In the coming days, the state of Maine has an opportunity to pay back the debt owed to our hospitals and contain the rising costs of health care for our people and hospitals. The Legislature will be sending Governor Paul LePage a bill to pay back Maine’s hospitals and to accept federal health care dollars to cover nearly 70,000 Maine people. It’s an offer he shouldn’t refuse.

Democrats have put forward a comprehensive plan that not only pays the debt; we make sure we don’t get back here in the future. Maine’s hospital debt is a symptom of our high health care costs.

As a family physician, I can tell you first hand that when people without insurance get sick, they often end up getting care in the emergency room — where it is most costly. The cost of that care is often picked up by hospitals in the form of “charity care” and then passed on to anyone with private insurance.

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The following are President Barack Obama’s remarks on the Affordable Care Act, made last Friday:
THE PRESIDENT: Moms take care of us. (Baby cries.) Yes, see? (Laughter.) Case in point. Sick kids, aging parents, grumpy husbands. And I know there are lots of moms out there who often go without the care that they need, or the checkups they know they should get, because they’re worrying that co-pay has to go to gas, or groceries, or the new soccer uniform instead. Or worse, they know the unfairness of being charged more for their health care just because they’re a woman, or the stress of trying to manage a family budget when health care costs are impinging on it, or trying to insure a sick child only to be told “no” over and over again.

So we decided that needed to change. In a country as wealthy as this one, there was no reason why a family’s security should be determined by the chance of an illness or an accident. We decided to do something about it.

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Last year, more than 4,000 Mainers were turned away from Maine’s community colleges. More than 200,000 Mainers started college but left before they completed their degree. And, within a decade, 4,000 jobs could go unfilled if Mainers aren’t trained in high-demand fields like information technology and precision manufacturing. This is just some of the news lawmakers in Augusta learned about the state of Maine’s workforce and business needs.

When we were on the campaign trail, we heard Mainers say that they want to be able go to work, pay their bills, and enjoy their family—and know, that we, as lawmakers, are doing our job— by working together to get results and move Maine forward.
 
And that is why, four months ago, a new legislative committee was formed to find solutions to close the skills gap and address the workforce needs of our businesses.From the start, lawmakers on this committee got to work in partnership with economic, education, business, and labor leaders from across our state. United in our goal, we sought to target our investments in a way that would strengthen the backbone of our economy: Maine workers and small businesses. Just this week, we celebrated an achievement for our state.

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Every frog has his day. The following reviews were published in the April edition of Military Times

“American Sniper” and “No Easy Day” each has been on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list for 25 weeks, which, coincidentally, is the time allotted to complete the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training course.
“Damn Few” just made the list, and its author “becomes at least the seventh veteran of the Navy SEALs to have a best seller since Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011,” says The Times.
The Times’ seal of approval means traditionally secretive SEALs have public shelf life.

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Tom Niemann in 2007, speaking at the transfer of the Arsonal property from the state to Niemann Captiol and partners. Neimann just announce a new partnership which, he says, will redevelop the entire 5 building complex. Photo by Ramona du Houx

Maine’s historic downtowns, community life, and its wonderful people drew me in like a magnet the very first time I visited. I grew up in awe of great architecture. Whenever I went downtown with my family, we would visit stores and talk with the owners and friends, while just doing our everyday tasks. The grand historic downtown buildings added to the united community atmosphere, which has a timeless value. Renovating historic buildings became my passion and has given me the opportunity to help revitalize that way of life in North Carolina and Maine.

That passion is manifest in a new project and a new partner I’m announcing here.

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April 27, 2013, The Great Degrader
I’ve been focused on economic policy lately, so I sort of missed the big push to rehabilitate Bush’s image; also, as a premature anti-Bushist who pointed out how terrible a president he was back when everyone else was praising him as a Great Leader, I’m kind of worn out on the subject.

But it does need to be said: he was a terrible president, arguably the worst ever, and not just for the reasons many others are pointing out.

From what I’ve read, most of the pushback against revisionism focuses on just how bad Bush’s policies were, from the disaster in Iraq to the way he destroyed FEMA, from the way he squandered a budget surplus to the way he drove up Medicare’s costs. And all of that is fair.

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Majority Leader Rep. Seth Berry wants to help jobs grow as he and others on the bipartisan workforce committee look to improve higher education, Maine’s downtown communities and small business opportunities. Photo by Ramona du Houx

A budget should reflect our values. That’s why it’s so hard to stomach the budget Gov. Paul LePage is proposing. Maine needs a budget that helps grow our economy from the middle out and allows the middle class to prosper. The governor takes a top-down approach that hurts our elderly, our youth, our small businesses and our middle class. These are not the values of the Maine I know and grew up in.

When the governor unveiled his two-year budget three months ago, he passed the buck to Maine communities and their local taxpayers. He tried to wash his hands of responsibility even as he handed Maine taxpayers a bill for four-hundred-and-twenty-five million dollars. Democrats have been working ever since to prevent the governor from unloading the biggest tax shift in Maine history onto our state’s taxpayers.

A lot of bad ideas went into the governor’s budget. He wants to cut the funds that communities need to keep their roads from crumbling. He cuts important property tax reduction measures, like the Circuit Breaker, that many Mainers rely on. He’s pushing new costs onto local school districts. He even decided to cut a program that helps elderly Mainers afford their prescription drugs.

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by FinerMinds Team
15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy

Here is a list of 15 things, which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and you’ll feel much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress and suffering – and instead of letting them all go and allowing ourselves to be stress-free and happy, we cling on to them.

Well, not anymore. Starting today, we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Ready? Here we go!

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By Gerald Weinand of Dirigo Blue

Laura Boyett, Director of Unemployment at the Maine Department of Labor, wrote in an email to a colleague that she is preparing analysis regarding the state opting out of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program (EUC).

The EUC is a federal program that provides additional benefits to unemployed persons after their initial benefits have run out, currently for up to an additional 37 weeks. Compensation is fully funded by the federal government including administration costs incurred by states.

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