched into a fuming tirade over the government’s plan to refinance mortgages for consumers upside-down on their homes. As [...]
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Sixty-one percent. You see the passive-aggressive stickers on cars all across Maine. It has become something of a battle cry for an entirely too smug and self-righteous group of Mainers who view Gov. LePage as illegitimate, due to his 39 percent share of the vote in the last election. See what they did there? If [...]
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Well that was much ado about nothing. Republicans caved on redistricting and abandoned their ambitious, if controversial, “Western Maine” plan. The new congressional lines will look an awful lot like the old congressional lines with only a bit of lipstick applied to make the 2nd District a tad more attractive to the GOP. For all [...]
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The phrase “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” is an old aphorism that hasn’t been true in a long time. It was popularized due to Maine’s status as a political bellwether state for presidential elections. Elections were held in Maine in September, and the party that won the governorship would go on to win [...]
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There is nothing so dangerous in government as a lawmaker who feels compelled to “do something.” People in government often feel they need to justify their own existence by finding a problem and then legislating a solution for it. Like parents disciplining their children, enterprising legislators have a penchant for codifying behavioral rules. Motorcyclists die [...]
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On Wednesday night, eight Republicans gathered at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California to debate each other for the right to take on President Obama next year. Most eyes were on Gov. Rick Perry and former Gov. Mitt Romney, the two front-runners, to see how they would perform. But I was watching the debate for a [...]
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On the national level, there has been a lot of talk about the cold shoulder Rep. Ron Paul has received from the media despite a very impressive showing at the Ames Straw Poll and being in third place in many national polls. The media establishment, it seems, doesn’t take Paul seriously as a threat to win [...]
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This afternoon, a very important person in my life, Aaron Sterling, lost a life long and difficult battle with a horrendous disease, Cystic Fibrosis. Aaron was originally from Skowhegan, and my first encounter with him was at the University of Maine, very early in my academic career. He was intensely interested in politics, and almost [...]
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Lost in all the kerfuffle over congressional redistricting has been a rather interesting tidbit of news. Gov. Paul LePage has asked his cabinet to institute a new (for Maine) way of drawing up state budget numbers, something called “zero-base budgeting.” There probably isn’t a drier topic on earth than the budget process, but for Maine, [...]
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