On Monday, Gov. Janet Mills announced that the bars in Maine would not be allowed to resume indoor service on July 1, as originally planned. The announcement wasn’t surprising — at least to me — given that last week Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control, announced that the state […]
It has all the makings of a good scandal. A powerful governor on a private conference call that was not open to the public. A surreptitious recording of the call by a participant, leaked to the media. An admission that actions being taken by that governor will make something worse. And, of course, the subject […]
When a crisis happens, I think most of us try our best to band together and be on the same team. In the year 2000, this country lived through one of the most bitter and miserable elections in American history. In the end, after a month of legal battles and uncertainty, George W. Bush became […]
Here’s a fun fact you might not know. Your “freedom of association” is not guaranteed specifically by name in the First Amendment. Don’t believe me? Read it again. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or […]
I don’t typically write follow up columns to things I wrote, but in this case I’m going to have to make an exception. A couple weeks ago, the column I wrote in these very pages declared in rather concrete terms that I was not worried about the coronavirus. What I was more worried about than […]
There are good times, and there are bad times. One thing in this life is certain: if you are currently living through one of those, the other will come eventually. If an economic boom is happening, there will be an eventual slowdown and recession. If you are in the middle of economic calamity, there will […]
I will begin this annual tradition of mine by acknowledging a failure of my final prediction of 2019. You see, in last year’s column, I told you that this year I would simply do a top 10 list of my predictions, as the number of required predictions each year was getting unwieldy. Alas, there is […]
Remember when Gov. Janet Mills told you that she would not, if elected, support increased taxes? Pay close attention to what happens in Augusta in the next couple weeks, because she may very well have to choose whether she meant that promise or not. Tuesday, the Maine House narrowly voted — 73 in favor to […]
It is pretty hard to find someone more sympathetic to the plight of teachers than me. My wife’s profession is elementary education, where she has worked for years as a teacher in kindergarten through second grade. I’ve seen the struggles she goes through up close and personal for years. I’ve been in her classroom with […]
Taxes are a complicated thing. You are taxed in many ways, not just on your income, and not just by one government. Indeed, American federalism guarantees that you are in fact taxed by your national government, you state government, your county government and your town government, to say nothing of the “fees” you pay to […]
