Maine Democratic Party

The GOP and the Maine Hospital Association lobbyist are not having a good week. Paul LePage, lacking any other issues to talk about in which the public agrees with him, has demagogued to death the repayment of the debt owed to Maine hospitals – despite the fact that everyone agrees with him. In response, Democrats in the Legislature decided to one-up LePage’s commitment to hospitals by both repaying them almost $500 million and saving them about $200 million more. They are doing this through the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, something that GOP Governors around the country have accepted. The hospitals and some GOP in Maine have already stated they want to do this, too. So what’s the problem?

I don’t know how much more of this I can take from the Maine media when it comes to the Punditocracy. My problems with Alan Caron’s weekly column are legion, and this week is no exception. However, there have been other semi-recent developments that have added to my Daily Outrage – and should for you, too. While I applaud the PPH and BDN for increasing the volume of their online/blogging presence, I’m fairly well astounded that they’ve given over space to Matt Gagnon, Bruce Poliquin and Scott Moody.

I'm at a loss like most people about how to respond to Monday's events. Underneath the rage, the pain, the shock...we find ourselves once again staring at the abyss of trying to understand an event that may not be understandable. The people involved in the response certainly demonstrated heroic courage, as all can see in the multitude of video available. Our capacity for embracing what is common among all people was once again on display in large ways and small, from coast to coast, and surely in many places around the world.