President-elect Donald Trump and Gov. Paul LePage are both lying about this year’s election.

Trump maintains that voter fraud prevented him from winning the national popular vote, which he actually lost to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by more than 2.5 million — a butt-kicking his ego is having trouble sustaining.

And LePage has called into question Maine’s elections during public appearances and letters to newly elected lawmakers. Again, with no evidence.

Their goal is simple: They want to convince their followers — who are unencumbered by and unconcerned with facts — that there is rampant election fraud so that they can pass draconian measures meant to deny people their right to vote.

Without evidence — and, in fact, in the face of contradictory evidence — Trump and LePage are laying the groundwork to further disenfranchise voters whom they suspect don’t support them.

Masters of public manipulation, Trump and LePage know that in our new post-fact world, some of their supporters will uncritically believe anything the two men utter, regardless of reality.

Across the country, there have been concerted efforts to adopt policies and laws that make it more difficult to vote. The U.S. Supreme Court rolled back protections in the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and states have taken advantage, particularly those states controlled by Republicans.

There’s simply no counter-factual example of Democrats trying to make it harder to vote. Instead, in states with Democratic governors or Legislatures there have been significant efforts to reduce barriers to voting.

According to the Brennan Center, a nonprofit organization that advocates for voting rights and election reform, since 2010, 20 states have placed new restrictions on voting and registration, including 14 that did it in 2016 in preparation for the presidential election.

The laws range from voter purges to strict photo ID requirements to reductions in the number of polling places and the number of days and hours people can vote earlier. For all the changes, the intent is the same: Make it harder to vote.

We might never know the implications. But The Nation, a progressive magazine, ran the numbers in Wisconsin, a state that Trump surprisingly won over Clinton.

Trump won Wisconsin by about 27,000 votes. But about 300,000 registered voters lacked the appropriate documents to vote under Wisconsin’s voter ID law. “Voter turnout in Wisconsin was at its lowest levels in 20 years and decreased 13 percent in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African-American population lives,” the magazine reported in November.

Reporter Ari Berman told the story of a 99-year-old man who made two trips to vote and one to the DMV on Election Day, an enormous hurdle. And when Margie Mueller, 85, “wasn’t allowed to vote with her expired driver’s license, her husband, Alvin, decided not to vote as well.”

In case it must be stated, the voting restrictions target people who tend to vote for Democrats.

We’ve been through this before in Maine. After LePage took office in 2011 and Republicans won the state Senate and the state House, they rammed through legislation to make it harder to vote by eliminating same-day voter registration.

Then Secretary of State Charlie Summers and Republican leader Charlie Webster spun themselves into a tizzy trying to document voting fraud, only to find just the opposite. Voters overturned the rollback of voting rights with a people’s veto later that year.

But I think there’s a new attack coming, both on the national and state levels to make it harder for people to register and to vote.

While there are a lot of things about the election in 2016 that broke form, one thing stayed true.

Mainers take voting seriously, and they vote.

Voters cast their ballots last month in Huntley, Ill. Stacey Wescott | Chicago Tribune | TNS

More than 750,000 Mainers either cast an absentee ballot or showed up on Election Day. I believe our state will be one of the leaders in voter participation when all the numbers are finalized, just like we were in 2014.

They’re also protective of those rights to participate.

But LePage and Trump are betting that they can whittle away at those numbers.

For the first time ever, Maine split its electoral votes this year, with Clinton winning the First Congressional District and the state overall and Trump winning the Second District.

Certainly, that’s bad for Democrats, but Republicans have done a good job of spinning the election results to suggest a more thorough GOP victory than actually occurred.

Clinton won the state; Democrats picked up two seats in the state Senate and maintained control of the state House; and voters passed four progressive ballot initiatives, despite vigorous opposition from the governor.

When the Legislature returns, I expect to see new efforts to make it harder to vote, and we’ll see changes proposed that would make it harder for referenda to get on the ballot.

LePage did not win a majority in Maine in either election; Trump lost the state and he lost the popular vote by a substantial margin.

Nonetheless, Trump is president and LePage is governor and they show that they will use that power to drive down trust in our institutions for their own gains.

Now, they’re going to try to take away your voice and make it harder for you to vote. Don’t stand for it.

The vexing question is not whether Russia tried to influence the U.S. election. It did.

It’s not whether President-elect Trump’s pick for secretary of state or several of his close advisers have unsavory connections to Russia. They do.

And, frankly, it really doesn’t matter if Russia intended to sow chaos in the election and undermine trust in our institutions or if they actively sought to aid Trump’s rise, though I suspect the latter is true.

The real question, and the one without a clear, immediate answer, is what do we, as a country, do about it?

Right now, our country is so deeply divided that many Republicans are downplaying the importance of Russia’s actions, the obvious ties between Trump’s team and the foreign power and his potentially undisclosed financial relationships that could create an unparalleled and unprecedented conflict of interest for a U.S. president.

Trump himself dismisses it all.

With a few notable exceptions, most predominantly U.S. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham and a handful of others, it seems that a burning desire to undo the Affordable Care Act, unwind the Environmental Protection Agency and a whole raft of other right-wing dream policies are more important than the security and sovereignty of the country.

Our hopes rest with an investigation by the lame duck Obama administration, which will be automatically dismissed by many Republicans, and oversight by the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, both controlled by Republicans.

The fact that Trump won the Electoral College vote and will ascend to the presidency speaks for itself. Most Republicans were willing to turn a blind eye to his racism, misogyny and lies. That goes for Republican voters and lawmakers alike. Would they really challenge him now, on the eve of his ascension?

Now, though, the only way we can reach consensus as a country is for Republican leaders to conduct a full and thorough investigation into Russia’s activities attacking democracy in the U.S. — and frankly, elsewhere — and into Trump’s business ties and appointments, which could compromise our country. And to make it all public.

For all the screaming — legitimate, I believe — that Democrats will do, I have little hope that we can break through in our new post-truth world. We are essentially talking to ourselves, dismissed by the minority who chose our new president.

The president-elect willfully attacks the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, and rejects his daily national security briefings. He’s willing to deny any information that doesn’t fit into his own worldview or suit his personal or political interests.

His supporters follow his lead.

He’s setting up a propaganda state where the only truth that matters is the truth that helps him. And people or institutions that dare to present inconvenient truths will be attacked and undermined, regardless of the potential long-term damage to our country.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky speaks in November. Carlos Barria | Reuters

The only check that has a chance to break through the partisan frame is for Republicans to put aside politics and get to the truth. And for Democrats to give them space and the cover to do the right thing.

That’s a truly scary proposition for this Democrat.

It seems like a wish into the wind to place my faith in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, to hope beyond reason that they can rise above what they have been to do the right thing now.

The signs so far are mixed, at best.

Trump should disclose his taxes and his business ties to Russia and other countries, and as much intelligence information as possible should be released before the president-elect is sworn in. Thorough and real investigation should continue. Those steps are necessary to safeguard our country.

But I don’t believe there is any amount of evidence or investigation that will stop Trump from becoming president in January. While I can understand the hope among some that the Electoral College will intervene and prevent a Trump presidency, such an action seems unlikely.

And dangerous.

To deny Trump the presidency in that manner would throw our country into violent turmoil. It would create the very best outcome for our country’s adversaries, including Russia. There would be no peaceful transfer of authority, the hallmark of a stable and successful democracy.

It’s a move from which our country might never recover.

If the worst about Trump and his affection for Russia proves to be true, there is only one constitutional remedy: impeachment.

And while it’s premature to talk about impeachment — for goodness sake, the president-elect hasn’t even been sworn in — that is the remedy that our system of government gives us for a president who abuses his position or breaks the law.

It’s the final check on executive power. And, for at least two years, it rests almost entirely with Republicans in Congress.

On Election Day, more than 65,000 Mainers signed petitions to expand access to health care.

The coalition of groups that collected the signatures, led by Maine Equal Justice Partners, fielded an army of volunteers to collect enough signatures to place the question on the ballot either in 2017 or in 2018.

The reason is clear. Five times, Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature voted to accept federal dollars as part of the Affordable Care Act to expand MaineCare, a move that would provide health insurance to about 70,000 low-income Mainers.

Each time, Gov. Paul LePage vetoed the bills and Republicans in the Legislature sustained the vetoes.

After a crowded ballot this year — there were six initiatives if you include a transportation bond — there have been calls in the Legislature, by the governor and from some interest groups to change the initiative process.

Overwhelmingly, the goal is to make it harder to place a question on the ballot. Such efforts should be rejected.

Efforts to place geographic restrictions on where signatures can be collected amount to favoritism of one type of voter over another. It’s wrongheaded.

A 22-year-old barista in Portland might not have much in common with a retired millworker in Lincoln, but in a democracy their votes — and their signatures — should have equal weight.

Other hurdles, like raising the threshold for the number of signatures, won’t prevent well-funded advocates from being successful. Instead, it’ll just make it harder for grassroots movements without big backers to get on the ballot.

LePage’s reason for supporting a harder process to place a question on the ballot is clear. He was blistered by the passage of four ballot questions that he opposed — and that went counter to his policy preferences. While he’s twice been able to be elected with less than a statewide majority, his policy positions cannot stand up to voter scrutiny.

In one election, voters rejected his economic policies by raising taxes on the wealthiest Mainers and increasing the minimum wage from its current unlivable $7.50 an hour.

They rejected his ill-informed and fictional pleas to reject the legalization of marijuana, which were based on inaccurate information and stereotypes.

And, in fact, voters even rejected an electoral system that had allowed him to become governor in the first place, choosing instead ranked-choice voting, which supporters say will guarantee majority support for the next governor.

Finally, adding the last insult to the list of injuries, voters made clear with their signatures that the governor’s willingness to let people suffer without health care is wrong.

Voters stand in line on Election Day at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. Gabor Degre | BDN

As we have seen, there have been numerous failed efforts to place other issues on the ballot, including energy policy, Republican efforts to deconstruct the tax system and a new casino in southern Maine.

Now, collecting the signatures and winning at the ballot box aren’t the same thing, and there is real uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act and the provisions that provide funding for MaineCare expansion. But by virtue of their signatures and the stories of people who signed, it’s clear Mainers know what they want.

“It was striking that a large number of signers spontaneously shared emotional accounts of the stress they and/or their loved ones experienced when they were unable to access affordable health care,” said Dr. Barbara Covey, who volunteered to collect signatures on Election Day.

With a new Trump administration in Washington and a LePage administration bent on gridlock and partisan war in Augusta, ballot initiatives remain a way for voters to take matters into their own hands and to overrule the politicians.

The system isn’t perfect. The argument that the ballot box isn’t the best place to judge complicated matters of public policy resonates with me.

But faced with a lack of progress, with a government that’s controlled by people who have the stated desire to unwind important policies and to block movement forward, the ballot is the last refuge for positive change.

Without it, it’s fair to say low-wage workers wouldn’t be getting a raise next month, and it’s unlikely that lawmakers would have been able to build consensus on taxes, voting procedures or marijuana.

And, without the fast-paced and successful collection of signatures supporting access to health care, lawmakers might not have been motivated to take up the cause again. With a statewide campaign pending, they have every reason to try once again to carry out the will of the people.

Ballot campaigns are messy and they’re expensive. But they remain a powerful tool for voters to take the lead when politics — or the governor — stand in the way.

Maine has finally recovered from the Great Recession.

It’s a good news story, singed along the edges by the underlying details.

Our state was slower than it should have been to recover. Bad policy decisions got in the way.

The former Lincoln Paper and Tissue mill, as seen from the town cemetery. Micky Bedell | BDN

Uneven growth around the state has left rural areas struggling, while urban areas are doing better. There’s no consensus in Augusta on how to stabilize rural Maine.

And Gov. Paul LePage keeps us arguing about problems that are minor or don’t really exist instead of working on solutions to problems that are real.

It’s a recipe for stagnation or worse, decline.

The Bangor Daily News’ Darren Fishell consistently looks at Maine through the lens of data. His reporting is often numbers heavy, and not nearly as exciting as the latest blow-up by LePage or shining rhetorical object tossed out by president-elect Donald Trump.

But if you believe in facts — strange that such a qualifier is necessary — his stories should help policymakers sort out the best approaches to economic recovery.

In two recent stories, Fishell breaks down the numbers on the state’s economic recovery and on its population, two datasets that are linked.

Simply put, but for “people from away” — a term that chafes common sense — Maine’s population would be declining. More people are dying in the state every year than are being born.

About 4,000 people moved to Maine in the past year, meaning our state’s overall population is up a miserly 2,000. The growth reversed what happened in 2015, when Maine was one of seven states to see its population decline.

Now about the economy: According to Fishell’s data, Maine has finally gotten back to where it was on the eve of the Great Recession in 2007. That took way too long.

But the economy is different than it used to be, and it will come as no surprise rural communities in the northern and western parts of the state continue to struggle.

Manufacturing, wood products, paper and pulp are down, seafood exports are up and the service economy is growing. Aroostook, Oxford and Franklin counties started 2016 with fewer jobs than in 2015 and, Fishell found, other rural areas gained jobs more slowly than the state as a whole.

The Maine State Chamber of Commerce is connecting the dots, and tying the need for greater in-migration to our state’s long-term economic prospects.

In a report released in the fall with the Maine Development Foundation, the chamber makes the case that our state must attract and integrate people from other states and other countries if we want to prosper.

“The overall message is clear: we are facing a workforce shortage that, if current conditions continue, will become more severe in the years ahead,” the report says. “This will in turn constrain the success and growth of existing businesses and make it difficult to attract and develop new ones, constraining our economic growth.”

Certainly, this is a message that thoughtful leaders have been talking about for years. But it’s worth repeating.

While I agree with the report, there’s an underlying message that’s wrong: “The current situation is no one’s fault,” the report states at one point.

It’s politically astute; the goal of the report is to build consensus instead of casting blame; but it runs counter to solving the problem identified in the rest of the report.

To grow our population, to support our workforce and to improve our economic situation, we have to change what we do, how we think and what we say.

And that’s a lot harder than recognizing a shortfall in the workforce or the changing nature of the economy. We don’t need the census or the Federal Reserve Bank to tell us what’s happening in mill towns. Just walk around them and you see it.

But if we’re to reverse the slide, we have to be the change we want to see and the way we treat people based on geography, skin color and even religion.

During the last election, politicians were attacked for not being real Mainers, for having the audacity of being born somewhere else but wanting to make a difference here.

Immigrants were ruthlessly and wrongly attacked, blamed for everything from terrorism and crime to carrying diseases.

Heck, even native Mainers — generations born and raised in rural parts of the state — were attacked for wanting to be “Portland liberals.”

We try to bail out failing industries, but refuse to invest and support new ones that have the potential to grow. And we throw rocks at people who are trying to do good work because they’re not from here or bring a new perspective.

The data tell the story of what’s happening, and a roadmap exists to start turning things around.

There are a lot of things that make our state feel like two very different places, but the fate of rural Maine and our urban areas are tied together. We can’t be successful unless we stop with the artificial distinctions.

We’ve got to retire the judgment that somehow “people from away” are morally suspect, and we must end our isolationist tendencies. Those old jokes just aren’t funny any more, and frankly they’re holding us back.

I don’t like Linda Bean’s politics.

She politically, and financially, supports candidates and policies that are opposite of my beliefs. That’s her right. I don’t have to like it. And neither do you.

But L.L Bean is a different story. The company and its positive impact on Maine is bigger and longer lasting than any single member of the large family who owns it. The company has earned its positive reputation and has turned out some of the most compassionate leaders in the state.

L.L. Bean doesn’t need me to defend it, but I will.

The company is facing a boycott from a liberal group called Grab Your Wallet, which is encouraging its supporters to punish businesses that supported President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump is unfit to serve as president, and I understand what Grab Your Wallet is hoping to do. But they are taking aim at the wrong company.

The boycott is the result of news coverage that Linda Bean, a granddaughter of Leon Leonwood Bean – the founder of the company – and a member of the company’s board, supported Trump. She is accused of violating campaign finance laws by contributing $60,000 to a political action committee supporting the president-elect. The limit for such contributions is $5,000.

Shannon Coulter, the co-founder of Grab Your Wallet, told the Portland Press Herald, that L.L. Bean needed to understand that “there are repercussions for their company’s brand and bottom line when consumers learn what their leaders are up to in terms of politics.”

I agree. So let’s talk about what the company’s leaders have been up too. There’s a lot more to L.L. Bean than the political activity of one member of the family.

L.L. Bean is the fifth largest employer in Maine, with between 4,501 and 5,000 employees, according to the Maine Department of Labor.

More than that, the company has been a steadfast believer in the state, investing here when other companies have moved away.

Despite the disadvantages, the company has kept its headquarters in Maine. And even though it would be cheaper to make them elsewhere, L.L. Bean manufacturers its iconic Bean Boots at factories in Brunswick and Lewiston.

L.L. Bean also drives a hard bargain with other companies that it does business with, encouraging them to locate or expand in Maine.

But the commitment of the extended Bean family to our state goes even further.

The late Leon Gorman, who was the grandson of the company’s founder and who served as the company’s president and chairman of the board, is one of the most impressive and compassionate people I’ve ever known.

He built L.L. Bean into the retail giant that it is today, but he also gave of himself to countless causes, including volunteering without fanfare every week for 12 years at Preble Street Resource Center, a homeless shelter in Portland. He started volunteering as a dishwasher and worked his way up to the grill, a post that had to be earned.

He and his wife, Lisa, helped to create the Foundation for Maine’s Community College, and donated millions of dollars to ensure thousands of Maine students could go to college.

And really, that just scratches the surface. Leon and Lisa’s philanthropy extends to numerous causes.

There’s also John T. Gorman, Leon’s brother, who founded the John T. Gorman Foundation, which has a mission of helping and supporting disadvantaged Maine residents. The foundation’s work includes improving education for Maine children, helping struggling families and keeping low-income seniors in their homes.

The work that Leon and Tom have done in Maine has not only changed lives, it has saved lives.

L.L. Bean itself also has a striking history of philanthropy. According to the company, it’s donated more than $14 million to conservation organizations in the last 10 years and more than $6 million to health and human services organizations. Total giving for the period is close to $30 million.

In December, the company announced $2.1 million in grants to nonprofits for 2017, which includes money for education, to fight homelessness and for conservation. They are also supporting the arts, through the Bangor Folk Festival and the Maine State Music Theater.

Responding to the boycott, Shawn Gorman, the L.L. Bean executive chairman, took the high road. He explained that the company doesn’t take political positions, that members of the family naturally have different political views, as do the company’s employees and customers.

“L.L. Bean does not endorse political candidates, take positions on political matters, or make political contributions. Simply put, we stay out of politics. To be included in this boycott campaign is simply misguided, and we respectfully request that Grab Your Wallet reverse its position,” Gorman wrote.

I don’t think this poorly aimed boycott will have much of an impact on L.L. Bean. Even without all the good the company does, the fact is it also sells quality products – some of them made right here – and backs them up with the best service and returns policy that I know of.  If the jeans I got for Christmas help Linda Bean, I know that they also helped Jobs for Maine’s Graduates, the community colleges and countless other causes. I can live with that trade.

This is one anti-Trump liberal who supports L.L. Bean and recognizes what this family and business mean to the state. I’m grabbing my wallet, but instead of joining the boycott, I’m placing an order at L.L. Bean.

When it comes to U.S. history or the Constitution, Gov. Paul LePage has shown a shocking lack of knowledge.

He should be embarrassed. He should be ashamed.

He’s neither.

During his weekly radio appearance on WVOM, LePage attacked U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon who risked his life to end the Jim Crow era in the South. Lewis was attacked because he has questioned the legitimacy of the presidential election that will install Donald Trump.

He then completely botched the history of the end of slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow.

“John Lewis ought to look at history,” LePage said. “It was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves. It was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant who fought the Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice.”

The Bangor Daily News rightly provided a history lesson.

It was Hayes’ election that ended Reconstruction, a period after the Civil War when federal troops were present in southern states.

The history books will remember John Lewis, his leadership and his courage. He owes no apology and has earned the right to say what he believes — even if the governor finds it distasteful.

LePage? He’s more likely a footnote, a reflection of a time in Maine and in the country where a fever of ill-temper, racism and hostility spread through the body politic.

In the same radio appearance, LePage also took aim at two other Maine leaders, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree and U.S. Sen. Angus King.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis speaks in Miami on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Emily Michot | Miami Herald

Pingree announced Monday during an MLK Day event that she would not attend the Trump inauguration later this week. King plans to attend, but LePage says he’s thinking about running against him in 2018, and his actions would suggest he’s readying a run.

“If she won’t attend on Friday, I would advise her to resign,” LePage said. “To me that’s political rhetoric. Donald Trump is blunt, he comes out and says it the way it is and that’s why he got elected. Chellie Pingree, Angus King … we’re sick of these silver-tongued people.”

According to The Washington Post, at least 44 members of Congress are skipping the inauguration, largely based on Trump’s attacks against Lewis.

And in terms of what voters are sick of, new polling shows that the shine has already worn off Trump. He’s entering office deeply unpopular, and people have little faith that he has the skills to be an effective leader.

In September, The Washington Post called on LePage to resign, pointing to LePage’s “assaults on decent governance and public civility” and specifically his notion that blacks and Hispanics are “the enemy.”

Since then, he’s done nothing to rehabilitate himself, as evidenced by his attack on Lewis.

What’s challenging about LePage — and Trump — is that their words matter. They empower dangerous people and give permission for hatred. We have an obligation to call them out.

But at the same time, the words also distract from his policy proposals, which are dramatic and terrible.

The governor released his proposed budget, which includes massive handouts for the rich, cuts for education and an assault on health care for low-income Mainers.

The budget was not well-received by the Legislature, which will likely rewrite significant portions of it, just as they have for LePage’s entire tenure.

The governor is also working hard to block the will of the people with his continued opposition to four citizen initiatives that voters passed in November. From tax policy and education, to marijuana and a living wage to election reform, the governor has shown a complete disregard for voters.

Our challenge is this: We can’t allow the governor to obscure his bad policies with outrageous statements on talk radio or at town hall meetings, but we also have to hold him account for the terrible things he says — whether they’re bold-faced lies or nasty, hateful rhetoric.

The governor has made a calculation, which so far has been proven correct, that he can say and do whatever he wants without consequences.

Maine voters support a higher minimum wage.

More than a thousand people turned out — with Pingree — on Saturday because Maine voters want more people to have health insurance, not fewer.

Mainers want a fair budget that doesn’t favor the wealthy and does invest in our children. And they want election reform that doesn’t reward LePage’s brand of division.

We know because the voters have shown us at the ballot box.

More and more voters in Maine are awake, and they can pay attention to foul words and foul deeds at the same time.

There are two ways to tell the story of the Affordable Care Act and the Republican efforts to repeal the law that has brought our country’s uninsured rate to its lowest point ever.

There’s data. And there are people.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office examined the impact that repeal would have on health insurance coverage. The numbers are staggering and terrifying.

Eighteen million people would lose health coverage in the first year. The number would increase to 32 million by 2026. The research does not score a replacement, because no real replacement has been proposed with enough detail to judge its impact.

Writing in The Washington Post, two health care researchers parse the numbers even more. Roughly 44,000 people a year will die if the ACA, also called Obamacare, is repealed without a replacement.

A pro-Affordable Care Act demonstration in Newark, New Jersey, on Jan. 15. Stephanie Keith | Reuters

The numbers are so large, the impact so devastating and widespread, that they are difficult to believe. There’s a truism in public policy about big numbers. When they get big enough, they’re difficult to perceive.

But behind each of the big numbers about health care, there are real people.

People who are ill are facing an uncertain future, even under the best of circumstances. A person I know is fighting cancer. He’s covered through Obamacare. (I’m not using his name because the last thing he needs is a bunch of Trumpistas on the attack.)

“It would seem that I, with my fingers desperately grasping my ACA coverage as I slip slowly through the tunnel of cancer world, am in a very leaky lifeboat. I have always worked hard, played by the rules, paid my own way, served my country and my community. Now I am about to have a death sentence delivered to my door by my very own government. Tough to swallow. Really tough.”

He lives in Maine. You may know him. You probably know someone like him.

The political disagreement over the Affordable Care Act is about the appropriate role of the government in providing health care and about who, ultimately, pays.

Broadly speaking, Republicans would limit the government’s role as much as possible, including rolling back successful programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and they would force as many people as possible into the private market.

Democrats can be put into two categories: People who support universal, single-payer health care, similar to what our neighbors in Canada have, or a hybrid that combines private markets with programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

The ACA boosted coverage by expanding access to health coverage for low-income families through Medicaid, called MaineCare in Maine, and through subsidies to help purchase insurance on the private market.

Gov. Paul LePage has refused to expand Medicaid, costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars and needlessly jeopardizing public health. Five times he’s vetoed legislation, supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Now, a group of citizens have collected enough signatures to force the issue and place expansion on the ballot — even with the uncertainty of the law down the road.

Obamacare has been effectively demonized. It was a political albatross, hurting Democrats up and down the ticket. But now that Republicans control the levers of power in the federal government, voters are looking upon the law with new eyes.

A NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last week found that 45 percent of Americans support Obamacare, compared to 41 percent who don’t. And half of all respondents said they have no confidence that Republicans will come up with a better idea.

Voters are pretty clear about what they don’t like about Obamacare. And it doesn’t match the policy argument that most Republicans are making.

In focus groups conducted by the Kaiser Foundation, voters said they worried about rising premiums, deductibles, copays and drug costs. And, they said, surprise bills for services they thought were covered made them really angry. They don’t like insurance companies, either.

From the limited details we’ve seen about replacement plans, all these problems are likely to get worse.

Sen. Susan Collins, working with Sen. Bill Cassidy, this week introduced the outline of an ACA replacement, which would allow states to keep Obamacare if they want, completely opt out or set up a system that combines Health Savings Accounts and health insurance plans with high deductibles.

So far, the plan hasn’t garnered support from many Republicans or Democrats. It appears to leave in place the fees and taxes that fund Obamacare and use them.

The plan struggles from the central policy argument about health care by trying to create a choose-your-own-adventure menu that mixes a heavy federal hand with a hybrid system and a doomsday option, where states just opt out, leaving their residents out of luck and largely on their own.

As the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities sees it, the plan likely puts at risk low-income families and people with pre-existing conditions.

There are major concessions in the Collins plan meant to earn Democratic support. While the details are unclear, it appears to be a good-faith effort. It’s at least a starting point.

What seems impossible is for the plan — any plan — to give Republicans and voters what they both want, because they want very different things.

Trust. Good faith. Compromise.

Ha! Not when it comes to tax policy and Gov. Paul LePage.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. LePage has no real interest in tax reform, and Democrats have zero incentive to play along with complicated schemes that shift taxes toward working people and give breaks to the wealthy.

In 2009, Democrats worked in good faith to develop a tax reform plan that rebalanced the books. The sales tax was broadened so that more services, in a service-based economy, were taxed and income taxes were lowered. It also included elements to help low-income families.

While the plan had winners and losers, the goals were noble and because it promised the Holy Grail of Republican goals — reducing the income tax — it should have been able to win broad, bipartisan support. It did not.

Instead, Republicans waged jihad against the tax reform package, successfully repealed it at the ballot box and hung the policy around the necks of Democrats for several elections to come, even tagging Democrats who never supported it with the sin.

It was a lesson in hardball politics that I will never forget. No policy — no matter how sound on paper — is worth a dang if you can’t defend it politically.

That’s part of the reason why LePage’s budget and his efforts to change the state’s tax code are doomed.

First, his ideas are a political disaster. They would result in higher property taxes and expanded sales taxes for the promise of lower income taxes. But — and there’s always a but with tax policy — the majority of the benefit of those reduced income taxes go to the wealthiest people in the state.

Second, voters implicitly rejected his model in November (and in 2010), when they approved a surtax on high income earners to fund K-12 education, which is the primary driver of property taxes.

Under LePage’s plans, which include the elimination of the Homestead Exemption for people younger than 65, homeowners would take a bath.

According to the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, 912 families in Millinocket would see their property taxes skyrocket by $593 per year. It’s a similar story around the state, as property taxes go up an estimated $300.

Ouch.

Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of earners would see their tax bills go down by an estimated $23,000. That’s almost as much as someone earns in a whole year if they work 40 hours a week at $12 an hour.

Finally, even if his ideas were good — and they’re not — for LePage to successfully change the tax code, he’d have to find a way to work successfully with Republicans AND Democrats in the Legislature.

Fat chance. Just this week, the governor called them irrelevant.

BDN illustration by Eric Zelz

There are mantras that stick to any debate about tax policy: Tax reform should be revenue neutral and the tax code shouldn’t pick winners and losers.

Poppycock. Both are nearly impossible.

If you change the mix of taxes, you can pretend they are revenue neutral in the first year, but the numbers will change, just as the economy changes. Sales go up, unemployment fluctuates, consumption patterns change, real estate markets expand and contract.

And any time you change taxes, someone will benefit and someone else will pay, either out of pocket or with reduced services. Lower income taxes benefit people with high incomes while shifting costs to homeowners through property taxes and to low-income families by raising sales taxes.

If you want to change the tax code but want it to be revenue neutral and not pick winners and losers, turns out you really don’t want to change the tax code.

Property taxes should be the top priority for lawmakers.

Property taxes do not necessarily correlate with ability to pay. They hit people on fixed incomes the hardest, and they are a hindrance to homeownership, which is a laudable economic goal and source of security for families.

But if you think that property taxes should be the focus of any reform — and that the state should do a better job of funding its obligations for education, which voters said they wanted — then the governor’s tax plan is going in the exact opposite direction.

For LePage to be successful, he’d need to build trust with lawmakers, work in good faith and be willing to compromise. No chance.

At this point, LePage’s tax proposals and budget are little more than campaign documents (perhaps thinking about 2018?), placed into the record so he can talk about the evils of taxes and welfare.

With the state budget firmly in the hands of the Legislature, it’s the governor and his voter-rejected ideas that are irrelevant. The job of seriously governing falls to others.

U.S. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is an obstructionist, an enabler of Trumpism and, remarkably, a poet.

During the heated debate over the confirmation of Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general earlier this month, McConnell invoked a seldom-used rule to tell Sen. Elizabeth Warren to sit down and shut up.

On the floor of the Senate, the majority leader told another U.S. senator to sit down and shut up.

A man from Kentucky told a woman from Massachusetts to sit down and shut up.

And then, the male-dominated Senate voted to support McConnell’s invocation, silencing Warren and prohibiting her participation in the debate.

Thus was born a rallying cry.

“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

The 11 words, uttered with contempt, were meant to suggest that Warren had brought such disrespectful treatment upon herself. She’d deserved what she had gotten. She’d earned the rebuke in the genteel Senate for her untoward actions.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. Joshua Roberts | Reuters

And then the world exploded — or at least 51 percent of it.

Warren read a letter the late Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., had written to oppose Sessions when he was nominated for a federal judgeship in 1986.

The letter was a stinging rebuke from a civil rights leader who, through the repurposing of the letter, spoke from the grave to oppose the elevation of a man unsuited to be attorney general.

“Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens,” King wrote in opposition to then-prosecutor Sessions’ judicial nomination.

McConnell accused Warren of impugning the character of a fellow senator and then denied her the opportunity to further participate in the debate.

In his abuse of the Senate rules, McConnell made a tactical and strategic error. First, he elevated a late-night speech over a nomination that could not be stopped to monumental proportions. Word of his actions traveled around the world, and King’s letter — later read on the same Senate floor by men — received new attention.

Had he allowed Warren to finish, her speech would have been less than a footnote in the fight against President Trump’s cabinet nominee.

Instead, McConnell embarrassed himself, the Senate and his Republican colleagues who voted to silence one of their colleagues.

But far beyond the impact on the debate itself, which created pain for Trump and Sessions but did not jeopardize Sessions’ nomination, McConnell reminded women — all women — of the jerk at work who talks over them, who interrupts, who disregards their ideas, who takes credit for their work.

He reminded the world of the many, many women in history who were warned and who nevertheless persisted. Women like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Edie Windsor and so many others.

“Nevertheless, she persisted.” The words should have come from the lips of a suffragette or a Freedom Rider, from a historian or a poet, from a mother to her daughter. Not as a slur from the mouth of an old, white misogynist.

Last week, my 13-year-old daughter and I were talking about school. If you’ve got teenage kids, you know that getting any useful information can be a challenge. But that night, Addie was talkative.

She told me about a boy with whom she’s often paired for projects. The boy, a smart kid, has earned the reputation of being a leader, a take-charge type.

“Dad,” she told me, “they call me bossy when I act the same way.”

Nevertheless, she persisted.

“He likes to talk about how smart he is and says he’s smarter than I am,” she told me later, in a different conversation. “He wants everyone to know that he’s the smartest. And he tries to put me down.”

Nevertheless, she persisted.

“But I don’t really care what he says,” she concluded. “I’m strong enough to know that I’m smart — smarter than him, anyway — and I don’t need to prove it to him or anyone else.”

She persisted.

It’s just kids, sure. But it is the treatment women endure from the time they’re little girls through the time they serve in the United States Senate.

The day after Trump was inaugurated, millions of people rallied, including an estimated 20,000 in Portland and Augusta alone, as part of the Women’s March. They marched for peace, for health care, for women’s rights, to show their outrage.

They stormed the airports when the president took aim at immigrants and tried to ban Muslims from entering the country.

And on Saturday, they marched once again, this time for Planned Parenthood.

This president — empowered by his acolytes in the U.S. House and Senate — is trying to unwind the world with attacks on minorities, women, immigrants and anyone who is different.

Nevertheless, they will persist.

McConnell, with his wrongheaded sit-down-and-shut-up moment, put words to a movement that will be his undoing and the undoing of his president.

Gov. Paul LePage’s tenure as a woeful chief executive for Maine should offer some important lessons in how to react to President Donald Trump’s reign.

The first lesson is that we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by outrageous behavior. Yes, we must hold our leaders accountable for their racist ideas, bad manners and half-cocked notions. But the temptation too often is to focus on the men.

Second, we cannot let divisions among progressives divide us.

There are a lot of people who have expressed real disappointment in the election of Tom Perez as Democratic National Committee chairman over U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison. There are Bernie Sanders supporters who say they are prepared to write the Democratic Party off based on this outcome.

Their candidate of choice, Ellison, lost. But immediately after his victory, Perez named Ellison deputy chair as a way to build party unity.

But it’s clear that divisions remain.

Democrats need to leave them behind. The chairman election is not the sort of thing that should divide the party or progressives. I’m not saying, “get over it.” I hope Ellison’s supporters and people dissatisfied with the Democratic Party will continue to work to make our party stronger. That’s the opposite of “getting over it.”

The DNC job is largely administrative. It involves a lot of fundraising along with a hefty dose of local and state party operation-building.

Keith Ellison and Tom Perez speak after the Democratic National Committee elected Perez as chair. Perez named Ellison deputy chair. Chris Berry | Reuters

In a time of opposition — with Democrats shut out of the White House and Congress — the role of DNC chair might expand. But ultimately, a new crop of leaders will emerge to carry the Democratic standard. That list could include some already big names, like Sanders himself. But it’s unlikely to be Perez or Ellison.

Finally, there remains a lot of bad blood between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Sanders. We need to put it behind us.

Undoubtedly, Sanders brought new energy and new voters into the Democratic Party. His message, his cranky demeanor, his devil-may-care attitude about some political norms was refreshing to a body politic tired of canned messages and caution.

For her part, Clinton built a coalition that ultimately carried her to victory in the Democratic primary in a year of insurgency. The coalition, in fact, helped her to amass nearly three million more votes nationally than Trump.

The second guessing — the “he would’ve,” “she shouldn’t have” — is fruitless. It’s my profound hope that Democrats and other progressives can stop refighting the last war. There simply is no answer to be had about whether Sanders might have done better in the general election than Clinton.

Instead, as we move forward with our opposition to Trump, we must focus on the impact that his policies are having on real people. We must tell the stories of working families who could lose health care, who are divided by draconian and ineffective immigration policies, who are threatened by tax policies that take money away from schools and give them to the wealthy, and who are endangered by policies that target people who live in our communities and whom we all know and love.

For example, Trump’s decision to cancel guidance about transgender students being able to use the appropriate bathroom will hurt real people. Progressives need to lift those voices up and help them to tell their stories.

On the media, it’s also important to recognize two important ideas. We must defend the media from Trump and his efforts to obscure the truth and make facts meaningless. We need them to hold him accountable, to share accurate information and to help the electorate become better informed.

But we also have to be careful not to let Trump use his vendetta against the media to knock real headlines off the front page, as we’ve seen with LePage and some of his choice remarks about reporters and news organizations.

Such attacks are attacks on democracy itself, but the reason they are important isn’t about the newspapers or the reporters. It’s about undermining the ability of voters to get information that’s timely and accurate.

Trump presents a unique threat to democratic norms and to our democracy. We have to match his bravado and outlandish, dangerous behavior with discipline and focus.

Every action progressives undertake should be motivated by two questions: Will this make our country stronger, and will this help us win the next election? In that order.

The ongoing divisions and our susceptibility to distraction only empower Trump and those who would help to enforce his dark vision for our country.

Americans are clear about what they want from any health care reform.

They want simpler policies, fewer surprise costs, lower deductibles, cheaper prescription drugs and lower out-of-pocket expenses for their health care. They also like protections for pre-existing conditions, they support Planned Parenthood and they want more people to have coverage.

The newly released Republican plan in Congress is also clear.

It takes away health care from millions of people, makes insurance even more complicated, increases deductibles, increases out-of-pocket expenses — particularly for older and low-income Americans — does nothing about prescription drug costs, but does give massive tax benefits to wealthy people. Also, it defunds Planned Parenthood.

As Emily Brostek of Consumers for Affordable Health Care said Tuesday, “This plan seems to do almost everything that most Americans oppose: fewer people will be covered, costs will be higher and basic protections will be lost.”

It doesn’t solve anyone’s problems — not even those of a president and a GOP caucus who promised to repeal Obamacare.

The plan has landed with a dull thump, even without an impact analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Rep. Greg Walden introduce the American Health Care Act on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Eric Thayer | Reuters

Democrats have panned it for hurting millions of families by taking away their insurance and driving up costs, and conservative Republicans say it costs too much, is just Obamacare Lite or just won’t work.

Even Gov. Paul LePage says he opposes the bill — and he doesn’t understand health care or the Affordable Care Act enough to understand why he doesn’t like it. He’s all over the map. But doggone it, he knows when he doesn’t like something, regardless of the facts. And he doesn’t like this.

Oh, and he doesn’t like Obamacare, or President Obama for that matter, except for the health care market exchanges, which work because of subsidies paid for by taxpayers and the individual mandate that requires everyone to have health insurance or pay a fine.

So he’s heading to Washington (again) to lobby against it, and maybe hunt for a job.

As President Trump has belatedly discovered, health care policy is complex.

But fundamentally, every question about health care comes down to one easy-to-understand choice.

You either believe that everyone, regardless of income or situation in life, should be able to receive medical care when they are sick or injured, or you don’t, and you put qualifiers on who is worthy of health care.

The reason our health care system is such a mess is because we want to avoid this basic question, and we hide the debate in bogus ideas such as personal responsibility and market-based reforms.

The entire system is constructed to create a myth that health care is delivered through a more or less free market. Conservatives believe that greater faith and reliance on this free market will deliver better and less expensive results.

But it doesn’t, and it won’t. Health care isn’t a commodity like any other. People don’t and can’t always make rational choices, and they have no real individual power to bargain.

And we’ve already accepted that the government has an important role to play in guaranteeing health care for millions of people.

Even before the Affordable Care Act, huge numbers of people received their health care through the government: Seniors who receive Medicare, veterans and members of the military, poor children, some people with disabilities, low-income pregnant women, state workers, county workers, city and town workers, and people who work at public schools and colleges.

Taxpayers also subsidize the cost of insurance for people who receive their health care through work.

In one way or another, the government is helping to provide health insurance coverage for those people either directly or through subsidies hidden in the tax code.

The Affordable Care Act took this a little further by mandating that young adults can stay on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26 (a reform pioneered in Maine), by providing subsidies for low-income workers to buy coverage on the health care exchanges and by expanding Medicaid.

And the ACA, while not perfect, has worked. It reduced the number of people without insurance to record lows while also reducing the overall cost of the health care system and reducing the federal deficit.

Twenty million more people have insurance today because of the reforms of the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans now control the presidency and both chambers of Congress. The easier veneer of opposing Obamacare has been stripped away by the difficulties of crafting legislation that can actually pass.

Democrats now have it easy. They must stay united and oppose this disaster of a health care rollback.

Republicans, on the other hand, are going to have to decide — very publicly — whether they think everyone should have access to health care or if only some people should. And they’re going to have to say who doesn’t deserve it.

With Trump’s various promises to not kick people to the curb and cracks already showing in the Senate and House, seven years of dreams about repealing Obamacare are already turning into a political nightmare.

The plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act just hit a major barrier: Reality.

The numbers are in and they show what many people have known all along. Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” Obamacare are nothing more than a scam that would take health coverage away from millions of people, shift billions of dollars in costs onto states and destabilize the insurance market — all to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the bill Monday. Twenty-four million people would lose health coverage by 2026, 14 million next year alone. Medicaid would be cut by $880 billion, destroying the state-federal partnership that provides health care to children, seniors, people with disabilities and people struggling with substance use.

And while Republicans and the Trump White House have been attacking the CBO, it turns out that their internal analysis projected even bigger losses.

As Politico reported this week, the White House analysis found that the bill would cost 26 million people their health coverage. Right down the line, the Trump administration found that the impact of the American Health Care Act would be even worse than what the CBO found.

Even by the more cautious CBO analysis, 52 million Americans will be without health coverage by 2026. The White House found it would be 54 million.

From left, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer speak to the media Monday. Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

U.S. Sen. Angus King predicted the carnage.

“I don’t think there is much question that this proposal will hammer Maine and my people, and I can’t stand for that,” King said.

King went on to say that the terrible bill would tear insurance out from under people to give tax breaks to people who make more than $250,000 a year.

As the CBO confirmed, the AHCA would hit Maine particularly hard by driving up health care costs for low-income people and seniors.

Beyond the headlines of lost coverage, the bill also includes a number of gimmicks that will ratchet down federal support for Medicaid.

Medicaid insures about 268,000 people in Maine, and about 79,000 rely on Obamacare subsidies to purchase health care through the exchanges. About 114,000 low-income children in Maine are covered by Medicaid.

They’re all at risk.

Medicaid, despite near constant attacks from Republicans such as Gov. Paul LePage, remains popular. Voters recognize the program’s value and its critical role in helping to keep people healthy.

And voters also agree that people shouldn’t be kicked out of the program. In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 69 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of independents and 95 percent of Democrats agreed that Medicaid shouldn’t be cut for states that have expanded access.

As Kaiser found, more than 50 percent of people have some sort of personal connection to Medicaid, which is called MaineCare in Maine. And two-thirds of people want to keep the program as it is today.

Despite its popular support, the Republican plan would destroy the program with convoluted funding mechanisms that are designed to starve the program over time and kick people off.

The so called “per capita cap” or block grant programs are built to appear reasonable. But the devil — and I mean devil — is definitely in the detail.

These shell games are cuts. Period.

The Washington Post eloquently described it this way: “The proposed American Health Care Act would break with the government’s half-century old compact with the states in helping to finance Medicaid, which covers 68 million low-income people, including children, pregnant women and those who are elderly or disabled.”

The Republican health care plan punishes low-income people. It punishes the elderly and children. It punishes people with disabilities and living in nursing homes. All to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

During his campaign, President Trump promised that he wouldn’t support any plan that would cut Medicaid or Medicare and that he wouldn’t take health insurance away from anyone.

Clearly he was lying. It’s not the first and certainly not the last time. But it could very well be one of the most consequential.

While we all laugh about the idea that our microwave oven is spying (and the garbage disposal is destroying the evidence. SAD!) on us for President Obama, taking health care away from 52 million people is a death sentence for the “crime” of being poor or older.

The Republican health care plan would be devastating to Maine, its people and its economy. King nailed it: “The pattern is shift and shaft: Shift the cost and shaft the people who need coverage.”

Gov. Paul LePage came to power with the goal of blowing up decades of Democratic governance.

He rode a wave of discontent — and lies — into office. Unconstrained, he’s attacked and undermined government at every opportunity.

Land for Maine’s Future is an incredible, bipartisan success story. It’s public policy and investment that works. Land has been conserved for farming, forestry and public access through a partnership between private and government funders.

But the governor hates it. Really hates it. And he’s making other people hate it, too.

During his time in office, he has done everything he could — legal and not — to undermine and destroy the conservation program.

Now, in a turn, he’s supporting a significant project in Somerset County.

As the Bangor Daily News’ Michael Shepherd reports, the governor is supporting a conservation project with a hefty $5.7 million price tag. The easement would protect the Big Six Forest, a 23,600-acre property near the border of Quebec along the St. John River.

The land, according to the BDN, accounted for as much as 24 percent of Maine’s maple sugar production and 3.4 percent of the country’s.

That’s a significant amount and makes the conservation project — at least on the surface — seem worthwhile.

The easement could protect an important piece of a Maine-based industry and keep an important area in production — and out of residential development.

But, unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that.

The owner of the property is Paul Fortin of Madison. Fortin and his businesses have made significant contributions to LePage’s re-election campaign and his political action committee. (Fortin has also contributed more than $5,000 to US Rep. Bruce Poliquin.)

The easement would allow Fortin to continue sugar operations and logging on his property and would generate a large payday for the conservation easement, which would be funded by a combination of private, state and federal dollars.

The easement and its structure don’t appear to be unusual.

But with this governor, you can’t help but wonder.

Julia Durgee of Portland sketches Gov. Paul LePage during the governor’s March 8 town hall forum in Yarmouth. Chris Cousins | BDN

We know that the governor has used the power of his office to punish his political opponents. He’s even bragged about it.

Is it so hard to believe he would do the same to reward his supporters?

Perhaps, it’s as simple as having the access to make the case for an already worthy project — the protection of Big Six Forest is deemed a statewide priority for the maple sugar industry, after all.

But a reasonable person is entitled to ask if a similarly worthwhile project in another part of the state, or that involves people whom the governor believes are his opponents, would receive the same treatment.

Frankly, we don’t have to ask. The governor has used his authority to block LMF projects that he wrongly believed would benefit someone he treats as an opponent. He’s also blocked projects in the southern part of state.

And that is the insidiousness behind how this governor operates.

He hates government. He has shown himself willing to undermine it, even in areas of common sense and common purpose, such as public health and infrastructure investment.

He operates with such blatant disregard for the truth, facts and procedural norms that it’s easy to believe he’s capable of just about anything — saying anything, doing anything — to get what he wants.

Without the truth as a fence around his actions, constraining him to operate appropriately, who knows what grudge or deal he might pursue?

So here I am: A supporter of LMF and public-private conservation, left to question whether I can trust LePage and his appointees to do the right thing.

The same thing is happening at the federal level with President Trump. Just this week, the government announced new restrictions on passengers’ ability to carry electronics on some U.S.-bound overseas flights.

It’s billed as a security precaution, but already there are suggestions that instead the move is being used to punish foreign airlines.

LePage has so untethered his tenure from reality, has cast those with whom he disagrees as the enemy and has so abused his power, that skepticism of his actions grows unchecked.

Trust in government — even among people like me who know that government has an important role to play in many areas — and other institutions declines.

Norms of behavior are disregarded, and the fabric of civil society is pulled ever thinner.

The dark picture that LePage and his ilk drew to fuel their ascension to power becomes more real. They have concocted a self-fulfilling prophecy of government failure and kleptocracy of their own making.

The damage that LePage has done — and that Trump is starting to do — will take years to correct. It is deep down in the bones of government, and it will take a public servant of the highest skill, patience and integrity to fix.

The situation puts a new onus on the LMF board to be precise and cautious in its evaluation and to insulate itself as much as possible from any real or perceived pressure from the governor. Not only will LMF board members be judged by their own actions, they will be judged by the actions of the governor as well.

The fight for health care is far from over.

Last week, President Trump and Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress suffered a humiliating defeat when they were unable to muster enough support to pass the American Health Care Act.

Lacking support from moderates and conservative Republicans — and from the public — Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was forced to pull the bill from the floor without ever taking a vote.

For seven years Republicans have been at war with the Affordable Care Act. They weaponized the law against Democrats and spewed a mix of misleading facts and outright lies about the law’s effectiveness.

Voters rewarded the Republicans because they really are frustrated with the health care system. But the cure Republicans offered would have made those frustrations even worse, and they would have cost 24 million people their health insurance.

While Obamacare is far from perfect, it did expand health care coverage to millions of people through a combination of subsidies and Medicaid expansion. The uninsured rate in the United States is at historic lows. And the quality of the insurance people have has gotten better, as policies are required to provide essential benefits for things such as maternity care, prescription medicine and health screenings.

Republicans, Trump included, now say they are ready to move on to tax reform. Ryan went so far as to say that Obamacare would remain the law of the land for the “foreseeable future.”

Don’t believe it.

When Trump and Ryan talk about tax reform, they aren’t really talking about making the tax system better, simpler or more efficient.

House Speaker Paul Ryan discusses the demise of the American Health Care Act. Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Their top priority isn’t working people and the taxes that are taken out of their paycheck every two weeks. Their priority is to slash taxes for the wealthy.

Inside the Republican caucus there are real divisions about taxes, just like on health care. Ideas such as a border adjustment tax or tariffs are controversial, and there are deficit hawks who could demand that any changes in the tax code actually be paid for.

And that’s how we end up right back to health care.

The AHCA was built upon the pillar of providing huge tax cuts to the country’s richest people by devastating Medicaid. The AHCA would have cut $880 billion — that’s “billion” with a “b” — out of the program that provides health insurance to children, people with disabilities and older Mainers.

The bill also destroyed the federal-state partnership that funds the program by adopting per-capita caps or block grants, which would have further eroded federal support for health care.

Republican leaders, including Gov. Paul LePage, are perfectly comfortable taking life-saving health care away from people. They’ve done everything they can nationally and in Maine to ratchet down coverage.

It’s mean-spirited, and it’s bad policy.

But it’s also the only place in the federal government outside of defense spending that they can find the money they need to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

Progressives, moderates and anyone who believes everyone should have access to health care have the right to celebrate the demise of the AHCA last week. The calls they made to congressional offices, the protests, the letters to the editor — frankly, the honest pleas for help — made a real difference.

They may have literally saved the lives of thousands of people who would have lost health care. And they certainly moved members of Congress to do the right thing.

But the fight is far from over.

Republican leaders will try again, and you can bet that any plan to rewrite the country’s tax laws will once again come for Medicaid and the coverage that the program provides to 265,000 Mainers.

There’s a lot at stake for our communities and our state.

But we also have to remember there’s a lot at stake for Republicans. They’ve made a lot of promises. And there will be tremendous pressure from their base and from their funders for them to deliver.

That’s going to require us all to redouble our efforts to hold the line, particularly around health care.

After all, at least in the House, it wasn’t the devastating cuts to Medicaid that kept the most conservative members from supporting the AHCA. They were perfectly willing to strip health care away from millions of people. It was the fact that the AHCA wasn’t more draconian that kept them away.

Imagine: 24 million people without health insurance wasn’t enough pain and suffering.

Planned Parenthood, Medicaid, Medicare. They’re all still in Republicans’ sights. The fight over health care is far from over.

Gov. Paul LePage made a strong case last week for why it’s critical to raise the minimum wage for all workers in the state. Of course, he didn’t mean to make that argument.

Appearing on the radio, the cheapskate said that he stiffs wait staff to make a political point.

“I cut the tip in half and then I put the comment, ‘Call your legislator,’ on my charge card” receipt, LePage said, according to the Sun Journal.

In November, voters approved an increase in the minimum wage. The governor has been a vocal opponent of the policy, despite its strong support among voters.

The law raised the statewide minimum wage from $7.50 an hour to $9. The wage continues to rise until it reaches $12 an hour in 2020. At that point, it will rise each year with inflation.

It also eliminates over time the tip credit, which allows industries where workers receive tips to earn a sub-minimum wage as long as tips boost the total wage to the minimum wage threshold. The sub-minimum wage for tipped workers would finally end in 2024, seven years from now.

Alan Light via Flickr | Creative Commons license 2.0

This week, the Legislature will consider at least 10 bills that seek to change, overturn or study the minimum wage increase.

The governor of the state — who enjoys publicly financed, free housing, a $70,000-a-year salary and a $35,000-a-year expense account that he can spend however he likes — punishes people arbitrarily because he doesn’t like the outcome of the last election.

Of his salary and benefits, LePage says he feels like a priest or nun. (I don’t know any clergy who hold back on tips.)

Frankly, it’s awful, if not surprising.

The governor, at every turn, does what he can to disempower workers. He attacks unions. He attacks low-income working people. He has tried to roll back child labor laws, making it legal for kids as young as 12 to enter the workforce.

And who could forget the whole labor mural fiasco?

Right now in Maine and the United States — in fact, in much of the world — our economy is built upon cheap labor and cheap energy.

We don’t pay the real cost of production. The costs are shifted off to future generations in the form of undrinkable water, fouled air and a degraded environment. Energy, particularly fossil fuels, is subsidized in a way that’s hidden from most consumers.

And workers, who aren’t paid a living wage, rely upon other services to make ends meet or simply suffer, with their children going without.

Businesses that are built upon a model that doesn’t account for the true cost of what they produce are ultimately unsustainable.

Some restaurant owners and their staff are opposed to the change in the tip credit, arguing that it will hurt their business and hurt the servers who make significantly more than minimum wage when their tips are included in their total salary.

But as the Bangor Daily News found when it endorsed the higher minimum wage before the election last year, most waiters and waitresses earn low wages, even when tips are included. The average of salary for people in the restaurant and food service industry is about $23,000 a year.

Fair Wage Maine, the campaign that supported the successful ballot initiative, found that increasing the minimum wage to $12 would help one in four working moms, and that 52,000 Maine kids live in a household with one parent who would get a raise.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, my mom had to take a job working at a fast food restaurant.

Restaurant is a kind description for the place where she worked.

The job was terrible. The pay was terrible. The hours were terrible. She had to be at work before dawn for the breakfast shift.

It wasn’t a tip job, but the pay was miserable, and we really struggled until she was able to escape. It was tough work for little pay and even less thanks.

People like my mom — hard working, honest and who play by the rules — deserve a raise.

There are at least seven states that don’t allow a sub-minimum wage. Eliminating the tip credit hasn’t hurt workers there.

I get why some restaurants and servers are nervous. The change in the law affects them directly. But the evidence shows that you can have a healthy restaurant economy and pay a higher minimum wage without impacting tips.

People who work low-wage jobs shouldn’t be dependent upon the governor’s mood — or anyone else’s — for their pay.

LePage’s activism is misplaced and cruel; his targets are largely powerless to fight back.

The governor of the state has no business short-changing hardworking Mainers. And as legislators consider changing our state’s new law, hopefully they realize they don’t either.

Democrats in Augusta last week rolled out a smart, skinny budget to counter the proposal that Gov. Paul LePage presented earlier this year.

The budget prioritizes property tax relief, funding for education and investment.

It’s a far cry from LePage’s effort, which prioritizes meanness and failed notions of trickle-down economics.

Democrats call their budget “The Opportunity Agenda.” The name outlines the general philosophy of their plan: To make investments that give individuals the best opportunity for success.

For folks who don’t work inside the State House, the fighting over the two-year budget looks a lot like a three-act play. The governor introduces his ideas – which in LePage’s case are uniformly rejected by most Democrats and Republicans. Democrats present the outline of an alternative. Just before the deadline, Republicans and Democrats come together on a plan that can survive an anticipated gubernatorial veto.

At least that’s what’s happened in the past.

The State House in Augusta. Troy R. Bennett | BDN

But the conflict inherent in the system misses an important underlying point. For the most part, fighting over the budget is limited to what’s around the edges.

Yes, there are significant policy disagreements, and there is a real fight every year around issues such as taxation and spending on anti-poverty programs. That said, there is also broad agreement around much of the budget, which is not particularly controversial.

Democrats start there with their plan. They are proposing to fund baseline services consistent with the existing budget, which supermajorities in both chambers of the State House agreed to during the last budget negotiations.

The current two-year budget is about $6.8 billion. Democrats would propose to increase that amount to about $7.5 billion. I know, the so-called small government types just fainted.

But much of the increase is paid for through economic growth and new revenues, particularly from the sale and taxation of marijuana.

The Democrats are projecting, somewhat conservatively, new revenues of about $265 million.

And much of the new spending is allocated toward reducing property taxes.

Property taxes are regressive. They are especially hard for people living on a fixed income. They’re also the hardest tax to be addressed at the state level because they are set locally.

The Democratic plan attacks the problem in two ways: Directly, with new aid to taxpayers through an increase in the Homestead Exemption and the Property Tax Fairness Credit; and indirectly with more support for towns and cities through full funding of K-12 education and an increase in revenue sharing.

The big fight between Republicans and Democrats will be over the 3 percent surcharge on families who earn more than $200,000 a year.

Republicans strongly oppose the surcharge. Democrats keep it as part of their plan. The resolution of this policy dispute is at the center of budget negotiations, with both sides so far firm in their positions.

Voters have made it clear that they want better funding for K-12 education, and property taxes are a significant burden, hitting seniors hard especially in southern Maine and along the coast.

Other parts of the Democrats’ budget shouldn’t be controversial, but the jury’s out.

The plan includes targeted investments in areas that used to gain broad, bipartisan support: roads and bridges, research and development, workforce training. But in the hyper-partisan politics of the day, a fight is possible.

The Democrats’ plan calls for bonding to fund these areas, plus an expansion of broadband access, creation of a student debt relief program and new money for the state’s business incubator program.

You’ve heard it before, but it’s definitely true. Budgets are about more than money. They are moral documents that outline our priorities and define how we go about taking care of people in our state.

At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Democrat’s “Opportunity Agenda” will be adopted in full. But it is a thoughtful starting point that tackles some of the major challenges facing the state.

“Our Opportunity Agenda takes a comprehensive approach to the problems facing our state and provides a pathway that would make a real difference in the lives of Mainers,” said Speaker of the House Sara Gideon. “It puts Maine families first, giving them the tools they need to build the future they deserve. We do it by lowering property taxes, making education attainable, and promoting job growth and small business development.”

Democrats are holding a town hall on the Opportunity Agenda at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 13 at the Bangor Public Library, 145 Harlow St.

The plan is not without political risk. It does include an increase in spending that will be twisted into all sorts of political mischief.

But this budget blueprint makes a statement that Maine can’t cut its way to prosperity. We need to invest in our people and our institutions.

“Along with every challenge comes an opportunity, and Democrats commit to being the voice of the people in this budget debate,” Gideon said. “We know that’s what Mainers want and we intend to deliver.”

Not content with taking food away from hungry kids or health care away from the sick and the elderly, Gov. Paul LePage has now set his sights on taking public lands away from everyone.

LePage will travel next week to Washington, D.C., to testify at a kangaroo court of a hearing before the US House of Representative Committee on Natural Resources. There, he will continue to spread misinformation about the new Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.

The monument was created last August by President Barack Obama and since has had a positive impact on the state and the Katahdin region, drawing new visitors and new economic investment.

But LePage is driven not by facts or a concern for the people of the state, but by a blind ideology that opposes the federal government out of spite.

The hearing is less about discovering the truth of national monuments and public lands and more about generating headlines for Republican politicians who want to demonstrate their allegiance to fringe groups like the Sovereign Citizens and the nut balls who violently took over a federal reserve last year.

The hearing comes as President Donald Trump is expected to launch an executive branch review of all the national monuments created in the country during the last two decades.

Haskell Rock Pitch on the East Branch of the Penobscot River with Bald Mountain in the background in the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. Gabor Degre | BDN

I worked on the creation of the Maine national monument with Elliotsville Plantation, a nonprofit foundation that donated the 87,000 acres to the National Park Service, for more than four years.

Now, eight months after its designation, we can say with evidence that opponents’ fears about the monument haven’t come true.

Maine’s national monument came into being after thousands of conversations with people all around the state, including those who were inclined to support it and those who were inclined to oppose. The result is unique.

Katahdin Woods and Waters was created with private land – not state or federal land – donated along with an endowment of $40 million to support operations and maintenance. That’s special and took into account concerns about costs to taxpayers.

The monument forever – it’s written into the deeds – protects access for snowmobiling and hunting, along with other traditional activities. There were snowmobiles on monument lands all winter long.

Groomed skiing trails were maintained and the monument began to fulfill its mission of being a four-season recreation and tourist designation.

CNN, in a story about the places people must visit in 2017, listed the monument among some of the biggest tourist draws in the world. You can’t buy positive publicity like that, especially with the state’s paltry budget to support tourism.

At the same time, there’s a new vibrancy in the region’s real estate market, new businesses are opening and a foundation has announced a $5 million investment in the region to create an outdoor education facility.

According to the Bangor Daily News, in just the first months of the monument being open, there was more car traffic visiting than there are residents in the towns of East Millinocket, Medway and Patten.

Even longtime opponents are coming around and oppose LePage’s efforts to undo the monument designation.

LePage will sit before a congressional hearing next week, and I expect he’ll say all kinds of crazy things about the land and the law. But he knows little about either.

President Obama acted lawfully and consistently with the Antiquities Act. And the land that became Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is a helluva lot more than the wasteland that LePage describes.

To my knowledge, LePage, never one to let facts get in his way, has not visited the land. He’s never talked to the local chamber of commerce or the owners of new businesses in the region. He’s never floated the East Branch of the Penobscot River, he’s never climbed Barnard Mountain and looked across the valley to Mount Katahdin.

I have. And so have thousands of other people. Once you see the land, once you set foot on the trails or bike the old logging roads, or dip a line off the side of canoe into the river, you understand just how special this place is.

LePage, during his tenure as governor, has had few good things to say about our state. He complains about the people and looks into the woods and sees nothing but toothpicks and open pit mines.

But there’s a lot more to us and to our state. Katahdin Woods and Waters is introducing the world to inland Maine, to our state’s industrious history and the wonders of our big woods.

LePage can tell his lies. He can waive his arms and join the ugly chorus in Washington, D.C., that would trade away our country’s outdoor legacy.

But when the snow is gone and the mud is dry, the people will continue to come to the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. And when they feel the rush of Haskell Pitch or climb through wild woods to the peak of a mountain, they will know that our governor and his enablers are wrong.

As governor, LePage has been a destroyer. Five mills have closed since 2011 and he has stood helplessly by, watching and complaining but doing little else. He’s done his worst to verbally tear down schools, and towns and cities, and health care. His vision of the state is based on subtraction, not addition.

Now he want’s to tear public land – your land – away from everyone. We can’t allow that to happen.

WASHINGTON – Gov. Paul LePage is racking up the frequent flyer miles with his recent spate of visits to Washington, D.C.

I hope he earns a free upgrade or a ticket someplace nice because he’s certainly not doing himself – or our state – any favors with his recent travels.

On Tuesday, LePage testified before the Federal Lands Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee. His stated purpose was to educate the committee about the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, which was created last year by President Barack Obama.

With a friendly majority including a number of Tea Party blusterers who could give even LePage a run for his money, it should have been an easy way to grab a few friendly headlines.

It wasn’t. LePage was poorly prepared, managed to mangle even his small list of pre-approved talking points and largely embarrassed himself.

Gov. Paul LePage

While the governor denies it, there’s no question in my mind that his trips to Washington are an ongoing audition for a job in the Trump administration. Even if anyone’s paying attention to him, I don’t think he’s going to get a call back.

LePage bungled basic facts about the state, while managing to insult the Katahdin region, disregard community leaders who were in the audience watching his performance and even bad mouth Acadia National Park, one of the most visited and beautiful national parks in the country.

Under questioning from the committee, LePage was unable to say how big the tourism industry is in the state.

For the record, in 2016 tourism generated $6 billion in spending and supported 106,000 jobs, or about one out of every six jobs in the state.

According to information presented at the Governor’s Conference on Tourism – apparently the governor wasn’t paying attention – the total economic impact of tourism was $9 billion and tourists paid nearly $600 million in state taxes.

Despite shedding crocodile tears for the maintenance backlog at Acadia National Park, the governor didn’t know how big it is or much about its economic impact on the region and the state or its popularity.

Numbers that big are worth remembering.

Acadia is 35,332 acres, plus another 12,416 acres that are privately owned and under a conservation easement managed by the National Park Service.

According to the National Park Service, Acadia generated $333 million in total economic benefits to the region and state and supported 4,200 jobs in 2016. Visitors spent a whopping $274 million in the region.

The park logged more than 3.3 million visits last year.

In fact, the pre-approved talking point that the governor repeated – over and over again – was that once, a long time ago, there was a bad fire in the park.

What a salesman!

I doubt that the governor realizes that Acadia is one of the Top Ten most visited national parks in the country; that it was originally created as a national monument; and owes its existence to philanthropy.

Sound familiar? It should. That’s also the story of Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, which I worked on for more than four years.

He also doesn’t seem to understand the way Baxter State Park is managed. He described Baxter as a working forest, which would certainly surprise a lot of folks, including Gov. Percival Baxter himself.

Baxter State Park allows Scientific Forest Management Area timber harvesting on about 29,500 acres (14 percent) out of a total of 209,644 acres. Most of the park is to remain forever wild.

But the worst of the governor’s flubs was more personal. With business leaders from the Katahdin region sitting right behind him, the governor talked about the region as a mosquito-infested wasteland. A place no one would want to visit.

It was insulting. And it was a lie.

Matt Polstein, who was at the committee meeting on Tuesday, wrote in the Bangor Daily News that his tourism-based business is booming.

The coast, the governor said, is doing great. But nobody is going to come inland. He’s wrong and his disdain for the region only hurts it more as it tries to rebuild from the loss of five paper mills since 2011.

Oh, if only the governor worked as hard at saving those jobs as he has at trying to stop real, significant and long-term investment in the region with the creation of the monument.

The Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is already creating jobs, drawing new visitors to the region and helping to bring new energy to a part of the state that needs it.

LePage, who willfully turns away federal dollars meant to help Maine, is equally flip about the $40 million endowment that came with the new monument. LePage dismissed it. It’s not enough to make a real difference, he suggested.

The endowment alone won’t create and maintain the monument, but it’s one hell of a strong start. And Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters, a nonprofit, has formed to further support the park.

The governor did not represent our state well. He was misinformed. Belligerent. Untruthful. Insulting. Embarrassing.

LePage showed his character. And it wasn’t pretty.

Birds of a feather, it seems.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is in Maine this week, ostensibly to hold a press conference with Gov. Paul LePage about the state’s opioid crisis.

The visit, which was announced with less than 24 hours notice, puts LePage and Price on the same stage in Augusta talking about health care.

And it comes at a time when the Senate is working to overhaul a disastrous health care bill passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Perhaps the visit is payback for LePage’s recent visits to Washington. Instead of a job, he gets a little love from DHHS. Or perhaps, it’s to send a message to Sen. Susan Collins, who is one of the leading skeptics in the Senate of the bill because of its dangerous impacts on Maine.

Or to buck up Rep. Bruce Poliquin, who has come under intense pressure since his vote to take health care away from millions, including tens of thousands of Mainers.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer speak to the media after the Congressional Budget Office released its estimate Monday predicting 24 million people will lose health coverage over the next decade under the Republicans’ American Health Care Act. Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

It’s fitting that LePage and Price will be together. The two men have basically invented the “Four Pinocchios” or “Pants on Fire” ratings used by fact checkers who are too refined to call someone a liar.

LePage has made a career out of mangling facts about health care, drug addiction and drug crime.

His policies range from misguided to derelict to needlessly cruel and senseless. He has refused to expand access to health care and has actually taken coverage away from Maine people.

Price, fresh off a long career in Congress, earned a resounding “Four Pinocchios” from the Washington Post over the weekend for his futile efforts to spin baloney into talking points around the Trumpcare, which is also called the American Health Care Act – insomuch as it takes health care away from 24 million Americans or more.

Price tried to make the argument that the AHCA would not make cuts to Medicaid, which serves about 263,000 people in Maine.

That’s not true.

The AHCA cuts more than $800 billion from the program and would seriously impact older Mainers, people with disability and children. It even puts at risk medical services that are provided to special needs students in schools.

The Post put it simply: “When you are reducing spending by more than $800 billion over 10 years, you can’t pretend you are boosting spending.”

It’s not the first time that Price has stretched the truth. During his confirmation hearing, his testimony came under tough scrutiny.

As the Wall Street Journal reported in January, Price got a sweetheart of a deal when he bought biomedical stock at a discount while serving in Congress. Price testified, under oath, that the same deal was available to “every single individual that was an investor at the time.”

Nope. That’s not true. The Journal found that Price was one of fewer than 20 US investors offered the deal.

ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize winning, independent, non-profit newsroom, dug deeper into the Price affair.

“On the same day the stockbroker for then Georgia Congressman Tom Price bought him up to $90,000 of stock in six pharmaceutical companies last year, Price arranged a call to a top US health official, seeking to scuttle a controversial rule that could have hurt the firms’ profits and driven down share prices,” it reported

There’s not a person in Maine who doesn’t know that our state is facing a terrible crisis with opioids. Three hundred seventy-eight people died of drug overdoses in Maine last year, including 313 who were killed by heroin or other opiates.

Last month, during a meeting of the Task Force to Address the Opioid Crisis in the State, Portland Police Chief Michael Sauschuck was clear.

We can’t fight addiction without making sure that more people have access to affordable health care.

When asked what would make the biggest difference to fighting the crisis, Sauschuck said the expansion of Medicaid. That’s because so many people grappling with addiction lack insurance to access treatment, the Portland Press Herald reported.

“It’s funny, as a cop sitting here, I’m not going to tell you that I need more drug agents. I’m going to tell you I need more treatment and I need more prevention work,” Sauschuck said.

“If we’re not doing prevention, treatment and enforcement – and we’re not doing them equally – then we will fail and we are going to continue to fail. And when we fail in this conversation, people are dying. A person is going to die today, tomorrow and every day moving forward, [that] is what the stats show.”

While LePage and Price will be talking about addiction, they’re both schilling for legislation that does just the opposite of what Maine needs to push back against our drug crisis.

The American Health Care Act would tear the heart out of Medicaid – and out of the most effective tool in fight against addiction.

Maine lawmakers face a conundrum of their own making. And the only real way out is to trust the voters.

A well-financed – and extremely troubling – campaign to build a new casino in southern Maine has collected enough signatures to force a ballot initiative this fall.

The backers of the casino question have skirted campaign finance laws, misled their own lobbyist, hidden from public view and lied.

The Legislature knows it – Democrats and Republicans alike.

Now, they are considering their options and none of them are particularly good.

When a campaign collects enough signatures to place a question on the ballot, the measure is presented to the Legislature, which then has three options.

Lawmakers can enact the bill exactly as written, they can send it to voters or they can pass a competing measure, which then appears along side the original question on the ballot.

There are huge amounts of money at stake. Hundreds of millions of dollars.

And lawmakers are rightfully concerned about the kind of misleading and scurrilous campaign voters could face around the casino. In the past, organizations like CasinosNO! effectively held back the tide of gambling expansion. But opponents of legalized gambling have largely lost their argument.

A person signs a petition that is related to “An Act to Allow Slot Machines or a Casino in York County” on Oct. 19 in Bangor. Micky Bedell | BDN

With two casinos already in the state – one in Bangor and one in Oxford County – it seems more likely that organized opposition would come from the existing casinos, motivated by keeping the market on slots and table games more limited.

Faced with this dynamic, many legislators are reluctant to put the casino question into the hands of voters. As lawmakers have shown time and again this year with their efforts to undermine citizens’ initiative, they don’t necessarily trust the decisions that come from direct democracy.

Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason, a Republican, and Rep. Louis Luchini, a Democrat, are so concerned about the initiative and the deceptive way that it was placed on the ballot, they are floating a controversial plan to circumvent the initiative process.

As reported by the Bangor Daily News, the two are talking about enacting the deeply problematic legislation as written by proponents and then moving quickly to repeal the brand new law.

The goal would be to deny the casino’s backers their slot on the ballot.

It’s a dangerous and unprecedented gambit. It’s destined to end up in court. And it has the potential to set a precedent in which the Legislature and the governor could conspire in the future to block any referendum, regardless of its content.

The potential for mischief is too great.

Secretary of State Matt Dunlap described to the Portland Press Herald how the scheme might be perceived by a court, “That’s a little bit too cute by half.”

That’s putting it mildly. I really do sympathize with the struggle lawmakers are dealing with. They should examine all the options. It’s just that this one is pretty bad.

During my time in the governor’s office, the Baldacci administration strongly opposed the expansion of gambling in the state, vetoing legislation to allow the industry’s growth.

After several attempts, voters passed initiatives to allowing gambling first in Bangor and then in Oxford County.

Gambling laws have been written piecemeal and have not taken a thoughtful approach to the regulation of gaming or how the proceeds should be used in the best interest of residents of the state.

As much as it might pain me to say, Hollywood Casino has had a positive economic impact on Bangor and has sparked a revitalization of the riverfront, including the construction of the Cross Insurance Center.

Gambling is in Maine, and I cannot foresee a future in which the industry doesn’t continue. And, because there’s big money at stake, I don’t think the sketchy ballot campaign we’re seeing now will be the last.

Instead of trying to further undermine the initiative process with a Hail Mary plan that might be tossed aside by the courts, the Legislature should instead adopt a comprehensive gambling reform bill as a competing measure.

The bill could end some of the deeply flawed ways casino dollars are spent and put in place reasonable, data-based criteria for any future expansion, including stricter regulation on who can be involved in any facet of the gambling industry or its expansion. The backers of the current casino question don’t deserve a place at the table.

It’s difficult to predict how voters will react to competing proposals on the ballot – that’s why we have elections after all.

They could become confused by the competing measures or frustrated. And a live campaign gives the tricksters who placed the question on the ballot a shot to win that they probably don’t deserved.

The other alternative: Put the question out there as written. Both require opponents to run a real campaign.

The only way forward is to trust the voters to make the right decision, to engage with them early and have a substantive conversation about the casino proposal and its backers, and to fight hard against a truly bad idea.

It’s no sure thing, but it’s a dangerous game to undermine Maine’s initiative process.