Monthly Archives: August 2016

Magazines like to rank Maine’s economy. Put their lists dead last this election season.

As we enter election season, political parties will again ready their claims about what’s up and what’s down in the economy and why that should cause voters to fill in Bubble A or Bubble B (or, in certain markets, Bubble C). Those, of course, are arguments dressed as descriptions, based on a whole bunch of funky assumptions. On Monday, the magazine Governing ranked […]

Measuring the toll hybrid cars take on Maine roads

Gov. Paul LePage this week added Maine to a growing number of states that have passed or considered special fees on hybrid and electric vehicles. LePage and officials in other states raised concerns that high-efficiency or electric vehicles are not paying their fair share of road maintenance costs, which are funded largely through state and federal taxes on gasoline. The governor did not […]

Half of our national parks started as monuments

The official transfer of land east of Baxter State Park from Roxanne Quimby’s holding company, Elliotsville Plantation, to the federal government on Tuesday morning appears to indicate that a national monument designation is on the way. Opponents of the proposal have long argued that presidential designation of the land as a national monument would make a full park designation inevitable. […]

Here’s another sign of Maine’s slow economic recovery

For purchasing power, Maine state government hasn’t yet returned to the halcyon days of early 2007. Neither have many areas of the state’s economy, according to various measures of tax revenue. Researchers with the Pew Charitable Trusts found Maine was one of 21 states where tax revenue continued to lag the most recent peak, which it hit in 2007, adjusting for inflation. […]

Is Presque Isle really the nation’s ‘epicenter of anxiety’?

In a piece for the New York Times this week, opinion writer Seth Stephens-Davidowitz describes Presque Isle as the country’s “epicenter of anxiety.” The finding is based on Google searches for the word “anxiety” and related terms, such as “anxiety help” and “anxiety symptoms.” Apparently, Americans are punching those terms into Google more this year than in any other year […]