News
by Tom Sturm | Mar 3, 2011 | News
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...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 8, 2011 | News
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...
by Mark Roessler | Mar 10, 2011 | News
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...
by Tom Vannah | Mar 10, 2011 | News
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....
by Our Readers | Mar 10, 2011 | News
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...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 10, 2011 | News
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...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 10, 2011 | News
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....
by Maureen Turner | Mar 10, 2011 | News
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,...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 15, 2011 | News
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...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 18, 2011 | News
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...
by Vicki Needham | Mar 18, 2011 | News
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...
by Tom Vannah | Mar 18, 2011 | News
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...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 18, 2011 | News
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...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 18, 2011 | News
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....
by Our Readers | Apr 5, 2011 | News
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...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 7, 2011 | News
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...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 7, 2011 | News
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...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 7, 2011 | News
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...
by Pete Redington | Apr 7, 2011 | News
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...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 7, 2011 | News
“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...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 7, 2011 | News
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...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 12, 2011 | News
An effort to guarantee Massachusetts workers the right to take time off when they’re ill took an important step forward recently, when a legislative committee gave its approval to the Earned Paid Sick Time bill. The bill would allow eligible workers to earn up...
by Robert J. Haynes | Apr 19, 2011 | News
After the blatantly manufactured “statewide” report on municipal health insurance entitled “The Utility of Trouble. Municipal Health Plans: Gilded Benefits from a Bygone Era,” released in April by the Boston Foundation and the Massachusetts...
by Tom Sturm | May 10, 2011 | News
The City of Easthampton recently approved applications for what will be a large outdoor market in the parking lot of the former Fedor Pontiac car dealership at 228 Northampton St. (Rte. 10). The market, organized by Carla Racine of Northampton, is the first of its...
by Tom Sturm | May 17, 2011 | News
In an era when the cries over the outsourcing of American manufacturing are only drowned out by the sound of Chinese factories running at full steam, it’s easy to forget that at one time, the United States was a leader in the business of making things. Though...
by Markos Moulitsas | May 17, 2011 | News
Conservatives had two options in responding to news that Osama bin Laden had been killed: They could either celebrate along with the rest of America and concede that the Obama administration had done the right thing, or they could lose their minds completely and...
by Mark Roessler | May 31, 2011 | News
“The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day—without their permission.” The above bombast was part of a much longer email...
by Senator Bernie Sanders | May 31, 2011 | News
At a time when this country faces a $14 trillion national debt and a huge deficit, Congress must aggressively move toward deficit reduction. However, as we do so, we must be mindful of what caused the deficit in the first place, and make certain that the solution to...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jun 8, 2011 | News
In a down economy, the news centers around money. Tax cuts, tax hikes. Outrageous bonuses for irresponsible Wall Street executives. The shortfalls in everyone’s retirement accounts. These are real problems, but they take our attention off even more ominous...
by Tom Vannah | Jun 8, 2011 | News
The longtime president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, Robert J. Haynes, announced last week that he will not seek re-election to the position he’s held since 1998, opening the door for what he said he hopes will be “younger” leadership. A former...
by Paul Shoul | Jun 10, 2011 | News
The morning after the tornado touched down in Springfield, photographer Paul Shoul took to the streets. To view a gallery of photos from that day, click on the icons to the right, below the large photo. * An Ill Wind In a house in West Springfield, a woman throws her...
by Tom Sturm | Jun 10, 2011 | News
Bob Paquette, WFCR/WNNZ’s longtime producer, reporter and host of the station’s Morning Edition program, died of an apparent heart attack over the Memorial Day weekend, leaving for many a void in their day which will be difficult to fill. A familiar voice...
by Maureen Turner | Jun 10, 2011 | News
Growing up in Springfield, Amaad Rivera says, he didn’t have any openly gay adult role models. When he came out at 18, he didn’t have anyone to talk to about what he was feeling and experiencing, and neither did his mother. “I grew up here, and...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jun 10, 2011 | News
Bin Laden’s death may be the most momentous event of this year—or it may seem to be. After the clapping and the dancing, it’s time for our afterthoughts about what difference his death really makes. It’s too soon to be sure, but it may make...
by Chris Lehman | Jun 10, 2011 | News
In the long-ago epoch when Bill Clinton made a credible-sounding populist run at the presidency, he hymned the American dream as a compact securing a better future for those who “worked hard and played by the rules.” Here at the shank end of the great...
by Our Readers | Jun 15, 2011 | News
Bring On the Train In my opinion, it is truly awesome that we’re finally getting these architectural treasures back (“Your City’s Front Door,” May 26, 2011)—as functional improvements to our infrastructure! I can’t wait to take the...
by Maureen Turner | Jun 21, 2011 | News
There are certain unmistakable signs that summer is finally coming to the Valley: the exquisite local asparagus. That certain, shall we say, organic odor in Hadley. And, in recent years, the publication of the annual Locally Grown Farm Products Guide. If your...
by Mark Roessler | Jun 24, 2011 | News
After 143 years, the Clarke School for Hearing and Speech is leaving its 11-plus-acre campus at the top of Round Hill in Northampton. It won’t be going far, though. The administration is consolidating operations to Bell Hall, a newer building on the edge of the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jun 24, 2011 | News
Summer is road trip time, but as we pack our cars for those long-awaited vacations, a sobering fact confronts us: the cost of travel will never be as low as it used to be. That’s not only because the era of cheap oil is over, but because American roads are...
by Our Readers | Jun 24, 2011 | News
The Archaeology Beat Regarding James Heflin’s June 16 Art in Paradise column about the loss of ancient artifacts in Iraq (“Destroying the Past”): John Russell is a brilliant, kind and considerate expert in ancient Near East archaeology. I had the...
by Tom Vannah | Jun 24, 2011 | News
I wasn’t surprised when a federal jury last week convicted former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi on seven of nine criminal charges. I didn’t spend a single moment in the courtroom, but I’ve been reading about DiMasi’s legal troubles...
by Eesha Williams | Jun 24, 2011 | News
Activists are asking the public to join them at a rally on June 23 and June 24 outside the federal court in Brattleboro, where the trial of Entergy v. Shumlin will be held both days from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Peter Shumlin is governor of Vermont. Entergy is the...
by Maureen Turner | Jun 30, 2011 | News
In 2002, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed an ambitious resolution to address the increasingly sticky problem of how to handle the city’s waste. The resolution called for the city to divert 75 percent of its solid waste from its landfill by 2010....
by Stephanie Kraft | Jun 30, 2011 | News
The fear that poor towns, regions or countries could become dumping areas for toxic material, including nuclear waste, was what led to protests against so-called “environmental injustice”—practices that embody the worst effects of the intrusion of...
by Maureen Turner | Jun 30, 2011 | News
Springfield has held the unhappy distinction of being the foreclosure capital of Massachusetts; last year, 595 properties were foreclosed on in the City of Homes, more than in any other municipality in the state, including Boston. Foreclosure rates have been slowing...
by Tom Sturm | Jun 30, 2011 | News
Easthampton’s Cellar Bar began as a subterranean extension of its glamorous upstairs sister, Venus—as a chic but casual complementary space. Venus, which opened in the summer of 2009, offered high-end, Latin- and French-inspired dinner menus created by...
by Our Readers | Jun 30, 2011 | News
For Whom the Tolls Rise Toll roads must produce revenue to defray costs of borrowed money they use for road work, regular maintenance, costs of toll collections, and the 10 percent or more profits to the (foreign-based) shareholders (see “Phantom...
by Tom Vannah | Jun 30, 2011 | News
Rudi R. Scherff, the proprietor of the the Student Prince Cafe and The Fort Restaurant in Springfield, says he always wondered what a tornado would be like. Now that he knows, he says, he hopes it’s his only such experience. “Once was enough,”...
by Ted Rall | Jul 6, 2011 | News
Borders Books and Music, which once employed 30,000 workers at more than 600 stores, is bankrupt. Those numbers have been halved. And even after these massive cuts, analysts say, Borders is probably doomed. The next time you walk past the empty ghost store where your...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 7, 2011 | News
During the past 600 million years, scientists say, there have been five “global extinction events” in the ocean. Now we’re headed for another one unless we shrink our carbon footprint and quit overfishing now, not later, according to a group of...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 7, 2011 | News
Last week, City Hall signaled that Springfield was moving into a post-tornado “rebuilding phase.” Almost four weeks to the day after the June 1 storm that ripped through the city, Mayor Domenic Sarno officially kicked off a new “public/private”...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 7, 2011 | News
Amaad Rivera, Ward 6 representative to the Springfield City Council, says he’s proud of what he’s accomplished during his short time on the Council, and he intends to do even more—just from a different seat. After initially taking out nomination...
by Pete Redington | Jul 7, 2011 | News
Originally painted green in 1947 to cover a slew of advertising images, Fenway Park’s left-field wall has been affectionately known as the Green Monster ever since. Yet until recently, there has been little that was sustainably green about ye olde ballpark save...
by Tom Vannah | Jul 12, 2011 | News
Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun may not be the highest-paid university administrator in Massachusetts, but at more than $900,000 a year as of 2009, I think it’s fair to say he’s doing pretty well. When I called Aoun’s office last week,...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 12, 2011 | News
On June 9, members of Springfield’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community and their allies gathered on the steps of City Hall with city officials. They were there for a flag-raising ceremony marking the return of Pride Week in the city. Almost a...
by Tom Sturm | Jul 14, 2011 | News
There’s a game of chicken going on this summer, and it doesn’t involve cars, train-hopping or holding lit cigarettes between forearms. The federal government may go into default on the national debt as of Aug. 2. Congress is trying to hash out the details...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 14, 2011 | News
Sometimes the truth is the gorilla in the room that people don’t see. In the Congressional debate over the debt ceiling, as Republicans refuse to raise taxes on the upper 2 percent, the gorilla looms very large. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 14, 2011 | News
In the worst economy many Americans can remember, it’s easy to imagine the country divided into two groups: the unhappy jobless and the happy employed. But it’s far from being that simple. Certainly the jobless are unhappy, but the employed are under...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 14, 2011 | News
Springfield’s municipal budget for fiscal 2012—a $542.2 million affair—has long since been finalized and sent off to the state bean counters. But the political aftershocks of the budget process? Well, they’re still reverberating around City...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 14, 2011 | News
Last month, Connecticut became the first state in the nation to legally guarantee workers paid sick days. This week, the Massachusetts Legislature will take up a similar bill, at a July 14 hearing of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development. The...
