Articles
Why Did Norm Olsen lose the DMR post?
Last month, Gov. Paul LePage appointed Patrick Keliher as the new commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, nearly six months after the fiery resignation of the previous commissioner, Norman Olsen. Mr. Keliher’s appointment wasn’t surprising; he’s been deputy commissioner since 2007 and acting commissioner since Mr. Olsen’s July 20th departure, and may represent reassuring
Portland’s Cruise Ship Terminal Opens For Real
Last month, Portland celebrated the opening of a deepwater pier that finally allows large cruise ships to tie up at its three-and-a-half-year old, $27 million passenger terminal on the eastern waterfront. At the ribbon-cutting, the political class turned out in force to bask in the camera lamps, including Gov. Paul LePage, city mayor Nicholas Mavodones,
How the Civil War Made the Maine Coast a Backwater
For the past 125 years or so, outsiders have been coming to our coast precisely because of its unspoiled, under-populated, and surprisingly un-industrialized and undeveloped landscape. Our coast—unique to the seaboard of the northeastern U.S.—has been a backwater, a place people come to get away from it all, rather than in pursuit of economic opportunity.
Not So Public Testimony
This spring, state legislators were asked to do a favor for Jack DeCoster, the Turner-based egg magnate. A bill sponsored by Rep. Dale Crafts (R-Lisbon) proposed to relieve Mr. DeCoster of the requirement to pay his workers minimum wage or overtime or to allow them to unionize. The proposal was later scaled back to nix
Two novels present Maine, the way life is
There was a time not long ago when Maine literature-or, more accurately, literature about Maine-was largely written by and for people from away. Transplants or seasonal visitors like E.B. White, Louise Dickinson Rich and Henry David Thoreau wrote of our state, land and people with the adoration that comes with falling in love with someplace
LePage nominates fisherman/diplomat to head DMR
Maine’s struggling ports get some gifts
Maine was once a major player in maritime commerce, building ships, shipping resources, and competing with Boston and Halifax for dominance in the trans-Atlantic trade. Now our ports count themselves lucky if they still shelter an inshore fishing fleet. The decline has been a century in the making, with places like Portland losing their markets
Parallel 44: Origins of the Mass Effect
Fellow Mainers: ever wonder why it is that if a car cuts you off on the highway and it just happens to have Massachusetts plates our reaction is so much more intense than if they’d been from Ohio or Vermont? And why is it that, in an effort to upset southern Mainers, Northern Maine secessionist
Parallel 44: Portland stanches bleeding at cruise ship terminal
For once, I’ve got some positive news to report from Portland’s eastern waterfront. Regular readers are well aware of the cruise ship-related shenanigans here: how city officials used obviously flawed economic assumptions to gain approval for the building of a new $20 million cruise ship terminal, leaving city taxpayers on the hook for a potential
Parallel 44: Resisting democracy
One of America’s less pleasant political traditions has been the effort to ensure ordinary people don’t get too much say in the process. Among the Founding Fathers there was little disagreement over the desirability of keeping the elite in control, which is why most states forbid poor people to vote, persons of modest means from