Maine
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According to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network radio service , Occupy Maine in Portland has lost its bid in Superior Court to remain in Lincoln Park: (Portland) -- Occupy Maine demonstrators have lost their bid in Superior Court to continue camping in Portland's Lincoln Park. Occupy members testified last week that the park serves as a public symbol and helps spread their message protest...
DailyKos (Maine) - Wed 9:43 a.m. - 7 clicks 
Spent the day yesterday at the 18th Annual Gathering for Changing Maine. This yearly event is one that I have gone to many times but yesterday was special. The theme this year was “Visions and Strategies for the Occupy Movement in Maine.” At the end of the day during the wrap up session one young [...] ...
The Populist Farmer - Sun 8:23 a.m. - 12 clicks
Equality Maine and friends , which in the Fall gathered more than twice the required signatures (shades of Wisconsin!) for a marriage equality initiative to be placed on the ballot in November, 2012, has announced that they have decided to go forward with the ballot question. Marriage equality proponents say their polling shows a significant 54% of Mainers in favor of marriage equality. The...
DailyKos (Maine) - Jan 26 - 6 clicks
Last week, I submitted to the Maine Legislature a bill entitled, “An Act to Limit to Natural Persons the Right to Contribute to Political Cam paigns.” This bill closely tracks the Montana "Corrupt Practices Act,” which was upheld on December 30, 2011 by the Montana Supreme Court in the Western Tradition Partnership case. The ruling reinforced the “compelling interest” underlying the Stat...
DailyKos (Maine) - Jan 24
Conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney has a far better organization than Newt Gingrich, and that’s a big part of why he’ll be the nominee. The coming terrain is supposed to benefit him, too. One friend of mine who's an expert at watching polls , Tweeted the other day, You look at the contests coming up after Florida... Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine... Caucuses, West, and North... M...
DailyKos (Maine) - Jan 23 - 2 clicks
Cross posted at Dirigo Blue Just weeks into his new job as Governor of the State of Maine, Paul LePage rejected years of tradition set by his predecessors, and refused invitations to the Martin Luther King breakfast celebrations in Bangor or Portland. Instead, he chose to attend the breakfast held in Waterville, as he had done in previous years as mayor of that city. When asked by reporter...
DailyKos (Maine) - Jan 17 - 9 clicks
Just weeks into his new job as Governor of the State of Maine, Paul LePage rejected years of tradition set by his predecessors, and refused invitations to the Martin Luther King breakfast celebrations in Bangor or Portland. Instead, he chose to attend the breakfast held in Waterville, as he had done in previous years as mayor of that city. When asked by reporters about that decision and the um...
DailyKos (Maine) - Jan 16
Big Talk host Suzanne Murphy speaks with Alex Cornell du Houx, a Maine State Representative who served as a Marine in Iraq. Download this episode here . Subscribe to the podcast here . read more ...
Maine Politics - Jan 8
Suzanne Murphy and Alan Brewer talk with Eliza Townsend of the Maine Women's Lobby . Download this episode here . Subscribe to the podcast here . read more ...
Maine Politics - Jan 8
It's great to see Sen. Collins advocating an evidence-driven approach to evaluating and mitigating health risks to Americans: [Collins] has repeatedly questioned the use, in particular, of the backscatter X-ray machines, which emit low levels of ionizing radiation... "As a frequent flyer, I just cannot believe that it is good for people who are traveling every week, or for TSA employees who ar...
Collins Watch - Jan 5 - 2 clicks
Democratic State Representative Jon Hinck, a co-founder of Greenpeace USA, Launches First Web Ad of 2012 Maine Senate Race against Olympia Snowe On Wednesday, as the Maine Legislature returns to work for the 2012 session, Representative Jon Hinck (D-Portland) is also launching the first web advertisement of his 2012 campaign against Olympia Snowe. Entitled “ Red, White and You ,” the...
DailyKos (Maine) - Jan 4
Sorry I’ve been gone but my New Year’s resolution is that I will be better about posting. Had to get this one up tho’: LePage called out by Forbes Magazine editor for “stretching the truth”. Got to say those guys are being way too nice. This from the Kennebec Journal: At a town hall meeting [...] ...
The Populist Farmer - Dec 20
Forbes may be a favorite magazine of America's 1%, but at least it adheres to standards of journalistic integrity. In the most recent issue, Forbes ranked the 50 states in terms of fostering business growth and career opportunity. Maine came in dead last - 50th out of 50. Governor Le Page immediately seized on the survey results as an excuse for pushing 65,000 Maine residents off...
DailyKos (Maine) - Dec 17
Ace Nelson already published some of this story . Several people have recently tried to make sure that I noticed the Boston Globe article about Nicole Maines and her family, entitled Led by the child who simply knew . Jonas and Wyatt Maines were born twin boys but, as Jonas is reported to have said early in their childhood: Dad, you might as well face it. You have a son an...
DailyKos (Maine) - Dec 16 - 15 clicks
crossposted from my own blog on Wordpress "Honolulu 2011-2012" Mainer-in-Exile From here in Honolulu I still read the Maine News. Yes folks, I have become a Mainer-in-Exile. Economic opportunity in my chosen field caused me to move here to Hawaii in 2005. I still have family members in Maine along with many friends and professional colleagues. I pay my license fee to the Maine State ...
DailyKos (Maine) - Dec 15 - 16 clicks
Author, journalist and frequent Maine Politics contributor Colin Woodard has recieved a great deal of national attention for his new book, American Nations , in which he examines what he believes are 11 distinct cultural regions within North America. Woodard recently did a daytime call-in program on MPBN , now available onli...
Maine Politics - Dec 15 - 16 clicks
Suzanne and Al discuss Maine's Clean Elections system with Andrew Bossie, executive director of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections. Last week, Maine's Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee voted along party lines to strip out the matching funds provision of the Maine Clean Election Act without replacing it with one of several propos...
Maine Politics - Dec 11 - 15 clicks
Yesterday an anonymous commenter drew attention to the text of the "Gang of 14" agreement to argue that Sen. Collins had committed to the "extraordinary circumstances" standard for judicial nominee filibusters only for a set period of time . Indeed, the text of the agreement specifies that its provisions are "related to...judicial nominations in the 109th Congress." So it's certainly fair to s...
Collins Watch - Dec 8
Can anyone sincerely believe that Collins' bizarre interest in pruning the judiciary meets the "extraordinary circumstances" threshold that she committed to back in 2005? Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine joined all but one other Republican today in blocking the nomination of Caitlin Halligan for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. [...] Collins told reporters on Cap...
Collins Watch - Dec 7
PPH : President Obama hopes to persuade Maine's two senators and several other Republican lawmakers to break party ranks and help confirm his nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A Senate vote is expected this week, but so far Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are apparently not budging. Both have said they are concerned about oversight of the bureau. [...] Forme...
Collins Watch - Dec 6 - 2 clicks
Paul LePage The competition for most evil governor elected in 2010 is stiff. The competition for most childish, buffoonish one has not been in doubt at least since Maine Gov. Paul LePage ordered the labor history mural removed from his state's Department of Labor. Every few months he reemerges to cement his standing—and apparently enough time has passed since LePage was revealed to have ...
DailyKos (Maine) - Dec 5
Sen. Collins surprises your humble narrator and does the right thing, coming out in favor of the payroll tax cut being offered up by Senate Democrats: Collins said in a phone interview tonight that her goal is to make sure "working families aren't faced with a tax increase come January, frankly at a very bad time given the fragility of our economy." And while Collins doesn't want to see small ...
Collins Watch - Dec 1
Sen. Collins : "What we've been hearing over and over again is that the reason Republicans are opposed to the surtax [on the rich] is because of the concern on its impact on job creation," she said. "Well if you carve out employers you take away that argument." ...
Collins Watch - Dec 1 - 2 clicks
The honorable Paul LePage tries hard to make himself popular. He wants to import "cheap" Canadian energy to Maine. Northern New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces are pretty close and their Governors and Premieres take regular summit meetings about fisheries, agriculture and other things. Paulie can even speak French--it's his primary language though he speaks English with a great wor...
DailyKos (Maine) - Dec 1
The congressional "super committee" has failed to reach an agreement to cut the federal budget deficit, but the battle over taxes is continuing. At least one Maine business owner says it is time wealthier taxpayers like himself step up and pay more. Jim Wellehan is president of Lamey-Wellehan Shoes, based in Auburn and with six sto...
Maine Politics - Nov 28
This diary is of three maps I did of three small states, Nebraska, Maine, and New Hampshire, which did not warrant stand alone diaries. Since each state has 2-3 districts there is only so much you can do with each from a partisan perspective. Each state was gerrymandered from a different partisan perspective. ...
DailyKos (Maine) - Nov 22
Unless you're a hard right Republican, isn't the whole point of electing someone like Sen. Collins that she doesn't defer to a fringe radical like Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)? Neither Maine Republican is a supporter of Lautenberg’s Safe Chemicals Act...Collins...hopes negotiations going on over Lautenberg’s bill will lead to an agreement large numbers of senators can support. [...] Collins...n...
Collins Watch - Nov 18 - 2 clicks
Not much new in this fight, just the victims. Thanks to everyone who helped Protect Maine Votes to victory on Tuesday. A People's Veto overturned the Republican legislature and governor's ban on same-day voter registration. Protect Maine Votes had this to say : "Same-day registration has worked for almost 40 years, helping Maine to be a national leader in voter participation," said Barba...
DailyKos (Maine) - Nov 12
Big Talk host Al Brewer and I discuss the results of Tuesday's election, with a focus on the Portland mayoral race and Question One on the statewide ballot. For the poll numbers we discuss, see these posts over at Down East. For the full results of the mayoral race, including the IRV rounds, see this detailed spreadsheet cou...
Maine Politics - Nov 11
Charlie Webster, the chair of the Maine Republican Party, has spent the summer making bogus claims about voter fraud, and even likened same-day voting registration as part of some gay agenda . But last night, at a meeting with University of Maine College Republicans, Webster got off a corker , as we say here. A blast that is likely to be used over and over again in the 2012 election campaign...
DailyKos (Maine) - Nov 10
Pass out the smelling salts! Maine Republicans have the vapors! TPM reports that the Maine GOP has taken out an ad saying that measure 1, restoring same day voter registration, is part of the legendary homosexual agenda. FACT! IN THE 2010 ELECTIONS, EQUALITY MAINE (ADVOCACY GROUP FOR GAY/LESBIAN MARRIAGE) DONATED $141,000 FOR THE ELECTION OF DEMOCRAT CANDIDATES TO THE MAINE LEGISLATURE. F...
DailyKos (Maine) - Nov 8
The right to vote and choose our leaders is at the heart of what it means to be an American. If we don’t like the decisions our elected officials are making, we can simply vote them out. Maine Republicans and the Wall Street interests who bankroll their campaigns are now trying to make it harder for working Mainers to vote, by taking away our time-honored right to register to vote on Election ...
DailyKos (Maine) - Nov 7
My home city of Portland, Maine is having its first mayoral election in 88 years, the result of a successful ballot referendum and popular disgust with the city council's handling of a proposed development on the Maine State Pier. Fifteen candidates are on the ranked-choice ballot, making it especially difficult for voters to beco...
Maine Politics - Nov 7
Public Policy Polling . 10/28-31. Likely voters. ±MoE 3.8%. (no trendlines) Q. Question 1 would reject a new state law requiring new voters to register to vote at least two business days prior to an election. If the election was today, would you vote for or against Question 1? Would vote for it : 48 Would vote against it : 44 Not sure : 7 With the referendum in just six ...
DailyKos (Maine) - Nov 2
“I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” -- Paul Weyrich, “founding father of the modern conservative movement,”1980 A new report from People For the America...
DailyKos (Maine) - Oct 29
As many as five million Americans won't have the right to cast their ballot next November, if Republican governors and legislatures get their way. Thirty-four states have either pending legislation or new laws severely restricting the ability of a specific group of voters—students, minorities, low-income people, people with disabilities—to register to vote, or to cast their ballots. One o...
DailyKos (Maine) - Oct 27
Sen. Collins : [Salam Fayyad, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and I] discussed the PA's unilateral appeal to the UN to grant recognition to a Palestinian State, a move that I strongly oppose. He seemed to concede that this approach was a mistake. ...
Collins Watch - Oct 27
They may not be literally occupying, but they are winning hearts and minds and... they've done it! With more than two months to go, EqualityMaine and friends have gathered more than 60,000 signatures, 3000 more than the 57,000+ necessary to put marriage equality on the ballot in Maine in November of 2012. Their goal is 80,000 signatures; I hope they get 100,000. But there is almo...
DailyKos (Maine) - Oct 27
Here's a Big Talk show from two weeks ago that I'm just putting online now. Election season seems to have put me into quite the blogging debt. Let's see if I can climb out of it. Big Talks hosts Suzanne Murphy and Al Brewer welcome into the WMPG studios members from Occupy Maine. Six protestors shared stories and reasoning behind w...
Maine Politics - Oct 25
This week on Big Talk, Host Suzanne Murphy speaks with two members of the Portland Food Co-op , Communications Director Michelle Smith and Board Member Sean Cooper The PFC is a newly developing local business. Though they do not yet have a physical storefront, the member-owners collectively purchase more than $6000 worth of food e...
Maine Politics - Oct 25
Sen. Collins : "I have never supported an open-ended and unconditional commitment of U.S. troops in Iraq. However, I do remain concerned that many U.S. military officials have repeatedly said that they believe a residual force of U.S. troops might have to remain in order to continue training Iraqi troops to help ensure that the significant gains we have made there, at great cost to American bloo...
Collins Watch - Oct 22
Via e-mail, ACLU of Maine Executive Director Shenna Bellows says that her organization is "very concerned" about Sen. Collins' vote in favor of the Ayotte amendment , which would have banned the use of civilian courts for many terrorism cases. Some more background from an ACLU prepared statement: The failure of the Ayotte amendment...should be a wake-up call to anyone who still thinks there is...
Collins Watch - Oct 21
Cross posted at Dirigo Blue Brenda Peluso is the Director of Public Policy for the Maine Association of Nonprofits , whose mission is to "strengthen the leadership, voice, and organizational effectiveness of our state's nonprofits so that they can better enrich the quality of community and personal life in Maine." Members of the Association include Affinity, the Augusta Food Bank, Catholi...
DailyKos (Maine) - Oct 18
Last March, Maine Gov. Paul LePage ordered the removal of the History of Labor in Maine mural from the lobby of the Maine Department of Labor. Judy Taylor had been commissioned in late 2007 to create and install the mural , which she did the following year. LePage also ordered then names of eight conference rooms be changed , rooms named after former Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and lab...
DailyKos (Maine) - Oct 17
We're excited to announce the 2012 Margaret Chase Smith Journalism Award competition. The $100 award, named after an American who spoke uncomfortable truths to powerful people, will go to a Maine journalist with the fortitude to press elected officials to answer difficult, important questions. For the 2012 round, the award will be given to the first Maine-based reporter who asks Sen. Snowe or ...
Collins Watch - Oct 14
In spite of no votes from Sen. Collins and Sen. Snowe, the nomination of Alison Nathan to US District Court was approved today by the US Senate. She will become only the second "out" lesbian to serve in the federal judiciary. It's not clear why Collins opposed the nomination--there's no explanatory press release on her website as of this writing. But given her support for truly fringe Bush adm...
Collins Watch - Oct 13 - 2 clicks
Sen. Collins, who played a pivotal role in shaping the largest Keynesian stimulus in US history just three years ago, has voted to block even a debate on the administration's jobs bill: Collins said, the administration's "take it or leave it" proposition in an effort to score political points persuaded her to vote against the bill. She added that the administration also changed the bill to reta...
Collins Watch - Oct 11
After Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren noted--in response to a debate question referencing Sen. Scott Brown's (R-MA) nude Cosmopolitan centerfold--that she had "kept [her] clothes on" while paying for law school, Brown had a sharp, tart response: "Thank God ." Too bad it was classless, ugly and kind of icky. But that hasn't stopped Sen. Collins from coming to the aid of the Brown campaign's ...
Collins Watch - Oct 7
This is a very short diary. So, I turn on the local news (WMTD out of the Augusta area) because I want to see the local weather forecast (we're looking at frost in my area tonight). Things go to commercial. What do I see? "Tired of bank fees? Look in to one of Maine's many credit unions!" Not one commercial, but TWO before the weather. Just a bit more after the break... ...
DailyKos (Maine) - Oct 6
There's a lot of competition for most evil among the governors elected in 2010; there's no competition for biggest buffoon. That is and always has been Maine's Paul LePage, and in this video clip, Brian Williams offers him the chance to burnish that reputation. Naturally, burnish he does. Back when LePage was making headlines for having a labor history mural removed from Maine's De...
DailyKos (Maine) - Oct 6
There's been a noticeable improvement in the quality and diversity of political writing on BDN Op-Ed page in recent months. This piece from Nate Libby, director of the Maine Small Business Coalition, exemplifies the trend: Small-business owners know what's happening in our communities because we serve and employ the workers who make our local economies thrive. [...] Too often, we hear argumen...
Collins Watch - Oct 5
Sen. Collins, who has won plaudits and awards from several gay rights groups in recent months--and is slated to be honored by another prominent group next week --professes not to know how the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is affecting gay couples: When Metro Weekly spoke with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) about her views on the repeal of DOMA, the senator celebrated by many LGBT advocates fo...
Collins Watch - Sep 29
Prompted by an anonymous fax , last March Gov. Paul LePage ordered the removal of the History of Labor in Maine Mural from the Department of Labor building. It was later learned that the mural was packaged in crates and stored in a closet in the building. Here LePage responds to questions regarding his decision to remove the mural: On Monday, responding to a question f...
DailyKos (Maine) - Sep 28
A couple of months ago, in I Know Where All the Democrats Have Gone , I wrote: They've gone to Maine, where they've been working hard and long to convince Maine voters to reconsider their ban on marriage equality, and to undo their state's new law forbidding same-day voter registration. And now we have some awesome news on the marriage equality front. The folks from EqualityMaine , WhyMa...
DailyKos (Maine) - Sep 28
Despite the fact that it looked like Republicans in the state legislature were going to pass a partisan map by a simple majority, an 11th hour deal was struck with legislative Democrats. The map they agreed to was passed just today and received over 2/3rds support in both chambers of the state legislature, staving off the potential for a people's veto movement and court challenge...
DailyKos (Maine) - Sep 27
Paul LePage, voter registration slacker. Out of Maine comes a prototypical Republicans being Republicans story . AUGUSTA, Maine—Members of the coalition hoping to restore same-day voter registration in Maine released information early Tuesday detailing legislators who voted to eliminate same-day registration but registered to vote on or near Election Day themselves.[...] The names of le...
DailyKos (Maine) - Sep 27
Jonathan Shenkin, former president of the Maine Dental Association, on potato consumption and childrens health : Our senators' argument, which appears to have originated with the potato industry, is that the potato is full of nutrients. In a recent press release, Snowe detailed all the healthful components of the potato, but neglected to mention its established association with obesity. Colli...
Collins Watch - Sep 23
The Center for American Progess isn't happy with Sen. Collins On September 12, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and 20 of her colleagues introduced the Regulatory Time-Out Act, S. 1538. This bill would establish a one-year moratorium on regulations from the executive branch and independent regulatory agencies... This moratorium would halt the implementation of rules to reduce mercury, dioxin, and oth...
Collins Watch - Sep 23 - 3 clicks
Charlie Summers, Secretary of State of Maine, has made a big deal of supposed widespread fraud in voting by Maine college students. At the instigation of the state's Republican party, he conducted an investigation into whether masses of college students were voting twice, both at college and at their home addresses, and whether non-citizens were voting. Summers just released the findings o...
DailyKos (Maine) - Sep 21
Way back in 2008--in the middle of a re-election campaign--Sen. Collins supported raising taxes on people with annual income of more than $1 million. Here she is this week : Collins said she favors overhauling the tax code and hiking taxes on the extremely wealthy, perhaps people making $5 million a year or more. Seems like something of a moving target, no? ...
Collins Watch - Sep 15 - 3 clicks
The junior senator will back the debt ceiling plan: While this plan is not perfect, it is a step in the right direction. It averts default, puts real controls on spending, makes significant reductions in our long-term debt, protects Social Security, and provides much-needed certainty to our job creators. ...
Collins Watch - Aug 2
