Jeff Christenbury's blog

Having now been the party in the minority both in Congress and the White House for the first time since the early 1990s, Republicans are faced with the task of rebuilding the party and coming out with a clear, strong message. During this time of opposition, we as conservatives must develop clear stances on issues and engage the public with our message, as most of them agree with us on most of the issues.

Despite the best efforts of a united front of Republicans – and a few House Democrats – President Obama had his landmark piece of legislation passed, a so-called stimulus bill which he hopes will bring us out of recession. There’s a lot to talk about this bill – which is more than 1,000 pages in length – and I’ve broken down the 10 things I hate about it. Please excuse the length of this post but let’s just say I was ‘inspired’ by our elected officials in Washington.

old adage goes, the whole is only as good as the sum of its parts. What a lot of us Mainers don't like about the country as a whole can be said about our own state. From sanctuary state status for illegal immigrants to humbling economic statistics, Maine and her citizens cannot point the finger at Washington's problems while we fail to fix our own. In the sports analogy world, we are the part of a collective team and right now are not taking care of our own responsibilities as a player (state) on the team (country).

On Wednesday, government aides released a report that the fiscal year 2009 will have a $1.2 trillion deficit and 2010 will have at least a $700 billion deficit. The news comes just 13 days before one of the most liberal U.S. senators becomes president, a man who is proposing nearly $1 trillion in new spending to ‘stimulate the economy.’ The Obama plan includes tax cuts for middle class Americans, the raising of taxes on the wealthiest Americans and the raising like capital gains taxes.

The recent ice storm left hundreds of thousands of Mainers without power, some for a few hours and many for a few days. During this time of electronic exile the majority of people were forced to fend for themselves both for basic survival and time fulfillment. With many social services paralyzed because of the power outage we were forced to adhere to a founding principle of conservative ideals: personal responsibility.