Maine
updated
2:55 p.m.
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Republican Peter Mills today became the first gubernatorial candidate to claim to have met the requirements to run a publicly financed campaign under Maine's clean election system. In a recent Sun Journal article , Mills said the main hurdle to qualifying as a clean elections candidate was not raising $40,000 in $100 seed money contributions, but collecting the 3,250 $5 contributions now requi...
Maine Politics - Wed 11:08 a.m. - 4 clicks 
As we all know, Sen. Collins professes to want the health care discussion to focus more on lowering costs. Here's the President: ...
Collins Watch - Tue 11:47 a.m. - 3 clicks
Remember when the national arm of the League of Conservation Voters shelved its own standards and, in a move that betrayed its membership, endorsed Sen. Collins? Even though she had a far weaker record on environmental issues than her opponent? Even though local Maine LCV officials were lining up against her ? And even though the organization was unable to articulate why its own environmen...
Collins Watch - Mon 3:08 p.m. - 3 clicks
If I'm reading this right, Sen. Collins was the only Republican to vote to keep a $100+ billion unemployment assistance-themed bill on track yesterday. I'm all for it. But it does raise the question: Since the junior senator votes for all the spending and all the tax cuts, wouldn't it make sense for someone to ask her how she proposes to balance the budget? ...
Collins Watch - Mar 4 - 8 clicks
Sen. Collins will gladly cross the aisle to hand out goodies . But she consistently rails against unpleasant things like service cuts and allowing tax cuts to expire. She likes to have it both ways. And that's why they call her a moderate. ...
Collins Watch - Mar 3 - 8 clicks
Yesterday, Sen. Collins was blaming Democrats for Sen. Jim Bunning's (R-KY) crusade against unemployment benefits, health benefits and highway programs. Today she went to the floor to make it clear that she disapproves of his filibuster. Tomorrow, who knows. ...
Collins Watch - Mar 2 - 2 clicks
She sure is a loyal soldier : Hundreds of jobless Mainers woke up today with the looming threat of losing their unemployment benefits. Benefits expired this weekend, and a measure in Congress to extend them for another month is being held up by one senator, Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican. [...] But Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, says both parties share the blame for the gridlock. ...
Collins Watch - Mar 1 - 5 clicks
Edward Luce in The Financial Times : In order to win over Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, the Democrats removed $83bn of short-term spending from the [stimulus] bill at the cost of 400,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. ...
Collins Watch - Feb 27 - 4 clicks
Also in the latest FEC filing from Dirigo PAC, Sen. Collins' political action committee, is news of donations to the senate campaigns of ousted executive Carly Fiorina and Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL). The support for Crist, in particular, puts the junior senator at odds with conservative activists. ...
Collins Watch - Feb 26
The top contributor to Sen. Collins' political action committee, Dirigo PAC, for the 2009-10 cycle? Blue Cross/Blue Shield . ...
Collins Watch - Feb 25 - 4 clicks
The entire "jobs" bill that Sen. Collins has decided not to try to block clocks in at less than two percent of the stimulus bill. It's $15 billion cost is also a mere fraction of what Collins and allies stripped from the Recovery Act, at a time when every additional dollar of stimulus was sorely needed. So let's be frank: Her support is little more than a token gesture. This isn't a centr...
Collins Watch - Feb 22 - 3 clicks
Senators Snowe and Collins joined fellow Republican Senators Kit Bond, George Voinovich and newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown in breaking with their party to vote down a filibuster. ...
Maine Politics - Feb 22 - 3 clicks
The fact that so many wingnuts hate Sen. Collins with such passion demonstrates that they're focused much more on rhetoric than substance. With the exception of the stimulus bill--which she worked hard to water down--the junior senator has voted with the Republicans on every single major piece of legislation over the last 9 years. ...
Collins Watch - Feb 20 - 3 clicks
Sen. Collins has spent half a year , give or take, carrying water for the GOP and lying about health care. But now she says she's back to being a bipartisan moderate pragmatist. Anyone who thinks she's interested in advancing serious reform rather than killing it is either incredibly--almost willfully--gullible or just hasn't been paying attention. ...
Collins Watch - Feb 19 - 6 clicks
Thomas Cushing Munjoy notices something the deferential, power-coddling Maine media aren't in a hurry to report. I do wonder where he got that picture. ...
Collins Watch - Feb 18 - 6 clicks
Yesterday : "It's a bad sign," Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told me about Bayh's retirement. "The loss of someone like Evan speaks volumes about people's frustrations with the Senate and our failure to work in a bipartisan fashion." Two weeks ago : "The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the War on Terrorism. “And, because of that blindness, this a...
Collins Watch - Feb 17 - 4 clicks
Rush Limbaugh has called out MOOMilk , the Maine-based organic milk producer, for its evil, socialist philosophy. ...
Maine Politics - Feb 13 - 5 clicks
Thrasybulus at As Maine Goes : Collins is 100% as conservative as she can be AND win re-election in the dystopia that is Maine. Cut some slack. ...
Collins Watch - Feb 12 - 6 clicks
The Market Decisions poll released today has 46% of Mainers sampled opposing the "Obama/Congressional health reform proposal" while 39% support it. Setting aside for the moment the fact that there isn't a specific proposal to be for or against, the interesting part of this poll is the reason why it seems that Mainers have turned against the kind of reform that may now be considered by Congr...
Maine Politics - Feb 11 - 5 clicks
Just a week ago, Sen. Collins had a national platform and was on the attack . This morning, she dialed in to a local talk radio show to--in the show's own words--" defend her criticism " of President Obama. Things haven't exactly gone according to plan. Not surprisingly, Collins spends much of the interview on the defensive, testily delivering the talking points she's been using since the argum...
Collins Watch - Feb 11 - 3 clicks
A bit more unflattering exposure for Sen. Collins. Start at 0:55 and stick around for the great Bush clip: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy ...
Collins Watch - Feb 10 - 5 clicks
It's not just BDN . All of a sudden, even PPH has the audacity to allow criticism of Sen. Collins in its pages. Greg Kesich unloads on the junior senator today. Remember: Since Richard Connor's early flirtation with Collins skepticism, the Portland daily (like BDN) has handled her as a kind of sainted celebrity , keeping its pages totally free of sentiments critical of Collins. So what to...
Collins Watch - Feb 10 - 2 clicks
Who would have thought that a former state senator would have the temerity to call out Saint Susan's noxious rhetoric about the Obama administration? Or that BDN would have the temerity to publish his criticism? A year ago in an OpEd published here, I praised Sen. Susan Collins for the independence she demonstrated in crafting and voting for the Obama recovery act... Sadly, last week Sen. Col...
Collins Watch - Feb 10 - 2 clicks
The New York Times editorial page : An election is coming, so the Republicans are trying to scare Americans by making it appear as if the Democrats don't care about catching or punishing terrorists. [...] Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, suggested--without any evidence--that vital intelligence was lost by [having the FBI arrest and interrogate Abdulmutallab]. [...] The Republican ...
Collins Watch - Feb 10 - 4 clicks
Sen. Collins, you'll remember, voted in favor of policies generating trillions of dollars of debt during the Bush administration. But now, things are different : Collins, meanwhile, said she would be open to exploring a bipartisan jobs bill that focuses on creating private-sector jobs without adding to the federal deficit. It's just like her response to the Christmas Day bombing: One standar...
Collins Watch - Feb 10
If you haven't yet read Chris Busby's feature on the state of Maine's Green Party in last month's Bollard, you should. ...
Maine Politics - Feb 9 - 3 clicks
Part of the stimulus act provided for a website to allow people to track where the money goes. That site, Recovery.gov , shows the various states that have their own versions. Turns out that Maine is one of them . :-) There are already posts from Susan Gendron about how the money will be used for school projects, and a report about the apparent low bidder on a I-295 construction project. This s...
Downeast Politics - Nov 17 - 2 clicks
(picture of MCS) The late great republican Us Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine once said of the republican party back in the 1950’s: “Smears are not only to be expected but fought. Honor is to be earned, not bought.” and… “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny [...] ...
White Noise Insanity - Nov 17
This is just a bunch of bullshit. If the Bradley Effect was really in play, then in my very white state of Maine on Caucus Day in February of this year, Hillary Clinton would have won over Barack Obama! But that didn’t happen. Nope. Forty five thousand mainly white Democrats came out to vote for [...] ...
White Noise Insanity - Nov 17 - 2 clicks
We (well, I, as Eric is on a plane to Pittsburgh at the moment) sit here (in North Carolina) waiting for the polls to close on Election Day in our home state of Maine (yes, we voted absentee.) While there......
Wampum - Nov 17 - 4 clicks
