News
by our readers | Feb 21, 2008 | News
A Cross, the Great DivideI went to the Montague Bookmill a few Thursdays ago to see the first local screening of Purple State of Mind with John Marks and Craig Detweiler. It was an interesting flick. There was also an interesting follow-up discussion with John Marks...
by Bill Bonvie | Mar 20, 2008 | News
Now that we're still stuck in Iraq after five long and bloody years, there are those, including Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, who insist that the tide is turning and that the "surge" in U.S. troop strength and improved tactics are...
by Shawn Macomber | Feb 21, 2008 | News
Nearly 2 million tourists, many from overseas, descend on Liberty Island each year to commune with that green icon of American freedom, the Statue of Liberty. Most of them will actually get to see the monument—as long they put out their cigarettes, hand over any...
by Mark Roessler | Mar 20, 2008 | News
Trolling around online a few weeks ago, I discovered a creature so terrifyingly awful that as a devotee of monster movies, Grimm fairy tales and Lovecraft, I couldn't believe it had escaped my attention for so long. Now that I've glimpsed a Rat King, though,...
by Alan Bisbort? | Feb 21, 2008 | News
The Senate passed a "stimulus package" this week that will piss another $150 billion down a hole the size of the Pacific Ocean. The "trickle down" effect of this package means that most Americans will get anywhere from $300 to $600 apiece....
by Maureen Turner | Mar 20, 2008 | News
Next month marks the fifth anniversary of the stealing—really, it's hard to think of it in any other terms—of the Mason Square Library. In April 2003, the Springfield Library and Museums Association, the private non-profit that ran the Quadrangle and...
by Alan Bisbort | Feb 28, 2008 | News
In the docudrama Radiant City, written and directed by Gary Burns and Jim Brown and just out on DVD, one scene captures the mess made by our "way of life." Author and critic James Howard Kunstler is standing on an asphalt bike and jogging path affixed to a...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 27, 2008 | News
Growing up in Three Rivers in the 1960s, Suzanne Strempek Shea had a fairly typical Catholic childhood. Weekdays, she donned a plaid uniform and headed to the local parochial school, where she was taught by nuns, both the book-hurling, skull-rapping variety and the...
by Chris Collins | Feb 28, 2008 | News
First Franklin District State Rep. Steve Kulik (D-Worthington) knows all too well the impact the "digital divide" can have on the quality of life of a Western Mass. resident."I have the dubious distinction of being the only legislator in this state who...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 27, 2008 | News
If you were about to give to the National Republican Congressional Committee, close your wallet. It's not certain yet, but it seems that that committee has been hemorrhaging money into an elaborate embezzlement setup invented by its former treasurer, Christopher...
by Stephanie Kraft | Feb 28, 2008 | News
Citibank, part of the largest bank holding company in the U.S., is now propped up by an infusion of cash from Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Saudi Arabia because of $24 billion in losses stemming from the subprime lending disaster and other credit problems. In the world of...
by our readers | Mar 27, 2008 | News
Cold War Nostalgia"Star Wars 2.0" [March 6, 2008] hit the nail on the head. The continued military expansion of the U.S. government, as exemplified by the recent Bush negotiations with Poland, shows without a doubt that our government is aching and yearning...
by our readers | Feb 28, 2008 | News
Wait For It!In condemning Massachusetts' landmark effort to insure our citizens, Shikha Dalmia can't wait (for the facts) to render a verdict ("No to CoerciveCare," Feb. 14).The writer claims that spending for our subsidized plan will cost 85 percent...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 27, 2008 | News
Just over the Massachusetts border in Vernon, Vt., the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is showing signs of age. Last summer the Advocate published photos of a collapsing cooling tower at the plant and of an interior pipe patched with duct tape—pictures taken...
by Natalia Muñoz | Feb 28, 2008 | News
In Puerto Rico, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had most of the island's 63 delegates on her side for weeks. Then, on Feb. 12, Barack Obama wrote a Valentine's Day letter to the territory's governor that was filled with promises unheard of since the...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 27, 2008 | News
Springfield City Councilor Tim Rooke was getting ready to head over to a budget meeting at City Hall last Tuesday when he decided to make a quick call to the mayor's office to let them know he was coming.Rooke says he's always made it a point to show up at...
by Alan Bisbort | Mar 6, 2008 | News
George W. Bush is both out of control and out of gas, but nobody in Washington, D.C. seems willing to pry the steering wheel from his cold dead hands. All indications are, in fact, just the opposite. That is, the Democratic Party seems collectively content to go into...
by Niall Stanage | Mar 27, 2008 | News
The first time I saw Hillary Clinton speak in person, she addressed about 80,000 people. But they hadn't come to see her. The time was November, 1995 and the place was the downtown area of my native Belfast. The Irish Republican Army had called a ceasefire a...
by Kendra Thurlow | Mar 6, 2008 | News
Bottle recycling in Massachusetts has slowly declined over the past few years. Many environmental groups, including MASSPIRG, the Sierra Club and the Container Recycling Institute, cite two major reasons for the decline: the change in the beverage market, and the...
by Alan Bisbort | Mar 27, 2008 | News
In Detroit right now, a corrupt mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, has been trying to whip up support in the black community by playing the race card.Is there an echo in here?Kilpatrick is in a heap of trouble for charging $210,000 in personal expenses—spa massages,...
by Natalia Muñoz | Apr 3, 2008 | News
Puerto Rico went from being an afterthought to nearly the last frontier for both the Democratic Party's presidential candidates.Through tenacious campaigning, Sen. Hillary Clinton has again dashed Sen. Barack Obama's hope of a coronation. Hubris took over...
by Alan Bisbort | Apr 3, 2008 | News
When the smoke clears on the Bush era and historians have a chance to take stock of the disaster, the list of American journalists to whom they can turn for the "first draft of history" will be short. Glenn Greenwald—one of the honorable few—did...
by Alan Bisbort | Apr 3, 2008 | News
Back among the bright and shining lies of the Bill Clinton administration looms the moment when a huge contingent of American corporate and political leaders traveled to Beijing to stand in Tiananmen Square. They did not go there to pay homage to the hundreds of...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 3, 2008 | News
The earth is rapidly losing species of plants and animals, and climate change promises to accelerate that loss. But the Bush administration in seven years has only added 59 species to the endangered list, and many of those were only added under court orders.It goes...
by our readers | Apr 3, 2008 | News
Nuke Release InevitableThe Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy held a joint meeting in Bethesda, Md. February 19-21, planning "the technical issues and research topics for potential extended operation of the nation's nuclear power...
by Daryl LaFleur | Apr 3, 2008 | News
In an initiative unprecedented in Massachusetts, Northampton's Mayor Clare Higgins supports expanding the city's regional landfill into a recharge area for the Maloney well, which is in a Zone II water supply protection area over the Barnes Aquifer. The...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 9, 2008 | News
Christmas was approaching, money was tight, and the mom wasn't sure how she'd buy gifts for her two kids. So she went to a national income tax preparation company in Holyoke that was offering a deal to cash-strapped taxpayers: if she brought in her pay stubs,...
by David Sirota | Apr 10, 2008 | News
The Federal Reserve Bank's decision to address the housing crisis by extending $200 billion of taxpayer-financed credit to Wall Street banks was met with a stunned reaction typical of surprising events. But really the move was the expression of longstanding...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 10, 2008 | News
The war in Iraq is now costing the country $12 billion a month. While the rest of us get poorer, who's getting rich off this windfall? A glance backward at the period between March 20, 2003, when our troops rolled across the desert to invade Iraq, and March 20,...
by our readers | Apr 10, 2008 | News
Fact CheckThank you for attempting to review my new album [Asking For Flowers, CD Shorts, March 27, 2008]. I wanted to help you with some fact checking. I haven't "taken to wearing makeup." I wore it the first time I played the Iron Horse and I wear it...
by Ted Rall | Apr 10, 2008 | News
“No one owes obedience to a usurper government or to anyone who assumes public office in violation of the Constitution and the law. The civil population has the right to rise up in defense of the constitutional order. The acts of those who usurp public office...
by Alan Bisbort | Apr 16, 2008 | News
Everywhere I turn these days, friends and colleagues in the journalism trade are losing their jobs. With an economy in free fall—and all portents suggesting even worse times are on the horizon—losing a job is not a new story for most Americans. Like...
by Tom Vannah | Apr 17, 2008 | News
When dozens of newspaper boxes disappeared from downtown Springfield last week—between 30 and 60 boxes, including seven Valley Advocate boxes—Advocate Circulation Manager Jeffrey Owczarski began calling city officials, hoping that someone in a position of...
by our readers | Apr 17, 2008 | News
Dining on DoctorowAndrew Varnon's "Book of Doctorow" (April 3, 2008) fails to answer the question he raises: Why [did renowned author E. L. Doctorow agree to appear at] Western New England College?I appealed to Doctorow on behalf of WNEC (and not Smith...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 17, 2008 | News
You've got to hand it to Brian Santaniello: the man has staying power.Let's start with his 24 years on the Springfield City Council, where he enjoyed the title of the Council's "dean." Santaniello served under several mayors, but was most closely...
by Laura S. Washington | Apr 17, 2008 | News
The suits at PBS must perspire profusely when they consider the latest from Tavis Smiley on the subjects of Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Smiley, the PBS talk show host and public television's Numero Uno black guy, is a vociferous and cagey Obama...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 17, 2008 | News
Prominent Republicans who might be seen as father figures to President Bush—including Henry Kissinger and James Baker III, the lawyer who helped put Bush in the White House—disagree with the president on key issues. It showed again in a recent forum...
by voted by our readers | Apr 17, 2008 | News
2008 Best of the Valley Reader's Poll What’s the best thing about living in the Pioneer Valley? As the 2008 Best of the Valley Readers’ Poll makes clear, it’s nearly impossible to whittle the possibilities down to just one thing. In the pages...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 24, 2008 | News
What will the world, and American society, do without oil? Will we achieve a planned, relatively gradual shift to a life without it, or will we face the shock of sudden depletion, with industry and transportation paralyzed, food distribution uneven and unreliable, and...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 24, 2008 | News
To say that Springfield city government has had an ethics deficit in recent years is a gross understatement, with the emphasis on gross. While the city's economic base was crumbling, a shameful number of public officials took the opportunity to loot what remained...
by Alan Bisbort | Apr 24, 2008 | News
Okay, I'm bitter. I lost my American flag lapel pin while I was rolling gutter balls at the bowling alley. And afterwards they were out of orange juice at the blue-collar diner where I go for my photo ops with "Cup of Joe" Lieberman. Also, I don't...
by Alan Bisbort | Apr 24, 2008 | News
This week we officially learned what we already knew: Bush and his posse authorized torture of terrorist suspects. Last Friday, Bush told ABC News, "I'm aware our national security team met on this issue, and I approved." The following people signed off...
by Stephanie Kraft | May 1, 2008 | News
As food shortages hit the world hard, it's time to review how trade and investment policies, as well as energy prices, global warming and scarce water supplies, have contributed to them. Critics have complained for years that World Bank and International Monetary...
by Ben Goddard | May 1, 2008 | News
So much has been written and said about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's victory in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary that any analysis I could add would be, to paraphrase the victor, "commentary you can Xerox." Chris Matthews summed it up well on the...
by Natalia Muñoz | May 1, 2008 | News
Acting like super delegates, mainstream media pundits are pushing for Sen. Hillary Clinton to cede the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama in the name of party unity. This is the first time that a black man and a white woman are the only two viable...
by Stephanie Kraft | May 1, 2008 | News
For many intelligence operatives and Secret Service officers, executing dirty tricks in the service of their country's national security is psychically wrenching; they would never engage in it for any lesser reason. But for a few, it becomes a skill that can make...
by Stephanie Kraft | May 8, 2008 | News
A plan to build a Lowe's Home Improvement store in Hadley on a parcel adjoining Long Hollow Bison Farm has hit an obstacle. The developer, Paradigm Development of Colden, N.Y., has been informed by the state that it must start all over again proving that a stream...
by Stephanie Kraft | May 8, 2008 | News
Given the hype that's kept Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's association with outspoken pastor Jeremiah Wright booming in the media echo chamber, a story that's been curiously underreported is that of the love feast between Republican...
by our readers | May 8, 2008 | News
Meat MadnessEarlier this week, the prestigious Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health concluded that factory farming takes a big toll on human health and the environment, undermines rural economic stability, and fails to provide...
by Alan Bisbort | May 8, 2008 | News
Wow, did we just get a giant green tongue-bath this Earth Day! Every April 22nd, it seems, everybody suddenly loves Mother Earth. Madonna has gone green; I know this because she's on the cover of Vanity Fair's Green Issue, just as Leonardo DiCaprio was...
by our readers | May 15, 2008 | News
Year of DoctorowDoctorow appearing in the Valley twice this year? I was surprised for a second by your cover story ["The Book of Doctorow," April 3, 2008]. It took only a brief look inside to see you were referring to E.L. Doctorow. The other novelist, Cory...
by Alan Bisbort | May 15, 2008 | News
In 1888, the Bostonian Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward, a novel that imagined America in the year 2000. He foresaw a "nation organized as one great business corporation… the one capitalist… the sole employer." That's the bad news....
by Maureen Turner | May 15, 2008 | News
Ginetta Candelario was disappointed by the results of last week's Holyoke City Council meeting, but not surprised. "The writing was on the wall," the city resident says.On May 6, the Council failed to pass a proposed moratorium on new trash facilities in...
by Stephanie Kraft | May 15, 2008 | News
Town after town in Franklin County within 20 miles of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is passing a resolution demanding that the plant close in March, 2012, the end of its originally projected life cyle. The plant's operators, Entergy of Mississippi, have...
by Alan Bisbort | May 15, 2008 | News
A Mickey Mouse war policy begets Mickey Mouse results. On that note, the perfect coda to the five-year-old disaster that is John McCain's favorite war just arrived. The company that built Disneyland, Los Angeles-based C3, is now designing a multi-million dollar...
by Alan Bisbort | May 22, 2008 | News
For those who don't harbor burning ambitions or insatiable acquisitive streaks, money is the root of all evil. Money, these people will tell you, can't buy happiness. While most Americans would probably agree with this sentiment—if only as a holdover...
by our readers | May 22, 2008 | News
World War II Losers Passing the U.S.So much talk recently about the cost of diesel fuel, the increasing costs of trucking, plus the increased inconvenience and cost of air travel, and gas tax holidays. How about a truly radical idea, a win-win deal that can help...
by Stephanie Kraft | May 22, 2008 | News
Two-thirds of the oil used in the United States goes to power our transportation. The end products—greenhouse gases—are changing the climate in ways that are threatening agriculture, weather patterns and even human life. With the world warming and oil...
by Stephanie Kraft | May 22, 2008 | News
Let's step back from the Democratic presidential primary and have a think about superdelegates, why the Democrats have them and what good they are (or aren't). Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean gave a lot of people a jolt when he said late in...
by Maureen Turner | May 29, 2008 | News
Just a few weeks ago, Pat Markey sounded optimistic about the first big proposal he'd be bringing forward as a freshman Springfield city councilor: a detailed ordinance, co-sponsored by colleague Bruce Stebbins, that would hold city officials to public disclosure...
