Last week, the topic was Social Security, but there’s another immense federal program whose future is hanging on the outcome of the election: Medicare, which offers coverage for doctor and hospital care and prescription drugs to people 65 and older.

“The Republican vision is clear — ‘I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.’ Republicans say they don’t believe in government. Sure, they do. They believe in government to help themselves and their powerful friends. After all, Mitt Romney is the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people.

In any election season, the candidates for federal office get the most attention. But it’s the other election, the one you don’t hear so much about on TV, that you can do more to affect and whose results will more directly affect your life — the election of a new state Legislature.

One-issue voters have always seemed like cranks to me.

The United States continues to experience a marked slowdown in the growth of health-care costs, despite some widely misinterpreted new reports. And a growing body of evidence suggests the deceleration is driven by more than a temporarily weak economy — which is good news for the federal budget and for workers.

Before embarking on my career as city administrator, I was an advocate for patients at mental institutions in Massachusetts and at St. Elizabeth’s, the massive federal psychiatric facility, in Washington.

It was going to be a wonderful weekend. Two nights and a dinner at an historic Brunswick inn, a second dinner at a new Vietnamese restaurant there, a visit to the Bowdoin Art Museum to see William Wegman’s exhibition, and Sunday brunch at the Topsham Sea Dog — all for our travel column published on Thursdays in this newspaper.

There have been two big shifts in Maine politics in recent years.
The first is obvious: The 2010 takeover of the House, Senate and governorship by the Republican Party for the first time in 40 years. The second big shift is a little less obvious and has occurred more within the Republican Party itself.

You have to hand it to Mitt Romney and his team. Starting in the first debate, he pivoted almost effortlessly to the center, which is where elections are won.

Back in the olden days when I was growing up, there were two models of school — public school and religious school.