Monthly Archives: October 2017

Opposing Medicaid expansion is not a conservative position

Gov. Paul LePage’s opposition to Medicaid expansion is one of the most destructive acts of his tenure in office — denying healthcare to 70,000 low-income Mainers purely out of spite. And it’s predicated on a series of logical fallacies that should make his allegedly conservative followers cringe with embarrassment. Here’s the most obvious one: If […]

Democrats could have demanded accountability at DHHS. They caved instead.

Maine Democrats had an opportunity to start correcting a grievous wrong last week. A federal report showed Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services failed to investigate more than 15,000 suspected cases of abuse, neglect, and medication error within the state’s Adult Protective Services (APS) division, including the deaths of 133 developmentally disabled adults. Acting […]

Shawn Moody: Expedient Republican

Shawn Moody considers himself an independent, but he’s joining the Republican Party anyway. “Looking at it from a realistic standpoint, there is not an independent party in Maine,” Moody told the Portland Press Herald. “It turned out to be a handicap in 2010. I didn’t have a political party to support me.” That’s a heck […]

Money stands in the way of fixing the mass shooting problem

A gunman murdered 58 people in Las Vegas last week. Another horrible tragedy, another senseless body count, and another collective shoulder-shrug about how to end this madness. As another BDN columnist, Matthew Gagnon, said in the aftermath, “there is very little, if anything, we can really do to stop it.” If it strikes you as […]

On health care, LePage is out of his league

In 1969, a University of Southern California professor named Laurence Peter authored the concept, commonly referred to as “The Peter Principle,” that describes the experience of many promising, upwardly-mobile workers who end up promoted beyond their abilities — promoted to the level of their own incompetence. As we watch our governor, Paul LePage, inject himself […]