Raise taxes on the rich? Only one candidate says ‘yes’?

You’re concerned about economic and social justice. For those in real need — people who are poor, sick, old, mentally ill, addicted, disabled — you want decent care. You’re concerned, too, about proper funding of schools, community colleges, and university campuses. And you want fair state taxes so the rich and the big corporations pay proportionally more than the poor and middle class. . . .

Only Green Independent candidate Lynne Williams, a civil-rights attorney, says she would, temporarily, tax higher-income people at a higher rate, proposing three new brackets beginning at $35,000, $50,000, and $75,000, for couples, with rates “somewhere between 8.6 and 9 percent.”

Not a large increase, for sure, but she’s the sole major candidate with the guts to break the taboo. No wonder Maine’s Democrats have lost a lot of progressive voters to the Greens.

Read Lance Tapley’s piece in the Portland Pheonix.