Here is a video of Eliot speaking at Waynflete School about the economic problems that Maine is currently facing and what we can do to turn the economy around:
VIDEO: What Does Healthcare Reform Mean for Maine?
March 24th, 2010
The healthcare bill provides Maine a real opportunity to become one of the leading states in providing better healthcare by shaping healthcare around people and not health insurance companies.
Listen as Eliot discusses how Maine can seize this unique opportunity to transform healthcare in Maine.
VIDEO: How Casinos Harm Recreation and Tourism in Maine
March 24th, 2010
Here is a YouTube video in which Eliot discusses his opposition to casinos and why he believes Maine should invest in its people and places of character instead:
Maine Wellness – Lower Cost Healthcare for Maine
March 24th, 2010
Maine’s rapidly rising annual expenditures for healthcare are crippling Maine’s working families, who pay too great a portion of their wages for healthcare, and are breaking the backs of Maine employers. High healthcare and insurance costs are one of the most important factors making it difficult to live and do business in Maine.
We can bring healthcare costs under control in Maine by providing essential health-care services for all Maine citizens through Maine Wellness, a new statewide framework within which coverage and care will be provided at a price that Maine businesses and taxpayers can afford, while preserving individual choice and the important relationships between patients and caregivers.
The Maine Wellness framework will be based on these three principles:
- All Mainers should have access to essential health care services.
- The program must be financially sound and sustainable.
- We will reward healthy behaviors and pay for healthy outcomes, de-emphasizing payments for procedures as much as possible, because many of the diseases we pay to treat are preventable.
Our program will borrow from the highly successful efforts undertaken by Cianbro, Hussey and other large Maine employers, who have succeeded dramatically in controlling costs and providing incentives for people to stop smoking, to lose weight and to take better care of themselves. Maine Wellness will be built on the foundation of Maine’s strong system of non-profit hospitals and committed physicians and caregivers.
Maine Energy Resources – Lower Cost Electricity for Maine
March 24th, 2010
We have an extraordinary abundance of clean, renewable energy resources in Maine: our forests and croplands, our onshore and offshore wind, our tides and our ample sun. We need to be sure that some of these renewable resources are used to generate electricity for use right here in Maine, to lower electricity costs for Maine businesses and homeowners and to generate jobs and incomes for Maine.
Maine Energy Resources, a publicly-owned business chartered to operate as a public power authority, will use low-cost, tax-exempt capital to generate electricity throughout Maine from our renewable resources and will accelerate the development of clean and low-cost electricity in Maine. Maine Energy Resources will invest in energy efficiency in Maine and will enter into public-private partnerships with energy entrepreneurs. Maine Energy Resources will not export electricity out of state, because an important part of its mission will be to put the electricity to work in Maine.
Lowering the cost of electricity is one of the most important tools we can use to keep jobs in Maine, to expand businesses in Maine and to attract new investment.
Rebuilding: Investing in Maine’s Competitive Assets
March 23rd, 2010
For decades in Maine, our economic development efforts have been uncoordinated, duplicative, wrongheaded and unproductive. Cities and towns in Maine with the same fundamental interests in economic development have been competing against each other in exhausting, expensive and fruitless efforts to build their individual commercial tax bases. Literally hundreds of state, regional, local and non-profit agencies in Maine spend millions upon millions of dollars every year chasing jobs and industries that have little cause to move to Maine, while paying scant attention to the needs of businesses that already are in Maine and want to expand.
Our high cost structure has built a wall around the State of Maine, one that discourages new businesses from moving to Maine and investing here, while behind that wall we have failed to invest in a focused way in our competitive assets. Cutting our cost structure – lowering the cost of living and doing business in Maine – is our most urgent and immediate challenge, but at the same time we also need to bring a new, strategic and far more focused approach to investing in Maine’s competitive advantages – our young people, our quality places, our natural resources and our strategic location.
Investing in Maine’s Natural Resources
March 23rd, 2010
Maine is blessed with abundant resources of farmland, mighty forests, clean waters and the Gulf of Maine. Farming, forestry and fishing were the cornerstones of our state’s economy in our beginnings. These remain keystone industries. In a world increasingly desperate for the products that we can harvest, investment in the sustainable development of our natural resources can drive Maine incomes higher.
Lowering Maine’s cost structure in the ways that our Strategy suggests will have a discernible impact in short order. Lower electricity and healthcare costs can extend the growing season throughout our state, revitalize our pulp and paper industry and promote more efficient and more profitable lumber and wood products mills. Research and development efforts in composites and bio-fuels also hold great promise for using Maine’s resources in new and innovative ways.
While Maine’s traditional fishing industries face many challenges, our coastal waters and the Gulf of Maine represent an amazingly diverse resource that will continue to be a bountiful source of food and protein that the world needs. The same is true for Maine’s agricultural lands, as demand for locally sourced foods increases and the issue of food security becomes more prominent.
All of these efforts to use Maine‘s natural resources in innovative and sustainable ways benefit from something else that has incredible value: Maine’s legendary reputation for quality. That’s our brand, and we must continue to safeguard it, invest in it, and promote it.
Investing in Tourism, Recreation and Maine’s Places of Character
March 23rd, 2010
We call ourselves Vacationland, and tourism is our largest industry, but it also is an industry that for too long has been taken for granted and underappreciated. We will change that. People come to Maine from all over the world because of what we have to offer: a beautiful coast, pristine lakes and ponds and miles of rivers for fishing and recreation. We also have vast tracts of wilderness areas, majestic mountains, and communities filled with history, culture and warm and friendly people. In addition to our great outdoors, we have vast creative and cultural assets that are equally important magnets.
People come here to hunt and fish, to go sailing, kayaking, canoeing, bicycling, hiking, skiing, snowmobiling and a host of other outdoor pursuits. Many people own second homes in Maine. And Maine is an increasingly popular place for people to retire, bringing with them disposable incomes and valuable skills, while placing few demands on our schools and state services. What draws these tourists and permanent settlers alike is not only our pristine natural resources, however.
In addition to our traditional sources of tourism dollars, Maine is now host to burgeoning year-round cultural tourism that attracts visitors from around the globe to our outstanding museums, galleries, performance venues and historical landmarks, as well as to our statewide festivals and fairs. Our local farms are themselves becoming destinations and our farmers’ markets, as well as our artisanal local food products, wines and beers, all figure prominently in the success of our nationally recognized restaurants. People are coming to Maine and spending money to take advantage of these diverse cultural assets, but we have so far failed to promote them as effectively or aggressively as we should.
Like any industry, tourism requires investment. We are competing for visitors with other places around the country and throughout the world. We cannot simply take it for granted that people will come here because they always have; we must promote ourselves aggressively, continually search out new markets and find ways to help our tourism, recreation and sporting businesses invest in the kind of infrastructure and amenities that will keep people coming back to Maine.
Lowering the cost of doing business in Maine will help our tourism-related businesses, just as it will all other businesses, and investing in education, especially arts, technology, hospitality and recreation management programs, will make sure that the industry has trained workers and is developing the next generation of industry leaders.
Finally, people come here because Maine is special – what has come to be called quality of place. Maintaining that quality experience is the most important investment we can make. That means respecting and protecting our natural environment and our wild and scenic places. It means preserving farmland, forests, working harbors and downtowns. It means reinvigorating those historic downtowns by attracting creative entrepreneurs with favorable living and working conditions. It means welcoming investment in our state, but doing so on our terms, not someone else’s.
Investing in Maine’s Strategic Location
March 19th, 2010
For too long we have thought of ourselves as being at the end of the line. That is a shortsighted view. Instead of just looking south to the rest of the United States, we should look north to Canada, our largest trading partner, east to Europe, and over the North Pole to Asia.
In a world that is increasingly interconnected, Maine is strategically located to provide access to population centers in the Northeast and Midwest U.S. As Canada develops its energy resources and a major international deepwater port in Halifax, Maine can position itself as a critical link in moving energy and goods through our state. However, we need to invest in our seaports, rail lines, roads and airports. We need to support the responsible development of LNG terminals and energy corridors and to undertake a public-private partnership to build an East-West highway.
Great opportunities to create new jobs, increase incomes and develop new revenue sources lie before us if we take full advantage of our location and invest in the infrastructure that will put us in the center of the action, instead of at the end of the line or sitting on the sidelines.
Background Checks on the Purchase of Guns & Firearms
March 15th, 2010
“I support the current law requiring background checks on firearms purchases from licensed dealers and would support extending background checks to private sales (except between family members) and sales at gun shows if this could be accomplished in ways that don’t add additional costs or burdens on sellers and buyers. For example, there might be a toll-free number that sellers could call to get verification immediately over the phone.”