A U.S. Department of Justice investigation into whether prison officials in Massachusetts are violating federal law by denying prisoners their addiction treatment medication could have consequences for all of Maine’s prisons and jails.
Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announced the investigation into whether the Massachusetts Department of Corrections is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act in a letter received by that state’s health and public safety officials on March 27, according to The Boston Globe.
The letter asserts that people with an addiction to opioids, who receive medication-assisted treatment outside of prison, are denied that treatment in Massachusetts prisons, in violation of the federal law that protects people with disabilities from discrimination. People who are in recovery from drug addiction are considered to have a disability under that law.
“It would set a very strong precedent if the Justice Department encourages prisons and jails in Massachusetts to provide opioid replacement therapy in a correctional setting. I think that would have ramifications for the entire country,” said Zachary Heiden, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.
A decision in Massachusetts wouldn’t necessarily be legally binding in Maine unless it reached a higher appeals court, but it could precipitate a similar investigation here or prompt action by corrections officials or lawmakers.
An estimated 70 percent of all inmates in local jails nationwide have committed a drug offense or used drugs regularly, and an estimated 35 percent were under the influence at the time of their offense, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
When other states have continued or started people on addiction medication in jail and helped them continue treatment after their release, they have increased the chance people will stay in treatment, and witnessed reduced drug use and drug-related criminal behavior.
As in Massachusetts, prisons and jails in Maine have largely prevented inmates from continuing to take physician-prescribed addiction medication such as methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone, though they are considered the medical standard of care.
Just one jail in Maine, Knox County Jail, allows certain inmates to take buprenorphine, commonly known by its brand name Suboxone, while another jail, Penobscot County Jail, started offering naltrexone, known as Vivitrol, on a limited basis last year, according to a BDN review of all jail facilities last July.
That review also found Maine’s state-funded prisons do not offer medication-assisted treatment. The Maine Department of Corrections did not reply to a request for comment Thursday.
“I’ve had many patients arrested on false warrants, kept over the weekend in jail awaiting a court hearing on Monday, having had to endure withdrawal. How would this be different from withholding anticonvulsants, insulin or psychiatric medications?” said Mark Publicker, a leading addiction specialist in Maine.
Publicker said corrections officials in Maine shouldn’t wait for federal intervention, however, to allow inmates to continue their treatment.
Sheriffs, meanwhile, have expressed concern about allowing methadone and Suboxone into their facilities because they are narcotics in their own right, though they don’t produce a high when taken as prescribed. They’ve also raised the issue of the cost of providing the medication. Doing so would likely require adding medical or counseling staff, said Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce, whose jail has about four mental health counselors for about 400 inmates.
“We do not do medically assisted [treatment] because, No. 1, the cost. No. 2, the average stay for us is about 27 days,” Joyce said. “We don’t even do drug rehabilitation. At one point we did, but we didn’t have people long enough. You’d just start making progress, and they’d be released and go back to their habits. It was really throwing money away.”
Heiden said a lack of funding is not a good enough reason to stop someone’s medication-assisted treatment when they enter a jail or prison.
“Every study shows that drug addiction treatment is much cheaper than drug addiction,” he said.
There hasn’t been a lawsuit yet in Maine to potentially compel jail and prison officials to provide the treatment because the right plaintiff hasn’t come along, Heiden said.
“From a constitutional standpoint it’s been recognized for quite some time that jails and prisons cannot be deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need. Opioid addiction is unquestionably a serious medical need,” he said. “The hard part is finding the right plaintiff who has a claim. Our courts are not equipped to answer general policy questions. They settle disputes between real parties.”
But if the Justice Department finds Massachusetts is violating the law, it would have, “what we call in the legal world, persuasive authority,” Heiden said, meaning a precedent other courts may follow. If the case makes its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which covers Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico, a decision there would be legally binding on Maine.
There is no indication that an investigation similar to the one in Massachusetts is taking place or will happen here.
“I cannot comment on whether an investigation is being, or will be, conducted in Maine,” said Donald Clark, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine.
Maine Focus is a journalism and community engagement initiative at the Bangor Daily News.
“Here, read this.” The biologist slid a folded paper past his beer, where it came to rest next to my wine. My friend works for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Since his bosses may think his idea is nuts, I’ll protect his identity and just make up a name: Wally.
The paper was from a scientific journal, The Canadian Field-Naturalist. It was titled “Gray Jays and Common Ravens as Predators of Winter Ticks,” and it dated back to 1989. The journal documented anecdotal evidence of ravens and jays eating engorged ticks that had fallen off moose. There were even a few observations of gray jays that landed on moose and possibly picked off ticks.
Maine has a winter tick problem. This tick species feeds primarily on moose, and an increase in the tick population has had a terrible effect on our moose. We may have to shoot more moose, just to starve the ticks.
Wally’s eyes brightened. Gray jays are members of the corvid family, which also includes crows and ravens. Corvids are among the most intelligent of birds. On a scale where Stephen Hawking was a ten and Congress is a zero, jays are about a six. All corvids can learn from each other.
Wally wondered, could gray jays be trained to eat ticks? In a controlled experiment where jays were given the choice between eating bread or a fat, juicy, engorged tick, the jays chose the tick every time. What would happen if you brought a stuffed moose into the woods, sprinkled some bread and engorged ticks on the haunches, and called in the jays? Would they learn to eat ticks off moose, and teach other to do it?
For the next several minutes, we debated the merits. Jays cache food, and the journal documented instances where jays hid ticks for later consumption. If jays stashed ticks all over the woods, wouldn’t that just make matters worse? Probably not. Separated from the moose, the ticks would likely freeze. If this new abundant food source caused a gray jay population explosion, would the extra jays deplete other songbirds by raiding nests all summer? Probably not. Corvids do raid nests, but their reputation is likely overrated. Would a live moose tolerate birds picking ticks off its back? The journal documented one moose getting annoyed and chasing off ravens that foraged too closely.
I had my own doubts about whether jays would be that easy to train, and whether other jays would learn from them. Gray jays are notorious for raiding picnic tables. Late last year, I stepped out of an outhouse on Harrington Lake along the Telos Road, and came face to face with a gray jay perched just three feet away. His inquisitive expression said, “When are you and I going to share breakfast?” But when I encounter jays away from cabins and campsites, they seem unaware that I might have food, and act oblivious when I toss a potato chip their way.
So last weekend I went into the woods to conduct experiments. I started with some jays that were not near campsites. I got their attention and threw some peanuts on the ground. They ignored me. Perhaps bread would be more noticeable, I thought. I had a croissant left over from breakfast, so I tore off a chunk and held it in my palm, arm outstretched. Among jays, this is universal sign language for “Look, I have food in my hand.”
They ignored me, darn it. That was a $3 croissant that I had just sacrificed for science! I picked up the crumbs and drove down the road a half mile, where another family of jays popped out of the woods. They watched as I threw the crumbs, and simply flew off, ignoring my offering. This happened several more times. Apparently, campsite jays don’t talk to logging road jays.
I picked up the now-soggy pieces of croissant and drove to the Ranger’s Cabin at Chamberlain Bridge where I knew the jays would be more welcoming. Three flew over immediately. I threw a morsel on the ground, and two jays raced each other to grab it. Moments later, they were eating out of my hand. Maybe I don’t need to train jays to find moose. Maybe I need to train moose to tromp through campsites. This might not end well.
More experimentation is needed. Or, at least that’s my excuse for heading back into the woods to play with moose and gray jays.
Bob Duchesne serves as vice president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley Chapter. He developed the Maine Birding Trail, with information at mainebirdingtrail.com. He can be reached at duchesne@midmaine.com.
The Department of Homeland Security said a surge of illegal crossings last month justifies the Trump administration’s call for an emergency deployment of National Guard troops to the Mexico border, citing a 37 percent increase in the number of people taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol.
U.S. agents arrested or denied entry to 50,308 unauthorized migrants in March, the highest one-month total since President Donald Trump took office and a 200 percent increase over the same period last year, when crossings fell to historic lows.
The monthly arrest figures are widely used as a gauge of illegal migration patterns, and the numbers typically rise each spring as demand for labor increase at farms and other worksites. But this year’s jump between February and March was the largest of the past five years, and driven almost entirely by migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
In a statement, DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton said Thursday that the sudden increase was evidence “the crisis at our Southwest border is real.”
“Illegal aliens continue to exploit our immigration laws,” Houlton said. “We need to close these dangerous loopholes that are being taken advantage of each and every day, gain operational control of the border, and fully fund the border wall system,” he added, referring to the $25 billion Trump border security plan that has stalled in Congress.
Houlton’s mention of loopholes was a reference to the Trump administration effort to tighten asylum procedures it says migrants are exploiting. The backlog of asylum claims in the U.S. immigration court system is so lengthy that applicants who enter the country without authorization can spend several years living and working in the United States while their claims are adjudicated.
DHS said it registered a 49 percent increase in the number of families taken into custody last month, a category consisting of a child and at least one adult relative. The number of unaccompanied minors under age 18 rose 41 percent. The totals for those categories were still below their 2014 peak, but administration officials said they pointed to the urgency of taking swift action.
Administration officials say they are considering measures to discourage illegal migration as the weather warms, and since last year DHS has threatened to separate parents from their children to deter them from attempting the trip. The agency has implemented the practice on a limited basis in recent months, drawing criticism from immigrant activists and child welfare advocates.
DHS typically releases the monthly border apprehension totals later in the month, and their publication a few days early indicated the Trump administration was seeking to bolster its claims that a National Guard deployment of up to 4,000 troops is warranted. “I usually start looking for the numbers to be released around the ninth or 10th of each month,” said Adam Isacson, who tracks border security at the Washington Office on Latin America. “These were out on the fifth.”
The threats of family separation and a tightening of asylum rules could be one explanation for the surge, Isacson said. “Rumors about a coming crackdown could be making people try to take the trip now, especially if that’s the message of some of the smugglers,” he said.
Arrests along the border with Mexico have been falling for the past decade and reached their lowest level since 1971 last year.
“Because of the Trump Administrations actions, Border crossings are at a still UNACCEPTABLE 46 year low,” the president wrote on Twitter Thursday.
Good morning from Augusta, where procedural politics are starting to take hold as we careen toward the end of another legislative session. When one side or the other doesn’t get what it wants on marquee bills, parliamentary procedure rules become the playbook.
A case in point is what happened Thursday on a bill that would have prohibited gross metering. That allows electricity utility companies to tax people who generate certain amounts of energy on their own from devices like windmills or solar panels. The bill was drastically pared down from the way it was originally proposed and garnered heavy support in the Legislature — until it came to overriding a veto by Gov. Paul LePage.
The Senate veto override vote was 26-7 but the veto was sustained Thursday in the House on a 97-52 vote — about four votes short of the necessary two-thirds needed to squish the veto. Normally, that would be the end of it.
But House Speaker Sara Gideon, D-Freeport, and House Majority Leader Erin Herbig, D-Belfast, conspired to keep the bill alive a little longer by tabling it, presumably to twist some arms in an attempt to move this bill to enactment.
Another example: Democrats opposed LePage’s tax conformity bill in a committee on Thursday and it’s unclear where things will land. The governor’s plan, which would overhaul Maine’s tax code by handing back $88 million in taxes to Mainers on net by next year, faces a difficult road after Democrats on the tax committee voted against it on Thursday.
Democrats’ alternative plan would reject estate and corporate tax cuts while boosting earned income and property tax credits and creating a new credit for businesses that offer paid family leave.
The LePage administration has said not conforming to federal tax changes would make pieces of tax law hard to administer, so while a deal may have to be worked out at some point, it’s hard to see exactly how the Legislature will get there with a scheduled adjournment date of April 18.
Expect more procedural karate when it comes to Medicaid. Now that the LePage administration has refused to submit an expansion plan to the federal government by the April 3 deadline defined in a citizen-initiated bill, Democrats are spearheading hearings about the cost.
Experts laid out the range of estimates to pay for the new enrollees Thursday to the Legislature’s budget committee, which convenes again on Monday to discuss the potential cost of hiring new people in the Department of Health and Human Services to handle some 70,000 or more new applications.
LePage has made clear he will not be the one coming forward with funding proposals and it now appears that lawmakers will do it for him. Attorney General Janet Mills, who is also vying for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, announced this week that the state has won $35 million in tobacco settlement money that could fund expansion start-up costs.
That’ll probably require legislative action and an attempt to force Medicaid expansion past Republicans who oppose it — and hold a majority in the Senate. Let the procedural posturing begin.
Democrats’ bid to force the Legislature to put out another bill on ranked-choice voting failed. Whether or not ranked-choice voting will be used in the June election will likely have to be settled in court after an effort from Sen. Michael Carpenter, D-Houlton, failed on Thursday.
It would have forced a legislative committee to report out a bill funding the voter-approved system and fixing legal conflicts that may prevent it from being used. Somewhat remarkably, Democrats lost in a 17-17 vote after wooing Sen. Tom Saviello, R-Wilton, to join them. But Sen. Dawn Hill, D-Cape Neddick, wasn’t present for the vote and the effort is dead for now.
Another maneuver by House Democrats could be viewed as a bit of political trickery. A citizen-initiated bill that would create a new 3.8 percent employment tax to fund a universal home health care system, which was spearheaded by the Maine People’s Alliance, looks like it’s headed straight to the ballot without a public hearing.
The Legislature has the choice to send initiatives like that directly to the ballot or just enacting it. Normally, the former happens without the kind of public hearing that almost all bills get in Augusta. But last year, a legislative committee held a hearing on a York County casino question that disclosed key information about its funders.
Advocates say a hearing is crucial even for initiated bills because a public airing and review by committee analysts help uncover issues ranging from technical flaws to constitutional uncertainties that could be addressed before final wording of ballot questions is written. The Republican-led Senate voted to send the bill to the Legislature’s Taxation Committee, but the Democratic-led House disagreed.
There were hours of testimony last week from House Republicans who opposed the bill, which prompted a partial walk-out by Democrats. In the end, Democrats used their slim majority to indefinitely postpone the bill, which sends it to the ballot without any hearing.
Following last year’s fierce battle over another Maine People’s Alliance initiative that would have created a 3 percent tax in support of public schools, which passed at the ballot box but was repealed by Republicans in the Legislature, the timing of this proposal in an election year is troublesome and putting the bill through the legislative process could have forced votes that would have been potent campaign fodder for candidates in both parties.
Today in A-town
The House and Senate are off after working the past four days. Floor sessions resume Monday and lawmakers were warned to expect two or three sessions per day by midweek as the Legislature approaches adjournment.
Three committees plan to meet today. The Health and Human Services Committee will pore over a late governor’s bill to change MaineCare eligibility standards related to retirement and education accounts. The judiciary and energy committees also will meet this morning.
Reading list
The secretary of state has ruled for the defendants in two ballot access skirmishes.Max Linn, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, and Cody Blackburn, a Libertarian running for a Bangor seat in the Maine House of Representatives, will appear on the June 12 primary election ballot following unsuccessful challenges by their opponents. Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap ruled Thursday that enough of their signatures qualified — despite several signatures from dead people on Linn’s petition.
Whether prisoners should have addiction treatment medication is the focus of a federal probe that could have ramifications in Maine. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether the Massachusetts Department of Corrections is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing the medication to prisoners who were taking it on the outside. The outcome could be important in Maine, where prisons and jails generally prevent inmates from continuing the treatment.
LePage has signed $45 million in tax breaks for Bath Iron Works into law, prompting complaints from the company’s union. The bill, which was under development for months, will provide up to that amount of breaks over the next 15 years, providing the shipyard maintains certain employment levels and invests $200 million in its physical infrastructure. However, union leaders distributed leaflets Thursday blasting the company for 31 layoffs announced last week and 27 people still out of work for a previous round of layoffs.
A Pittsfield high school is suffering the effects of fewer foreign students enrolling. Maine Central Institute, a semi-private town academy that serves as the local high school, typically has 25 percent to 30 percent boarding students who are mostly international. This year, only about 16 percent are boarders. That has prompted the school to reduce faculty and staff levels and cut programs such as freshman basketball and cheerleading.
Fame, not fortune
Daily Brief fans have rare opportunities to see Christopher Cousins and Michael Shepherd in living color on their televisions or personal viewing devices. Mike helped moderate the April 3 Republican gubernatorial debate on WGME, which you can watch over and over again by clicking here.
Chris will play the same role for the April 10 debate among Democratic Blaine House hopefuls. The BDN will stream that at 8 p.m. Tuesday. Our dynamic duo also will appear on The Maine Event at 6 p.m. Sunday on your local Maine Public channel.
Their fame may be growing but their bank accounts are not. The Daily Brief accountant told me that raises are out of the question this year, given the fact that we have obliterated our budget for makeup and hair gel. Sorry, guys. Here’s our soundtrack. –– Robert Long
We clearly do this job for the adoration. Here’s our soundtrack. –– Michael Shepherd
Yesterday you told us no days off. Now no raises. What’s next, confiscating our notebooks? Here’s your soundtrack, bossman. — Christopher Cousins
Today’s Daily Brief was written by Christopher Cousins, Michael Shepherd and Robert Long. If you’re reading this on the BDN’s website or were forwarded it, click here to get Maine’s only newsletter on state politics via email on weekday mornings.
To reach us, do not reply directly to this newsletter, but email us directly at ccousins@bangordailynews.com, mshepherd@bangordailynews.com or rlong@bangordailynews.com.
Maine’s most iconic outerwear retailer plans to open its first downtown store in the United States in Boston Friday morning.
That store and four others opening later this year elsewhere in the United States are part of an L.L.Bean strategy to locate smaller stores in what it considers unique urban markets where outdoor gear will be chosen specifically for the tastes of local residents, Eric Smith, brand engagement spokesman for the company, said.
The other four will be in New Haven, Connecticut, near Yale University; Park City, Utah; Madison, Wisconsin, near the University of Wisconsin; and Oak Brook, Illinois.
The retailer has four other Massachusetts stores in suburban areas: Burlington, Mansfield, Dedham and Mashpee on Cape Cod.
“Each are smaller stores in unique markets where we will curate the assortment of clothes we will sell,” Smith said. “It is part of a national retail growth plan with smaller stores carrying items for local buyers where we understand the market and the community.”
The store opens at 9 a.m. Friday. It will employ about 50 people and be open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on average.
Smith said he recently saw someone trying to get into the store at 8:30 a.m.
“Maybe he thought it was open 24 hours a day, like the Freeport store,” Smith said.
The Boston store will sell town-to-trail casual and active wear, he said. It also will capitalize on its proximity to the Fort Point Channel, where customers can put in kayaks and have other outdoor experiences using rented L.L.Bean gear as part of the retailer’s Outdoor Discovery Program.
Smith said L.L.Bean donated $5,000 to the Boston Harbor Islands, a group of state, national and city parks that it hopes to use for its Outdoor Discovery Program.
The store will be L.L.Bean’s 35th in the United States outside Maine. It will be 8,600 square feet on one floor at 56 Seaport Boulevard. That compares with 14,000 square feet for the average L.L.Bean retail store, which typically carries a wide variety of goods and is located in crowded suburban areas, Smith said.
The flagship L.L.Bean store in Freeport is 96,000 square feet, and all five stores on the Freeport campus total 200,000 square feet of retail.
The Boston store is in the One Seaport district near the Convention Center and Boston Harbor. The area has a fast-growing cluster of living and retail space and includes a movie theater and restaurants, one of which, “75 on Courthouse Square,” was started by Thomas Kershaw, whose first restaurant, the Bull and FInch Pub on Beacon Hill, inspired the TV sitcom “Cheers.” There is underground, paid parking available.
While the Boston store is the first urban store in the United States, L.L.Bean has 25 small stores in Japan, most of them in urban areas.
The Boston opening celebration will run three days.
The first 100 customers in the door at 9 a.m. Friday will get a gift card worth up to $500.
Other events Friday include a chance to meet former Red Sox legends Jim Rice, Luis Tiant and Dennis Eckersley. The Red Sox won their home opener Thursday against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Events Saturday and Sunday will include outdoor yoga, free food and music.
Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of America’s dominant television station owners, commanded its anchors to deliver a scripted commentary, warning audiences about “one sided news stories plaguing our country” and media outlets that publish “fake stories … that just aren’t true.”
This might sound like a media literacy lesson, offered in the public interest. But the invocation of “biased and false news” so closely echoes charges from the Trump administration that many observers cried foul.
Sinclair’s record of broadcasting news content favorable to the Trump administration, including mandated program segments such as the “ Terrorism Alert Desk,” and “ Bottom Line with Boris,” with former Trump administration official Boris Epshteyn, provides additional evidence of partisan bias.
So, is it time, as some commentators are suggesting, to restore the Fairness Doctrine, which used to require broadcasters “to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was fair and balanced”? That policy, adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, was repealed in 1987. It supposedly sustained responsible political debate on the nation’s airwaves until its disappearance during the Reagan administration.
I would argue that nostalgic calls for the restoration of a golden age of civil political discussion on America’s airwaves mistake what actually happened in those decades.
Airtime for Nazis, socialists, communists
Politics and broadcasting have been consistently intertwined in American history. As I have found in my own research, the commercial broadcasting community — including advertisers — has consistently aligned news content and commentary in ways favorable to the White House.
But such episodes are often conveniently forgotten.
The vast majority of 1930s radio “news” was politically slanted analysis by veteran journalists like Thomas, H.V. Kaltenborn and Boake Carter. Kaltenborn, for example, was notable for his anti-union commentaries.
The uncertain nature of early broadcast regulation, combined with pressure from organized interest groups and politicians, all made the exact parameters of political speech on American radio ambiguous in the 1930s.
So the networks lent their microphones to a wide range of views from the quasi-fascists like Father Charles Coughlin (the “Radio Priest”), to homespun socialists like Huey Long and union leaders like the American Federation of Labor’s William Green. As Douglas Craig, David Goodman and numerous other scholars have pointed out, political broadcasting in the 1930s was vibrant, fertile and diverse to an extent unmatched to the present day.
But as war neared, U.S. political broadcasting narrowed its range.
The Roosevelt administration began to carefully police the airwaves. CBS’ highly rated news commentator, Boake Carter, had often criticized President Franklin Roosevelt’s policies. But when he applauded the Anschluss,Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, and expressed admiration for Nazi policies, the White House acted.
As media historian David Culbert revealed, Roosevelt’s adviser Stephen T. Early secretly contacted CBS and Carter’s sponsor, General Foods, to silence Carter. Despite high ratings and a popular following, Carter’s CBS contract was not renewed. Within weeks he was gone.
Broadcasting’s self-censorship under government pressure expanded at the start of World War II. Circumscribing critical analysis and channeling commentary to the political center pleased advertisers and politicians.
With the assistance of such broadcasting pioneers as Edward R. Murrow, subjective radio news commentary morphed into the type of observational reporting now identified as broadcast journalism.
The most famous example of this shift occurred in 1943. That year Cecil Brown, CBS’s top-rated news analyst and author of the best-selling “Suez to Singapore,” dared to criticize the war effort he witnessed on the American homefront. Brown was fired, and his dismissal proved a warning to every other broadcast commentator.
Not everyone was happy with the neutering of news and opinion on American airwaves. In response to the Brown firing, FCC Chair James Lawrence Fly criticized what he considered corporate censorship.
“It’s a little strange,” Fly told the press, “to reach the conclusion that all Americans are to enjoy free speech except radio commentators.”
With the lesson learned, and with the support of the advertising community, America’s broadcasters aimed to address only the “ vital center” of American politics in the postwar years.
Still, politics persisted
It would, however, be a mistake to believe that the Fairness Doctrine silenced fractious political discourse on the American airwaves.
Throughout the decades that the Fairness Doctrine remained official policy, controversial political broadcasts aired regularly on American television and radio. There was Joe Pyne, whose show at its zenith in the 1960s attracted a reported 10 million viewers. Pyne insulted the hippies, Klansmen and civil rights activists he invited to his studio. Though the show is recalled today more for its outrageousness, it was a political show and Pyne propagated a conservative, law-and-order, patriotic message.
Then there’s Bob Grant, who broadcast a popular radio show in New York City throughout the 1970s. Grant’s “arch disdain for liberals, prominent black people, welfare recipients, feminists, gay people, and anyone who disagreed with him,” wrote The New York Times, “was familiar to his listeners.”
Nationally syndicated programs like “Donohue” offered liberal perspectives, and even the “CBS Evening News” brought back commentary, with veteran journalist Eric Sevareid providing perspective on the daily news each weeknight.
I’m not equating the well-reasoned, often brilliant political commentary offered by Eric Sevareid to Sinclair Broadcast Group’s transparent political advocacy. Sevareid reached a much larger percentage of the American populace than all the Sinclair newscasts combined, and he was therefore far more influential.
But to express surprise that Sinclair now shapes news content and commentary to be more hospitable to political advertising, and more supportive of the current administration, ignores the fact that political commentary has always sold well in the American commercial system.
I believe Sinclair’s management has identified an underutilized segment of the local TV news advertising market — the pro-Trump segment — as the 2018 midterm elections approach. The broadcaster is now shaping its news products to more effectively appeal to the audience for the political advertisements it seeks to sell this fall.
This economic interest closely aligns with Sinclair’s current political and regulatory imperatives. It makes the propagating of biased news content even more effective from Sinclair’s perspective.
Sinclair clearly hopes that the political consultants who purchase campaign ads, and the federal regulators who must approve their planned purchase of Tribune Broadcasting’s 42 stations, will appreciate their recent media literacy efforts.
Michael J. Socolow is an associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine in Orono. This piece was originally published on TheCoversation.com.
A Maine mayor is receiving backlash for a tweet making fun of a Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor.
The Morning Sentinel reports some Waterville officials are calling for Republican Mayor Nick Isgro to resign. Isgro wrote in a tweet earlier this week that Parkland student David Hogg should “eat it.”
The post was in response to an article about Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who mocked Hogg online and lost advertisers. The tweet has since been deleted.
The Maine Democratic Party said in a news release Isgro’s post was part of a “long line of aggressive and often bigoted social media statements.”
Four Democratic city councilors condemned Isgro’s comments on Thursday.
Isgro declined to comment when he was contacted on Facebook.
Facebook’s acknowledgement that most of its 2.2 billion members have probably had their personal data scraped by “malicious actors” is the latest example of the social network’s failure to protect its users’ data.
Not to mention its apparent inability to even identify the problem until the company was already embroiled in scandal.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters Wednesday that Facebook is shutting down a feature that let people search for Facebook users by phone number or email address. Although that was useful for people who wanted to find others on Facebook, it turns out that unscrupulous types also figured out years ago that they could use it to identify individuals and collect data off their profiles.
The scrapers were at it long enough, Zuckerberg said, that “at some point during the last several years, someone has probably accessed your public information in this way.”
The only way to be safe would have been for users to deliberately turn off that search feature several years ago. Facebook had it turned on by default.
“I think Facebook has not been clear enough with how to use its privacy settings,” Jamie Winterton, director of strategy for Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative, said. “That, to me, was the failure.”
The breach was a stunning admission for a company already reeling from allegations that the political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica inappropriately accessed data on as many as 87 million Facebook users to influence elections.
Over the past few weeks, the scandal has mushroomed into investigations across continents, including a probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Zuckerberg himself will be questioned by Congress for the first time on Tuesday.
“The FTC looked the other way for years when consumer groups told them Facebook was violating its 2011 deal to better protect its users. But now the Cambridge Analytica scandal has awoken the FTC from its long digital privacy slumber,” Jeffrey Chester, executive director for the Washington-based privacy nonprofit Center for Digital Democracy, said.
Neither Zuckerberg nor his company has identified those who carried out the data scraping. Outside experts believe they could have been identity thieves, scam artists or shady data brokers assembling marketing profiles.
Zuckerberg said the company detected the problem in a data-privacy audit started after the Cambridge Analytica disclosures, but didn’t say why the company hadn’t noticed it — or fixed it — earlier.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday on when it discovered the data scraping.
In his call with reporters Wednesday, Zuckerberg said the company had tried “rate limiting” the searches. This restricted how many searches someone can conduct at one time from a particular IP address, a numeric designation that identifies a device’s location on the internet. But Zuckerberg said the scrapers circumvented that defense by cycling through multiple IP addresses.
The scraped information was limited to what a user had already chosen to make public — which, depending on a person’s privacy settings, could be a lot — as well as what Facebook requires people to share. That includes full name, profile picture and listings of school or workplace networks.
But hackers and scam artists could then use that information — and combine it with other data in circulation — to pull hoaxes on people, plant malware on their computers or commit other mischief.
Having access to such a massive amount of data could also pose national security risks, Winterton said.
A foreign entity could conceivably use such information to influence elections or stir up discord — exactly what Russia is alleged to have done, using Facebook and other social media, in the 2016 presidential elections.
Privacy advocates have long been critical of Facebook’s penchant for pushing people to share more and more information, often through pro-sharing default options.
While the company offers detailed privacy controls — users can turn off ad targeting, for example, or face recognition, and post updates that no one else sees — many people never change their settings and often don’t even know how to.
The company has tried to simplify its settings multiple times over the years, most recently this week.
Winterton said that for individual Facebook users, worrying about this data scraping won’t do much good — after all, the data is already out there. But she said it might be a good time to “reflect on what we are sharing and how we are sharing it and whether we need to.”
“Just because someone asks us information, it doesn’t mean we have to give it to them if we are not comfortable,” she said.
She added that while she no longer has a Facebook account, when she did she put her birth year as 1912 and her hometown as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Neither is true.
The Maine Public Utilities Commission voted Wednesday to approve a $1.2 million taxpayer subsidy to an embattled biomass company operating two plants in West Enfield and Jonesboro.
The vote by the three-member commission largely followed the recommendation of PUC staff, which found last month that Stored Solar LLC met only one of its three contract obligations while falling well short of the other two.
It maintained the agreed upon number of jobs but purchased less than 40 percent of the waste wood it promised and spent $1 million less on capital expenditures than it was supposed to.
Some lawmakers said the $1.2 million subsidy should be reduced further based on that performance. But during deliberations held Wednesday, PUC chairman Mark Vannoy said the payment is far less than Stored Solar could have received.
“If the plants had operated at full capacity, and Stored Solar met all its contract criteria, the payment would have been $4.6 million,” Vannoy said. “Instead, it’s $1.2 million, which is a reduction of roughly 75 percent.”
Stored Solar has been under intense scrutiny since winning the subsidy contract late in 2016. Logging contractors reported a rash of late payments throughout last year. And, this year, a bill was introduced that effectively voided its contract while calling for an investigation.
Some lawmakers have also questioned whether the company should have ever qualified for the subsidy program following an examination of the 2016 biomass bailout law by Maine Public Radio.
But so far, the scrutiny has yet to yield legislative action.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
The death of a Pittsfield woman found in the trunk of a car last month has been ruled a suicide, authorities said.
The 30-year-old woman died of acute intoxication from oxycontin and hydroxyzine, according to the chief medical examiner’s office, which concluded she killed herself. A bottle of pills and an iced coffee were found beside her inside the truck, Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said.
A mechanic at the Varney auto dealership in Pittsfield on March 2 found her body inside the trunk of a Chevrolet Malibu after the car had been towed there from a Wal-Mart parking lot in Palmyra. The woman’s relatives had found the car but didn’t have the keys to get inside, according to McCausland.
Olivia Harper of the Bath YMCA earned a national title on Thursday at the YMCA Short Course National Championship being held in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The 16-year-old standout won the gold medal in the 100-yard backstroke, an event in which another Mainer also earned a podium finish.
Harper recorded a time of 54.6 seconds in the trials and then lowered it to 53.7 in the finals. She out-touched runner-up Emma Shuppert of Blue Ash, Ohio, who clocked a 53.85.
There were 179 competitors in the event.
Harper, who trains with coach Jay Morissette at the Bath Y, split 26.1 at the 50 and then raced ahead of the field over the final 50 yards with a 27.5.
Gabby Low of Kennebec Valley YMCA in Augusta collected the bronze medal in the 100 back with a time of 53.87. Lowe, a leader on Cony High’s state championship team, had qualified sixth in the trials at 55.09 but sliced 1.22 seconds off her time in the finals.
Harper also had won a silver medal in Wednesday’s 200-yard backstroke event.
Harper’s victory follows a gold-medal performance last year at the YMCA Nationals by Bath’s Caitlin Tycz in the 100 butterfly. Tycz continued her swimming at University of Southern California and competed in this year’s NCAA Division I championship meet.
Also on Thursday, Kennebec Valley YMCA’s Nathan Berry competed in the preliminaries in the men’s 100 backstroke and finished in 51.7.
Bath YMCA teams competed in the 200 freestyle relay. Matt Yost (22.7), Brian Hess (21.4), Brandon Johnson (21.8) and Nicco Bartone (21.9) finished in 1:27.9.
Harper (24.1), Ella Martin (23.9), Mary McLeod (24.7), and Haley Harper (24.6) clocked a 1:37.7 on the women’s side.
Carson Prouty (53.8) and Colby Prouty (54.6) of Bangor, both of whom compete for the Canoe City Swim Club at the Old Town-Orono YMCA, swam in the preliminaries of the men’s 100 backstroke.
Central Maine Power said its internal audit of its smart meter and new billing system has shown no signs so far of artificially inflating electricity usage by customers, some of whom have complained their bills are hundreds of dollars higher than normal.
In a telephone conference call with reporters Friday morning, CMP CEO Doug Herling said the company has tested more than 1,600 of its meters since this January at the request of customers, which is almost four times more than the 444 tested in all of 2017. Of those tested this year, only one meter, which was not a smart meter, wasn’t working properly.
The billing system, suspected smart meter failures and an unexpectedly cold spell in December and January have been blamed for the high bills.
“We feel very confident that the smart meters are working properly,” he said. “We’ve not found anything in the billing system or the smart meter system that would artificially increase customer usage.” The company is still checking for issues, and he said if it finds any, it will credit any extra payment to the customer.
Additionally, on Jan. 1 the standard offer price, a fixed rate approved by state utilities’ regulators each year as a default electricity supply option, was increased. Herling said that while that price shows up on the CMP bill, it is not a CMP charge because CMP is a transmission and distribution company, not an energy supplier. However, customers saw 8 cents added to their bill because of the standard offer price increase.
To date, Herling said CMP has been able to speak with with many customers and explain the extra usage. It has talked to about two-thirds of the 1,580 customers who filed complaints with the PUC.
“We’ve heard of cases when customers say no one was at the premise,” Eric Stinneford, vice president, controller, treasurer and clerk at CMP, said. “In a number of cases we found they had appliances left on, which explained the usage.”
Herling said he welcomes an external audit by the Maine Public Utilities Commission, the regulatory body for utilities.
On March 20, PUC Chairman Mark Vannoy and Commissioners R. Bruce Williamson and Randall Davis voted to undertake a formal technical investigation to look expressly at metering and billing issues that have arisen over the past several months.
“I approve [checking] customer billing from the meter, whether it’s a smart [digital] or analog meter, all the way through to the creation and delivery of a customer bill, which includes both financial and usage information,” Davis said at the time.
Herling said the company wants to get information to the public about the measures his company is taking to get to the root of the complaints. The call Friday is the first of what he said will continue to be “calls as long as they are needed.”
The reviews of the PUC complaints by CMP involve assigning a member of a special team to research the customer account and call the customer.
“It can take more than an hour to discuss a bill,” Beth Nowack Cowen, Customer Service Experience vice president at CMP, said.
“In some cases we’ve closed out the cases and in other cases we’ve come to an impasse and the customer has gone back to the PUC.”
CMP added 38 percent more staff to handle customer calls when it started its new billing system last November. It has 180 agents who answer calls and experts who call customers in the evening and on the weekends, she said.
For one, the auto industry doesn’t need a jump start. Car sales in the U.S. have been near record highs for several years. And, if the president is so interested in helping the auto industry, he wouldn’t have unilaterally imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium that will raise costs for car makers. Since the March tariff announcement, steel prices have already risen, costing manufacturers more to buy the raw material for products as diverse as chipper knives used in sawmills to warships to cars.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and lobbyists for American car makers argue that the fuel economy standards are too onerous. They are not.
The current standards, which went into effect in 2012, were not simply imposed by the Obama administration. Instead, the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards were negotiated by federal regulators, car makers, unions and environmental groups. Under these standards the gas mileage for a 2018 model year light truck, such as a Ford 150 is 19 miles per gallon, as posted on the vehicle’s window sticker at a dealership. It is 26 miles per gallon for a typical car.
In 2025, those standards rise to 23 mpg for the truck and 34 mpg for the car.
American fuel economy standards have long lagged those in other developed countries, especially those of the European Union. This is despite the fact that many of the same manufacturers make cars that are sold on both continents. For example, American car makers sell cars in Europe that get between 40 and 60 miles per gallon and SUVs that get more than 50 miles per gallon. If they make these vehicles for the European market, they can make them for the US market, too.
American auto dealers argue that Americans aren’t interested in fuel-efficient vehicles. It is true, that Americans buy far more trucks and SUVs that Pruises and Volts, but Americans say they value fuel economy.
Of course, these sentiments fluctuate over time. When fuel prices are low, American buyers tend to favor larger, less fuel efficient vehicles. But, when gas prices rise, they trade-in those vehicles for smaller, more efficient models. In 2007, when gas prices neared $3 a gallon, Toyota Priuses, a hybrid vehicle, outsold the popular Ford Explorer SUV. Higher fuel economy means less money that Americans spend on gasoline and diesel fuel.
If fuel economy standards are lowered in the US, domestic automakers will be ill prepared to respond the next time gas prices rise, says Adam Lee, the owner of numerous car dealerships in Maine that sell both American and Japanese brands.
“Toyota, Honda, Nissan are not going to stop researching more efficient vehicles,” he said. “The American manufacturers will fall behind.”
He also disagrees with the argument that meeting the current standards are raising the prices of cars in America. Much more of the price increase can be tied to the proliferation of technology, such as navigation and communication systems, that now comes with most vehicles.
Higher fuel economy standards save Americans money and reduce carbon pollution, a major contributor to climate change and lessen emissions of pollutants that harm human health and the environment.
The Veazie Salmon Club, which since the 1970s has hosted anglers from around the country as they fished the productive Penobscot River pools below, will cease to exist in the coming months, according to a longtime member.
Interest in the club has waned in recent years, as Atlantic salmon have been listed under the federal Endangered Species Act and no salmon fishing has been allowed on the river since a short, experimental season was staged in 2008.
Member Gayland Hachey, who owns a fly shop in town, sent out an email on Thursday that announced the club’s demise.
Under the heading “DEATH OF THE VEAZIE SALMON CLUB,” Hachey offered an update on the club’s future.
“To anyone that is a Veazie Salmon Club Member, we have shut down all of the utilities to the club and [member] Claude Westfall is taking all of the club pictures and memorabilia down to the Atlantic Salmon Museum,” Hachey wrote. “This is all do to the lack of members and funding when the funds run out this fall we will have to let the club go to the town for back taxes.”
The club is one of three salmon clubs on the Penobscot. The Penobscot Salmon Club in Brewer is the oldest, and members there have been working on a proposal to build the Maine Atlantic Salmon Museum on the site. Farther upriver sits the Eddington Salmon Club.
Two airlines have offered to replace a departing seasonal airliner at Bar Harbor Airport, giving airport managers hope that their busiest season won’t be compromised.
Without a seasonal airliner, Bar Harbor would be left with one carrier, Cape Air, to serve during the summer. The lack of a second carrier could decrease the passengers the Trenton-based airport serves, which could reduce its federal maintenance funding, officials have said.
Carriers typically need 60 to 90 days to set up service at an airport. That cuts it close for a new airline to replace Pen-Air on July 1, Bradley Madeira, the airport’s manager, has said.
The airport’s advisory committee will meet on Tuesday at 5 p.m. at the airport’s fire station to recommend a carrier to Hancock County commissioners.
Underlining the tight timeline involved, the commissioners will hold a special meeting at 8:30 a.m. April 13 in Ellsworth to make a recommendation to the federal DoT, Madeira said Friday. Federal officials will have the final say.
Pen-Air averaged 6,882 passengers annually over the last three years.
Time, site: Saturday (2), noon, Sunday, noon, Mahaney Diamond, Orono, Maine Records: UMaine 8-19 (4-2 America East); Stony Brook 15-11 (4-2)
Series, last meeting: Stony Brook leads 47-31, UMaine 3-0 on 5/26/17
Key players: Maine — SS Jeremy Pena (.297 batting average, 3 home runs, 13 runs batted in, 24 runs scores), RF Hernen Sardinas (.291-3-17), C-DH Christopher Bec (.288-3-11), 3b Danny Casals (.288-4-20), CF Brandon Vicens (.270-1-7); Stony Brook — SS Nick Grande (.400-3-16, 28 runs, 13 doubles), 3B Bobby Honeyman (.326-1-17), C Sean Buckhout (291-0-9), RF-DH Michael Wilson (.284-2-24)
Pitching matchups: UMaine — RH Zach Winn (1-0, 2.39 earned run average), RH John Arel (2-0, 2.73), RH Nick Silva (2-2, 4.91); Stony Brook — RH Bret Clarke (2-2, 2.70), RH Brian Herrmann (3-2, 4.74), RH Greg Marino (1-1, 7.27)
Game notes: The Black Bears and Seawolves are tied with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County atop the AE standings. SBU won all three regular-season meetings in 2017 but the Black Bears beat the Seawolves 3-0 in the tournament. SBU senior righty Aaron Pinto is tied for 15th in the country with seven saves. He is 2-1 with a 0.46 ERA. Stony Brook’s 63 doubles rank tied for 19th. Grande leads the league in hitting. Sardinas has reached base in 11 straight games and Vicens has in nine. Winn, Arel and Silva are a combined 4-1 with a 1.23 ERA in their six league starts. They have allowed 23 hits in 36 2/3 innings. Head coach Matt Senk has 786 victories in 28 seasons at Stony Brook and guided the Seawolves to the College World Series in 2012, becoming the first Northeast team to do so since UMaine in 1986.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The Masters is living up to its hype with some of the biggest names and hottest games in contention going into the weekend.
Except for two guys who generated so much of the buzz.
Tiger Woods hit another shot into Rae’s Creek, didn’t make a birdie until the 13th hole and wound up with a 3-over 75, leaving him 13 shots behind Patrick Reed. Woods was more concerned with sticking around for the weekend than chasing a green jacket.
Phil Mickelson matched his worst score ever at Augusta National with a 79 to make the cut on the number, leaving him 14 shots behind.
Even without them, the show is just getting started.
Reed, who has never seriously contended on a big stage outside of the Ryder Cup, had birdies on half of the holes he played Friday. That was more than enough to atone for the few times he got out of position, and his 6-under 66 put him atop the leaderboard for the first time in a major.
“I kept myself out of trouble and allowed my putter to do the work,” Reed said.
He was two shots ahead of Marc Leishman, who boldly took on a high risk when he hooked a hooded 5-iron around the trees and barely over the water on the par-5 15th to about 6 feet for an eagle.
Reed was at 9-under 135.
Right behind? Five major champions, for starters.
Henrik Stenson (70) was four shots behind. Rory McIlroy (71) is off to his best 36-hole start in seven years and is looking as poised as ever to capture the fourth leg of the career Grand Slam. Jordan Spieth lost his two-shot lead on the first hole and was on the verge of getting left behind until he made a key par putt to close out the front nine with a 40, and then salvaged a 74 to join McIlroy just five shots behind.
Looming was Dustin Johnson, the No. 1 player in the world, who made a 45-foot par putt on the 16th to atone for several birdie putts in the 10-foot range he missed. Johnson had a 68 and was six shots behind, along with PGA champion Justin Thomas, who had a 67.
Eleven of the 17 players still under par at the halfway point can be found among the top 20 in the world.
Reed, who led Augusta State to a pair of NCAA titles, opened with a 25-foot birdie putt and zoomed into the lead after two more short birdie putts. He ran off three straight birdies again at the end of the front nine, holing a 15-foot birdie at No. 9 to stretch his lead.
He is the only player in the field to make birdie on every par 5 both rounds.
“The par 5s are huge around here to be able to pick up ground on,” Reed said. “You’re not going to shoot a low score if you don’t.”
For everyone else, it was about jockeying for position.
Spieth was happy to be near the top after the way he started — a tee shot into the trees on the right and a three putts for a double bogey, and then a drive to the left and three more putts for a bogey. Just like that he was behind, and it kept getting worse. He made bogey from the middle of the fairway on No. 7. He three-putted from long range on the par-5 eighth. And he was headed for a 41 on the front nine until he made a 10-foot par putt.
“I’m still in this golf tournament,” Spieth said. “With the way the back nine was playing today, the wheels could have come off there. But I made some nice par saves and was able to grind out some phenomenal second-shot iron shots and good two-putt birdies.”
Mickelson won the Mexico Championship last month, and at age 47 and with three green jackets, there was talk he could become the oldest Masters champion. Those hopes faded when he bounced around in the trees at No. 9 and made triple bogey and hit into Rae’s Creek on No. 12 for a double bogey.
He bogeyed his final hole for a 79, the second time in three years he posted that number.
Woods made bogey on the opening hole with a sand wedge from the fairway. He really came undone when his second shot to the fifth bounded over the green and into a grove of magnolia trees. He took a penalty drop to clear room through the branches, put that in the bunker and made double bogey.
Very little went right except for a pair of birdies on the par 5s on the back nine. Looking at the white leaderboards only made him feel worse. The cut is for the top 50 and ties and anyone within 10 shots of the lead. Woods kept seeing Reed make birdies, and he knew he was well outside the 10 shots.
“I was hoping to keep it within 10. I didn’t know what my position was, but I think I’m in,” he said after his round. He was tied for 40th.
No one has ever rallied from more than eight shots behind after 36 holes to win the Masters.
“I’m going to have to shoot a special weekend and I need help,” Woods said. “I’m not in control of my own destiny.”
Leishman seized on his moment with the best shot of the day. His tee shot on the 15th was too far left, leaving trees between him and the flag. Instead of laying up from 210 yards, he closed with the face of a 5-iron, aimed toward the right bunker and tried to hook it some 30 yards.
He hooked it about 40.
The ball narrowly cleared the mound at the front of the green, caught the slope and settled 6 feet away for an eagle.
“We’re not here to lay up,” Leishman said. “It’s a major. You’re going to have to take some chances at some point during the week if you want to win, and that was a time where I thought I had to take a chance. I’ve been hitting that shot well on the range and I thought it was a prime opportunity to give it a test. And it came off.
BOSTON — Greg Monroe came off the bench and had 19 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists, and the Boston Celtics defeated the Chicago Bulls 111-104 on Friday night.
It is Monroe’s second career triple-double. Jaylen Brown finished with a career-high 32 points and four rebounds.
With Al Horford and Jayson Tatum given the night off to rest, Boston went deep into its bench against a Chicago team that’s one of the worst in the NBA.
Chicago led by as many as 11 in the first half before Boston trimmed it to 58-55 at the half. But the Celtics outscored the Bulls 56-46 over the final two quarters.
Sean Kilpatrick led the Bulls with 24 points. Lauri Markkanen added 20 points and five rebounds.
Marcus Morris and Bobby Portis were both ejected late in the third quarter after receiving back-to-back double-technical fouls.
It was Boston’s first game since Kyrie Irving was ruled out for the remainder of the regular season and playoffs because of an upcoming surgery on his left knee.
TIP-INS
Bulls: Had a three-game winning streak snapped. … Went 14 of 30 from the 3-point line.
Celtics: Monroe is the first Celtics center to record a triple-double since Robert Parish did it on March 29, 1987. … Jabari Bird made his first career 3-pointer in the first quarter. In his first nine career NBA games he had just five points on 1-of-4 shooting. In the first 8 minutes on Friday he scored 11 points, connecting on 5 of his first 8 field goals. … Jonathan Gibson, who the Celtics signed via an injury hardship waiver earlier in the day, had nine points.
GETTING REST
Coach Brad Stevens said the plan over Boston’s final three regular-season games is give other players rest as well before the start of the playoffs.
“I’d like to get one, possibly two games with our group as is to play before we head in,” Stevens said. “We’ll manage that as we move forward. Knock on wood.”
STAYING UPBEAT
Stevens said Irving was obviously “bummed” after his decision to have his latest procedure, which is scheduled for Saturday. It will be his second surgery on the knee in a month, and will remove screws at the site of an infection.
Terry Rozier said Irving was in good spirits when he spoke with teammates.
“It wasn’t affecting him at all. And if it was we wouldn’t know because he’s that type of type of guy he is,” Rozier said. “He’s still joking. … He’s still making everybody laugh when you come in the room. So you can’t really tell.”
The additional surgery isn’t expected to have an effect on Irving’s long-term prognosis, Stevens said.
“It’s good, even initially (after first procedure). The structure of the knee is good. Everything around the knee is good,” Stevens said. “Everybody’s told us from the get-go that it was going to be a full recovery. We just didn’t anticipate having to take the screws out. But that shouldn’t affect him at all as far as a full recovery goes.”
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Forward Adam Gaudette of Northeastern University has won the Hobey Baker Award, the top individual honor in men’s college hockey.
The announcement came Friday evening during the NCAA Frozen Four championship in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Gaudette, of Braintree, Massachusetts, led all Division I players in the country in total points, goal scoring and points per game. He had 30 goals, 30 assists for 60 points in just 38 games, averaging a national-best, 1.58 points per game. He was the Hockey East conference player of the year.
Gaudette is the first Hobey Baker Award recipient from Northeastern University. He recently signed a contract with the Vancouver Canucks, who drafted him in 2015 in the fifth round.
Joining Moss, a 5-foot-10 guard, and 6-6 forward Fleming on the All-Maine first team are 6-1 guard Taylor Schildroth of George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill, 6-4 junior forward Wol Maiwen of Edward Little of Auburn and 6-7 junior center Nick Fiorillo of Scarborough.
Named to the all-senior All-Maine third team are 6-4 forward Finn Bowe of Cape Elizabeth, 6-foot guard Zach Hartsgrove of Nokomis of Newport, 6-6 forward Nolan Hagerty of Yarmouth, 6-2 guard Keenan Marseille of Hermon and 6-0 guard Bryce Gilbert of Piscataquis of Guilford.
First Team
Terry Farren | BDN
Terry Farren | BDN
Terion Moss, Portland
Moss’s attacking style of play defied his modest height, as the point guard was able to use his 3-point shooting ability — he made 113 from beyond the arc at PHS, including 40 this winter — to create space to work his way toward the basket for either his own offense or assists.
“His undersize is only in stature,” Portland coach Joe Russo said after Moss was named Mr. Maine Basketball. “Terion’s 5-10 but he plays above the rim a lot. He’s one of our best rebounders, and he plays a lot bigger than he is in terms of his length and jumping ability and his speed.”
“Terion is a phenomenal point guard who also was a winner,” Deering coach Todd Wing said. “He made everyone around him better. I’ll be happy to see him represent our city and state at UMaine.”
Courtesy photo | BDN
Courtesy photo | BDN
Matt Fleming, Bangor
Fleming, a second-team BDN All-Maine choice as a sophomore at Oxford Hills of South Paris, expanded his game significantly this winter in helping a senior-less Bangor team challenge for a top-four finish in Class AA North.
“Matt is probably the most polished offensive player in the state,” Edward Little coach Mike Adams said. “His length and athleticism make him tough to defend, but his skill takes him to another level. His ability to hit shots (from anywhere) opens up other options for him but his decision-making and reaction to defenses make him an even better player.”
Fleming was a finalist for the Gatorade Maine Player of the Year award as well as a Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference A/AA first-team all-star after surpassing 1,000 career points in the final game of his junior year. He shot better than 50 percent from the field and more than 80 percent from the free-throw line and scored a school-record 45 points during a regular-season victory at Windham.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performance like that on both ends of the floor in a long time,” Windham coach Chad Pulkkinen said. “He’s an extreme competitor, and he does everything for them as far as taking charges, guarding the best player, scoring 20-something points, getting rebounds and steals.
“He’s an incredible shooter and he’s worked on his game as far as going by people. When he was younger he’d spot up, but now he’s able to put the ball on the floor and get to the post. He’s rounding his game out.”
The Mr. Maine Basketball finalist and three-time Class C North tournament MVP was at his best during postseason play, averaging 28 points per game as coach Dwayne Carter’s Eagles extended their tournament winning streak to 12 games.
“Taylor Schildroth was impossible to guard,” Bucksport coach Larry Deans said. “For three years we made it our mission to try and contain him and we never did. I don’t feel bad, because nobody else did, either.
“I would have loved to have seen him at any of the higher classes, because I think his game translates to any level of competition in Maine.”
Schildroth, also a BDN All-Maine first-team selection in 2017 after earning third-team recognition as a sophomore, used long-range shooting to generate much of his offense but also capitalized on quick hands to deflect the ball away from opposing dribblers and ignite plenty of transition scoring for his team.
“He has a very deep shooting range, the midrange game, and he can go to the rim,” Carter said. “He has been impossible for his opponents to guard, especially his past two years.”
Courtesy photo | BDN
Courtesy photo | BDN
Wol Maiwen, Edward Little
Maiwen also expanded his offensive game this winter for Edward Little, but it was his defensive presence that proved pivotal as the Red Eddies captured their first gold ball since 1946 by allowing an average of just 35.5 points in winning the Class AA North and state championship games.
“He made himself into a legitimate scoring threat inside, which opened up our perimeter players,” Adams said. “Defensively we could bring him out and defend at the top of our press and his length and athleticism created havoc for opposing guards bringing the ball up, or he could protect the rim and allow our perimeter defenders to deny and get after ballhandlers as they knew Wol would have their backs.”
Maiwen, who was named the KVAC A/AA South Player of the Year, averaged 3.4 blocked shots.
“He’s just an incredible athlete and a great kid, too,” Pulkkinen said. “He’s improved his game on the block and can score in different ways, but it’s his defense that I think brings Edward Little to another level. His shot-blocking ability is about as good as it comes.”
Courtesy photo | BDN
Courtesy photo | BDN
Nick Fiorillo, Scarborough
Fiorillo led Scarborough in scoring, rebounds and 3-pointers as the Red Storm captured their first regional championship and advanced to the Class AA state final.
The rangy Fiorillo used increased strength and quickness to diversify his game, with more work in the post complementing his perimeter play.
“Nick had an outstanding year,” Scarborough coach Phil Conley said. “He was a very difficult matchup for teams because he could score on the block and also was a threat from beyond the arc.”
Fiorillo was named to the All-SMAA first team and was awarded the George Vinall Award as MVP of the Class AA South tournament.
“He’s a player that has scholarship potential,” Westbrook coach Dan LeGage said. “His size, interior game and perimeter skills make him a nightmare matchup for opposing teams. He has the ability to dominate a game on both ends of the floor.”
Second Team
Terry Farren | BDN
Terry Farren | BDN
Nick Curtis, Windham
Curtis led the SMAA in scoring and assists — for the third straight season, in the latter category — in quarterbacking Windham to the Class AA North championship game.
Perhaps epitomizing his reputation as a fierce player was the fact that Curtis also led his team in rebounding from the point guard position.
“He’s an incredible competitor,” Pulkkinen said. “I’ve never seen a kid play as hard as he does in practice as well as games. In practice it was even more impressive to watch how hard he played, he never let anyone outwork him and it translated into his success.”
Curtis, a Mr. Maine Basketball semifinalist and first-team All-SMAA selection, will play next season at Saint Joseph’s College of Standish.
The Broncos’ big man was a Mr. Maine Basketball finalist, first-team All-KVAC A/AA North honoree and KVAC All-Defensive Team selection as well as MVP of the Class A North tourney this winter while leading Hampden to a 20-2 record.
“Ian was a picture of consistency for us the past two seasons on the offensive end, shooting over 60 percent both seasons,” Bartlett said. “I felt that in his senior year he really improved his defense. His ability to protect the rim took our half-court defense to the next level.”
McIntyre, a third-team BDN All-Maine choice in 2017, will continue his playing career at Husson University in Bangor.
Terry Farren | BDN
Terry Farren | BDN
Griffin Guerrette, Presque Isle
Guerrette was one of the state’s most improved players, increasing his scoring average by more than 10 points per game from a year ago in leading coach Terry Cummings’ Wildcats to the Class B North semifinals.
The Big East Conference Player of the Year and Thomas College-bound guard used his dribble-penetration ability and a productive midrange game to spark that offensive explosion, which included two games of 40-plus points and six games of at least 30.
“An increase in size and strength was a big thing for Griffin, but he’s also really quick off the dribble,” Hermon coach Mark Reed said. “He can change pace and get the defense to start going one direction and then cut back really quickly.
“He also has a variety of shots he can make. He became a shot-maker who could stretch the defense from the perimeter, hit the midrange shot and then get all the way to the rim and get fouled. His ability to make shots at all the different levels was a big asset for him.”
Courtesy photo | BDN
Courtesy photo | BDN
Ben Onek, Deering
Onek was one of the emerging stars in Class AA, ranking second in the SMAA in both scoring and rebounding while being able to step away from the basket well enough to shoot 33 percent from beyond the 3-point arc.
“On the court he’s a strong, mobile forward who is a tough matchup for opposing teams,” Wing said. “He’s consistent from beyond the arc but at the same time plays above the rim.”
A third-year varsity player and junior captain for the Rams this past winter, Onek was named to the All-SMAA first team.
Terry Farren | BDN
Terry Farren | BDN
Zac Manoogian, Westbrook
Manoogian withstood a variety of defensive schemes devised to contain him to rank among Class A South’s leading offensive threats. He averaged 28 points during the tournament, with 35 in a loss to two-time state champion Greely of Cumberland Center in the regional final.
The first-team All-SMAA selection and Mr. Maine Basketball semifinalist, who will play next winter at Saint Joseph’s, made 40 3-pointers as a senior and shot 82 percent from the free-throw line.
Terry Farren | BDN
Terry Farren | BDN
Finn Bowe, Cape Elizabeth
“Zac epitomizes what every coach is looking for in a player,” LeGage said. He is a highly skilled, hardworking, talented person. He is someone who accepted our coaching and used what he learned to develop into one of the most complete players in the state.”
Third Team
Bowe rebounded from an injury-hampered junior season to lead Cape Elizabeth to the Class B South final with an all-around effort that was epitomized in a season-ending loss to Wells when he amassed 17 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists.
Terry Farren | BDN
Terry Farren | BDN
Zach Hartsgrove, Nokomis
The Mr. Maine Basketball semifinalist also was named to the All-Western Maine Conference first team and received the Bob Butler Award as the top senior player-sportsman in that league. He plans to continue his studies at the University of Wisconsin.
Hartsgrove led Nokomis to its first regional semifinal since 2003 and was named the KVAC A/AA Player of the Year after a senior season when he ranked among the region’s top scorers with a game that stretched from the rim well beyond the 3-point arc.
Hartsgrove, a 1,000-point scorer who plans to play at either the University of Maine at Farmington or the University of Southern Maine next winter, made 41 3-pointers while shooting 46.2 percent from the field and 77.1 percent from the free-throw line.
Courtesy photo | BDN
Courtesy photo | BDN
Nolan Hagerty, Yarmouth
Hagerty was another player capable of filling the stat box. The Yarmouth big man flirted with averaging a triple-double in leading the Yachtsmen to the Class B South semifinals while also being a top defensive presence near the basket.
Hagerty, a Mr. Maine Basketball semifinalist and first-team All-WMC honoree, will play next year at Brandeis University.
The Mr. Maine Basketball semifinalist, Big East Conference first-team all-star and Class B North tournament MVP could score when needed for the undefeated Hawks but more often focused on igniting the team’s transition offense and using his lanky frame to bother opposing guards on the defensive end.
Gilbert was one of the state’s top scorers in the face of numerous gimmick defenses, and concluded his career as the top scorer in Piscataquis Community High School history with 1,474 points.
The versatile guard, who was named to the All-Penobscot Valley Conference first team after leading the league in scoring during the regular season, was at his best in the open court.
Terry Farren | BDN
Terry Farren | BDN
Bryce Gilbert, Piscataquis
He often grabbed a defensive rebound and drove the full 84 feet to create his own fast-break chances or generate scoring bids for teammates. He’ll continue his basketball career at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.
