News
Teacher Payroll Fiasco Questioned
Last month, the Springfield School Department announced some embarrassing news: due to a payroll error, about 1,400 city teachers had been receiving more money than they were due in their paychecks. The overpayments, which stretched back to September, totaled about...
Obama the Republican
“It was Bill Clinton who recognized that the categories of conservative and liberal played to Republican advantage and were inadequate to address our problems,” President Obama wrote in his book The Audacity of Hope. “Clinton’s third...
Layers Beneath Dinosaurland
South Hadley’s Dinosaurland first opened its gates in 1950, when Carlton Nash quit his day job at the Holyoke Water Power Company and decided to stake everything he had on a set of dinosaur tracks he’d discovered in the woods of South Hadley nearly 20...
Greens Rooted in the Valley
As the governor’s race heats up, prepare for the various campaigns to begin making the requisite token gestures toward us forgotten folks out here in the western part of the commonwealth. (Note to the Patrick/Murray ticket: Worcester is not Western Mass. And...
Ticking Clocks, Dragging Feet
Back in February, Springfield City Hall offered a promising timeline for returning full library services to the Mason Square neighborhood: City Solicitor Ed Pikula told the Advocate at the time that the Springfield Urban League would need to vacate its building at 765...Between the Lines: Improvement Needed
The headline of the press release announcing a recent poll on the quality of life in Springfield offered at least a partially positive outlook: “Residents & Express Optimism for the Future.” Indeed, almost half of respondents to the...Holyoke Takes Up Immigration Equity Bill
Holyoke is a city that derives a deep sense of pride from its immigrant history. Now a city councilor is asking his colleagues to voice their support for a proposed federal law that would extend rights already given to immigrant partners in straight couples to gay...Imperium Watch: Banks Lose Student Lending
Banks are out as middlemen in the student loan industry. That’s one of the changes brought about by the new health care reform legislation. That change saves some $8 billion a year in subsidies flowing from the government to the banks and makes the government...State May Require Insurance for Bars
A bill that would require all bars, and all restaurants serving alcohol, to have liability insurance covering drinking-related injury or death is making its way through the Legislature. It passed the House 145-4 earlier this month, with all Western Massachusetts reps...
It's Gerrymandering Time!
Another federal census, another legislative redistricting process, another opportunity for politicians to try to manipulate that process for their and their party’s gain. Across the nation, federal, state and local legislative district lines are about to be...Between the Lines: Of Checks and Balances
The first government shutdown in 15 years made news a few days ago by not happening. Still, it’s worth reviewing what it would have been like if up to 800,000 government workers had had to leave their desks until further notice. And it’s worth noting that...
Work at Your Own Risk
Twelve years ago this spring, Patrice Woeppel was heading to her office in the Florida hospital where she worked as clinical director when she slipped on a dirty floor and fell to the ground. “I landed on my hands, then onto my left hip,” Woeppel writes in...Imperium Watch: 1040 Talk
April 15, the perennial income tax filing day, is not tax day this year. Thanks to a holiday many of us never heard of—Emancipation Day, the day slaves were freed in the District of Columbia by edict of Abraham Lincoln in 1862—this year we don’t have...Letters: What Do You Think?
Riffers Live, Puppets Died James Heflin’s article “The Wisecracking Puppets Who Wouldn’t Die” [April 8, 2010] was a frustrating piece to read for a longtime MST3K fan. Heflin cites several episodes from the series and states: “All that...Letters: What Do You Think?
GOP and Taxes: The Aha Moment Republicans don’t increase taxes on the wealthy during an economic downturn—it will exacerbate the problem. Republicans don’t increase taxes on the wealthy during a recession—it will slow recovery. Republicans...
The Luntz Strategy
Senate Republicans just debuted their new strategy for financial reform: refuse to cooperate with Democrats on the grounds that the Dems are too willing to give Wall Street what it wants. I’m not making this up. In a Senate floor speech, Minority Leader Mitch...Between the Lines: Shut Up and Bet
Well, that was fast, wasn’t it? Last week, the Massachusetts House of Representatives (not typically known for its speediness) passed a bill to expand gambling in the state just a few days after it was filed by Speaker Robert DeLeo. It now heads to the Senate....
Moviemaking Mecca
You may not know how much filmmaking and animation talent finds its home in the Valley. Take Larry Jackson of Amherst, formerly of Los Angeles, who earlier in his career was senior vice president for production for the Samuel Goldwyn Company as well as an executive...Letters: What Do You Think?
Let’s Hear It for Pickles Regarding Mark Roessler’s great article on pickles [“The Pickles All Around Me,” April 8, 2010], one comment: M & M Green Valley Produce is open year round. Their hours for now are nine to six, seven days a week....
Poultry Politics
In The Hoboken Chicken Emergency—a quirky 1977 children’s novel by Daniel Pinkwater—a kid named Arthur Bobowicz is sent out to buy the family’s Thanksgiving turkey and instead returns home with a live chicken. And not just any chicken: a...Imperium Watch: Waiting to Happen
With 29 miners dead at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia, it’s time to notice what a long story lies behind this disaster. Last year the mine was cited for more than 500 safety violations, up 200 percent from 2008. In the weeks prior to the deaths,...
Brown to Baker: Get a Barn Jacket
As Baystate Republicans gathered in Worcester’s DCU Center last weekend to choose a gubernatorial candidate—former Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare CEO Charles D. Baker came away with a crushing victory over feisty ex-Mass Turnpike official Christy...Working Against Mass Incarceration
In 2000, veteran activist Lois Ahrens came up with the idea of a course, through Amherst’s Center for Popular Economics, that would look at what we as a society truly pay for our system of mass incarceration—a system that, as of 2009, saw just under 2.3...
Big-League Courage
Last week, perennial NBA All-Star and five-time champion Kobe Bryant called an official who had just hit him with a technical foul a “fucking faggot.” The offensive slur was captured on national TV, prompting basketball analyst Steve Kerr to suggest,...Between the Lines: Public Workers Challenged in New England
A bill to reduce the bargaining power of public employee unions in Massachusetts has been filed in the state Legislature (see related article “It Can Happen Here”). A few weeks ago the Advocate had a short chat with a local labor leader who told us he was...New Boss, Old Boss
When Rick Sullivan, the former mayor of Westfield, became the new secretary of the Mass. Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, opponents of a power plant proposed in Springfield hoped the new hire might be good news for their cause. Critics of the...ImperiumWatch: It Can Happen Here
As public employees in Wisconsin and other states fight to hang on to collective bargaining rights, a bill to reduce those rights for public employees has been filed by Republicans in the Massachusetts Legislature. The Massachusetts bill doesn’t go as far as the...
Taking On Monsanto
In 2001, the Monsanto corporation sued a 70-year-old farmer from Saskatchewan, Canada, named Percy Schmeiser for violating its patent on an herbicide-resistant canola seed the company had developed. Monsanto’s suit alleged that Schmeiser had knowingly planted...
Brewers Brewing
When I arrived at Berkshire Brewing in South Deerfield to take co-owner Gary Bogoff’s photograph for this year’s edition of the Best of the Valley, I hadn’t initially realized I was interrupting him in the middle of some delicate, exacting work....
Caleb's Garden
Before he began writing his blog Talk Dirt to Me—you can find it at valleyadvocate.com—Caleb Rounds had already made an impression on a couple of Advocate editors who’d had the chance to see his garden up close and personal. For all the thousands and...Letters: What Do You Think?
Help for Injured Workers “Work at Your Own Risk” (April 14, 2011) exposed how inadequate the workers’ compensation system is. Patrice Woeppel’s book, Depraved Indifference, is excellent. We are very fortunate in Western Massachusetts to have an...Stein Stands Alone Against Gambling
Earlier this month, as the Massachusetts House took up–and quickly passed–Speaker Robert DeLeo’s bill to build two casinos and add slots machines at four racetracks, Jill Stein, the Green-Rainbow party’s gubernatorial candidate, headed to the...
Reality Versus Ridiculous Perception
In response to a recent Advocate article about a less-than-flattering WNEC poll on the quality of life in Springfield (“Improvement Needed,” April 15), one proud city resident wrote to offer a very different view of the city. “Springfield has been...Letters: What Do You Think?
Build a Casino, Already The question of a casino in this state is ridiculous, and I find writing about it just as silly. The main question is this: do we, as a state, wish to continue to help fund our neighboring states or keep Massachusetts dollars in Massachusetts?...Between the Lines: A Belated Goodbye
It’s important to read a daily newspaper, and it seems to become more important, at least for me, the older I get. When I picked up the daily habit as a kid, it was the sports page, particularly the box scores for my beloved Red Sox, which attracted me. Now...ImperiumWatch: What Kind of Neighbor Are We?
Americans need to take a deep look at the relation between our own policies and two nagging problems. One is the situation in Haiti; the other is the situation in Mexico. In both cases, our trade policies contributed to crises we now describe another way. We...
Back Where Ultimate Came From
This weekend, high school Ultimate teams from across the Northeast will converge on the Valley for the 19th Annual Amherst Invitational Tournament. The game—the object of which is to score points by tossing a flying disc to a team member in the opponent’s...Between the Lines: Bruno's Killers Go Down
The conviction in New York earlier this month of three men involved in the Al Bruno shooting in 2003 brings back memories of the night the mob leader was blown away in the parking lot of the Mt. Carmel Social Club in Springfield’s South End. In a city whose...Letters: What Do You Think?
Noho Bridge Art: Second Time Around For the city to begin a new search for proposals for the Route 9 railroad bridge artwork project is a slap in the face to the artists who already made the effort the first time around and are now being told to resubmit their work....Unpleasant Options
The benefits of political incumbency are well documented: the power that comes from being a for-now-at-least maker of decisions and exerter of influence; the luxury of already being in office, rather than trying to cram in a campaign around another, full-time job; the...
Greenfield's Beautiful New Drive-Through
In Greenfield this spring, an entity long thought extinct has made an impressive return. In a collaboration between a local financial institution and a local architecture firm, a handsome bank building was built that enhances the neighborhood in which it stands. Walk...Wisconsin Politics: Shooting at Decoys?
A rare swell of support for unions and organized labor has resulted from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s (and other Republican governors’) recent corporate-funded assault on public workers and their right to collectively bargain for wages, benefits and...
Green Rush
Springfield is a city with a deep industrial history, and while that remains a source of great pride (labor historian Robert Forrant has described the city, during the height of its technological activity, as the Silicon Valley of its day), it hasn’t exactly...Imperium Watch: Talking Back to the Banks
Talking about the foreclosure crisis isn’t simple because that crisis has a lot of levels. Early on, the favorite scenario for bankers and developers to put forward depicted the family who bought a house they could not afford, lived in luxury for a year or two,...AFL-CIO Updates Executive Compensation Database
Recently, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) announced the launch of a new, comprehensive online database of corporate executive compensation, permitting anyone to search pay rates by company, industry or state. The...
Maddow: Killing Bin Laden with a Spoon
On April 13, Rachel Maddow was a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he interviewed her about the documentary The Timothy McVeigh Tapes a program she hosted and helped edit that was to be released on the anniversary of the Oklahoma bombings. Though...Between the Lines: Break the Cycle
Washington’s relationship with Wall Street is growing more schizophrenic by the day. On the one hand, Congress is trying to show how tough it can be on the financial sector by enacting a law ostensibly designed to prevent another near-meltdown. As the mid-term...Bad Seeds in the Toy Box
In 2009, it was Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie (complete with tiny, tiny shorts and big, big hair) who took the prize. But what’s the most odious children’s toy of 2010? The Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood wants your opinion, as it...Facebook: Private No More
Last week popular social media site Facebook removed the ability for users to determine who could see their list of interests or personal information. It used to be that Facebook promised, “No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to...
Wonk and Circumstance
Every now and then the Valley spews forth one of its own into the shark-infested seas of national notoriety. Usually the culprit is an artist, a musician or a novelist of some sort, though on rare occasion you might see the rise of a filmmaker like Ken Burns or a...Letters: What Do You Think?
The Chicken Connection I’d like to thank Maureen Turner for writing an insightful and measured article (“Poultry Politics: Is the Valley ready for urban chickens?”, April 22) on a local topic that is so intrinsically linked to the national...Got Extra Milk?
There are a lot of lessons you might take from the string of natural disasters—the earthquakes and tsunamis, floods and droughts—that have been cropping up around the globe in recent years: about the effects of climate change, say, or the wisdom of nuclear...Look Who's Watching Videos
Do you ever find yourself gazing at your cherubic, dimple-chinned baby lolling about in her crib and thinking to yourself: when is this little slob going to stop all this drooling and goo-goo-ga-ga nonsense and start getting serious about her future? Let’s face...Between the Lines: After Bin Laden
Ding, dong, the witch is dead. Osama bin Laden, the author of the 9/11 atrocity in the United States and various lesser terrorist outrages elsewhere, has been killed by American troops in his hide-out in northern Pakistan. At last, the world can breathe more easily....Letters: What Do You Think?
Future Bleak for Nukes I should like to comment on the “Nuclear Power Safe” letter that appeared in your April 14 issue. I believe that further clarification is needed regarding matters introduced in this letter. The statement that “the nuclear power...Imperium Watch: Tectonic Shift
You might not find Michael Ruppert as much fun as Michael Moore. You might find parts of Collapse, the film in which director Chris Smith draws him out about his views of the impending violent downsizing of industrial civilization, less persuasive than other parts....Imperium Watch: Who Stole the Future?
It seems good news that more businesses are hiring now, and it is. But it leaves a lot to be hoped for. That’s because many of the jobs don’t offer the wages and security that American workers could count on in the years before our manufacturing base...Vote on New High School Approaches
The City of Easthampton holds a special election on Tuesday, May 18 that gives residents a chance to vote on a Proposition 2 1/2 debt exclusion to finance the construction of a new high school, which at last estimate would cost approximately $48 million. The debt...Between the Lines: Kagan in Context
If President Obama has his way, former Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan will replace John Paul Stevens—and the Supreme Court will move rightward. The nomination is very disturbing, especially because it’s part of a pattern. The White House is in the...E-Edition
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