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Halos & Horns 2010
[Halo] Jim Madigan, the director of public affairs programming for WGBY-Channel 57 in Springfield, did the Pioneer Valley proud in October, moderating a standout debate that cross-examined this year¹s crop of governor candidates without playing it cute or cozy....Letters: What Do You Think?
Hunting “A Dying Sport” There’s good news from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Within the last few days, newspapers across the country have reported that 33 states have seen a decline in hunting license sales over the last decade. Hunting...
The Amazing Marla BB
Marla BB reached to the middle console of her truck, grabbed a chunk of homemade cake, took a gulp of strong black coffee from a mug she’d balanced on her dash, mashed her foot on the accelerator and steered with her free hand, ascending the gravel road and...Between the Lines: Where There's Smoke…
Critics of the proposed wood-burning power plant in East Springfield continue to press the City Council to revoke a special permit allowing the project, despite warnings that the company would sue. In 2008, the Council granted a special permit to Palmer Renewable...iPolynomials
With the launch of a pioneering education program supported by an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant, a Northampton organization may find itself on the cutting edge of educational innovation in the 21st century. The city’s Collaborative for Educational...Better By Degrees
The good news: the population of Massachusetts has become better educated over the last 30 years. More good news: As it became the nation’s best-educated workforce, the population of Massachusetts saw average wages and income rise significantly. Today,...Meeropol on Wikileaks
Attorney, author and social/political activist Robert Meeropol is slated to speak on Saturday, Jan. 29 at 2 p.m. at Amherst’s Jones Library as part of the annual Thomas Paine birthday observance. Meeropol will address the recent controversy involving...In Memoriam: Perman Glenn III
The Valley lost a fierce advocate for civil rights last week with the death of Springfield attorney Perman Glenn III. The 50-year-old Glenn—who died in an apparent accident while vacationing in the Dominican Republic—was a defense attorney perhaps best...Money and Power
A number of the players behind the controversial proposed Palmer Renewable Energy plant are also significant political contributors. According to records from the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance: • Employees of Palmer Paving—all but a...Comcast-NBC: Pay-to-Play Internet
Imagine, if you will, that one day it was announced that your local supermarket was buying up the road system between you and the grocer. It’s an unusual merger, so it receives considerable government review before it’s approved, and when it is cleared,...Between the Lines: The Rising Cost of Opportunity
During the recent recession, the U.S.’s public universities crossed an important boundary—an ominous boundary from the point of view of making higher education widely accessible. More than half of our public research universities, including UMass, now pay...Imperium Watch: Mad Magazine
The National Rifle Association has warned Congress not to “mess with” gun rights in the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. The NRA is busy as usual, promoting legislation allowing guns to be carried in public places,...Off to the Races in the City of Homes
The Springfield mayor’s race was officially kicked off last week when City Council President Jose Tosado announced that he’ll run this fall against incumbent Mayor Domenic Sarno. Of course, the race has had plenty of unofficial starts over the past year or...
Western Mass. Legislators File Marijuana Reform Bills
In the November election, voters in a number of Massachusetts districts sent a message that they’re ready to see dramatic changes in the commonwealth’s marijuana laws. In nine legislative districts around the state (including the 1st Franklin and...Letters: What Do You Think?
Arnica Not Just for Weekend Warriors Tom Vannah’s article on arnica illustrates the pitfalls of writing on any subject where one doesn’t understand the concepts or theory. There is a vast difference between homeopathic arnica and herbal arnica—as...Imperium Watch: Middlegame Muddle
It’s ironic that a country that wages war in the name of democracy gets nervous when democracy actually breaks out. Jeff Cohen put it this way on the Truthout blog: “One of the mantras on U.S. television news all day Friday was: Be fearful of the...Between the Lines: Yes, Guns Kill
“Guns don’t kill people; people do.” We’ve been hearing that slogan from the NRA for years, and it’s just as disingenuous now as it ever was. The NRA is so determined to, well, stick to its guns that even after U.S. Rep. Gabrielle...
Rethinking Drug-Free School Zones
The only thing new about Gov. Deval Patrick’s recent proposal to shrink so-called “drug-free” school zones in Massachusetts is his support. For years, advocates of criminal justice reform have been critical of the school zone law, which carries...Letters: What Do You Think?
Leak of the Week Darn it! There’s a new leak at Vermont Yankee. Imagine a football field with end zones. That is roughly how far away this new leak is from the old one found last year that Entergy has been remediating ever since. Dang, it was in another calm,...Vermont: Corporations Aren't People
The wording of a new resolution brought to the Vermont State Legislature by state senator Virginia Lyons is stark and unambiguous: “The profits and institutional survival of large corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of...
Learning How to Eat, Again
At the turn of the last century—more than 50 years before Interstate 91 cut through the state and decades before the Valley was even known for its “Pioneers”—there lived a people whose way of life has all but disappeared. Some of us now live in...Springfield, MA: The Sunshine City
A little more than a week after Springfield City Council President Jose Tosado announced his plans to run for mayor this fall, the man he hopes to replace more or less kicked off his own campaign. In truth, the speech incumbent Mayor Domenic Sarno delivered last week...Imperium Watch: A World of Spyware
James Bamford, an investigative journalist and author who specializes in writing about electronic surveillance, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now in 2008 that a company called Narus had supplied AT&T with the surveillance equipment it needed to do wiretapping for...Letters: What Do You Think?
Shifting the Cost of Public Higher Ed A reader of Stephanie Kraft’s article on the decline of public funding for higher education [“The Rising Cost of Opportunity,” February 3, 2011] might well come away feeling sorry for poor families whose children...Between the Lines: Too Late to Monitor–Or Not?
Better late than never, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Environmental Health has committed to a radiation monitoring program for the seven Massachusetts towns in the 10-mile Emergency Preparedness Zone of the Vermont Yankee nuclear...“Feed Northampton”: Origins and Future
In 2009 a debate raged in Northampton. On one side, local athletes felt that the playing fields in town were insufficient to their needs and wanted the city to invest in finding new ones. On the other side were advocates of local agriculture, who, in the face of the...FBI: Chronic Abuse of Power Goes Unchecked
Last summer, there was another avalanche of classified documents detailing abuses by government officials, and it wasn’t from WikiLeaks. Compelled by a lawsuit, the government was recently forced to release files detailing abuses by the Federal Bureau of...IRS Cuts Babies a Break
Who says the IRS is a bastion of heartless, out-of-touch bureaucrats? Not us. At least, not this week. Earlier this month, the IRS announced that it was reversing an earlier decision not to include breast milk pumps on the list of items eligible for reimbursement...Sneakers for Sale, Size Extra Large
It’s about four months later than originally planned, but the long-awaited auction of pieces from Springfield’s “Art & Soles” public art project will finally take place, on Tuesday, March 1. On the block are 19 six-foot tall fiberglass...Between the Lines: For Local Churches, a Miracle of Sorts
Last week, parishioners at three closed Western Mass. Catholic churches got some limited good news: in a rather surprising development, the Vatican has overturned the decision by the Diocese of Springfield to close their churches, St. George and St. Patrick, both in...
Stick 'Em Up!
It might be the sign that we really are in another depression: a “perfect storm” of frustration, desperate economic situations and the bold, almost revenge-based actions of those whose despair has metastasized into anger, or at least into the audacity of...Letters: What Do You Think?
The Irish Were Egyptians It was only when President Mubarak stepped down that I thought of the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, a week-long uprising that brought about the end of the British Empire as such, and led directly to an Irish Free State, triggering freeing...Tension in Forest Park
After a good deal of eleventh-hour drama, it looks like the long-awaited renovation of Springfield’s Forest Park Middle School is back on track. The political fallout from the aforementioned drama? That could take a little longer to resolve. Last week, the...Imperium Watch: Order on the Court
Signs of conflict of interest on the parts of Supreme Court justices have become more flagrant since 2004, when Justice Antonin Scalia was criticized for going duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney a few weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case...Between the Lines: Why Now?
Why now? Why revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt this year rather than last year, or 10 years ago, or never? The protesters now taking to the street daily in Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Algeria are obviously inspired by the success of those revolutions, but what...Spoonful of Subsidies
Our “socialist” president is doling out welfare payments—unfortunately, to one of the world’s most profitable and socially corrupt industries: pharmaceuticals. Barack Obama’s administration is ponying up $1 billion to create a new branch...Letters: What Do You Think?
Bank Robbers Not Glamorous Poor people do not rob banks, desperately unhappy people do not rob banks, criminals rob banks. I’ve been poor and viciously abused. How come I never robbed a bank? Only a person who feels safe where he lives could have written that...Imperium Watch: The Wisconsin Revolt
Valley list servers last week came alive with notices of rallies on behalf of public service unions in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker was supporting legislation that would take collective bargaining rights away from those unions. From Western Mass. Jobs with...Challenging Corporate Personhood
Vermont state senator Virginia Lyons, who recently introduced a bill in that state’s Legislature to redefine personhood (and by extension citizenship) as only applying to human beings, has been continuing to gather support for her bill in both the general...
“Nervy” Preservation
The Springfield Preservation Trust has spent almost 40 years working to preserve the city’s rich architectural history. But it calls its campaign to renovate the 19th-century former schoolhouse at 77 Maple St. perhaps its “nerviest” effort yet. Built...
Biden's Bad Transit Bet
Last month, Vice President Joseph Biden announced a plan to dedicate $53 billion over the next six years to investing in high-speed rail. Plans and funding are already in place to extend rail service throughout many regions of the country; this new funding would...Between the Lines: Summary or DCR Spin?
It’s only a summary: that’s the state’s position in a nutshell. “This summary is not a document that will be utilized to make policy decisions,” writes state Department of Conservation and Recreation Resource Management Planner Jessica A....Letters: What Do You Think?
The Rich Get Richer In re Stephanie Kraft’s March 3 Imperium Watch (“The Wisconsin Revolt”): Both private and public sector employees need unions and collective bargaining—private sector employees to gain leverage with organized business...New President, Old Problem
Two years ago this month, a federal court in New York issued a ruling that was a stinging rebuke to Bush-era policies regarding accessible birth control. The ruling came in response to a 2005 lawsuit filed against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the Center...Valley Comes Up Short in Charter School Process
Last week, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved 16 new charter schools across the state. Although perhaps “across the state” is not the best way to put it—of the chosen 16, only one of the schools will be in Western Mass....
Sarno Wins Legal Scuffle With Club Owners
A Superior Court judge has finally issued a ruling in a bitter lawsuit that pitted Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno against owners of a downtown nightclub—and that found the mayor facing an embarrassing accusation of political retribution. In the spring of 2009,...Imperium Watch: Saner Than Boehner
Here endeth, let us hope, the tale of the alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a military accessory even the Pentagon doesn’t want. Even George Bush didn’t want it, and neither does Obama. A vote to kill the engine would cut $450 million...
Zones: Effective Deterrent?
Earlier this year, Gov. Deval Patrick proposed a number of changes to the criminal justice system, with an eye to reducing costs. The list includes amending so-called “drug-free school zone” laws, which were created under the Dukakis administration as a...Lawmakers Wary of Japan's Nuke Crisis
Some U.S. lawmakers are looking to “put the brakes” on building new nuclear power plants after witnessing the crisis at several Japanese reactors that were rocked by last week’s massive earthquake and tsunami. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) called for...DCR Drops “Controversial” Summary
In the end, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation chose to remove from its website an executive summary of public input to its “Future Forest Visioning Process.” Activists who have criticized DCR’s plan to continue and expand commercial...Between the Lines: NRC Okays Yankee Relicensing
The robosigning division of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has put its imprimatur on the relicensing application for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant near Brattleboro, Vt. Relicensing approvals seem automatic at the NRC, which with the Vermont Yankee decision...Imperium Watch: The Elite Guest Worker
Let’s open a window onto the Beltway battle over the offshoring of high-tech jobs that’s contributed to high unemployment in the U.S. As people, you have to love those cool, competent, charming and hardworking kids, many from Asia, who come to the U.S....Letters: What Do You Think?
GE Aviation on the Joint Strike Fighter Stephanie Kraft’s recent column mischaracterizes the GE/Rolls-Royce engine program for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) as one with only parochial benefits (“Saner than Boehner,” March 10, 2011). In fact, the...Forget Obamacare: Steincare Would Cover All
With the Supreme Court last week wrapping up three days of oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, now begins the long wait for the decision. While the justices were to take a first vote on the case last Friday, their decision won’t...Letters: What Do You Think?
Don’t Ban Logging at Quabbin Representatives from Environment Massachusetts in Boston have been circulating a letter urging MWRA communities to sign a petition requesting a permanent ban on logging in the Quabbin Reservoir watershed. The letter states that...Imperium Watch: Better Days for FOIA Requests
The U.S. government is more transparent now than it was under the Bush administration, though enforcement of the Freedom of Information Act still leaves much to be desired, according to analyses of the handling of FOIA requests by government agencies that were...Between the Lines: Trayvon Martin and the NBA
When LeBron James announced that he would be “taking his talents” to South Beach, he probably wasn’t referring to his skills with social media, let alone social justice. But he could have been. Admittedly, it’s far too easy to criticize...Leveling the Playing Field
“Whoever said that high school was the best years of your life was full of crap,” a student athlete says in the trailer for the documentary Out for the Long Run. That sentiment will ring true for a lot of people, but perhaps for none more than for gay and...Mason Square Library Comes Home
If patience is a virtue, then the library lovers of Mason Square are due an E-ZPass to zip them straight through St. Peter’s gates. Eight years ago this month, residents in the Springfield neighborhood received the jarring news that their branch library had been...E-Edition
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