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All Posts Tagged Tag: ‘Volume 7 No. 1’
The Margaret Chase Smith Essay: Bridging the Disconnect
In 1991, Richard Harwood had just completed a study for the Kettering Foundation on the way Americans felt about the political system and insisted that the conventional wisdom-that the public was happily apathetic-was misleading. The people he heard in focus groups across the country weren’t apathetic. They were mad as the devil about a system they believed had spun out …
Read MoreThe Importance of Maine’s Economic Ties With Canada: Some Thoughts Related to the East-West Highway
Whether to build an east-west highway across Central Maine has been widely debated in recent months and, regardless of where one stands on the issue, all agree it is important to study the idea further. In this article, Richard Mueller addresses Maine’s economic linkages with Canada and assesses how an east-west highway would affect them. In particular, he focuses on …
Read MoreReforming Maine’s Education Funding Process
In recent years how Maine funds K-12 education has been a source of almost constant dissension. As authors Patrick Dow and Ralph Townsend note, much of this dissension began in the early 1990s with the Legislature’s decision to reduce funding for local education. Shrinking community budgets for local education have led to political battles over who gets what and have …
Read MoreMaine’s Science and Engineering Brain Drain
More than the traditional economic ingredients, the new global economy is being built around talented people with special knowledge and skills – people with the capacity to innovate and with the entrepreneurial wherewithal to turn ideas into commercial products. Hence many states are shifting their economic development strategies away from efforts that market commodities like low tax rates and cheap …
Read MoreInterview with Senator George Mitchell
Senator Mitchell’s leadership in Northern Ireland has earned him worldwide praise. Yet such praise is not surprising to citizens of Maine who have lauded the Senator for many years throughout his remarkable tenure in the United States Senate. In 1980, Senator Mitchell was appointed to the United States Senate to complete the unexpired term of Senator Edmund S. Muskie who …
Read MoreDigital Democracy is Coming to the Maine Legislature
Although Maine’s information infrastructure is several years ahead of the nation in development, Maine ranks only 41st out of 50 states in its “Digital Democracy”; that is, its use of new telecommunications and information technologies to permit greater citizen access to laws, legislators and the state’s legislative processes. In this article, Rep. Joseph Carleton outlines the changes underway in the …
Read MoreCommentary: New Health Care Help for Maine’s Uninsured Children
Today, there is exciting news to share about children’s health care. The United States and Maine in particular have embarked upon a major new initiative to help thousands of the nation’s children who currently lack any form of health-care insurance. Specifically, Maine has adopted two new health-care programs: one that expands Medicaid coverage, and a second that is unique to …
Read MoreCommentary: Missing the Point About Campaign Election Ethics
Recently, an editorial and a political column appearing in the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Sunday Telegram respectively, criticized the Maine Code of Election Ethics project – an effort to reduce the negativism and attack advertising in Maine’s political campaigns – for its lack of enforcement mechanisms. The Code was described as well-intentioned but useless, hopeful but lacking. In …
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