Donald Trump and maga Republicans must release the Epstein Files because they said the would do it but then reneged

 Why Donald Trump can’t escape the Epstein files

Barbara S. Held is Barry N. Wish Professor of Psychology and Social Studies emerita at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. 

Donald Trump reneged on his vow to release the Epstein files

The admonition “Do as I say, not as I do” has been used by parents forever, to no avail. And it’s not helping Donald Trump get MAGAs past the Epstein files either. (Or, another way to think about it is "what goes around comes around".)

Diverse explanations for MAGA’s fixation on Jeffrey Epstein abound. David French of The New York Times called it key to “their indictment of America’s so-called ruling class.” 

Amanda Marcotte of Salon pointed to MAGA’s need for “moral absolution” after accepting Trump’s sexually abusive behavior. 

Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic said the “sexual abuse of underage girls is more visceral than more abstract harms of, say, taking away peoples’ access to health insurance.”

Yet, most agree that Trump’s reneging on his promise of transparency about Epstein intel contributes substantially to the uproar. 

Having spent years marinated in Trump’s conspiracy theories, MAGAs are addicted — they can’t let go of Epstein despite Trump’s saying “nothing to see here” and now making outrageous claims to change the subject. There’s even a self-help group for addicted MAGAs, Leavingmaga.org, whose mission statement could have come straight from Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Essentially, MAGAs lost their identities to Trump’s lies, as alcoholics have to drink. Many MAGAs are doing as Trump always does with conspiracy theories — holding tight to their truth. Though to their credit, many aren’t doing what he says they should, namely, move on from Epstein.

Trump and his Department of Justice appointees touted the Epstein conspiracy theory when it benefited them. 

But now even Trump is being called out by some MAGAs for his “ultimate betrayal.” As Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online maintained on Bannon’s WarRoom, “You [Trump] trained us to go after this issue” — meaning a “full excavation” of all the Epstein evidence. 

Right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk requested transparency more politely: “The way that you taught us is that we need to go after the rogue intel agencies. … We are your students in dismantling the deep state.” MAGAs want Trump to act like he did before the DOJ memo claiming that investigations “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” What happened to that Trump, the guy who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t push relentlessly? As Billy Joel sang, “Don’t go changing.” Missing from explanations for Trump’s reversal is one that’s overlooked, and it goes back to the famous 1961 Bobo Doll experiment conducted by social psychologist Albert Bandura. Bandura investigated “whether children learn aggressive behaviors through observing adults.” Children were assigned to one of three conditions: observing an adult who punched a bobo doll, observing an adult who didn’t punch a bobo doll, and a bobo doll with no adult present. He found that children who observed aggression displayed significantly more aggression afterward. 

So too, MAGAs are emulating the actions of their favorite role model, Trump, who like Bandura’s bobo dolls always bounced back when struck — until now. 

This means he might have become a different person. They therefore need reassurance that he’s still their guy, fighting the “deep state” on behalf of “truth” and “justice.” But now he’s got a well-earned identity crisis in their eyes👀: His withholding Epstein evidence speaks louder than his Dems-did-it words. Trump has therefore put himself in a lose-lose situation: If the Epstein files don’t come out, the conspiracy theories will likely persist. And if they do come out, the conspiracy theories will likely persist. That’s because even if Trump isn’t implicated in them, his base won’t be satisfied with any amount of intelligence. After all, as Trump has insisted endlessly, there’s always hidden government malfeasance we must defeat, no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented. That’s what makes conspiracy theories so resistant to evidence. Conspiracy theories aren’t born of fact, and they don’t die of fact. 

If they do die, it’s because their believers move on to another one, which Trump readily supplies (see Obama committed treason💢💥❗). As long as MAGAs keep buying Trump’s theories American democracy  remains on the endangered-species list.

Too few nurses to hire: hospitals are maxed out and staffing ratios will harm access to care

Mandated staffing ratios may not solve the complex issues facing hospitals and nurses.  Echo editorial opinion:

As the Bangor Daily News Editorial Board talked to nurses who support legislation to mandate staffing ratios and a representative of hospitals, which oppose the bill, a system in crisis was agreed on.

As people have become sicker, and mental health and substance use disorder needs go untreated, hospitals — particularly emergency rooms — have become increasingly dangerous and unpleasant places to work.

Both groups agree that this crisis needs immediate attention. They also agree more nurses are needed in hospitals and other health care settings. They disagree on how best to accomplish this.

The Maine State Nurses Association supports LD 1639, which would mandate specific ratios of registered nurses to patients. For example, one-on-one care would be required in operating rooms and intensive care units. Nurses could care for four patients receiving pre-surgical and rehabilitative care.

The bill is sponsored by Senator Stacy Brenner, D-Scarborough, who worked as a nurse-midwife.

“The bill … accomplishes two primary goals: increasing patient safety and encouraging nurse retention,” she said in a press release.

“The care and touch of a knowledgeable and dedicated nurse in those times when you are feeling most vulnerable greatly increases patient satisfaction, dignity, and the overall perception of their hospital experience,” she added. “This is a bill for everyone. But, most especially, this is a bill for bedside nurses.”

Brenner (who was a midwife) and other nurses spoke about their increasing frustration with working long, and sometimes unpredictable hours, while worrying that their patients were not getting the care they need and deserve.

This stress is understandably wearing on nurses, prompting many to leave the profession.

This situation is unsustainable, Cokie Giles, who has worked as a nurse at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor for 34 years, told us. There is not a nurse shortage, Giles, who is the president of the Maine State Nurses Association, told us. Rather, there is a shortage of nurses willing to work under current conditions.

And here is the crux of the problem. While studies have found that patients have better health outcomes when nurses care for fewer patients, there are, unfortunately, economic and human resource realities to consider.

There are already 1,500 nursing vacancies, according to Jeff Austin of the Maine Hospital Association. The association estimates that another 1,000 nurses would be needed to meet the standards in Brenner’s bill.

We are skeptical that requiring fewer patients per nurse will solve the many reasons driving people to leave the nursing profession or choose not to work in hospitals. Many nurses now work as traveling nurses, which typically pays more than being on staff at a hospital, or work in medical offices that don’t have the stress and chaos of a hospital, which must take any patients that show up at their door.

At a time when Maine already has a nursing shortage, we are concerned this bill would make the situation worse without addressing the underlying causes of worsening conditions in hospitals in Maine, and across the country. This could mean that hospitals would have to close units and deny care if they couldn’t hire enough nurses to meet the mandates in LD 1639. This could be one reason that no state, except California, has adopted broad nurse staffing ratios like these. Massachusetts has mandated nurse staffing ratios for intensive care units.

Without more mental health beds, for example, too many patients are spending time — often weeks or even months — in hospital emergency rooms. This is horrible for the patients and the medical care caring for them. Solving problems like this requires a much larger commitment — namely funding — from the state to grow the availability of mental health services.

This is just one of the significant and complex issues facing hospitals. That is not to say that hospitals, and other medical practices, should not invest more in improving working conditions. They (hospitals) cannot, however, hire more workers if those workers don’t exist.

Republican party needs a reset - Echo opinion

Opinion echo published in the Bangor Daily News.

Kurt Bardella is a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project. He is a former aide to California Republican Reps. Darrell Issa and Brian Bilbray and former Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Kurt Bardella

https://bangordailynews.com/2021/01/01/opinion/contributors/its-never-too-late-for-republicans-to-leave-the-party/

There was a time when being a Democrat or a Republican was defined by your views about health care, abortion, gun control, taxes, education, foreign policy, etc.

Those days are over.

It was something to hear Sen. Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah and the party’s standard-bearer in 2012, tell CNN’s Jake Tapper on Dec. 20, “I represent a very small slice of the Republican Party today.” An obvious, but candid, acknowledgement.

As he explained, the party he knew as a young man — and even just eight years ago — is gone.

“We were a party concerned about balancing the budget. We believed in trade with other nations. We were happy to play a leadership role on the world stage, because we felt that made us safer and more prosperous. And we believed that character was essential in the leaders that we chose. We have strayed from that. I don’t see us returning to that for a long time.”

Yet, when asked whether he thinks about leaving the GOP, Romney — like other Republicans who say they are repulsed by Donald Trump’s takeover — declined. He said he would be more effective battling inside the party. But I venture that’s only part of the rationale.

As someone who left the Republican Party to become a Democrat for similar reasons, people often ask me how I could have stayed in the GOP after Trump won.

The truth is, changing your political identity is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. For a person in politics — for the thousands of elected officials, staffers, local party officials, the entire political class really — it means unplugging from everyone you know and the foundation of your professional and social life. Imagine spending years of your life building relationships with like-minded people, and then one day, deciding to start over.

When you work in politics, your party is your team and your career. No one goes into politics without loving that life. If anyone thinks it is easy to casually discard all that because it is “the right thing to do,” you honestly have no idea what doing so really means.

That’s why, when Trump took office, many in Republican circles clung to the belief that he could be steered or managed. That, despite the inflammatory words, and actions that littered the campaign, the adults in the room would be able to contain Trump and preserve the political goals of the Republican Party.

I went through that very cycle when I made the decision in 2017, to leave the GOP. In doing so, I had to accept that I might not work in professional politics ever again. Back then, there was no Lincoln Project and nowhere for a former Republican-turned-Democrat to land.

Three years later, the situation in our country is even more dire. Republican leaders refuse to stand up to Trump even now, and by staying silent, are actively aiding and abetting his deranged plot to steal the election and undermine the will of the people.

I appreciate where Romney is coming from, but there comes a point where an institution is so thoroughly broken it must be rebuilt someplace else. The party’s true platform has become a toxic combination of authoritarianism and white nationalism. Rebuilding the party will require dismantling it. And helping in that cause doesn’t mean becoming an independent or agitating for a third party.

In the American two-party system, it means joining the other side — the Democrats. Steve Schmidt, Lincoln Project co-founder and John McCain’s campaign manager in 2008, explained why in a recent interview. “At the end of the day, there’s now one pro-democracy political party in the United States of America and that’s the Democratic Party,” he said. “And I am a member of that party because of that. I’m a single-issue voter. I believe in American democracy.”

At the start of the Trump presidency, anti-Trumpers who identified as Republicans stayed with the team hoping that their policy positions would still form the basis of a Republican agenda. That experiment is over.

If you were a Republican because you believed in fiscal restraint, under Trump the debt and deficit have exploded. If you were a Republican because you believed the GOP was stronger on national and homeland security, just look at what Trump said recently in cynically downplaying Russia’s cyberattack against our country. If you are a Republican because you believe in law and order, examine the records of the corrupt people Trump just gave pardons and commutations to. If you are a Republican because you are pro-life, there are more than 340,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 to call into question the GOP’s commitment to the sanctity of life.

Whatever issue has kept you aligned with the Republican Party, it’s time to accept that none of those issues supersedes the welfare of our democracy. When your party takes leave of its senses and takes its lead from the delusional rantings of a conspiracy theorist, it’s time to switch teams.

America must move beyond Donald Trump's mismanaged failed administration!

"Sore-loserism!" #DonaldTrump

An echo opinion by Amy Fried published in the Bangor Daily News, a Maine newspaper. 

Donald Trump has generated one shock after another. First as a candidate, then as president, Trump tweeted nasty insults, promulgated conspiracy theories, mishandled the pandemic and the attendant recession, and empowered corrupt, incompetent cronies.

Dealing with these incessant hits has been like responding to a child who eats way too much sugar. Every additional morsel unleashes a whirling dervish, acting with abandon and no concern for others.

The latest jolt to our body politic is the news that Trump discussed unconstitutional means of staying in office after losing the presidential election — an imposition of martial law, seizing vote counting machines and rerunning the election. If that happened, the U.S. would be an autocracy, not a democratic republic.

A senior administration official quoted by Axios reporter Jonathan Swan warned, “it’s impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends” when Trump is “retweeting threats of putting politicians in jail, and spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal.”

In a never before needed statement, top Army leaders made it clear they won’t participate in a coup, saying, “There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”

Yet, this authoritarian sore-loserism yielded very little response from politicians.

Most likely they think Trump won’t try to use the military to stop Joe Biden from taking office. And some Republicans are still afraid of crossing Trump, because they don’t want to turn off Trump’s base.

(Maine Writer- Is Republican Senator Collins among these "flakes"?)

Deep tiredness is also part of the nonresponse to Trump’s latest flirtation with dictatorship. As political scientist Daniel Drenzer puts it, Trump has been the “toddler in-chief.” Because undisciplined toddlers require close attention and intervention, they are just very exhausting to be around.

As American politics recovers from Trump’s poisonous sugar high politics, three dynamics will drive it.

First, President-elect Biden brings a calmness to replace our frenetic recent reality. Biden doesn’t do name-calling and there are no tantrums. He’s not irritable, easily distracted or full of braggadocio.

It’s been comforting, really, to watch his events introducing Cabinet nominees. What we see is a grownup who works with other grownups, all of whom care about communicating and governing with quiet competence.

Take the event put together by the Biden transition last week to introduce his Climate Team. Between statements by Biden, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and individuals picked to serve in the incoming administration, listeners learned two sorts of things. One was the personal and professional lives of those selected.

But besides this inspiring, illuminating information, you could hear the administration’s strategic approach. For Biden and Harris, tackling climate change wasn’t a stand-alone concern. Rather, it was tied to health problems caused by pollution and disparities in which communities suffered from environmental damage, repairing frayed international relations, and creating millions of well-paying jobs.

Second, particularly if Mitch McConnell continues to control the U.S. Senate, passing Biden’s legislation will be exceedingly difficult. In the latest COVID bill, Republicans prioritized aid to corporations as Democrats focused on helping low-income and middle-class Americans.

Biden knows that. Barack Obama recalled in his memoir that “Biden told him of how McConnell had blocked one of his bills. When Biden tried to explain the bill’s merits, McConnell responded, ‘You must be under the mistaken impression that I care.’”

But Biden’s experience, knowledge and team will help him get some things done in Congress and through executive action. What we’ll see mostly is a slow, grinding policy process with some notable successes.

Third, Trump will lurk as a vocal observer and meddler. He’s tried to undermine the transition. If he again runs for president, he’ll freeze the race. Although his claims of non-existent voting fraud have been dismissed by the courts, most Republicans are believers.

But for most — who never approved of Trump’s job performance, didn’t back him in 2016 or 2020, and think Biden won this year’s election — Trump’s statements as a former president will just become part of the background noise.

And so Americans, recovering from the Trump era, will move on.

Senator Susan Collins nonsensical comments - echo blog

Bangor Daily News blog echo posted by University of Maine History Professor Howard Segal:

Senator Susan Collins:

She must think that most Maine voters are idiots

Is Collins serious in thinking that her long and growing list of ridiculous excuses for supporting President Trump AND his Judicial nominees fools most of us? True, the core members of the Collins cult would jump off a mountain if so ordered. But even their blind faith in her support for the GOP may have its limits.

If, to be sure, the late great social critic H.L. Mencken said that no one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American people, what might he have said about Collins’ nonsensical comments and speeches.

I love when Collins allegedly needs time to contemplate votes she had decided upon weeks ago.

“Our Senator” will not be able to walk back her right-wing politics for ever.

Impeachment witnesses were brave and credible - out did cowardly colleagues who will not yet submit "under oath"

"...everybody was in the loop, including the vice-president (Mike Pence), the secretary of state (Mike Pompeo) and White House acting Chief of Staff (Mick Mulvaney)..."- Fiona Hill.

The impeachment witnesses are the silver lining to this embarrassing chapter in our history

Echo opinion by Kathleen Parker published in the Bangor Daily News, a Maine newspaper.

Former White House national security aide Fiona Hill testified under oath before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington during a public impeachment hearing of Donald Trump's illegal efforts to tie U.S. aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents.

After fidgeting through five days of public hearings, a dozen witnesses and countless political pontificators, Americans should be gratified by the quality of the people who testified and who actually do the nation’s work abroad.

If there was a silver lining to an otherwise embarrassing chapter in our history, it was that we were able to meet and hear from those whose names aren’t well known except to their colleagues. To listen and observe was to have one’s faith restored in America’s image despite the withering damage suffered these past few years.

One after another, the men and women who testified, subjecting themselves to the sometimes-scurrilous scrutiny of political profilers, maintained their focus and their cool. It was grating to hear the screech of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, whose raised voice surely signaled a stretch-and-restroom break for many viewers. While we’re on the subject, can’t the man put on a blazer? Jordan appeared without one, putting in mind a teenager who refuses to play by his parents’ rules.

May I remind him and others that dress codes are intended to show respect for the occasion and for others in attendance. Surely, our congressional leaders owe their constituents — and, in this case, the process — the small personal sacrifice of dressing appropriately. To do otherwise is to telegraph to the world that you think you’re more important than everyone else. Jordan also proved that age and maturity can be mutually exclusive.

There, I got that off my chest. (Parents may clip for personal use.)

Quite apart from the question of whether Trump should be impeached, viewers of the hearings were privy to history and were beneficiaries of a primer on current events. Often lost in the drama of the impeachment proceedings is the profound importance of Ukraine as a buffer to a resurgent Russian empire. 

Trump’s withholding of $400 million in military funding from Ukraine during its war with Russia — pending assurances that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would at least say he’d investigate the Biden’s involvement with the gas company Burisma — put Ukrainian lives at risk and signaled to Russia that U.S. support of Ukraine was credibly iffy.

One of the pivotal questions during the hearings was whether America’s diplomatic corps understood that “Burisma” was actually code for the “Bidens,” meaning political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was employed by Burisma. Only two witnesses claimed not to have known about the connection. One was Kurt Volker, a former envoy to Ukraine, who later said he should have caught on sooner. The other was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, whose claim was deemed “not credible” by witness Fiona Hill, the National Security Council’s former senior director for Europe and Russia, and a standout in the lineup of witnesses.

At several junctures, Hill schooled House Intelligence Committee members about the significance of Ukraine and the perils of advancing the false claim that Ukraine and not Russia had interfered with the 2016 election. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” she said. Critical of partisan rancor, she beseeched members to “not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”

As for the inferred quid pro quo between Trump and Zelensky, Hill confirmed Sondland’s earlier testimony that “everybody was in the loop,” including the vice president, the secretary of state and the White House acting chief of staff.

While true that the administration under pressure did release the military-aid funds, without Zelensky’s public announcement of an investigation, which Trump had specifically requested, his intentions alone created problems for those serving in Ukraine. In Hill’s words: “[Sondland] was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security, foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged.”

Whether Donald Trump is impeached remains to be seen. But the shame of his highly irregular behavior in seeking political favors from a foreign entity is softened somewhat by the pride one can feel in our diplomats, experts and fact witnesses to whom we are beholden for their good grace.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for The Washington Post. 

Hill’s testimony jibed with earlier testimony by acting Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor that there was a regular policy executed by the diplomatic corps and a “highly irregular” policy run by Rudy “Hand Grenade” Giuliani, whose legacy as former New York City mayor, we should note, has definitively expired.

"....and our Flag was still there....." Freeport Maine Flag Ladies

An echo blog published in the Bangor Daily News, written by blogger Michael Cianchette

 Maine’s own “Freeport Flag Ladies” have decided to retire.

The end of an era is upon us.

For 18 years, the Freeport (Maine) Flag Ladies spent at least one day, every week, standing along Route 1, through Freeport. 

They weren’t pushing a political message or advocating for partisan policy positions. Instead, they simply wanted to demonstrate love for their country and demonstrate their patriotism.

There is something noble in its simplicity. The American flag hoisted proudly, in rain or shine. A message to the world that, no matter what trials we undergo, we shall remain. After the twin towers fell on September 11, 2001, Francis Scott Key’s words rang anew: the flag was still there.  (The Star Spangled Banner)

JoAnn Miller, Elaine Greene and Carmen Footer

The flag has a particular resonance in the world today. For those of us here, it sometimes feels like things are falling apart. The political warfare in Washington DC, between partisan camps, fills headlines, online and over the air. The actual warfare between white supremacists and “Antifa” (political protests) spills violence into our streets.

But the flag — and the idea of America — means more. For weeks on end, Hong Kong has been gripped in the throes of civil unrest. Protestors have struck back against an encroaching Chinese imperium. In the midst of it all, the Hongkongers waved the American flag and sang the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The flag — and the ideals for which it stands — was still there.

Which brings us back to the Freeport Flag Ladies. The power of symbolism was readily apparent. It served as a rallying cause for disparate groups. Every political leader wanted to stand with them, outside of the iconic L.L. Bean. 

What they did was the right thing to do.

Since the three ladies started standing with their flags shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has entered two “big” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ve also been brought into “smaller” wars in Libya and Syria, among others. Men and women with the American flag proudly displayed on their right arm, stars forward to reflect an advance, went forward to do their jobs on behalf of their nation. And, in most cases, our flag is still there.

Its worth remembering as America considers its future on the world stage. On Nov. 3, 2020, ballots will be cast for president by people who were not yet born on Sept. 11, 2001. The twin towers are a memory they received from a world which existed before them. And 34-year-old Sgt. First Class Elis A. Barreto Ortiz lost his life in Afghanistan on Sept. 5, in an effort that has literally been in existence for the entirety of their lives.

However, while Hongkongers wave the American flag in hopes that American values may be maintained, the Afghan people had the opposite experience. The Taliban government in Kabul, seizing power after the Soviet withdrawal in the 1980s, placed most of the country under a totalitarian regime. When American forces arrived, the Afghan people had a new chance at life.

Since the Freeport Flag Ladies began their watch, Afghanistan has joined the modern world — 84% of Afghans support women’s education, while 61% are satisfied with democratic freedoms. The biggest problems facing young Afghans are a lack of jobs and schools, not a multitude of beheadings.

That all happened because the American flag — inextricably tied to Americans themselves — found its way to Afghanistan. There are plenty of political and policy conversations to have concerning our role in the world. How much blood and treasure should we invest abroad, versus deploying at home? It is a real question with no clear answer.

But, whatever answer we come up with, our American flag will follow, both here and on foreign shores. So, even if the Freeport  (Maine) Flag Ladies will not be holding the Stars and Stripes aloft weekly, their efforts have inspired countless others. The flag will still fly in Freeport, and Hong Kong, and Afghanistan. And wherever it is, there our ideals will be.

Maine legislature must fix the mis-information about citizens veto election date

What a mess! 

Maine secretary of state gave people’s veto efforts bad guidance on election date- Bangor Daily News by Michael Shepherd. Following the publication of this article, the Bangor Daily News published an editorial to support the groups that are looking to overturn the Secretary of State's wrong advice.  

AUGUSTA, Maine — Leaders of three efforts to overturn major laws passed by Maine’s Democratic-led Legislature said they’re considering “all options” — including a referendum and lawsuits — after getting inconsistent guidance on the timing of a people’s veto election.

The office of Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, a Democrat, told the Bangor Daily News last month, if the recall efforts made the ballot, the election would be in March 2020, because of a constitutional provision slating people’s veto efforts for the next statewide election.

Proponents of the effort said Dunlap’s office told them at the outset of their campaigns, that the election would be held in June. 

There’s a major difference between the two, since March is when Democrats will hold Maine’s new presidential primary. With Donald Trump facing no serious Republican primary threat, the electorate in March would be dominated by Democrats.

They would be unlikely to back the people’s veto efforts, which would mostly rely on conservatives who favor repealing laws passed in 2019, to allow doctors to prescribe (suicide) life-ending medication to terminally ill patients, allow abortions to be funded with state Medicaid money and end nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine requirements (and others).

Backers of those campaigns met with Dunlap on Thursday, where he took responsibility for the unclear guidance given by his office. He said later in the day that his office did not account for the new primary law — which passed at the end of the legislative session in June — when giving the guidance days later. His office’s stance is that the election will be in March.

People's veto process in Maine hits an unforeseen glitch: Calls for March 2020 correction

This election ruling, about a date based on Maine's newly enacted primary law, was not properly communicated to civic leaders. 

Groups are already working on people's vetoes- especially to recall the laws passed about Medicaid funded abortion (L.D. 820) and physician assisted suicide (LD 1313).  Therefore, there should be legislative action to solve the glitch about the date for the recalls election, at least for the upcoming primary in March 2020. 

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State must promulgate policies to put in place for future people's vetoes processes. This editorial board echo position by the Bangor Daily News explains the problem and the proposed solution: 

Maine's legislature must fix this problem for March 2020, because, otherwise, the electorate will be overwhelmingly Democratic in response to the presidential primary and thereby suppress a balanced response to the recalls of several Republican supported initiatives.  

BANGOR, Maine- The Maine Secretary of State’s Office made a significant mistake when it gave inaccurate guidance to groups involved with current people’s veto efforts.

Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, a Democrat, has rightly taken responsibility for this situation — a situation that is somewhat understandable given the complexity of the matter at hand, but nevertheless unacceptable.

Organizers behind several of these separate people’s veto efforts, which in total aim to overturn 12 of the new laws passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, were incorrectly told by Dunlap’s office that if they received enough signatures for their petitions by the mid-September deadline, they would likely have their veto efforts on the ballot next June.

The State Constitution sets ballot-qualifying people’s vetoes for the next statewide election. People’s veto organizers would have needed to submit their signatures by early August in order to get their veto on the ballot this November. Dunlap says he and his staff failed to initially realize that Maine’s new presidential primary system, created this legislative session by a billsubmitted on behalf of the Secretary of State’s office, means that the next statewide election after November is actually in March, not June.

“Honest to God, it just never occurred to us,” Dunlap told the Bangor Daily News, about the impact the presidential primaries law is now having on people’s veto efforts, noting that the presidential primary discussion had focused on the mechanics and timing of switching from caucuses to primaries.

“I felt really, really bad for them,” he said about current people’s veto organizers and the realization that they received inaccurate guidance, describing them as now being “caught in a headlock here”, as they face the prospect of trying to pass Republican-leaning veto efforts during a primary election that is expected to be dominated by Democratic participation.

Carroll Conley, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, said in an interview with the BDN how the inaccurate guidance factored in to his group’s calculus of whether to try to rush and collect signatures to make it on the November ballot, or take the extra time and instead plan on a June election. With the wrong information they received, the League and other groups didn’t have a chance to evaluate the choice between November and March.

“We are not crying conspiracy here,” Conley said of the incorrect guidance, while acknowledging the difficult situation it presents. “I think it totally blindsided everybody.”

Conley emphasized that he was speaking only on behalf of the Christian Civic League, which is just one of several groups working on veto efforts. He said his group still plans to keep collecting signatures, realizes that a March election is likely should it collect enough and hopes there can be some sort of remedy to the unexpected timing issue.

This is an undoubtedly unfair, seemingly unprecedented complication for the organizers. According to the Secretary of State’s office, Maine did not have a people’s veto occur during the state’s brief previous experience with presidential primaries in 1996 and 2000.

There is a very good argument to be made that citizen’s initiatives and people’s vetoes should appear on the ballot at consistent, expected times when more people are likely to participate regardless of party affiliation.

That does not mean, however, that this timing mistake amounts to voter disenfranchisement, as some Maine Republicans have tried to suggest. People may be less likely to participate in this March election, but there is nothing stopping or impeding them from doing so. That is not disenfranchisement.

As an editorial board, we argued in favor of several of the new laws — including “ death with dignity,” vaccination and abortion access laws — that people are working to overturn with these vetoes. We almost surely will argue against some of the vetoes should they make it on the ballot. But those policy disagreements come later. This moment is about ensuring a fair and consistent process.

The important thing now is to move toward a solution to resolve this problem of election timing, which both Dunlap and a Republican legislator called an “unintended consequence” of the new presidential primary law. Another complication is that one of the current veto efforts seeks to overturn this new law.

In the meantime, Rep. Patrick Corey, R-Windham, is working on legislation with the aim of changing the presidential primary law to remove the word “election” and specify that people’s vetoes and citizen’s initiatives won’t be included in those primaries.

Dunlap said his office’s impression is that such a move may require a state constitutional change, but Corey sees it differently.

“We created the problem with statute,” Corey told the BDN. “I think we should be able to fix it with statute.”

Corey seems appropriately focused on the “process concern” here and not the politics.

“What we owe the people of Maine here is a conversation about getting this right — whatever that means,” Dunlap told the BDN.

The right thing for all involved here is to wade through the admittedly complicated procedural and constitutional layers and try to find a way to address this unintended consequence — not only in fairness to the existing people’s veto efforts and the people working on them, but for the integrity of the process moving forward.

Donald Trump policies create more crises than they solve because no strategy exists

An echo blog published in the Bangor Daily News by Gordon L. Weil, a former local, state, national and international organization official. He is an author and newspaper columnist.

TRUMP- “Whack-a-mole” is an arcade game that’s an exercise in futility. It has come to mean that each time you try to solve a problem, another problem pops up.

In the original game, players would hit the mole on the head, forcing it back into its hole. Another would pop up, and players had to move fast to hit each new one. 

Satisfaction from whacking each mole did not last long.

So, that's like much of American policy under Donald Trump. His strategy is like playing Whack-a-mole. In trying to fulfill his campaign promises, each problem that Trump attacks just leads to creating another.

Take China. It pursues unfair trade policies and has a trade surplus with the U.S. It also steals American trade secrets and forces U.S. companies to turn them over, if they want to do business in the huge Chinese market.

Trump whacked China by raising tariffs on its exports, a move reducing trade by making their goods more expensive. He believes that will bring them to the bargaining table, where the U.S. can win concessions.

But higher tariffs raise prices for American consumers. U.S. agriculture loses markets in China when it retaliates by increasing its own tariffs and buys elsewhere. The trade deficit with China has grown a little worse, according to official statistics.

More moles. Quit the Trans Pacific Partnership and lose allies opposing China and farm exports to Japan. Meet with the North Korean leader without result, but boost his international standing. Force a North American trade deal, creating hostility with neighbors.

Taxes are too high, stifling economic development, Trump says. They should be cut, notably for the middle class and for business, which will invest the money with the profits yielding offsetting tax revenues. Smack that mole.

In 2017, the GOP lowered taxes on the biggest taxpayers, also supposedly the biggest investors. It also allowed corporations to bring foreign profits home and cut the corporate tax rate.

But the tax bill’s economic effect faded by 2019. Corporations used added funds to buy back their stock and increase executive pay, with only a portion going into new productive capacity. Federal debt grew faster than the promised new tax revenues. That’s the new mole.


Or immigration, Trump’s signature issue. He warned that Mexican gangsters and rapists were streaming into the U.S. Building a wall, paid for by Mexico, would end the problem. Meanwhile, separating immigrant families is stepped up, supposedly to serve as a deterrent. (Trumpzi report: He has said, at least 20 times, that Mexico would pay for the stupid immigration wall- "not!")

But keeping his promise depended on Congress and Mexico, and neither agreed with him. Immigrants arrived in even higher numbers. They were not Mexicans, but mostly from Central America and Africa. Instead of U.S. aid to slow the flow at the source, it was cut. Americans were shocked by immigrant family separations.

Undeterred, Trump promised to sweep up millions of undocumented immigrants and deport them. But his immigration agencies were caught by surprise and were unready for the task. The president backed off, saying he wouldn’t carry out the threat if the Democrats agreed to his demands to change the immigration laws.

The mole: Iran. The nuclear deal with Iran was unsatisfactory, because 15 years later Iran could choose to resume its production of nuclear fuel. Also, the deal did not halt Iran’s aggressive moves in the Middle East.

The U.S. withdrew from the deal and has put strong economic pressure on European participants to force them to stop buying Iranian oil. No direct talks with Iran.

Iran announced that, if the U.S. stops its oil exports, it will restart nuclear fuel development that would have been forestalled under the deal. The situation became more tense than it was under the now-rejected agreement, as both sides rattle their sabers.

When Iran shot down an American drone, which the U.S. says was over international waters, Trump readied a retaliatory strike, but then backed off. He said the U.S. did not want to cause 150 deaths. Is it possible the U.S. was not absolutely sure of the drone’s location?

Trump has had some big successes. He has set a new record in sustaining President Obama’s economic recovery. He has induced European countries to increase NATO-related spending. He now has China’s attention.

But he usually announces immediate solutions – Whack-a-mole – instead of traditionally less dramatic, incremental measures, creating new problems.

Will the oncoming campaign and what he has learned as president lead Trump to cut back on playing the game?

In his recent immigration and Iran reversals, Trump may have begun to recognize that his sudden policy announcements raise new issues and don’t finally settle matters.

Maine Writer post script- and when Trumpzi's policies fail, as all of them have done, the creature will create a P.T. Barnam made for TV reality show, for the purpose of deflecting the headlines away from real news....and the media gives him the spotlight! Ugh! There is no strategy in the failed Trump administration because an idiot mole is running the government.

To choose to die is often determined by people who have a vested interest in the "choice"

Before people leap to the wrong minded notion that death is a choice, please read "The Death Treatment", an article published in the June 15, 2015, The New Yorker.

In Belgium, the law allows euthanasia for patients who suffer from severe and incurable distress, including psychological disorders. Photograph Courtesy Tom Mortier

In Oregon, it is reported that people who are living with diabetes can claim to have a terminal illness.  Of course, with the horribly inflated price of insulin, priced by greedy pharmaceutical companies, the likelihood of dying prematurely with diabetes is growing, due to the cost of receiving care.

An echo opinion published in the Bangor Daily News by Maine native, Mike Reynolds:

BANGOR DAILY NEWS- In what seems like a lifetime ago, I began my activism against assisted suicide in a small dorm on the University of Maine campus in Orono, never imagining that I’d still be arguing the same points about such a flawed law that was enacted in Oregon in 1997. 

That year I went to Washington, D.C., to protest outside the Supreme Court (on a day that was bitter cold by even Maine standards) as they heard the Vacco v. Quill case, which challenged the constitutionality of New York state’s ban on assisted suicide.

A year later I testified in front of the Maine Legislature for the first time against assisted suicide. By then, it had been defeated a handful of times. It failed that year as well, and voters soundly defeated a referendum on the same legislation in 2000.

Maine people know that when you are looking at issues of life and death, you look to the experts in their fields. In testimony at a work session on this same proposal in 2017, the Maine Hospice Council estimated there was a large segment of Maine, roughly the size of Rhode Island, that has no access to hospice or other palliative or end-of-life services. Legal options such as advance care planning are already available to let others know your healthcare wishes.

A bill heard in the Legislature in 2015 revealed that Maine does not have the infrastructure to provide care for individuals who have certain forms of neuromuscular disabilities and require the use of a ventilator. The only options then were care provided out of state.

We have no business discussing assisted suicide when quality palliative care is not accessible across the state. With Maine finally expanding its state-funded healthcare to populations who have gone without it for years, there are far too many issues that make assisted suicide incompatible with Maine values.

Proponents of assisted suicide like to point to the myriad of “safeguards” in their laws, but the reality is once the prescription is picked up from the pharmacy, there is absolutely no oversight in the law to protect the ill person from someone else who wants to hurry their death along, be it an insurance carrier, an heir or a caregiver.

And this is not a “dignified” death, it’s taking 100 tablets and emptying their bitter contents one by one into the recommend “sweet liquid” to consume. According to yearly reports released by the State of Oregon Division of Health, it can take anywhere from several minutes to more than 72 hours to die in this manner. According to the 2018 report, eight people actually woke up after taking the “sweet drink” since the law was enacted.

This law vastly redefines “terminal,” so broadly that the word may lose any real meaning. In Oregon, diabetes has been reported as a qualifying “terminal illness.” Anyone who needs medicine to keep a chronic illness in check would qualify if, by stopping the medication, the individual would likely die in less than six months. For people who have cancer, chemotherapy has even been denied in Oregon by state-run health insurance, which offered assisted suicide instead.

The effects of this law are felt far beyond the confines of the sick and terminally ill. The Centers for Disease Control in 2017 stated that Oregon had a 35 percent higher rate of suicide than the national average; it was even higher in younger populations. We should all be concerned about what kind of message a government sponsored, medically administered program of assisted suicide sends to anyone facing difficult times.

This legislation is a last-ditch effort of Maine Death with Dignity, which was trying to put the legislation out to referendum this year, and whose vast majority of financial backing comes from out of state, namely the Death with Dignity National Center, located in Oregon. Please contact your legislator and ask them to oppose LD 1313.

Mike Reynolds is a Maine native and member of Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group opposed to assisted suicide. He lives in Lewiston.

Republican rebuke is a crack in Humpty Dumpty's border wall

Donald Trump's chaotic signature has vetoed the bill he wanted to waste billions of tax dollars on a border wall that he said Mexico was going to pay for!

An echo opinion published by the editorial board of the Bangor Daily News in Maine

Donald Trump lost his way by supporting an expensive and unnecessary board wall doing so just because "he could".  

Although the Republican rebuke of Trump's executive and selfish overreach may not override his stupid EKG style veto signature, the fact is, there is a crack in his political Humpty Dumpty veneer. 

Donald Trump lost his ability to support the unnecessary border wall. Like Humpty Dumpty, Trump the tRumpf, has had a great fall. Although he might scribble his way to a successful veto override, the fact is, his Republican Senators have put a crack in his political veneer.

A dozen Republican U.S. senators bucked Donald Trump by supporting a resolution to negate last month’s emergency declaration, setting up the president’s first veto. 

Trump plans to use the declaration to divert about $8 billion that Congress has already allocated to other purposes toward building more barriers on the southern U.S. border.

Those 12 senators who broke ranks from Trump — including Maine’s Susan Collins, the first Senate Republican to indicate she would support a resolution of disapproval — stood up for the separation of powers in the face of significant political pressure from their own party.

There are two problems with Trump’s emergency declaration. One, the administration has not demonstrated that the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border rises to the level of an emergency. 

Certainly, improvements in border security are warranted, but Trump has undermined his own position by bragging that construction of a border wall is well underway, and saying that he said I “didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster” while announcing the declaration.

Second, and more important, Trump’s plan to reroute billions of dollars approved by Congress for other purposes raises glaring constitutional concerns. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the power to raise and spend federal funds.

This fundamental problem led Sen. Susan Collins to take the lead in introducing a bipartisan resolution to end the emergency. A House version passed with a bipartisan vote of 245-182 in February.

“Let me be clear: The question before us is not whether to support or oppose the wall, or to support or oppose the president. Rather, it is this: Do we want the executive branch — now or in the future — to hold a power that the Founders deliberately entrusted to Congress?” Senator Collins said on the Senate flooron Feb.28. 

"It has been said that Congress’s most precious power is the power in the purse — set out in plain language in … our Constitution.”

“The president’s emergency declaration is ill-advised precisely because it attempts to short-cut the process of checks and balances by usurping Congress’s authority,” she added. “This resolution blocks that overreach, and nothing more.”

As an example of that overreach, Collins cited work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery that would stop if the president took money away from these projects to pay for border wall construction.

The rest of Maine’s congressional delegation — Sen. Angus King and Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden — similarly stood up for Congress’ constitutional authority by backing the resolution.

Despite securing enough support in both houses, the 59 votes for the resolution in the Senate is still not enough to override the veto Trump issued Friday. It is his first veto. That leaves the courts as the next step for debate over the emergency declaration.

It was, however, a fight worth having because Congress is long overdue in reasserting its status as a co-equal branch of government.

“Never before has a president asked for funding, Congress has not provided it, and the president then has used the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to spend the money anyway,” Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee explained after the vote, also noting that he generally supports the president on border security. 

“The problem with this is that after a Revolutionary War against a king, our nation’s founders gave to Congress the power to approve all spending so that the president would not have too much power. This check on the executive is a crucial source of our freedom.”

If nothing else, the president’s misguided and legally questionable border wall emergency declaration should be a call to action for constitutionalists in both parties to address the overly broad scope and use of the National Emergencies Act. But it could also be much more.

As said before by the Bangor Daily News editorial board, the preferable, if unlikely, way forward here is for Congress to fully reject Trump’s emergency declaration, scale back the extent that the presidency is empowered through the National Emergencies Act, and take another shot at more comprehensive immigration reform — including increased funding for barriers on the southern border, protections for immigrants already here and other needed updates to our immigration system.