Tag Archives: Taxes

Gideon’s paid leave proposal is comedy gold — for Gov. Mills

The concept of a “straight man” is a bedrock comedy institution. A relatively normal, identifiable person is paired with an off-the-wall character, and the contrast between the two creates comedy gold. Laurel and Hardy, Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the Smothers Brothers, all of these acts relied on the […]

Tax policy is not worth jail time

Here’s a waypoint I think everyone should be able to agree with: We need to be able to debate tax rates in this country without people getting arrested. Unfortunately, we’re not there at the moment. The over-the-top reaction to the tax reform bill now moving through Congress has shifted our public discourse into the most […]

Maine needs leadership, not acrimony, to pass a budget

If this latest budget/shutdown fiasco teaches us anything, it’s that Maine’s way of running state government is broken. And this year’s budget situation, though closer to the precipice of shutdown than normal, is not really much different than in previous years since Gov. Paul LePage took office. LePage’s budget approach disregards the key component of […]