In the era of President Donald Trump, Russian misinformation and Twitter bots spewing volumes of toxic fake facts, it’s good policy to be skeptical of what you see and hear. The satirical newspaper The Onion -- a great source for laughs -- has trouble competing with reality.

How many times I've driven past True Cemetery in South Livermore -- I don't know. It's also called Twin Bridges Cemetery after the two lovely iron bridges enabling traffic to cross over the Androscoggin River. Those bridges were destroyed by the State of Maine in 2005, replaced by a solitary concrete bridge with no soul.

If you see Congressman Jared Golden, D-Maine around our communities in Maine’s Second Congressional District you may want to ask him which of the accomplishments of the administration he doesn’t like:

Maine’s new state budget includes $2.7 billion more in spending than the previous two-year budget. This is a 16 percent hike in spending, a growth rate of more than three times the rate of inflation. Somehow, in this explosion of spending, this budget neglects to pay for the most fundamental of things that state government is supposed to take care of -- our roads and bridges.

My last column was about the immigrant Ulster Scots. Now, I’d like to introduce you to Scottish immigrants who didn’t come voluntarily.  

Even as health insurance companies report record profits, I regularly read about the growing crisis of Surprise Medical Billing (SMB). It seems implausible that these two trends are somehow unrelated. SMB occurs when health insurers won’t pay for medical care and, instead, those costs are shunted off to patients who can scarcely afford them. So are the insurance companies pocketing more profits at the expense of patients they claim to insure? It would certainly appear so.

Poor dental health impacts both individuals and their families. Being able to provide and take care of a family becomes increasingly difficult when someone is suffering.

In general, Maine citizens need a better understanding of how government works, and more involvement in choosing and monitoring their elected officials. Limiting by law the number of terms one person can serve consecutive and/or total terms in office (aka term limits) has the opposite effect on citizens. As such, I oppose mandatory term limits for our elected officials.

One of the greatest gifts Maine could receive this holiday season is full and dedicated funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund to be included in the fiscal year 2020 federal budget.

I will begin this annual tradition of mine by acknowledging a failure of my final prediction of 2019. In last year's column, I told you that this year I would simply do a top 10 list, as the number of required predictions was getting unwieldy.

President Donald Trump has earned his impeachment. Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have an obligation to give it to him.

With thanks to a generous community of individuals who attended the recent event, businesses who lined up to donate silent auction items and a core group of volunteers to put it together, we are overjoyed to have raised thousands to help Tim, Danielle and Abby in their fight against cancer.

With Thanksgiving 2019 behind us, retailers’ obligatory Christmas promotions have pushed away the last remnants of turkey, pie, gherkins and Pilgrims. From now through December 26 -- the day after Christmas -- we will see and hear Christmas promotions of all kinds -- including music promos.

I am writing a winter update to our community about The Commons as we wrap up an eventful year and have made some important changes in our structure. We now have both a program and marketing director, Jeremy Loguercio, and a development director, Tara Smith. We are also pursuing a position for volunteer director.

Many genealogists in Maine have Scottish and/or Irish ancestors in their family trees.

Lawmakers want your money, and they never stop wanting your money. At any given opportunity, they will dream up new ways of identifying it, taking it from you, and then using it. When they can't get it, they just take it from you anyway by spending money they don't have and covering it with debt.

Off-year elections -- even high profile contests -- aren’t always reliable predictors of things to come. But election results in Kentucky, Louisiana and Virginia confirm a lesson that we learned in Maine in 2017: The No. 1 issue in the mind of voters is health care.

V. Paul Reynold’s column on the joy of the 1950s is typical of what can happen to someone who doesn’t appreciate they are probably alive today because of so many good things we take for granted today but didn’t even imagine in the ‘50s.