A Little Comment(ary)...

Now jobless, MS sufferer still smiling
By BILL NEMITZ
Portland Press Herald

The brief news story appeared three weeks ago under the headline "Wright Express, feeling downturn, trims 22 jobs."

In 71 words, it explained that the South Portland-based company, which processes and manages credit card purchases for the commercial fleet industry, had been forced by the faltering economy to lay off 22 of its 730 employees.

Some undoubtedly called it a sign of the times. Others did the math and figured a 3 percent workforce reduction, well, isn't that bad. Still others, too worried about their own futures, didn't even notice.

Sarah Wilson noticed.

"I was sitting there with my headphones on and my boss came along and tapped me on the shoulder," Wilson recalled last week. "And he said, 'My boss would like to see you.' "

Down the aisle she walked, winding her way through the cubicles to an office she'd never even entered during her 18 months as a merchant services team leader. Looking inside, she saw her boss's boss along with a woman from human resources.

"I pretty much knew at that point," said Wilson.

Less than an hour later, she was in her car driving away, for the last time, from her workplace. One minute she'd had a good job, with a good company, surrounded by people she truly liked. The next, she was a statistic.

It's easy these days to forget that behind each upward tick of the unemployment meter, a life just changed. But if you're expecting a pity party for Sarah Wilson, you've come to the wrong place.

She's 39. She worked for 15 years in banking, rising to the level of branch manager before she woke up one morning in late 2004 with pins and needles over the entire left side of her body.

The eventual diagnosis: multiple sclerosis. The treatment: weekly injections of a drug called Avonex that left her feeling "like I had been run over by a Mack truck four out of seven days a week."

Still, even on those days, she said, "I put on my high heels and put the suit on and went to work."

And when she finally concluded that the stress of running a bank branch wasn't helping her health any, she started scouring the help-wanted ads. She saw the job at Wright Express and, when they offered her the position, decided it would be a better fit.

Which it was. Until Oct. 8.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=219644&ac=PHnws

On Election Day, vote – online and in print, we've got you covered
By JEANNINE GUTTMAN
Portland Press Herald

Forty-eight hours to go.

On Tuesday, Election Day will be upon us and the rigorous 2008 campaign for the White House will be in the hands of voters.

Not the pesky pundits. Not the puffed-up prognosticators. Not the roving packs of experts, handlers, consultants and insiders.

Finally, after months of sound and fury from every quarter imaginable, the matter will rest with you, the voter.

Thanks for hanging in there.

If you're feeling a bit weary from all the buildup and the national media hype, that's understandable. Many Mainers – a record number, in fact – opted for the absentee ballot route, preferring to cast their votes ahead of Election Day.

For those of you who stuck with tradition, we offer a special publication in today's newspaper, "Election 2008." Its aim: to help you navigate the top ballot issues Tuesday, including key Maine elections and referenda.

In this election tab you'll find profiles on all the major race candidates, pieces on the ballot initiatives and a sample ballot.

Our pre-election coverage continues today. On Tuesday, we'll have all-hands-on-deck in the newsroom to cover this very important election, with local reporters assigned to stories on the White House, Maine's U.S. Senate race, both U.S. House seats, legislative contests and local town elections.

We have our final plans in place, blueprints produced and fine-tuned over the months by Andrew Russell, our assistant managing editor for local news and director of our campaign coverage.

"It's a huge undertaking," Russell said. For Tuesday, "We have 15 reporters, six photographers, two online producers, a graphic artist and numerous assignment editors and copy editors assigned to writing and editing election stories. During the course of the day, they will report, write, edit and post to the Web and publish 80 separate stories, from the presidential race to State House contests to local ballot questions in our core coverage area."

Despite the tremendous amount of deadline work, which will add extra pages to Wednesday's newspaper, "it's also a lot of fun," Russell said. "Most journalists live for Election Day, with all its potential surprises, drama and meaning to our democracy."

Our coverage will take two tacks: Urgent, breaking news reports available throughout Election Day and into the night on pressherald.com, our Web site; and comprehensive, insightful, explanatory journalism on the day's events for Wednesday's newspaper.

With live election results feeds from the Bangor Daily News, which tabulates returns from around the state, our readers will have fresh tallies from across Maine, said Angie Muhs, our deputy managing editor for online & multimedia.

If you go to pressherald.com Tuesday after 8 p.m., when the polls close, you'll be able to see the live voting feeds as soon as our reporting staff sees them. You'll be able to watch how Mainers' votes are adding up, in real time.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=219291&ac=Insight&pg=2

History replete with turning-point elections
BY GEORGE MYERS JR.
Morning Sentinel City Editor

You've been hearing it for months: Yesterday's presidential election would be a historic one, with the nation electing the first black American president or the first female vice president.

Today, historians have noted the results and are drafting a new chapter for U.S. election history.

But despite this morning's post-election fanfare, some say the election wasn't truly of large consequence, not with two centuries of more momentous ones in the books with which to compare.

Far more important, said Colby College political-science professor L. Sandy Maisel, was the election of 1800, in which Vice President Thomas Jefferson vanquished President John Adams.

For the first time, said Maisel, director of Colby's Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement, "a party in power lost at the polls and voluntarily turned over the reins of power to the other side."

It was the beginning of the end for the Federalist party.

"Jefferson's election threatened the very essence of what the Federalists stood for," Maisel said. "Yet the Federalists ceded power ... and the legitimacy of our government was thus established."

Nor did yesterday's election rank as the second-most important one, he said. That's reserved for 1796, the first contested presidential election. More significantly, it was when George Washington refused to serve a third term.

By retiring to Mount Vernon, Maisel said, "Washington assured that we would have an elected presidency, not one that the incumbent held on to until death. His voluntarily retiring ... assured that the American experiment with an elected chief executive succeeded."

While neither of those elections had blogs or Saturday Night Live comics to help spark the campaigns, they did, Maisel says, "guarantee the legitimacy of the new government."

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5569278.html

Maine's first helps elect nation's first
By BILL NEMITZ
Portland Press Herald

Thirty-six years ago, he was the guy everyone was talking about. Gerald Talbot, the young, outspoken black man from Portland, had turned heads from Kittery to Fort Kent by becoming the first African-American ever elected to the Maine Legislature.

Now here Talbot stood Tuesday morning behind three dozen other early birds outside St. Pius X Church. Inside the soon-to-be-opened polling place, history once again beckoned.

"So many hopes lay on this," Talbot said as the line behind him grew longer and longer. "So many people, so many ancestors who never, ever thought this could happen. Or would happen."

Barack Obama. A black man. On the verge of becoming president of the United States.

"Everything I've got, I hope he wins," Talbot said, holding his hand to his chest. "He's got to win. For the whole country. For the whole world."

He's 77 now, far removed from those heady days back in the 1970s when he parlayed his role as perennial leader of the local NAACP chapter into three terms as a state representative from Portland.

The first time his name appeared on the ballot, Talbot was one of 20 candidates for 11 at-large House seats in Portland. His biggest worry: Voters would use up all their choices on the alphabetical ballot before they got to "T."

"I'm way down the bottom of the ballot!" he recalled, laughing at the butterflies that plagued him that day. "Who's going to go way down to the bottom of that ballot and vote for a black loudmouth?"

Well, 3,367 Portlanders did – enough to place Talbot 10th in the runoff and send him off to the State House.

His first impression?

"It was all marble," he said. "And I kept asking myself, 'What am I doing here? How did I get here?' I didn't even know where the men's room was."

But he knew Maine, having grown up in Bangor before moving to Portland after high school. And he knew his country, having served a hitch in the Army after the Marines turned him down because he was, of all things, colorblind. And he knew, then as now, that real change doesn't happen overnight.

For six years in the House, Talbot spoke loudly and frequently about issues – gun control, equal rights for gays and lesbians, a state holiday to honor Martin Luther King – that would take years to gain political traction. He battled to delete the names of nine locations on the Maine map that included what we now refer to only as the "n" word.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=220157&ac=PHnws


1978 Press Herald file

Maine’s income tax rate killing the economy
By Rep. Mike Thibodeau
R-Winterport

AUGUSTA: In August, Gov. John Baldacci pleasantly surprised us when he announced that reducing Maine’s income tax rates would be a top priority of his last two years in office.
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The governor didn’t explain his thinking, but it’s safe to assume the obvious — he knows that our top tax rate is a major reason our economy is so sluggish.

And when the economy is in the doldrums, so are tax revenues that fund the state’s countless programs. The states that are doing well financially are the ones that tax the least. The high-tax states keep losing jobs, people and voters.

Maine’s 8.5 percent personal income tax rate is one of the highest in the nation. To compound the problem, that top rate kicks in at about $19,000 a year for a single tax filer. In other words, Maine imposes its highest marginal tax rate on people working at just above the minimum wage.

That’s more than unfair; it’s economically foolish. Our high taxes put Maine at a huge disadvantage when it comes to attracting the kind of business investment that creates good jobs. Nine states don’t even have an income tax, including New Hampshire.

Republicans have recognized this problem for years and have offered one bill after another to fix it. Unfortunately, our efforts have always been shot down by the majority party in the Legislature. With the governor now on board for a tax reduction, his legislative allies may feel pressure to follow suit.

Still, it will be tough going. That same party has controlled the Maine House for 34 straight years. During this era of one-party rule, they have created one of the biggest and most expensive medical welfare systems in America. We provide free medical and dental care to 270,000 people — that’s 20 percent of the state population under age 65. It costs taxpayers more than $2.4 billion a year. Moreover, the average Medicaid recipient in Maine costs 90 percent more than the national average for Medicaid clients. That’s a heavy load for our poor state to bear, especially when working Maine families pay the second-highest health insurance costs in the country.

To keep feeding this massive Medicaid system and other welfare programs, the majority party has imposed punishing taxation on Maine residents. We now pay 14 percent of our incomes in state and local taxes, an average of more than $5,000 per person. That’s 27 percent higher than the national average.

http://freestateproject.org/node/14813

Uncertainty follows fast on heels of victory
BY J.P. DEVINE
Freelance Writer Morning Sentinel

At midday, from my house on this hill miles away, I can hear the traffic lights change on Elm Street in downtown Waterville. I sit and stare at my reflection in the big television screen. It's just me -- tired, old, liberal me. The Democratic "surge" is successful. Mission accomplished.
What do we do now?

The screen looks back at me. There is no Brian Williams, no David Gregory, Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews. There is only my reflection. I seem to have grown, in the past six months, visibly older, wearier, like a Teamster driver after passing through Kansas and trying to make Tempe, Ariz., by dark. The feeling is exhaustion. What do I do now?

The chattering class sleeps.

I hear only the birds now.

I walk the grounds this morning, free of media rattle. I make a list of things that leap out at me: a panel on the north side that needs repair, the tacking up of a loose piece of plastic on a back window. The last of the year's leaves await the swoop of the rake. Nov. 5 is here and gone. The roar of the armies of left and right has faded. It's over. What do I do now?

In the living room, my book table near my chair groans with its stack of magazines -- The Nation, The Economist, Time, Newsweek, The New Republic -- their covers ablaze with John and Sarah, Barack and Joe. Come and touch me, they cry. Let's read this over again. Let's reconsider Iowa and Michigan, study the poll tables and pundit opinions and the conventional wisdom.

I walk away. It's over. I say it out loud, and it bounces off the wall. "What do I do now?"

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5583162.html

J.P. Devine: Kindly buzz off, if you please
BY J.P. DEVINE
Freelance Writer Morning Sentinel

A few weeks ago, a woman friend of mine bristled when I tried to help her on with her coat.

"I can do that," she said with a smile.

It wasn't a friendly smile. It looked like that smile that Sarah Palin gave Charlie Gibson when he asked her about the Bush Doctrine. It was that kind of smile.

This woman was saying, "I like you, but I'm a strong, independent woman who can take care of herself." Fine. The next time she asked if I wanted to have coffee, I said I had diphtheria. I did it with a smile, that creepy-killer smile that John McCain gave the editors at the Des Moines Register.

Last week, as I was entering a store in Freeport, six college-aged women were just behind me. I stopped and held the door. One of them stepped forward and took the door from my hand, "Please," she said, "after you."

I got it at once.

I'm no longer cool.

I'm old. I'm no longer 28 and startlingly handsome. At 28, I was George Clooney before George Clooney was born. She would have stammered then, maybe got weak in the knees. Now, I was the old guy trying to be courteous, and I was rebuffed -- not just rebuffed, but rebuffed with an ageist twist. To her, I had become Wilford Brimley. I should have tripped her.

Men of my generation, the Teddy Kennedy and Joe Biden generation -- OK, the John McCain generation -- were force-fed good manners. If a woman came to the table where you were dining, you stood up. If you didn't, your mother kicked you under the table. Two pained shins and you started paying attention.

I think maybe I'll give that one up.

When we ate out in New York or Los Angeles, we almost never met anyone we knew. Living in a small town, you know everyone and everyone seems to eat at the same place. You spend so much time getting up and down, your food gets cold. So I'm giving that one up. If you're a woman and you come to my table, I'll pretend I don't see you. Of course, that won't work, because She will kick me under the table and pull the napkin from my chest.

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5600937.html

Our towns tell colorful election story
By JEANNINE GUTTMAN
Portland Press Herald

A huge number of Mainers went to the polls on Election Day, voting on important races and issues, from the presidency to casino gambling, from Congress to beverage taxes.

We know the results headline; we know who won and who lost, what issues prevailed and which ones were defeated.

But what other information can be learned from Maine voters' choices? If the ballot trends are studied from a macro level, against other presidential election cycles, what would the data tell us about Maine?

Our election team raised those questions, and others, in the days following Nov. 4. The result: Today's Page A1 story, "Red to Blue," by reporters Dieter Bradbury and Matt Wickenheiser.

In current election mapping, red is used to mark Republican strongholds and blue designates Democratic areas.

Bradbury and Wickenheiser found that Maine has been slowly transforming toward a solid blue state, even as the state's renowned independent voters broke red on specific races and questions. While Maine's presidential voting map is turning blue, residents seem to prefer splitting the rest of the ticket, going for the person, not the party. That means red can be in vogue, too.

"The story started with a few simple questions the morning after the election," said Andrew Russell, assistant managing editor for news, who directed our election coverage. "How did Kennebunkport vote? Did the town that is synonymous with the Bush family support Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama?

"Initially we were going to focus on Kennebunkport's switch. But as we looked deeper at the data it raised more questions, and we decided to broaden the story.

"How many towns were like Kennebunkport, which switched its vote from red in 2004 to blue in 2008? While Mainers as a whole have supported Democratic presidential candidates in every election since 1992, what has been the trend at the town level, and what does that say about Maine voters?"

Russell said Wickenhesier built a town-by-town database, using spreadsheets to analyze the 2008 preliminary election data. Julia McCue, a Web producer and in-house database guru, then compared those findings with official state results from the 2000 and 2004 elections. These data came from the Secretary of State's Web site.

Finally, Bradbury, our political correspondent, examined the results and fleshed out the reporting, Russell said.

"The findings showed some dramatic shifts, debunked some conventional wisdoms and upheld others, such as Mainers' tendency to split the ticket," Russell said. "For example, while a majority of Maine communities supported Democrat Barack Obama, most of those same communities also supported Republican Susan Collins," who was running for a third U.S. Senate term.

Bradbury said the story used town results to give the statewide portrait a "human scale."

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=222000&ac=Insight

Don't honor hateful signs with silence
By BILL NEMITZ
Portland Press Herald

STANDISH — The door to the Oak Hill General Store was locked Monday morning. In the window hung a sign that said: "Gone Fishing."

Probably not a bad idea, considering that this out-of-the-way enterprise is now in the full glare of the national spotlight.

It all started 11 days ago when The Associated Press in Portland received an anonymous tip of a sign inside the store announcing the "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool."

AP writer Jerry Harkavy and photographer Bob Bukaty took a ride out and, sure enough, saw those very words scrawled across a whiteboard inside the store.

Before they were rebuffed by a man behind the counter who wouldn't give his name, Harkavy said, they also noted that to win the $1-per-entry pool, a contestant had to pick the date that President-elect Barack Obama would be assassinated.

"Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. And at the bottom of the board were the words: "Let's hope someone wins."

Harkavy filed his account with AP headquarters in New York. There, it was folded into a national roundup of post-election venom, most of it racially tinged, decrying the election of the nation's first black president.

The story hit the wire late last week. Suddenly, Standish found itself lumped right in there with Snelville, Ga.; Kilgore, Texas; Forest Hills, Pa., and other places where the actions of a few have tarnished an entire town.

All of which raises a thorny question: Now what?

While the authorities investigate – in the Standish case, the Secret Service has been notified and the Maine Attorney General's Office is reviewing a report from the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office – what can a community do to reclaim its reputation?

And beyond that, is it better for all of us to ignore these isolated instances of ignorance (or worse) in the hope they'll dry up and blow away? Or should we focus as much attention on them as possible?

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=222572&ac=PHnws

$20 bill buys a heartfelt thank-you
By BILL NEMITZ
Portland Press Herald

A $20 bill can mean different things to different people. For Mike Hammond, it means that life, even in tough times like these, could be a lot worse.

Hammond, 51, lives in a one-room apartment on Casco Street in downtown Portland. He's suffered two broken ankles in separate accidents over the past five years, which has forced him to get around either on a cane or crutches – depending on how far he's going.

He's blind in one eye, has a brutally bad back and, because he hasn't been able to work since 2003, scrapes by on a monthly Social Security disability check that covers his rent but leaves him with little, if any, money for life's other essentials.

Like food.

He gets that each day at the nearby Preble Street Resource Center soup kitchen, which is where he found himself one day last week when something very unexpected happened.

"I was coming out the door when I saw this woman in a big SUV pull up," Hammond said. "I didn't think much of it – it looked like she was going to drop off some donations, like people frequently do down there."

The next thing Hammond knew, the SUV pulled right up to him. And the woman – he figures she was in her late 30s – reached out the window and handed him a small card.

"You are the recipient of a random act of kindness," the card read. "Pass it on and experience the magic."

The card, which depicted two angels standing on clouds and exchanging a big red heart, didn't excite Hammond all that much.

"What excited me," he said, "was the $20 that was kind of hidden underneath it."

Then what?

"She drove off," he said. "She was gone. Just like that."

It's certainly not the first time someone has been nice to Hammond, who grew up in New Hampshire and moved to Portland 15 years ago, after eight years in the Navy. But he's never been one to ask people for money – and he's certainly never had someone show up out of the blue and hand him $20.

"Twenty dollars, to a lot of people, isn't much," he said. "But when you're broke, it helps. It really helps."

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=223045&ac=PHnws