The Red County Caucus wishes to interject a healthy dose of Common Sense into the debate concerning the Ballot Initiatives facing Maine voters this coming November. Both Question 1 and Question 2 have far reaching implications to future welfare of this great State. Voters should take the time to look past the rose colored rhetoric, over-used, and tired political jargon. Investigate these questions through the eyes of common sense and the answers become clear.

Question 1: From the onset this initiative has smelled of corruption, and the stench has grown stronger the more we see of it. The very fact that the $5 million in question are controlled by one man shouts of a con. Mainers should see through this miles away and vote this down.

This is why government should not be funding business. This only attracts the most unseemly opportunists who are looking for “easy money”. Men such as this Shawn Scott, with the apt moniker “Shady Shawn”, hope through these referendums to profit off your tax dollars rather than take the hard earned path of the free market.

Question 2: We’ve tried this before. Hospitals were left with a mountain of unpaid balances, $750 million in fact, that left our hospitals over-leveraged and on the brink of insolvency. Extending coverage to able-bodied working adults has failed in the past and if enacted will once again cause hospitals to have to cut back on services, staff, and causing another state budget crisis to the tune of $100 million a year. It’s the proverbial “Deja Vu all over again” which will see Maine return to neglecting its elderly and truly needy as funds are redirected into the consuming demands of non-working childless adults.

For emphasis, We have tried this before and it failed. It makes no sense for hospitals to claim to be losing money from medicaid on one hand and ask for an expansion on the other. We have made positive advances in the effort to rectify the financial crisis in Maine’s healthcare sector. To return to the policies that caused the budget crisis in the first place is the very definition of fiscal insanity.